Your Thumb Here: Newest ID of Choice at Store and on Job Businesses and government agencies defend the practice as a reasonable response to the widespread traffic in false identifications. But civil rights advocates worry that fingerprinting is being used to intimidate people who patronize businesses that serve lower-income people. Some wonder if fingerprint databases can be protected from abuse.
Wayne Crews, director of technology studies at the conservative Cato Institute in Washington, said the technology can protect privacy, making it harder for a thief to use a stolen charge card encoded with a thumbprint. But Mr. Crews said that big, compulsory databases, like those for driver's licenses and other ID's that store people's finger or facial images, can be abused by officials, identity thieves or others who find a way into them. "You create a honey pot for hackers," he said.