Houston passes ordinance to fingerprint, photograph precious metal sellers

It sure gives the government half the paper trail for future taxation on PM's.

 

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Actually, it's the only half they care about. The other half is up to the taxpayer and is considered optional by the IRS.

 

But this is a local ordinance and the state government needs the other half for their sales tax revenues.

 

The Nazi's would have absolutely loved to have every person chipped. Think how many people went missing every day back then. Some of their bodies were never found. Yes, it would certainly have made their work much more efficient. Of course, that could never happen here, right? As long as the government can know where we are, what we are doing, who we are doing it with and how often we are doing it, we should be in good shape.

 

He also said:
”Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Ben Franklin


I certainly do not see presenting ID or fingerprint to certifiy a check or credit card, or selling bullion or copper scrap as interfering on anyone's liberties ~ except to avoid paying taxes, launder money, hide money, etc. and feel they are out of the sight of "The Man". My Opinion of course.
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The average physical PM does not want the gubbermint to know they are holding physical. We have seen what they are capable of doing.

 

I agree with in most things Jim but not fingerprinting. Its too much an invasion in me eyes. Heck, the government has my fingerprints and even retinal scans on file from previous involvement, but such things should not be part of daily commerce. Lazy police forces and ineffective penal systems are not enough to convince me my life should be so invaded.

 

As long as said holder participates in all current laws, I have absolutely no problem with that. If they are buying or selling bullion and treating the transaction such to avoid their state and federal tax laws, they are the perfect reason that their liberties should be taken away. Like Chris, I have been fingerprinted many times, but I have never felt it was violation of my freedom, because there were very good reasons for it. If the bank takes my fingerprint to cash a check or withdraw my money, I am not going to go crazy over it, I could just go to other bank or shop at a different store. Besides, "what technology can bring forth, a good hacker can defeat"~ anonymous

 

By that thought process you are indeed infringing on people's liberties as you are no longer allowing the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. You are saying that because someone wishes to not be fingerprinted when selling PM's they are automatically guilty of those crimes you mention. You have already decided that someone who may wish to simply remain private is trying to be nefarious. You are forcing someone to expose themselves to possible exploit from those who may indeed be criminals by providing very unique identifiable information when not absolutely warranted, for a discretionary transaction.

I'm quite surprised that especially in this day and age of technology there are so many who still do not understand that it's not about hiding something of ill repute, but instead protecting yourselves and your loved ones from the people and crimes these laws are supposed to prevent.

If you have nothing to hide, then go ahead and post all your important information out in the open everywhere. Post your name and full address on Internet forums, post your social security number on the corkboard at the supermarket, leave all your checking account numbers out on the table down at the community center. After all, there's no real difference between that and allowing yourself to be videotaped in public and putting down in writing all your personal information to a "safe and trusted" entity.

For if you believe that giving out all your personal information to anyone, especially that so unique as your fingerprints to a coin shop or pawn shop, is keeping you protected, you are sadly and severely mistaken.

So, a little scenario for you:
You are Joe Public driving up to the coin shop in your Lexus, and you've been videotaped on a public, or private for the coin store, video camera. You walk into the store and sell a bunch of coins and bullion, say $5k worth. You give your ID to be photocopied and you fill out a form and get fingerprinted. You take your money, walk out of the store and drive home.

Seems innocuous, right? Well, let's see...

There is now a video of you, with great detail of your features and looks. Your car, make and model as well as license plate are also on the video, very easily recognizable and the plate is well seen. In the store the clerk has taken a photocopy of your driver's license, as well as have the form with your home address and your fingerprint on there, certifying you are indeed you, and your car, your house and everything in it are indeed what and where they say they are, and they're yours.

The store employs a third party person - either a security guard at night, a cleaning crew, a delivery person, an apprentice with a cloudy background but nothing that would be on a criminal record and are able to pass a background check. This person needs a little extra cash, so they take an extra copy of some paperwork in the back as they're putting it into the safe, or the paper is left out accidentally when someone's cleaning up, etc. This paper/video gets sold to someone who is indeed a criminal, using an all-cash, non traceable transaction.

Then, a few weeks/months later you start getting phone calls about overdue accounts, collection letters, etc on accounts you never opened. But, someone did in your name because they had all your identifiable information that you so willingly gave up at the coin store when you sold some stuff a while back.

Or, worse, someone is able to track you and your whereabouts because they now know where you live, what car you drive and can find out the information about where you work, they break into your house and steal your things. Since you were seen driving a Lexus (and they can prove it's yours based upon all the information they have, they ran a credit check and see the lease outstanding on it), and selling $5k worth of coins, you most likely have money or items worth stealing. How many times do we see coin thefts posted here, and it's said "oh, it was an inside job". Well, this is an inside job.

And the fun part is you are left holding the bag for cleaning up your credit score, or cleaning up after a burglary, or having to buy a new car since it was stolen.

Far fetched? Maybe a little since it does read like a script from "24", but not as much as you think in today's world. Everything is interconnected. Not everyone may have access to all the information about you immediately all at once, but there are plenty of sophisticated criminals out there looking for these types of things. I manage IT, in a healthcare company. I can tell you firsthand that with all the regulations about safeguarding information, it doesn't mean squat. Especially with contracts going out to the lowest bidder, moreso on government systems, your data is leaving the US and going God-Knows-Where at any given time and you have no control over it once it is given to anyone.

And this all happened because you had nothing to hide in the first place. Except everything that's valuable to you.

 

But why is being fingerprinted so bad? Are you ever going to commit a crime where that fingerprint could be used against you? Probably not. It is the principle.

 

And the principle of why you've never done a bad thing than why should you? Should one be judged prematurely? I think that's whats happening here. My rights as a private citizen are being violated........

 

And that fingerprint is going to open everything up to this scenario? All of the rest can be obtained just by someone hanging out at the bullion 'store' and following you home. The purposed thief doesn't care if you are who you say you are, or a doctor wanted for Medicare fraud. I doubt many bullion buyers or seller do much to hide their way home. Even coin dealers carrying millions often stop on the roadside rest stop for a break and lose everything. The fingerprint or even their license plate or the photo ID had nothing to do with it.

 

And I'm way under the weather.....nite all........

 

Hey Green they say enough scotch and you can't see your fingerprints Hope you feel better tomorrow!

 

What a bunch of Nazi's. What I buy is MY business, and no one else. If I buy on ebay from a seller in TX, how can he photograph me?

 

For some local thief wanting to follow you home, no, the fingerprint does nothing to aid them. To someone who is more than a local thug, experienced in technology and looking to exploit you financially from afar, all the information they can get is useful.

And no, there is no arguing that a lot of this information can be obtained by many places. The argument is why add one more place that is a potential outlet of this information for something that is the result of the flawed "you want to hide something so you're automatically guilty" thought process . Sure, there's other places you can go to sell your stuff that don't have this yet. The problem arises when this becomes law across the country.

Whether or not I agree with the proposed good any regulation can do, and in this case I am not arguing this idea is a bad one or a good one, if it becomes law all over it becomes a problem. To your point, I'm sure most places are good hearted and follow the law, and protect the data they collect to the best of their ability. They can be trusted to an extent to handle your private information.

All regulation whether good or bad however, adds a detrimental cost to the party being regulated. That cost is in time or money (and time is money) in having to put into place practices to comply with that legislation. To those that have the means such as a multi-million/billion dollar corporation they can hire the right people and put the best safeguards in place because they have to. To a coin shop dealer who is only concerned with one thing - selling coins to keep food on his table - that thing is not the proper management of their customer's private data. They are concerned with doing the minimum necessary to just meet the letter of the law so they don't lose money on fines and lawsuits so they can spend time on the important thing of making money for the business, not spending it on complying with regulations. Therein lies the ability to make them an easy target for obtaining the private information. This is the whole argument of the car with the club on the steering wheel parked right next to the same car without the club - the one with fewer obstacles will be targeted.

Why am I, someone with no evil intent (and I'm innocent until guilty, right?), jeopardized in that manner simply because I want to sell some silver and gold. Just as I have no supposed reason to hide anything, I have no reason to be subjected to risk of anything in my personal life on that same basis.

 

I live in Texas, and for some reason whenever I buy silver at Dallas Gold and Silver Exchange they want my drivers license (even if it's 1oz purchase). They log my license number on the receipt and in the computer. Kinda weird considering that I'm buying not selling.

 

None of these have anything to do with the ordinance passed by City Council yet have everything to do with an over-reaction to an ordinance which was passed.

Some folks just need to stop overthinking this stuff with the "what if" scenarios and understand that government, beit city, county, state, or federal, are simply trying to make life easier for the masses that CONSTANTLY DEMAND that they "do something". It is incredibly easy to "armchair quarterback" a situation once it's occured but ever so difficult to prevent the situation from happening in the first place.

 

Huh?

Folks must be afraid that the government is going to "target" PM holders (who just sold their holdings anyway) for confiscation?

News FLASH: Platinumk, Gold and Silver are NEVER going to be used as a basis for the value of M-O-N-E-Y! Never. (They are too widely used in the very technology I'm using to type this response or the cell phone I use as a primary communication device..)

As such, there will NEVER be a need for a government, regardless of country, to "confiscate" gold or silver. Of course, the word "confiscate" is liberally applied here when the reality is that there was no such "confiscation" (unless you had one of the illegal 1933 Saints that is.) in 1933. The turning in of gold was exchanged for Federal Reserve Notes which is what we use on a daily basis anyway.

I just do not understand the umbrella of "fear and conspiracy" that some folks choose to live under.

 

It's also all but impossible to get onerous regulations and ordinances undone once they have become codified into law. I don't remember
anyone demanding anything like this in Houston and can't see how it is going to catch anyone except law-abiding citizens in the camera lens.