Dispatches from the privacy front, Corporate Division

WKMG-TV also let us know, this time on Friday, that Walt Disney World has added a new requirement for admission beyond the ability to pay high prices and endure hours-long lines for five-minute rides.

Tourists visiting Disney theme parks in Central Florida must now provide their index and middle fingers to be scanned before entering the front gates.

The scans were formerly for season pass holders but now everyone must provide their fingers, Local 6 News reported. They have reportedly been phased in for all ticket holders during the past six months, according to a report.

Disney officials said the scans help keep track of who is using legitimate tickets, Local 6 News reported.

Company PR flacks say the scans don't take actual fingerprints - but since in order to work they have to be able to distinguish you from everyone else, that seems a quibbling and pointless distinction.

In fact, it's hard to see how this achieves the stated goal at all. Apparently, the scheme was begun as a substitute for picture IDs for season pass holders, which apparently can only be used by the person who bought them. (Sidebar: That always struck me as dumb, frankly. Limit it to one entry per day and let it be used that day by anyone the ticket holder desires. The money that person/family will spend once inside the park should make it worthwhile for the corporate bosses. But no, they can't do that because, the transparently-stupid-once-it's-said-out-loud logic is that anyone who gets in free would otherwise have bought a full-price ticket if the freebie was not available. Just dumb.) But what this has to do with insuring the use of "legitimate" tickets by day-pass buyers is at best vague. Instead, it seems more geared to gathering information about the behavior of ticket purchasers for promotion and marketing. Which is probably why

[c]ritics of the new scanning technology do not agree with Disney and said the scans border on a violation of privacy.

I think it's a step in the wrong direction," Civil Liberties Union [of Florida] spokesman George Crossley said. "I think it is a step toward collection of personal information on people regardless of what Disney says." ...

"The collecting of this fingertip information and how it is to be used and what the source of that information is as it relates to what it will show - I don't like it and we will look into it," Crossley said. ...

Universal Orlando and SeaWorld also plan to implement similar technology in the future, Local 6 News reported.

Because once one place proves that an idiot, docile public will put up with crap like this, it spreads.