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Fake IDs in the age of the internet

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Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#171

Post by zaphod12 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #142
malnourish wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Wisconsin, at least: > Can an underage person possess and consume alcohol beverages on licensed premises? > Yes. Persons under age 21 may possess and consume alcohol beverages if they are with their parents, guardians or spouses of legal drinking age; but this is at the discretion of the licensee. The licensed premise may choose to prohibit consumption and possession of alcohol beverages by underage persons. https…

This site has a good summary[0] of Wisconsin, and in general I think Wisconsin's drinking laws are very sane. But contrast it with Utah[1], Arizona[2], Kansas[3], North Dakota[4], Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania or Vermont. [0] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?... [1] https://alcoholpolicy.niaaa.nih.gov/APIS_State_Profile.html?...…

Yeah, seriously...on a ski trip with my father in Vermont when I was a high schooler, I could not even CARRY A BAG with beer in it between the store and the car.

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#172

Post by dhimes »

Someone1234 wrote: post #138
schoen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've oversimplified the legal situation here. Many states' laws do allow parents to give their children alcohol, but they may also allow the parents' practices in this regard to be considered as a factor in finding that they are unfit parents, which is a determination that should be made by a formal hearing, considering various evidence. This may seem kind of bizarre, and perhaps the criteria in many states…

The state I'm currently in has no such exception. It is illegal for both the parent to supply and the child to consume alcohol at home. Both can be arrested. This is true for several states.

Whenever I've gone to a beer hall in Germany the only super drunk people were American college students. It's really a shame, and you are absolutely right: We Americans are going the wrong way with this (and have been for decades).

My middle son turned 21 (legal drinking age here in the US) a couple of weeks ago. He never drank at all as a "kid." You couldn't give him a glass of wine at a holiday dinner, or a beer to watch a ball game or anything. Neither myself nor his mother were a part of his birthday celebration. I was honestly quite worried that he would be out with friends and have his first experience go horribly wrong. He has no idea how it will affect him. (Thankfully all turned out ok).

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#173

Post by djsumdog »

dionidium wrote: post #169
djsumdog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. MADD really is fighting the wrong battle and should be a lobby for real mass transit in most major US cities. The idea that America is "too spread out" is a terrible myth. Every America city I've lived it use to have amazing tram systems. They're all gone now; killed by the desire of Ford and GM to see us a car future. There is an amazing amount of advertising that trained Americans to love their cars and consi…

No, it actually really is too spread out. My hometown of St. Louis once had an extensive streetcar network, that much is true; but you're missing a key point: that network was almost entirely within the 66 square miles of the original St. Louis City limits. The region is now spread far, far beyond those original borders. Only about 300k of the 2.8 million residents of greater St. Louis currently live within those lim…

This is really short sighted. If that original tram network was kept in place and upgraded, then money could have been spent on suburban rail networks.

Excellent examples: Melbourne and Adelaide in Australia. In fact, Adelaide is pretty spread out and suburban, but it still has a nicely laid out (if a bit dated) train network). Melbourne didn't ditch their trams and now have the largest network in the world (and they still have tons of suburbs with regional V-Lines reaching almost all of them).

If the tram networks hadn't been removed, we would have seen different priorities. Also, just because it's gone now, doesn't mean we shouldn't start fixing it. The amazing thing is when you do lay out rail, people tend to start building around them; including stores and housing. They have a an incredible impact on commerce simply by being laid down. There is a psychological impact of seeing the rails and seeing the trams pass at constant intervals that changes the way people think about transport.

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#174

Post by chiph »

arprocter wrote: post #116
Fripplebubby wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boston is the real deal when it comes to ID crackdowns. About 150k college students so some tens of thousands of fake IDs, plus a history of blue laws. I believe that legally they are even allowed to refuse legitimate out-of-state US drivers' licenses (most places do not do this, but they can). Foreign passports also can be refused. And that's not even counting the notorious "box scanners" which, to my knowledge, are…

Some of the blue laws are really strange. I remember one year we ended up driving to NH to fill the trunk - due to the day that Xmas fell on nowhere in MA was allowed to sell booze, even though it was a regular business day

Story time.

Charlotte North Carolina is adjacent to the South Carolina state line, where the alcohol taxes are lower. A few years ago, the NC Alcohol Beverage Control Commission sent an officer to sit in the parking lot of one of the beer & wine stores located just across the border. He would radio the vehicle license plates to his buddies waiting along Interstate 77, who would pull the cars over and charge the driver with bootlegging (still a crime, even in the 21st century).

The South Carolina highway patrol took great offense to this and sent several officers to the store and explained to the NC ABC officer that he was out of his jurisdiction and would he kindly go home and not come back.

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#175

Post by eveningcoffee »

makerbraker wrote: post #160
simplyluke wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The craziest part of it in the US, to me, is that everyone involved knows it's BS. Most vendors/bouncers in a college town are going to know the kid handing them a florida ID thousands of miles away from florida is almost certainly a fake - the fakes being produced by IDGod and most of the other college vendors are pretty terrible. They don't care though, it's enough to keep them from being fined/losing an alcohol li…

(A little off-topic but...) In the last 5 years or such, that lax attitude towards IDs has changed. Police departments in large cities, are asking bar owners to use the ID "verification" machines to check IDs at the door. And in some cases, that ask is making its way into the state's alcohol control departments' policies. > http://www.idscanner.com/legal/new-york-id-scanner-law-affir... I put verification in quotes,…

  That data can then be downloaded by for CRM purposes, 
  or likely by your PD after a crime, to gain a list of 
  potential suspects and/or witnesses.
So it is in fact a surveillance tool for tracking bar visitors?

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#176

Post by StavrosK »

lvoudour wrote: post #118
StavrosK wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem with Greece is not the lack of laws, it's enforcing them Hey, you don't have to tell me, I'm still waiting for smoke-free bars. Underage drinking is enforced even less than that, but it's a much less widespread problem. The lack of "on-premises" laws is especially of little concern, as we very rarely get public disturbances because of drunk people.

Smoke free bars? How about smoke-free restaurants first :) To be fair though I'm witnessing a shift the last few years, at least in restaurants/tavernas/fast-food joints. You can more easily find places to eat these days where smoking inside is not allowed.

Yeah, over here in Thessaloniki we have smoke-free places which I try to support by frequenting. I guess we know the answer to the question "how much of your population needs to do something before it becomes unenforceable?". It's 30%, the percentage of adult smokers in Greece.

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#177

Post by scardine »

_jal wrote: post #86
delecti wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big part of the problem is that America is very large and very car focused. If you can reasonably walk to where you're drinking (or more importantly, walk home from there), then you're less likely to drive drunk. Many bars in America essentially require driving to and from.

I think the car-orientation of the US would greatly benefit from a European-style approach to teaching kids about alcohol. I lived in Germany for a year as an exchange student when I was 16, the age at which kids can drink without a parent present. They can't get a license until 18. The vast bulk of kids there, in my experience, seemed to figure out sane drinking well before they got behind the wheel. Coming back to…

When I was 14 years old I engaged a vocational school maintained by the Brazilian national railroad company.

There I learned a lot of metal working including welding and operating lathes. Spent 3 years there and ended up as a certified maintenance electrician for diesel-electric locomotives (never worked in railroads after that but several skills were useful both at professional and hobby situations).

Now the laws are more aligned with the USA and that school is closed. Such laws are said to be more "protective" as if teenagers are incapable of handling sharp tools. Brazil wastes no opportunity to dumb down.

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#178

Post by FireBeyond »

dionidium wrote: post #169
djsumdog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. MADD really is fighting the wrong battle and should be a lobby for real mass transit in most major US cities. The idea that America is "too spread out" is a terrible myth. Every America city I've lived it use to have amazing tram systems. They're all gone now; killed by the desire of Ford and GM to see us a car future. There is an amazing amount of advertising that trained Americans to love their cars and consi…

No, it actually really is too spread out. My hometown of St. Louis once had an extensive streetcar network, that much is true; but you're missing a key point: that network was almost entirely within the 66 square miles of the original St. Louis City limits. The region is now spread far, far beyond those original borders. Only about 300k of the 2.8 million residents of greater St. Louis currently live within those lim…

Exactly like the sibling poster showed, there are multiple examples of this not being the case.

Melbourne has 4.6M people in 3800 sq mi.

It has a tram/light rail network of over 160 miles of track on 24 separate routes, and nearly two thousand tram stops. It runs a network of nearly 500 trams, and carries 200 million passengers a year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Melbourne#/media/File...

To give scale to that map, the radius of those routes (you can see something of a circle around the downtown area) from the city center averages about 15 miles (East Malvern, Box Hill, etc), and stretches near 25 miles at points.

Using your St Louis example and recognizing that certainly, not all of the Melbourne urban area is serviced by light rail, well over 700 sq mi is 'very well served'.

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#179

Post by FireBeyond »

chiph wrote: post #174
arprocter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the blue laws are really strange. I remember one year we ended up driving to NH to fill the trunk - due to the day that Xmas fell on nowhere in MA was allowed to sell booze, even though it was a regular business day

Story time. Charlotte North Carolina is adjacent to the South Carolina state line, where the alcohol taxes are lower. A few years ago, the NC Alcohol Beverage Control Commission sent an officer to sit in the parking lot of one of the beer & wine stores located just across the border. He would radio the vehicle license plates to his buddies waiting along Interstate 77, who would pull the cars over and charge the drive…

All Star Liquor Express on I-5 just south of the Oregon border to California.

There's nothing there. In fact the exit says "No Services" and indeed there's none.

But there is a big liquor store, that also has a sign on the front door saying "We will not knowingly sell to retail customers" (I'd estimate that 99% of their customers are retail, buying their liquor for about 2/3 the price of Oregon liquor prices, or coming up on half of the Washington price).

Re: Fake IDs in the age of the internet

#180

Post by cs02rm0 »

dagw wrote: post #25
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #5

The mass use of fake IDs of this sort is a bizarrely American problem. In the UK, you're considered an adult at age 18. Most (aside from the unfortunate 17-year-olds) university students can legally purchase alcohol, smoke, or gamble if they so choose. But we don't have MADD, I guess.

20 years ago at least a number of my 14-16 year old friends in England had fake IDs for buying beer and cigarettes.

Yeah, I did. Although one day I managed to accidentally hand over my school ID rather than the fake one.

Quite a quick walk out of the pub that day.

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