I could imagine this working in Hong Kong quite easily. Their ID card is already used at automated border crossings, libraries and starting this year as a driver's license. It has biometric data so I'd imagine you'd ID yourself with the card, thumbscan and pay (probably via the rfid style Octopus cards which pay for transport fares and also work with some fast food places and vending machines). How do you stop people selling cigs to underaged kids? Put a reg code on the filters and then log who buys which cigarettes. You can't easily destroy the filters by fire, shredding or water and all it'd take is one slipup to get caught. Same way newspaper companies check to see which paperboys dump their newspapers instead of delivering them...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gary @ Mar 31st 2006 10:07AM
I could imagine this working in Hong Kong quite easily. Their ID card is already used at automated border crossings, libraries and starting this year as a driver's license. It has biometric data so I'd imagine you'd ID yourself with the card, thumbscan and pay (probably via the rfid style Octopus cards which pay for transport fares and also work with some fast food places and vending machines). How do you stop people selling cigs to underaged kids? Put a reg code on the filters and then log who buys which cigarettes. You can't easily destroy the filters by fire, shredding or water and all it'd take is one slipup to get caught. Same way newspaper companies check to see which paperboys dump their newspapers instead of delivering them...