John H. Gass hadn’t had a traffic ticket in years, so the Natick resident was surprised this spring when he received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles informing him to cease driving because his license had been revoked.

And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must visit the Registry with proof of their identity.




  1. Animby says:

    Bobbo – I have a mother, a brother, a sister, a son and a granddaughter in the US. So I come home to visit when possible. Other than that, I doubt I’ll live there again. I’d have to start chasing the almighty (?) dollar again. At my age, that would kill me.

    Besides, you get used to banana leaves…

  2. Speter says:

    “A driver’s license is not a matter of civil rights. It’s not a right. It’s a privilege,’’

    under common aw the right to travel freely is a basic human right.

    only under state jurisdiction can they impose vehicular “laws” on you.

    not under common law as there has been no “injured party” by simply driving safely

    often it is easier to accept than try to explain the freeman principle to a uniformed slave

  3. bobbo, are we Men of Science, or Devo? says:

    Speter==was that the common law when there were no cars? And no need of a license to walk anywhere you want to go. don’t know about horses.

    Horses. Something about your post reminds me of horses. Can’t quite put my finger on it…..

    What about fishing and hunting licenses? Yes, the common law. As in: so what?

  4. noname says:

    # 59 bobbo, the pragmatic libertarian Existential Anti-Theist,

    You are correct in that “playing with/arguing with metaphors and similes, both a form of analogy all too easily leads to failure to communicate”

    I however provided a link to a rigorous study on the matter. From your responses, I get the impression you didn’t bothered to read at least the abstract.

    You can review the Article Abstract in the link.

    I included the study to counter the impression # 30 chris noted: “This unrealistically-accurate system”; implying it’s a statistical impossibility. This study specifically makes this a related example and it goes to show that indeed you can have a remarkably low “base rate fallacy”; as Nature has shown. To create a remarkably low “base rate fallacy” system, it only takes committed, intelligent and capable people to spend the time to design such. To say it’s an impossibility is a “cop out” with a lazy effort!

    As # 49 chris noted: “After considering, I’m doubly sure this is the same type of problem.”

    Let’s stop the excuses, get some serious and smart people working the issue. Instead Law enforcement would rather give the excuse “no system is perfect” instead of going the extra mile and validate the results before suspending someones drivers license while sitting behind a desk!

    Rightfully it must be the onus of the government to correctly do it’s job and not to try something with half measures. That is why I don’t like the attitude, “In the process a few thousand people get bothered.” Being tagged by the police is more then just being “bothered”.

    Congress has provided the police ample and tons of tools (legal and money) to do their job correctly. The GOVERNMENT dosn’t trust US so they listen to our phones, they instantly know our every financial transaction we make, they photograph most of our movements, they intercept our internet traffic…….. And yet they are lazy. They are getting more and more money and power each year.

    And yet the police think, we the
    sheepeople should prove our identity again using again the same docs we used when we got our license. And this is just a small inconvenience of our secure democracy; plz this is just lame.

    FIX the system. IT CAN BE DONE! IF NOT WILLING, THEN AT LEAST DO NOT BOTHER PEOPLE WITH FALSE ALLEGATIONS OF PROVIDING FALSE IDENTITY, FOR US TO DISPROVE!!!


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