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You may have heard of civil asset forfeiture.
That's where police can seize your property and cash without first proving you committed a crime; without a warrant and without arresting you, as long as they suspect that your property is somehow tied to a crime.
Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards.
It's called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.
Here's how it works. If a trooper suspects you may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan any cards you have and seize the money.
"We're gonna look for different factors in the way that you're acting," Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent said. "We're gonna look for if there's a difference in your story. If there's some way that we can prove that you're falsifying information to us about your business."
...
News 9 obtained a copy of the contract with the state.
It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @05:23AM
Still needs your card number, so unless you're in the habit of giving your wallet to random strangers?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Sir Finkus on Thursday June 09 2016, @05:37AM
Ever been to a restaurant?
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @05:52AM
No. I don't eat in restaurants that accept credit cards, because I'm not a rich snooty asshole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @09:07AM
My drive-thrus not only accept credit cards but they accept the google and apple phone payments. You should try eating at better places than street food vendors ... though my local hotdog cart takes credit cards via Square.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Thursday June 09 2016, @06:55AM
In Europe, no one (other than you) ever touches your card in a restaurant. Rather they bring the terminal to you so you can use chip and PIN.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:31PM
In Europe, no one (other than you) ever touches your card in a restaurant. Rather they bring the terminal to you so you can use chip and PIN.
I didn't know Oklahoma was in Europe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:53PM
Some of us Americans wish it was though.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday June 09 2016, @07:42PM
I'll just leave here: [yourdictionary.com]
2. A minor related mention; made as an aside, or afterthought.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:54PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @01:32PM
Other people are talking about this magickal land called "Europe" where you can ride a bike without having SUVs trying to run you off the road and other fantastical claims.
Just think of all the people who still call up order lines and places orders for stuff over the phone. It would amaze you how many people would rather read off their card number to another person over the phone (and trust me, it's a matter of when, not if, one of those operators is going to start writing down card numbers--and every time it happens all the upper class twits in charge are just shocked, I tell you, shocked! that their minimum wage employees who are working two or three jobs would do such a thing) than place an order on a website. Another secret: those operators are just placing the order over the website.
This is the USA for you. We're backwards as fuck because the people themselves are backwards as fuck.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 09 2016, @06:32PM
Arguably, the person answering the phone should be entering the order through the company's intranet, or a VPN, which is one step safer than doing it yourself online.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @07:36PM
The big players like JC Penny with in-house call centers are probably different. Maybe. Assuming they even have an in-house one. Just because a company is this size or that size doesn't guarantee that their call center is in-house.
When I was new at that job I'd suggest foolish things like VPNs this and crypto that and had regular freak-outs of OMG they want us to send them WHAT as plaintext?!?!?!?!?
The problem is that this requires the merchant who wants to hire a call center to answer their phones to pay their IT consultant, assuming they even have one and it's not just the boss' nephew who's good with computers and thinks HTTPS is the plural form of HTTP, for a few more hours of work. Sometimes it's just a crying shame when a whole IT department is available to the outsourcing merchant and the liaison doesn't even get them involved. That's just how unimportant these call centers that are just entering your credit card into the publicly facing website are to these merchants.
Since credit card breeches invariably happen for the most non-technical reason of them all, the operator just writing the numbers down while the supervisor isn't looking, it's easy to see why the crypto nerd approach is irrelevant.
This isn't just mom and pop shops trying desperately to compete with Amazon.com. Many of these are internet-based businesses that can't even be arsed to provide the operators with anything other than their public-facing shopping cart.
That's not to say that's the case all the time. It's just the case the vast majority of the time. It's not just merchants either. You'd be surprised to learn which customer service lines are just outsourced operators using the publicly facing website, asking the caller for their usernames/passwords to log in, doing things anybody could do, entering your complaint or request in the public contact us form, etc.
These call centers are located right here in the good old US of A. "Kevin" really is Kevin. He's a taxpaying US citizen. He's a native English speaker. He's a high school graduate. He may be attending college, hoping that he too can get rich by being a techie.
(That $5 wrench XKCD may be relevant, except in this case it's a pencil and some scrap paper.)