Biometric scanners, privacy and groceries (Venezuela)

During 2015, Venezuela installed approximately 20,000 fingerprint scanners to control purchases of basic necessities at supermarkets, in an effort , according to the government, to reduce food hoarding and panic buying, a move many see as both an introduction of rationing, and, according to Techdirt’s Fingerprints For Food: Venezuela Shows How Not To Use Biometrics a misuse of biometric techonologies. Digital Rights LAC‘s Marianne Díaz notes similar concerns, ‘In Venezuela, where in order to buy food supplies you must  slide both thumbs through a fingerprint scanner and give a big spectrum of personal information, is an issue of survival.’