Pocono Record has it right...

Oh, yeah, brother: preach it:

...the wine kiosks smack more than a little of Big Brother. Without a live person monitoring wine purchases, consumers will face some pretty intrusive procedures before they can walk out of the supermarket with a bottle of cabernet to go with their steak au poivre.

The editorialist at the Pocono Record puts their finger right on the wine kiosk problem. When you buy a bottle of wine at a private store in New Jersey/New York/Delaware/Maryland/etc., that's all you buy: a bottle of wine, and you walk away. When you buy a bottle of wine from one of these Wine-O-Mats, you buy a lot more: you buy a breathalyzer test, you buy an ID scan linked to what you bought (and how much you bought), you buy the knowledge of how much wine you buy over a year, and -- at least, according to the head of the PLCB's employees' union -- you buy an etched code on the bottle that links it to you...and all of that goes on your permanent record.

Is that what you want from your government? Big Brother literally looking out at you from some ridiculous wine-vending machine, sniffing your breath and taking your picture just so you can get a bottle of Yellow Tail (because I'm sure there will be Yellow Tail in these things, they've got a whole section of their own in the stores)? I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the Patriot Act, but at least I can understand why the government might want to listen on phone lines to pick up terrorist activity...why the hell do they want to keep a record of which bottle of wine I bought? What damned business is it of theirs?

It might be time to throw some bottles of wine in the Philadelphia harbor...

Reason #8: The Octopus

You remember the brilliant "winebot" idea? How the PLCB was going to get a contractor to open automated "wine kiosks" in grocery stores? I told you how they were going to use fingerprints and other biometrics to identify you and confirm your age.

Subject...identified...Nate "The Wino" Kraupsberger...of...no fixed address...please wait a minimum of...30 seconds...before handing your purchase to the underage person standing beside you with the cash in...his...hand...thank you for shopping at the Wine Kiosk!

But I missed something, which I just noticed in a Chicago Tribune reprint of a Morning Call story. Check this out.

Union head [Wendell] Young [IV, president of Local 1776 of the Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents state store clerks and assistant managers] said the bottles would be etched at the time of sale with identification numbers that could be traced back to the buyer.

Uh-oh.

Reason #8:

Too Much Information

Like that idea? After all, who needs to register guns when you can register bottles of wine? Once they register the bottles that are being sold in the kiosks, why would they not register every bottle sold in the store? And then...anyone remember the guy in Lebanon, PA, who told his doc he had "a few beers after work" and the doctor dropped a dime on him and had his driver's license suspended, based on a DUI conviction from three decades before?

I testified about the futility of keg registration before a joint committee of the PA legislature back a few years. One of the other people testifying was a guy who'd lost his underage son in a drunk driving accident. He wanted the State to tag every bottle of liquor and wine sold at State Stores, every keg and case sold at beer distributors, on credit or cash, so that any empty could be traced back to when/where/who bought it.

I thought that was crazy at the time -- I still do! -- and the legislators didn't seem wild about it either. But with the wine kiosk thing, it appears that the PLCB doesn't think it's necessary to get legislation to do the identistuff, which is seriously troubling.

But how far off is it now? When I buy booze at the State Store, I use my debit or credit card, and I get a receipt with every bottle listed on it. How do I know that information isn't saved? It may be paranoid to think they save it, but it may be optimistic to think that they don't. And once again, we have no other options.

I'm no conspiracy theorist. But when it comes to not keeping info on what I'm buying, booze-wise, I'll trust the corner booze store before I trust the State. For one thing, if I've got corner booze stores, I can buy at any one I want, and the info doesn't get compiled from the aggregate; if I buy anywhere in PA, that's potentially on my record. For another, there are more ways to opt out of privately-owned data-gathering schemes.

The PLCB should be abolished because granting the State too much information, more information than it needs, is not a good idea in these days of data-mining and info-insecurity. How much booze I buy, what booze I buy, and where I buy it is no one's business but my own...until I start abusing it. I've got nothing to hide, but it's not everyone's business.The PLCB clearly has a mindset that disagrees with that.

This reason may seem a bit whacky, a little hard-shelled. Me, I find the idea of this state agency that doesn't seem to feel that it needs further legislative authorization to start gathering this kind of information about me...troubling. We could write that into law, but it would be easier to just do the right thing: privatize booze sales in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.