Interesting that they had these in this movie, because now in many districts, cops have automated scanners attached to their patrol vehicle that scan the autos license plate and registration tag to see if the owner of the car has outstanding warrants and/if the tags are current.
These devices are expensive, but the money they reap in terms of fines paid, make it profitable for departments to aquire them.
I always hated the idea of barcodes used in this way. Many years ago when I watched Seaquest DSV and saw the captain get a ticket for speeding I thought about how without those fancy scanners no one could distinguish one plate from the other. I know that I couldn't decode and write down a barcode in a few seconds after a hit and run or a bank robbery. If a lense broke or got dirty or the scanner ran out of power it couldn't detect anything.
If a police officer was on foot patrol and wanted to report or check out a vehicle he would have to have a scanner, scan it and then transmit the image which would use more bandwith and time consuming than just saying the characters over a radio.
Also it would be better for forgers. If someone wanted to alter or make a new one they could easily but if the police are looking for a certain car then they can no longer go off the number plate and must resort to a description and considering that cars are mass produced and uniformed, this would be much more difficult.
In summation barcodes are terrible and just like having a keyboard vertical on a wall are there purely for the visual aspect of "look this is the future".
The only way they'd really work is if everybody had some type of visual scanner built into their retinas, or commonly wore glasses that could scan the visual barcode info and relay it back to a database (much like smart phones can now scan codes off magazine ads and such)
Horror Rock Book http://www.amazon.com/Horror-Rock-Roll-Stories-ebook/dp/B004ISLQV2
Implants. similar to the medical info ones we have. can store thousands of pages of imformation.
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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing.