Show Your Face When Using ATMs: There'll Be a Policeman Watching

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Shades, masks may be banned at ATMs
The National Police Agency and the Justice Ministry will ask financial institutions not to allow people whose faces are obscured with sunglasses or masks to use ATMs, in a bid to clamp down on bank-transfer scams involving the machines. The NPA and the ministry Tuesday mapped out an action plan that includes the deployment of police officers at ATMs nationwide and the issuance of warnings to people who have come to ATMs to make transfers at the instruction of scammers. The measure against wearing sunglasses and masks is aimed at making it more difficult for perpetrators of bank-transfer scams to withdraw cash from ATMs without revealing their identity. There are about 150,000 ATMs in the nation...Many of the crimes involving the withdrawal of money that victims transferred at ATMs were committed by young people wearing sunglasses or masks to avoid identification on surveillance camera footage. Accordingly, the NPA security plan will ask financial institutions nationwide to display posters asking customers not to use ATMs while wearing dark glasses or masks, as well as to consider developing a system that renders the machines inoperable by customers talking over cell phones or hiding their face...more...

[bolt_krank]

Sounds like one of the most impractical ideas I've heard in a while.
Trust the Justice Ministry to come up with it.

[kurohinge1]

. . . Accordingly, the NPA security plan will ask financial institutions nationwide to display posters asking customers not to use ATMs while wearing dark glasses or masks, . . .

They could also add posters asking customers not to rob the bank or mug other customers.

There could also be posters next to speed signs asking drivers not to speed, etc.

Why didn't anyone think of these posters before???

[bolt_krank]

Another brilliant use of tax money

[Behan]

This is pretty big news when you think of all the people wearing masks during the winter and allergy season.

[Midwinter]

This is pretty big news when you think of all the people wearing masks during the winter and allergy season.

Hell, the caretaker of my apartment building has been here 12 months and not once has he ever appeared in public without one of those masks. Always suspected him guilty of something but never wanted to stop and ask...