Heading to San Diego Comic-Con? Be Sure to Bring Your Photo ID

Attention, everyone who's registered for this year's San Diego Comic-Con International 2012: You won't be able to share your badge with friends this time around - and you might want to ensure that you're carrying a photo ID with exactly the same name as is on the badge at all times, just in case. Yes, Comic-Con is getting serious with its attendees this year, it seems.As Heidi Macdonald points out, Comic-Con has updated its terms and conditions for attendees this year, tightening up security more than a little bit. As the revised terms explain:

By registering for a paid or complimentary Comic-Con badge you agree not to sell, trade, transfer or share your comp code, barcode confirmation, or badge. In the event that San Diego Comic Convention/Comic-Con International (SDCC) determines that you have violated this policy, SDCC has the right to cancel your badge(s) and keep any money paid by you. Barcode confirmations and/or badges that have been sold or provided by anyone other than SDCC will not be honored by SDCC. All badges are the property of SDCC and must be relinquished to SDCC upon request.

SDCC may perform any of the following validation of badges on entry to any area of the convention. These measures are an effort to prevent illegal badge duplication and unauthorized reselling. SDCC may scan the bar code, require a photo ID that matches the name on the badge, scan RFID embedded in the badge, and examine the badge with other technological and/or physical methods to verify authenticity of the badge and holder. Before leaving any registration area please make sure that the name on the badge matches your identification.

Yes, they're introducing random photo ID verifications throughout the convention. You may have thought that this seemed like a bad idea considering the sheer volume of traffic in and out of the San Diego Convention Center throughout the five days of the show, but that's ignoring another, more obvious reason why this is a bad idea: How, exactly, does checking photo IDs help at a convention when a large percentage of attendees are wearing elaborate outfits that will ensure that they will not look like they do on their drivers' licenses? "I'm sorry, sir, I can't let the two of you in. Your ID doesn't look anything like Boba Fett, and neither does your friend's look like Ahsoka Tano."

We can only hope that technology evolves to such a point where eye-scanning technology will be in place for next year's show, so that such time-consuming and overly elaborate security methods will at least feel slightly more like something out of Mission Impossible.