Selling used console games could identify you as a potential criminal.

Identified by eye color, hair color, height and weight. Then fingerprinted, mug shot taken, an affidavit signed. You've likely just been processed through the justice system as a suspect in a crime. Then again, maybe you just sold a copy of Madden NFL 2009 at your local video game shop.

There's still nothing illegal about selling used video games, but in some states the steps you have to take to sell your old copies of Playstation, Xbox and Wii titles may make you feel like you've broken the law.

Ten states and the District of Columbia legally require businesses to meticulously detail the used gaming habits of their customers and share that information with police. The application of secondhand goods laws to video games also requires stores in many of those states to separate used games in a special area, filing them away by customer name and holding those games as potential evidence in a crime for as long as 30 days.

Secondhand Goods laws can be created at the city, county or state level. Currently Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Utah and Washington state include video games as items that need to be tracked and reported to police. Many counties and municipalities also have secondhand goods ordinances that apply to purchases of used video games. That means that stores like Best Buy, Target, Play N Trade and GameStop now find themselves asking employees in some states to collect a variety of information on their customers including fingerprints, photos and physical descriptions. That information is then entered into a database shared with local law enforcement.

 The American Civil Liberties Union says you should be worried whenever a commercial business is asked to take so much personal information and give it to law enforcement.

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU and author of The Surveillance Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society, says that the tracking of used video games is the byproduct of policies built on a slippery slope.

"It's a classic example of a slippery slope," he said. "Initially, limited information was collected about high value, frequently stolen items and the next thing you know they're collecting information for $20 video games."

Since 9/11 the government has been amplifying its capacity to collect data on its citizens by working with the private sector, Stanley says.

"I think whenever you have private companies doing things for the government it raises a whole set of questions about oversight and how that data is used."
http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/2/21/2802111/how-selling-used-games-marks-you-as-a-potential-criminal