CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia started Friday keeping driver’s license photos out of a computer database for members of a small religious group who believe digital storage is a “mark of the beast” that evokes biblical prophecy.
State Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Joseph Cicchirillo said the group of about 50 or 60 Christians, who are not affiliated with a particular church, contacted the agency two or three years ago to object to their pictures “being on a database that can be exchanged throughout the world or hacked into.”
The group says bar codes and digital storage of photos are a way of numbering people, which they liken to a warning in the Bible’s book of Revelation about a “mark of the beast” indicating the arrival of the Antichrist.
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