tsk tsk!
you are being redundant! 
[CAC = Common Access Card]
so people get tweaked regularly when they talk about their Common Access Card Card.
it sounds funnier if you have been the victim a few times…
Yep - I have a DOD client and there are pretty strict rules regarding flash drives. You have to have one not just approved by, but provided by the admins. As we don’t use DOD computers it hasn’t been an issue, but really, I can see the point - those things are a security nightmare.
I seem to recall from this very board that usage like “CAC card” and “PIN number” is a completely correct feature of the English language. It may be technically redundant, but it’s an established linguistic pattern that appears over and over again. It adds clarity where abbreviation has perhaps gone too far. It also accounts for the fact that common acronyms are no longer parsed for their constituent words, and instead take on the role of a self-contained idea. And that single idea may often feel more natural as an adjective than as a noun.
Besides, no one ever said language has to make perfect technical sense. Consider the (perfectly correct and standard) Spanish sentence “No tengo nada.” It properly translates to English as “I don’t have anything”, but literally it’s “I don’t have nothing.” This double negative is not proper English, but it’s essential in Spanish. I’d say that the English version makes more “technical” sense, if you parse it like a mathematician would. But the fact remains that a logical shortcoming can become entrenched and standardized in language.
So whether “CAC card” is correct maybe the battle between prescriptivists and descriptivists, but I tend to think it’s really the difference between being pedantic (playing “gotcha” games) and, well…not being a jerk.
I don’t get it. Nobody I know or ever have worked with gets ‘tweaked’ when they call it a “CAC Card”. To be honest, I insist on leaving the “card” in the title, otherwise it sounds like a rather unprofessional word in an office-like environment. Or, you sound immature, as if you’re changing the pronunciation just so slightly to say “cock” but get away with “caack”.
Tripler
I don’t know why it’s so “Common Access,” anymore than my old green ID card was. . .
Yeah, in common usage, it’s a CAC card. When I was in tech school, I made a reference to my “White Common Access Card”, just like they taught us to call them during Basic Training (what other colors of Common Access Cards are there? I dunno. I think it was just a subtle way of reminding us to pay attention to details like that). Anyhow, the tech school sergeant had no idea what I was talking about until I said “ID Card”
Now, my first tech school instituted a card-swiper as part of our classroom accountability, because they evidently didn’t trust the NCOs and officers in our classes enough to take accountability of us in class :rolleyes: (or, more likely, they found they could get the capability to use card-swiper accountability and thought it was neat). At the beginning of the class day, we joked about “Whipping our CACs out” in bad JFK accents when it was time to swipe in in the morning.
Come to think of it, I’d probably still use that joke for logging into my computer today if I wasn’t afraid my shop chief would hear it and spend the next two hours giggling over it hysterically. It’s fun having Senior NCOs with the maturity of an Airman. 
Airman’s Guard unit gave him a spiffy biometric thumb drive a few years ago. Now he can’t use it because of the new restrictions.
I’ve also seen a lot of flyers on bulletin boards in various places looking for missing thumb drives; they were left in public computers and now their owners are looking for them. I mean, you get up because you’re finished, and now six months worth of thesis research is gone because of carelessness.
OK, OK!
I call it a CAC card all the time myself.
a much better description than just CAC.
it is being a j… pedantic. I guess we have a few of those at work.
I work for a bank and our main branch with our district vault has security guards. I mean, you need a card and codes and all such things to get to that vault, but people know our vault is there… so they have security guards.
Guards and video cameras don’t seem that extreme.
You start by wanting access control to your building. Plenty of systems work for your employees, from key cards to real keys to numeric keypads. But what about visitors? You probably want a guard at the front door or in the lobby to vet them and give a security presence. Some places use a receptionist for this role but that doesn’t seem that common nowadays. As far as video cameras, that’s so you have a backup to your secondary doors. Your locks are supposed to keep people out, but what if they don’t? That’s when you want camera footage.