Slashdot Mirror
Bars' Scanning of ID Violates BC Privacy Laws
AnonymousIslander writes "The Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of British Columbia has ruled that electronic scanning of driver's licenses (and similar forms of ID) as a condition of entering a bar or nightclub is a violation of BC's Personal Information Privacy Act. The decision (PDF), while dealing with one specific club, will still have ramifications across the entire province. It is not known if the nightclub in question will attempt to appeal the decision in court. A similar decision was reached last year in Alberta.
The system in question is known as BarWatch, and has been the target of criticism by many for a number of years. Despite this, a number of bars/nightclubs and restaurants in communities across Canada have installed similar systems, and just days before this decision came down there were calls for the expansion of BarWatch in Victoria to cover restaurants and other establishments serving the post-bar crowds." Similar systems are in use across the US, as we have discussed.
A bar should not be liable for someone using a fake ID that looks real. If the ID looks genuine, the picture looks like the person using it, and it says they are of age, that should be as far as it needs to go. If the person gets caught, they should have to take responsibility for their actions. Why did bars think this system was a necessity in the first place?
-SaNo
Bars personally really don't give a shit about the client's ID. They are _forced_ to be uber diligant about this by the government, because, if God forbid, they let an 18 year old get a beer they face anything between losing their license and jail time. Governments also consistently ruled that if someone gives the barman a fake ID and they fall for it, it's still the barman's fault and not the fakers. So obviously they have to implement fascist mechanisms of ID checking, otherwise they'd be forced out of business by the government.
Now the same government goes around and says their ID checking is too strict (while obviously not alleviating any of the burdens which it imposed on bars on checking IDs in the first place). Hey government geniuses, if you'd like bar owners to not violate their client's privacy, maybe relaxing your age-proving rules would be a good place to start?
Cause it seems a bit unfair to impose ridiculously stiff penalties, including suspension of license, on clubs for serving underage persons, but then deny them any tools that might confirm someone's age, apart from looking at the date on an easily faked driver's license. Let the parents, not bartenders, be responsible for their childrens behavior.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Really? You mean that keeping records of people intending to drink alcohol, the time, the location, who you might be going with, and hold onto that information for some unknown time, and share that information with unknown people or organizations.... you mean doing that could be considered a violation of an individual's privacy??
It still amazes me that people that live in countries that supposedly support an individual's rights allow themselves to be treated like branded cattle this way.
To the legislators that create such stuff, and to the people who support such legislation: Keep on waxing that slippery slope...
a bar needs one question answered:
is person older than legal drinking age. period.
they dont need name, age, address, hair color, who you arrived with, weight, etc.
I am not a number, I am a free customer!
You will treat me as such, or I will take my custom elsewhere.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'll support this decision when the laws concerning kids change.
Here are two dangerous scenarios, both of which take place in an age-restricted venue.
#1) You go home with the cute girl. You don't worry about this person's age since the legal age of the venue is 18 (Quebec), 19 (rest of Canada), or 21 (USA). Well, turns out you were wrong, and now you're a branded sex offender for life. Your only recourse is to sue the bar to oblivion for not doing its job filtering out the kids, forcing the bar to start being more strict, including scanning IDs.
#2) You just got paid, feeling generous, go out to a bar, vibe is good and everyone is having a fun time. Your table of friends somehow merges with another table of strangers and everyone is getting along. So, you buy shots of vodka for everyone in celebration of such a great night. Only then, the police do a spot check on the bar, find out you bought alcohol for a minor, and get thrown in jail. Your only recourse is to sue the bar to oblivion for not doing its job filtering out the kids, forcing the bar to start being more strict, including scanning IDs.
When you're in an age restricted venue, that does not allow you to be innocent when you do something that somehow "violates" a minor that's also in the same venue. When the laws that facilitate this "guilt" change, then maybe I'll care a little more about the "privacy implications" of a bouncer being able to truly verify the age of an incoming customer.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Most of the comments on this story so far (about a dozen) are in support of customer privacy.
In contrast, last week, most of the comments on a similar story about Canadian privacy law were in favor of the business. In that case, though, the business itself was online (Facebook), whereas in this case, the business is brick & mortar & alcohol, and only the data is online.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/17/1346209/Facebook-Violates-Canadian-Privacy-Law
Do you, the Slashdot reader, have a different opinion about these two cases because of the case differences? Or did the posters of all of last Friday's comments go on vacation this week?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Some of you are perhaps missing some information regarding this case.
The id's were being taken not because of age issues, it was due to a rash of gang violence in vancouver and the lower mainland of BC. The bars decided to start scanning peoples IDs and running them against a police/RCMP database. This in turn, it was hoped, would keep people with active warrants and such from frequenting bars and causing a ruckus.
As other have pointed out, it has been somewhat effective as there has not been any shooting in clubs downtown (insert tiger rock analogy here). The downside is that all these innocent people have to submit to police state type actions in order to go to MOST bars in downtown vancouver (mostly on granville st, club district).
I myself have been denied entrance for asking too many questions regarding data storage policies and complaining about the system. Most people do not seem to care and will hand over their DL as well as be photographed. I have watched many people hand over ID without a second thought. They scan the mag stripe and put it into their private database. How long do they keep the data? I do not know, as I was escorted out for asking that and other questions.
THis is a real win for privacy in BC. If you read the CBC fourms however, you can see that many so called citizens do not care two shits about privacy as long as they have their preacious illusion of security.
-
Most of the problems in bars in Victoria are caused by a very few people. They cause a problem at one club, get kicked out, go to the club down the street and repeat the process. They ruin the evening for everyone around them but they don't care because they just want to make trouble. Maybe if they were banned from every bar if they caused trouble in one tey would think twice before causing that trouble. Since when is making trouble at a bar a right?
The system is designed to inform all bars who have the system that someone has been banned. The simplest way to do it is to use drivers license numbers as they are unique to each person. Now one may say that they should only track the license numbers of individuals who cause issue but just think about trying to get that number as you are throwing someone out. You also have to check to see if they are banned as they come in.
As for miss-use of the information, there are plenty of civil and criminal penalties to make that not worth the risk.
Apparently I can't just walk into any ol' country club. I have to show my membership card. I get my membership card by applying. Part of the application process is showing some form of ID, another part is laying down a bunch of moneys, being in good standing, blabla.
How come that is legal, then?
As a result - and I know the answer is 'no', but I'm curious as to -why- it is 'no' - couldn't any ol' bar simply offer 'guest membership' by means of, say, a stamp / wrist band, where the 'membership process' includes showing some form of ID, costs the patron, say, $2 (which goes toward a complimentary membership drink), and the membership duration lasting the entirety of the patron's stay?
I've worked at a couple of bars here in the US and we scanned ids. But, the scanners we used were small, portable handheld units that just read the magstripe to see in the data contained in the magstripe matched the information printed on the front of the card. The only contact with the outside world that the unit had was the tiny AC power cord used to charge the batteries.
I can see the benefits of scanning cards, as it is very easy to duplicate DLs. However, I don't see how you need to completely read someone's info and feed it into an online database just to check their age.
In the US, if a counterfeit ID that can fool any reasonable person is used to illegally purchase alcohol, and the bar serves the alcohol, the person who made the purchase is held fully accountable, and not the bar. This protects bars from having to worry about every single ID being counterfeit, as counterfeiters are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
I think the system of electronic scanners that just verify magstripe data with printed data on the front of the card is sufficient, since a counterfeit card that looks legit AND fools scanners will also fool any resonable person.
I don't see where Little Brother Canada thinks that everybody should have to punch in to a database whenever they want to go out for a night on the town.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/07/22/bc-barwatch-violates-privacy-laws.html
After all, it's not as though I've never encountered a bouncer who's a rage-driven, 'roid-crazed whack job with delusions of adequacy, a two-figure IQ, and an ironclad belief that every woman in the world desperately wants access to his shrunken little dick. Exactly the kind of person I want having access to my sister's personal information. And if there's ever been a "security system" in a bar that couldn't be defeated in five minutes by a bartender with a Grade 8 education and a weakness for white powder, I've yet to see it. So I wouldn't be all that confident that the twitchy little guy in the corner with the laptop and the Klingon Vengeance Blade isn't paging through the personal data of everybody on the premises even as I try to hide my "Trekkies Are Assholes" t-shirt.
The day I surrender the contents of anything on a mag strip to the lack-wits, thieves and bottom feeders who infest your average bar is the day I move to Iran and stand on a street corner with a megaphone and invite Ali Khamenei to blow me.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.