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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?
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...
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.
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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.
In Canada feel free to have sex with any girl who's over 16. But you'll be thrown in jail if you take photos. For photos, you've got to wait until she's 19. But sex, no problem at 16! Oh and they just moved that up from 14 a couple of years ago...
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?
Part of the answer is, we give country clubs far less grief than they're due, because many of their members are influential. And they still catch hell when they enforce membership rules that are very obviously racist, though that happens less often than you might think.
However, in this specific case, you're comparing apples and oranges - the situation in BC is not akin to a country club barring non-members. Once the law gets involved in a situation like this (which it did, since they were tying the scans to police databases), the system becomes subject to legal oversight. Cops, legislators and the like are bound by higher laws concerning basic rights for the people, which were very obviously being violated here.
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Yes, they do. In fact, they need an actual photo of you. So they can confirm that you are the person on the card.
Now, what should happen is that your address shouldn't be on the driver's license at all.
The police should be able to pull that out of the DL database, and no one else has the right to know where you live. That, frankly, is an idiotic holdover from when police did not have databases, and should have gone away mid-nineties. (If someone has a legitimate need to know where you live, for example if went to a bar and skipped on on your tab...that's what small claims court is for.)
Same with age, that should not be on a license, except underaged people should have that clearly marked on their DL. Although it should just be an 'Under 18' or 'Under 21' unless they specifically want their birthday on there. Same with elderly people, who could have 'Over 55' or whatever on their license if they want.
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