A growing number of bars nationwide are turning to new ID scanner technology to bounce troublemakers before they cause more problems by sharing information about them with other neighborhood taverns.
The trend has privacy advocates concerned about how the information will be stored and about potential uses by private companies.
When entering a venue using one of the systems, a customer, regardless of age, presents his or her ID to a member of the door staff, who runs it through a scanner that checks for validity and whether the person is of legal drinking age, says Nathan Perry, a bar manager at Southside Johnny's in Colorado Springs.
The system also photographs the customer and the ID, and provides information about the customer's history at the venue, Perry says. Then a computer database shares that newly collected information with other area bars.
"If somebody causes a problem then we just add them to the list," he says. "We can add 'started a fight,' or 'caused a problem.'"
While standalone ID scanners have been available for at least 10 years, the new systems allow multiple bars in a geographic area to alert each other about known troublemakers, says Michael Sengstaken, president of New York-based IDetect Inc., one of several companies offering the systems, which cost about $2,000.
He says bars and clubs in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Canada have begun using the networked systems, including Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville cafes in Florida.
The systems come with very few promises of security or confidentiality, says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the national American Civil Liberties Union.
He says it's possible the data collected at bars and clubs could be resold to everyone from marketers to insurance companies who are tracking the drinking habits of policyholders.
"You no longer control that information, and you no longer get to make...
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