
Security Company Building an International Database of Banned Bar Patrons - jbegley
https://onezero.medium.com/id-at-the-door-meet-the-security-company-building-an-international-database-of-banned-bar-patrons-7c6d4b236fc3
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koolba
> When a bargoer visits another PatronScan bar and swipes their ID, their
> previously flagged transgressions will pop up on the kiosk screen. Unless
> patrons successfully appeal their status to PatronScan or the bar directly,
> their status can follow them for anywhere from a couple weeks to a few
> months, to much, much longer.

“Appeal” to a private company to seek what’s effectively forced arbitration
only ends one way en masse.

This sounds horrible. I hope there’s some legit privacy regulations passed to
ban passive practices like this. Scanning an ID locally to check for
duplicates that night sounds reasonable. Auto uploading it without notifying
patrons to a central DB is not.

~~~
_jal
Look down the road a bit.

This is the "social credit system" for western nations forming. I only know
how this works in the US, so I'm concentrating on it.

Firms like this that succeed will be bought out and rolled in to the existing
credit firms as new dimensions. (They already track much more than your credit
use - google "experian data services", and substitute the other two in as
well.)

It is private, so in the US there is little regulation to worry about. And the
third-party doctrine means no warrants are required for LEO access.

Can you smell the freedom yet?

~~~
basementcat
No worries. Just don't forget to get your free annual "Drink Establishment
Behavior Report" free from Experian/Equifax/TransUnion if you live in New York
or California.

Alternatively, just pay a low low price of $1 a month for our "Bar Behavior
Report" monitoring service!

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JoshTko
This system is going to be a nightmare to maintain long term due to bad data
(GIGO). Imagine a large number of bar employees able to determine who get's a
global bar ban. What prevents an employee from inputting all the people they
dislike? Seems like a recipe for failure.

~~~
msla
This is a case where you hope it flames out in a big, obvious fashion, with
lots and lots of false positives, as opposed to being merely kinda bad with a
few unlucky saps being barred (or dis-barred, in this case) but the badness
never being serious enough to discredit the concept.

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vorpalhex
Oh great, a private company promising to store my home address and other
sensitive personal details in a database. That surely won't get breached at
all, ever, in any way, due to terrible malfeasance of even the most basic
security principles.

Oh, and combined with lobbying cities to force adoption?

Realistically, how do we prevent every blockhead with an unsecured database
from hoovering up personal information? Can we start instituting major fines
and the requirement to carry liability insurance or something?

~~~
astura
I can't read TFA because it's paywalled, so I don't know if it talks about the
information saved, but they don't need your home address, ID number and issuer
is all they need to store as far as PII goes and you don't even have to store
those directly - you can encrypt them like a password.

~~~
droithomme
The article states that they store in their database your "name, gender, date
of birth, zip code, and photo", but currently they don't store your address or
id number.

The information stored though is certainly sufficient to find your street
address and a great deal of other information in almost all cases since a full
legal name + DoB + zip code match is nearly always a unique identifier.

Storing the id photo is fun and no doubt useful for further tracking of the
patron using things such as the cameras on the table kiosks. Also the photo
has value for sale to other interested parties.

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duxup
There seems to be a real business of making "lists" of things and people to
accomplish trust related activities. I know a few folks starting / running
companies like this based on just scraping facebook profiles or google
results.

Most of these seem pretty unscientific / dangerous.

Everyone wants to be the key-master.

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kirykl
I wonder if this is technically a type of defamation.

I'd think the tracking company would need to have some degree of proof as to
the "bad behavior" they're sharing with it's member bars to hold up in court.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
It absolutely can be. Defamation definitions vary by state, but in general
it's something like:

1\. A false statement

2\. Made to a third party

3\. About a specific person

4\. That causes damages (eg, to their reputation)

If they repeat something false, it absolutely is defamation. Damages could be
hard to prove or show - perhaps a business meeting at a bar would qualify.
Likely way to use this is through sending the company a demand letter
basically saying "remove these false statements from your database or I will
sue you for defamation."

~~~
gknoy
If all they are doing is recording that one was thrown out of a bar, and the
reason _the bar_ says it happened, those are all truthful things. They aren't
saying you did that, they're saying that _the bar_ said you did that.

It seems rotten, but I'm sure that's the kind of loophole they'd use as
defense. :)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
It's complicated, but this is explicitly _not_ recognized as a defense by
courts. If Alice tells me "Bob says that Charlie started the fire", whether or
not that statement is defamatory depends on whether or not Charlie actually
started the fire, not on what Bob actually said.

The more likely legal defense is Section 230 of the Communications Decency
Act, which shields online service providers for liability for hosting online
content from third parties.

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imglorp
Casinos do this too, to boot card counters. They're doing license plates and
face rec.

[https://www.onlinecasinoking.com/insights/casino-id-
facial-r...](https://www.onlinecasinoking.com/insights/casino-id-facial-
recognition-technology-used-in-casinos/)

------
kypro
Sounds like it could be useful screening data for employers. Would that be
legal to do?

It does seem we could use some modern privacy laws to prevent this type of
thing occurring...

~~~
astura
Why would it be useful? Most employers don't care about if their employees are
also bar patrons and bars are a place to socialize - going to bars doesn't
mean you're a heavy drinker. I frequently go to bars without drinking more
than maybe a sip of alcohol. Either I'm the DD or I simply don't feel like
drinking that day and my friends wanna meet up, or even if I just want some
food. Doesn't apply to me but people go to see the band as well.

~~~
vkou
> Why would it be useful? Most employers don't care about if their employees
> are also bar patrons and going to bars doesn't mean you're a heavy drinker.

Most don't care about your personal life.

But some care incredibly deeply about it. There are Christian employers in
Canada and the United States, who will fire you, if they discover that you,
say, had pre-marital sex at some point in your life. Others will fire you for
undergoing a medical procedure.

Do you think bosses like that give two shits about an employee splitting hairs
as to what exactly constitutes living in sin?

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womitt
This practice can only be stopped if people stop attending any bar that uses
this company's technology...

~~~
sudosteph
I mean, laws that regulate data privacy for companies like this could probably
help too. I dont think its reasonable to allow storing data from scanned legal
ids without explicit, written consent from the ID holder to start.

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ComodoHacker
So it ten years we'll have commercial social credit systems, voluntarily
accepted.

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jokoon
Social filtering is often heralded as a great thing to improve society so that
its citizen can learn to behave. Survival of the fittest in its greatness.

Merit is overrated anyway, so all people have left to do with their lives is
sorting and filtering people to pretend they can enjoy a better evening.

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droobles
Cool, I'll skip those bars if I see them using this.

~~~
chronogram
On the other hand, I might want to go to those bars.

~~~
apacheCamel
I think the greatest thing about this is the choice. If you don't like this
practice, vote with your wallet. If you do, then the same rules apply. I think
the biggest issue a lot of people may have is the possibility that the choice
aspect is taken away.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Ah you don't know abut the pressure licencing bodies and local politicians can
put on land lords.

One pub I used to goto was well know as the only pub in town that did not have
bouncers at the weekend.

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ttoinou
Does "patron" mean boss or regular clients ?

~~~
AndyMcConachie
In this context "patron" means anyone that goes into a bar, basically
customers.

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jancsika
Which is safer-- a municipality where the set of violent patrons is
distributed across all its bars, or one that creates a huge incentive to
cordon off that set of violent patrons into a few "rough neck" bars?

Any relevant research on that topic?

~~~
52-6F-62
I'm going to guess the proprietors of this company haven't thought that far
ahead, and instead are banking on growing large enough, fast enough, that it
won't be their problem.

~~~
jancsika
Very likely. I mean, I certainly wouldn't be writing a comment like that if I
were making money off this type of data mining.

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mattnewton
To those people saying this is no big deal because your address is public
record and has to be shared to buy things: how would you feel if online
retailers put together a private list of problem customers who sent a
suspicious number of returns, failed deliveries or other signals?

Edit because I was too vague: I am saying multiple online retailers
collaborating on a list together that bars customers from purchasing/
returning from all of the participating members. I am aware that companies
individually fight return fraud using their own private lists and fraud
detection software from external companies.

~~~
astura
That already exists

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/12/ret...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/12/retailers-
tracking-customers-returns/2642607/)

Since you asked, my personal opinion is "I don't care."

~~~
vokep
How would you feel if it was a single system used by all retailers?

~~~
astura
1) I'm pretty sure it already is.

2) I still don't care.

Just my opinion.

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circlefavshape
International? I've never seen an ID scanner outside the US

~~~
astura
I saw one attached to a vending machine in Germany. The vending machine sold
alcohol and the ID scan was only for alcohol purchases.

I live on the East Coast, I've traveled around the country a fair bit, and I
go to bars. I've only seen an ID scanner literally once in my life.

~~~
magduf
Cigarette vending machines in Germany are the same way.

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mjparrott
Anyone else thinking of George bringing the book into the bathroom at the book
store, and getting flagged by every book store in New York? haha

~~~
slig
IIRC, it was the book that was flagged, not him.

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Hard_Space
Readable: [https://outline.com/CczEzy](https://outline.com/CczEzy)

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siffland
everyone must have way more upscale bars than i do. the 8 or so bars in a 5
mile radius from the house dont even have video cameras, let alone care who
enters the bar (as long as they are over 21).

I can see where this would be helpful, but i can see most small bars not
really caring as long as no one starts a fight.

------
alkonaut
Could this fly with GDPR in Europe?

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exabrial
As long as they're compliant with the credit reporting laws in the USA I don't
see a problem with this. Under such laws you may see whats in your file, make
corrections to it, and there's a expiration policy for negative behavior.

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droithomme
Will also be useful to keep track of who are good tippers. Also with the
little video kiosk things they have at the tables, you can serve them targeted
ads. Also, keep track of who they are drinking with, this information is worth
good money to someone. Also even if they are polite and never cause problems
but drink frequently that's helpful information regarding health risks for
setting car and health insurance premiums. As well as evidence to police after
a fender bender, will definitely want law enforcement to have access to this
info. And maybe they checked a box when applying for life insurance saying
they didn't drink, but this proves they did - policy is rescinded after filing
the claim. Big savings there. Back to that tipping information, maybe they tip
people of certain genders and ethnicities higher than others. This could be
useful to prove bias in a discrimination lawsuit if they have hiring
authority.

Few parties dealing with people in any capacity wouldn't want to pay something
for access to this really great database.

