Great Taste, Less Privacy 

Some people say there's no privacy violation in scanning licenses because the information on the bar code is the same information on the front of the card. A bar owner could easily photocopy the card and get the same data. But privacy advocates say the electronic file makes data collection, entry and combination far easier.

"It's an area of concern," said Rich Carter, director of technology and standards for the AAMVA. "The policy is that you shouldn't be collecting the info for one purpose and using it for another. If you're telling them you're using it to verify their age, you shouldn't be using it to market them."

Story Tools

Story Images

Click thumbnails for full-size image:

See also

• ID Cards Aim to Speed Security
• Acxiom Opts Out of Opt-Out
• Keep an eye on Privacy Matters

Today's Top 5 Stories

• Extra! Extra! Read All About You
• Jamming Tags Block RFID Scanners
• Greenpeace Founder Green No More
• Buy Offline, Get Spammed Online
• Change Your Input, Get an Earful

Tech Jobs Partner

never settle.

Andy Rose, manager of West End restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas, has been scanning licenses for a year. The bar downloads the scanned information into a computer occasionally. He said the restaurant doesn't use the information for marketing purposes, but he admits he glances at the data once in a while to check the female-to-male ratio.

"I saw we were running a 55-45 male-to-female ratio. We're an upscale sports bar. So as long as we can run almost a 50-50 ratio and we have the ladies coming in, that's a damn good sign we're doing well."

Rose said the bar hasn't caught a single underage drinker or fake ID with the device, but he has had customers "raise hell" over having their license scanned.

"Some people it just freaks them out. They think you're getting information on them," he said. If a patron does object, the bar doesn't insist on scanning their license.

In addition to fear of relentless marketing, there are concerns about stalking. A bar employee, for example, could create a list of all blond female patrons between the ages of 21 and 25 who weigh 120 pounds. The Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 was passed to prevent states from selling driver's records, in part because people were outraged states were making money on the data. In addition, an obsessed stalker killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer a few years ago using an address obtained from public driving records.

Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy & Technology, said the potential for fraud is also high. Since bars and restaurants use handheld scanners, an employee could pull out a personal scanner and scan cards twice to sell the data for ID theft crimes.

"The public has the ability to pressure businesses that are using driver's licenses in this way," Schwartz said. "Unless people say it's OK and the bar has told them how they're going to use the data, bars should not be doing this."

Privacy advocates are worried that more info will be added to license codes in the future, and that efforts for standardizing the cards and creating a central database to store the information would make the driver's license a de facto national ID card.

Some states also are talking about switching to smart cards with an embedded computer chip, which would store even more information. And there are concerns about radio frequency ID cards, which can be scanned at a distance (the same way E-ZPass toll booths operate on a highway). Those card carriers would never know information was being scanned.

"Surveillance tends to creep up incrementally," said Schulte, one of the Pittsburgh exhibit's producers. "We want to make it more obvious to people so that this will bring a dialogue when it does happen."

Schulte's co-producer Singer said license scanning is a new practice, so not many people have challenged it. She said she hopes the trio's website will encourage people to take steps to protect their information.

To get the word out in Pittsburgh, they handed out stickers to museum patrons to place over their bar codes. The stickers read: "I stop shopping when you start swiping!"

Have a comment on this article? Send it

More stories written by Kim Zetter