Bar ID scans not 'reasonable,' says Alberta privacy commissioner

[tehowe]

Bar ID scans not 'reasonable,' says Alberta privacy commissioner

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2008/02/20/tantra-scanning.html?ref=rss

Alberta's privacy commissioner has ordered a Calgary nightclub to stop scanning patrons' driver's licences, disputing the bar owner's stance that the practice curbs violent behaviour.

Nyall Engfield filed a complaint to the office in August 2005 after his driver's licence was scanned before he could enter the Tantra Nightclub at 3rd Street and 10th Avenue S.W. He claimed his personal information was collected without his permission.

Tantra and its owner company, Penny Lane Entertainment Group, argued the scanning system was for their customers' safety and discouraged troublemakers from entering the bar.

 

[karrie]

Seems to me that it would be simple enough for a club to say 'sign in with a scan, or don't come in at all'. Plenty of other businesses solicit information from you, and you're free to just not shop there if you don't like it.

 

[DurkaDurka]

Karrie, with the amount of identity theft already occurring, do you think it would be smart to leave personal data unsecured in the hands of a bar owner? The potential for abuse is too large to condone such a practice in my opinion.

 

[karrie]

Karrie, with the amount of identity theft already occurring, do you think it would be smart to leave personal data unsecured in the hands of a bar owner? The potential for abuse is too large to condone such a practice in my opinion.

Do I think it would be smart? No. I personally wouldn't go to the bar.

Do I think it's within their right, so long as they aren't using the information illegally? Yes.

 

[DurkaDurka]

Do I think it would be smart? No. I personally wouldn't go to the bar.

Do I think it's within their right, so long as they aren't using the information illegally? Yes.

I think a citizens right to privacy would trump the need of a bar to collect personal information of it's customers, especially if that business is sharing it with other businesses. Even if they are using it "legally", they don't have the experience or know how to secure information like that.

 

[karrie]

From what I've been told about my privacy rights though Durka, anytime I voluntarily hand my information over to someone, I've given them permission to store it. Not to sell it or share it, but, to store it in their system. I've had to hand over my information for a host of reasons with assorted businesses. My option is to not use those businesses if I don't trust them, or if I feel they're being frivolous in requesting my info. And I have to say, that I've had much more frivolous requests for my info than this.

 

[karrie]

hmmmm.... okay, so, the privacy commissioner seems to be on a bit of a war path against this sort of data collection. If it's equally applied across the board that businesses aren't allowed to collect data on their customers without good reason, then great. It seems to me though that both of these instances are ones where it can be used to prevent crime, or to more easily find those who've committed a crime. Is this really where we want the crack downs occurring? Personally, I find it more offensive to have to give my driver's license information when returning goods at a store. At least I can understand why a bar would want my driver's.

 

[DurkaDurka]

I don't have a problem presenting my drivers license to whoever, as long as they are not scanning it and keeping my details on record. There really is no reason for a bar to scan your license, how will them holding your license prevent a crime? Most crimes in bars are fights and people taking off without paying, neither serious enough to support data collection by bouncers.

 

[Lester]

The datbase is a gold mine for fraudsters, na lot of staff rip off the owners for drinks, pad the tabt,ake bribes to get in- I don't think it would be beyond them to steal (copy) and sell the database to a fraudster.

 

[MikeyDB]

Luckily ....

Brian Mulroney doesn't have to produce ID to scam business associates from Germany...or Canadians...

Paul Martin "The Liberals" et al. don't have to produce ID when they steal millions from the Canadian taxpayer....

Exxon and Walmart and Gap and Old Navy etc. etc. etc. don't have to identify themselves when defrauding consumers......

It's rich that so many Canadians whine about ''Proof" when government and corporations steal defraud and lie to Canadians but don't require that these hooligans be publicly identified....

The moral of the story is .... if you can hide your identity you can be a businessman or a politician in Canada....but if you're a "citizen" your data is up for grabs by anyone who can come up with the flimsiest of reasons why collecting your personal information is "critical" to their interests....

Baa Baa Baa

 

[darkbeaver]

Screw bussiness, screw scanning, screw the machine (unplug it first). All corporate shills and bagmen should be arrested and imprisoned in the near arctic untill thier trials are arranged. Thier hands should be scanned, soft pale puffy hands are a sign of uselessness, this class must be eliminated through reeducation (forced labour). I suggest digging an oil canal from Alborta to Nova Snotia using bussiness management types and the mentally challenged godwhacks.

 

[MikeyDB]

Don't be so glum Beve...

Britishers were alarmed to find out that the CIA has been using British and European waypoints on their campaign of "rendition"....known to the rest of the world as kidnapping...

America lies, that's a given.

 

[darkbeaver]

I don't care what condition of rendition is extant with this edition of British sedition. The corporate banking/counting cult can scan my arse.

 

[darkbeaver]

I don't care what condition of rendition is extant with this edition of British sedition. The corporate banking/counting cult can scan my arse. Oh by the way, on a brighter note the capitalist economy is collapesing. Now that's good news I can't wait for the depression, free range chickens will be worth more than gold or oil. cluckcluckcluck:smile:

 

[MikeyDB]

Beve Beve Beve....

Why would they be interested in your's when they've got a whole Whitehouse and Senate and Legislature in America to find a bountiful crop of the same products!

 

[faithlessforeve]

It seems almost anybody/business can sell your private information. After only a month moving to Toronto, I had to go to an outpatient at a nearby hospital. It was the first time I had given anybody my personal information. About a month later, I received a letter from a woman's hospital looking for a donation. I always believed that the first hospital either sold/gave the woman's hospital my information without my notice.

 

[tehowe]

An interesting aside to this thread... before he was kicked out for the kind of dipping that I'm sure everyone in Ottawa engages in, the Federal Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski wrote this:

Specifically, I am referring to: the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency's new "Big Brother" passenger database; the provisions of section 4.82 of Bill C-17; dramatically enhanced state powers to monitor our communications, as set out in the "Lawful Access" consultation paper; a national ID card with biometric identifiers, as advanced by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Denis Coderre; and the Government's support of precedent-setting video surveillance of public streets by the RCMP.

These initiatives are all cause for deep concern because of the intrusions on privacy that they directly entail. But they are even more disturbing because of the thresholds they cross and the doors they open. Each of these measures establishes a devastatingly dangerous new principle of acceptable privacy invasion.

More on my crappy blog here:

http://tehowe.blogspot.com/2007/04/radwanski-warned-of-govt-survelilance.html

 

[darkbeaver]

Beve Beve Beve....

Why would they be interested in your's when they've got a whole Whitehouse and Senate and Legislature in America to find a bountiful crop of the same products!

Well it's because quality counts, my chickens actually taste like chicken, they are 100% real organic semi-wild chickens not some legislated P3 psuedo-chicken. Real chickens are good to eat.Gold silver or sex nobody eats for free. Depression is oportunity, we have to take advantage of market conditions, adapt,diversify, expand, envelope, capture, enslave the market, it's a better bussiness environment dawning now, perfect for adventurous dynamic fringe enterprise. Without cheap oil and with a depressed ecomomy sans forigne factory peasents most former wage slaves in the western world will shortly be enjoying a free diet programe, weight reduction will exponentially rise shifting the global balance slowing the revolution of the planet, we will wobble and dogtrot arround the sun for centurys waiting for the fish to return. Oh ya bar coding eh, phuck it, what is a privacy commisioner anyway? Do we have a manners commisioner or a skipping runner and walking commisioner? Don't tell me , I don't want to know. That last fiver of bud was worth the chicken.