Saturday, July 6, 2019

POSSIBLY UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE ..... OR MAY NOT

by Bob Walsh

There are now about 1,000 patrons of bars in Sacramento who are now on the PatronScan shit list that I wrote about a few days ago. It seems that the criteria for landing on this list is more than a little loose, and your "due process" rights if you land on it are pretty much non-existent.

Just recently an upscale bar manager was accosted by some drunk asshole at her own bar. She found out who he was by the simple expedience of scanning thru the photos in the PatronScan machine, which photographs the patron as well as scanning in the ID, and putting him on the shit list.

The now-mandatory program started last November in Sacramento and is now in use in about 30 bars and restaurants. It has been in voluntary use for about three years and in that time has been helpful in many police investigations.

Beginning in 2016 any business in Sacramento that had an ABC license and also had an entertainment permit was REQUIRED to have some sort of ID scanning system. The Canadian-based PatronScan is one of the most popular of these systems.

The shit list has no criteria for placement if placed "privately." It results in a five-year ban. A "public" flag can result in a five year ban from ALL establishments that use the system, which includes Canada, Australia and the UK and well as the US.

Generally information is kept in the system for only 30 days for non-problem customers. The information is also used for marketing purposes, such as where a customer likes to sit, what they like to drink and credit card info.

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