A photo of your passport, face, and a biometric match — all to get a drink
web.archive.org
Privacy advocates and cybersecurity experts say the growing use of ID scanning at venues raises the risk of personal data breaches. They argue a more ambitious overhaul of privacy laws is needed.

TL;DR

ID scanning is becoming a more common requirement to access bars and clubs in Australia (and worldwide). A company called ScanTek is used in over 1,000 clubs in Aus and provides tools such as biometric-matching someone’s face to an ID, detecting fake IDs, flagging people and sharing data with other venues automatically

As well as verifying ages, ScanTek boasts “collect marketing information from IDs and drivers licences, which business owners can use to target specific demographics with promotions” on its website in a pitch to business owners. Though they claim to not share any of this with third parties

Australia’s privacy laws are vague, don’t specify what can be collected and how it must be stored, and only say that companies shouldn’t keep data for longer than is “reasonable”

  • kablez@lemmy.world
    27·
    11 hours ago

    The worst part is all our data is stored on American servers run by megacorpos. ID information scanned by venue terminals is one, but even private health records and sensitive government documents are being chucked into Amazon S3, Azure/OneDrive and Dropbox.

    The government should be prioritising secure, independent digital infrastructure but they’re too busy giving our tax dollars to foreign consulting firms so they can build bad websites.

    • hector@lemmy.today
      7·
      8 hours ago

      Far from being a passive participant in our information being disseminated everywhere, they are actively undermining our privacy everywhere. They want our information, all of it, so they’ve made sure they can get it without warrants or judges or oversight, but so too can everyone else.

      They’ve had their priorities all screwed up. That’s what was so frustrating about the president railing against the “deep state,” the bureaucracies are a problem and do need to be reigned in, he tapped into the anger on that, and trade, and will make those things worse not better. Only able to because the opposition party sold out to the rich and powerful.