A digital rights advocacy group is reupping its call to ban biometric facial recognition technology in bars and other venues serving the LGBTQ+ community after new reporting revealed widespread use of the technology in San Francisco’s Castro District.
This week, Gazetteer SF put a spotlight on the face-scanning technology that’s been hiding in plain sight in multiple Castro venues for over a year.
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Hart Owen, a guest at Mix bar on 18th Street in the iconic gayborhood, said she was taken aback when she saw the tech stationed at the bar’s front entrance.
She’d just handed her ID to the bouncer when she was directed to turn and face a small camera before being allowed into the bar.
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Owen described a device with a monitor and a forensic ID scanner, something like a high-security kiosk stationed at a TSA checkpoint.
“Why is this at a gay bar, of all places?” she asked herself.
The tech Owen was confronted with was Patronscan Guard+, a biometric and personal data collection device made by a Canadian surveillance company. At least three bars in the Castro employ the technology to collect the personal data of every customer that comes through the door, including names, addresses, genders, and even how they behave inside, Gazetteer reports.
The surveillance is ostensibly used to flag “blacklisted” customers.
A bouncer at Mix filled in some details.
“I’ve been here for a year, and it’s been here longer than me,” they said of the kiosk.
Personal and biometric data gathered from customers is stored on the Patronscan platform for 30 days, then deleted unless the patron is flagged for bad behavior, “like fighting or stealing,” they said.
Mix bouncers aren’t required to tell patrons the tech is in use; a small plaque on the device advises customers that’s the case.
“It’s posted signage,” says the bouncer.
At least nine bars in the Castro are synced to the same flag network that Mix is a part of, according to Gazetteer’s reporting.
Sarah Phillips, campaign director at digital rights organization Fight for the Future, calls use of the technology at LGBTQ+ venues “a complete betrayal”; the group has been warning against it for years.
“As we speak, the federal government and anti-LGBTQ actors across the country are putting together databases of trans people and attacking our community in every way imaginable,” Phillips said in a statement shared with LGBTQ Nation. “Gay bars should be a space where we can gather without the fear of dangerous and invasive surveillance technology that has historically been weaponized against vulnerable communities.”
The group has started a social media campaign to avoid exactly that kind of “dystopian” future.
“Demand they trash their surveillance machines and stop endangering the community,” the group’s online petition reads.
“One of the distinct ways that the venues, bars, and public spaces can actively combat the targeting of people in our community by law enforcement, bad actors, and anti-LGBTQ politicians is rejecting facial recognition, and we are calling on gay bars everywhere to read the room,” Phillips said.
“We’ve seen this movie before and refuse to comply with this oppressive tech in our spaces during an enormous wave of political persecution against queer and trans people.”
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