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Drivers licenses scanned for private club membership

Drivers licenses scanned for private club membership

Old Oct 11, 2016, 9:55 pm
  #1  
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Drivers licenses scanned for private club membership

Hi guys

Hope this question hasn't been asked too much or I'm just being an idiot. I'm based out of Kansas City but I've been coming to Dallas for a work project the last couple of months. When down here my coworkers and I will often go to bars, pubs, etc... for dinner and drinks.

Everything seemed pretty normal until today two different places (one a pub, the other a hotel bar) asked to scan our IDs for private club membership. This was really offputting to all of us, we'd never seen anything like this before, and they asked us to sign these receipts for membership.

Is this normal? It comes off as an invasion of privacy for marketing purposes (at worst), and a government invasion of privacy (at best). It was so unnerving at the first place that we decided to leave because we had been to this place many times over the past few weeks and we hadn't had to do anything like this before. They didn't explain anything about why they took our IDs and brought us back these pieces of paper to sign out of the blue.

I also googled it and it appears to be some TABC regulated thing, but it is completely foreign to our group, and we're quite traveled within the domestic US, Asia, and Europe.
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Old Oct 11, 2016, 10:18 pm
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In some neighborhoods (for example, I experienced this around the SMU campus) kin the Dallas Fort Worth area, alcohol can only be sold/served to members of private clubs. Bars offer club membership for no or extremely minimal fees. I suspect that the pieces of paper were either membership applications or, if you kept them, membership cards. It's a liquor control board regulation, somewhat similar to blue laws in intent, that's at least better than the entire community being dry (as a local option).

BTW, the role of the driving license might be the need to prove your ID or age in order to purchase such a membership.
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 12:24 am
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Private property you were seeking admittance to?

I think your only option is to leave if you don't want to meet their entry requirements.
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 6:12 am
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Texas is divided up into wet and dry areas. Wet can sell alcohol in one form or the other, whereas dry areas cannot.

In dry areas or wet ones that do not allow drinking in restaurants the restaurants will establish a private club inside the restaurant than allows for serving alcohol. To do this you provide ID and sign saying you are now a member. This membership may be transitory in that you reup for each visit or permanent. It has been this way for for as long as I have been around, which is decades

It is entirely innocent and not a commie plot to gather secret, personal information. Just a way to booze where normally you cannot drink.

This web site will tell you all you ever wanted to know about this and other strange rules here in Texas related to "alkeyhall" as my mother in law used to call it while she drank a beer hidden in a paper sack in her own home.

https://www.tabc.state.tx.us/
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 6:47 am
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OP isn't asking about the odd membership issue which is a fairly common device in a number of areas around the country, but rather about having is DL scanned.

The answer to that is that it is a way for the establishment to demonstrate to liquor enforcement authorities that it is doing its bit to avoid fake ID's. Nothing more than liability protection for the establishment.

If you are concerned about the privacy considerations, it is always a concern anytime you show anything which has your photo, full name, address and DOB on it to anybody, let alone scan that data (or photocopy it). For all you know, the property does keep a record of the information and sell it to the KGB or to Burglars International to use while you are away in Texas.

But, it is private property and you have two options: meet the owner's conditions for entry or go drinking elsewhere. So, it's a judgment call for you. Risk vs. reward.
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 7:00 am
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Right. What I am saying is that they have done it that way for quite some time. There is nothing unusual here. Scanning it, photocopying it, or writing down all of the data on it is what they do.
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 1:54 pm
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So if you're operating as a private club in Texas, are you required to do this, or is it just an extra accountability step to protect the establishment in the event that they are audited?

It's just totally weird, I had been to the same place multiple times over the past two months (and many other bars in the area - Frisco/Plano) and they had never requested it. We went to a different bar just down the street and they didn't ask to scan our IDs. The problem is that I don't necessarily trust a small private establishment to secure my identity information, much less a bar.
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 2:02 pm
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Originally Posted by alman84
It's just totally weird, I had been to the same place multiple times over the past two months (and many other bars in the area - Frisco/Plano) and they had never requested it.
My guess is they had recently been visited by the TABC and were having to be extra strict. That happens here - places where I never get carded because they know me, suddenly have to card every person at the table for drinks, etc.
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Old Oct 12, 2016, 2:39 pm
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Originally Posted by alman84
So if you're operating as a private club in Texas, are you required to do this, or is it just an extra accountability step to protect the establishment in the event that they are audited?

It's just totally weird, I had been to the same place multiple times over the past two months (and many other bars in the area - Frisco/Plano) and they had never requested it. We went to a different bar just down the street and they didn't ask to scan our IDs. The problem is that I don't necessarily trust a small private establishment to secure my identity information, much less a bar.
The club is required to not sell alcohol to non-members.

Some places require a membership for all who drink; others only for the one who buys (i.e. one person at the table). And as with age checks elsewhere, clubs may get lax about checking, but they take the risk of getting busted.

I don't think it's a requirement to scan DLs for club membership, but it makes things easier for the club, so many opt for that. I remember in the old days (circa 1990) having to fill out a form by hand to get my club membership.
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Old Oct 14, 2016, 5:45 am
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Originally Posted by Paint Horse

It is entirely innocent and not a commie plot to gather secret, personal information. Just a way to booze where normally you cannot drink.
wow

having your information stored unnecessarily is not wrong because of some "plot", it's wrong (among other reasons) because the people who collect it are not responsible stewards of it. if age verification were the bona fide reason for this, there are many other ways they can do it other than scanning and storing it. also, why do i have to give someone my name, just so it to be stored, in order to have a drink?

data breaches and theft of information are so prevalent that they're now considered barely newsworthy.

this website and products like facebook are lucrative for one reason. i hope you realize what it is.

so ya, some of us care about where our information goes and for what reason

dale gribble is right

Originally Posted by wrp96
My guess is they had recently been visited by the TABC and were having to be extra strict. That happens here - places where I never get carded because they know me, suddenly have to card every person at the table for drinks, etc.
carding is different than scanning and storing

this issue is proof that dallas sucks. citizens and the idiots they elect can change this easily but they're choosing not to.

yet again there are quite a few losers in houston heights that support keeping their hood dry.

Originally Posted by alman84
The problem is that I don't necessarily trust a small private establishment to secure my identity information, much less a bar.
you shouldn't trust anyone. i dunno what size has to do with it, especially considering that small firms rely on massive firms for this type of operation. not that it matters because some of the largest companies in the us have been hit.
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Old Oct 14, 2016, 6:01 am
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All an interesting discussion. But comes back to the question of how much you need a drink. If you want one, you are either going to meet the establishment's demands or you are going to drink alone somewhere.

The real question is not what the place collects but how they store the data, for how long and the measures taken to delete it.

Clearly they collect the data in case the cops come back, so the question is "when".

The bouncers won't know and whatever they do say isn't going to be reliable. So grin and bear it or don't.
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Old Oct 14, 2016, 12:22 pm
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Originally Posted by Often1
All an interesting discussion. But comes back to the question of how much you need a drink. If you want one, you are either going to meet the establishment's demands or you are going to drink alone somewhere.

The real question is not what the place collects but how they store the data, for how long and the measures taken to delete it.

Clearly they collect the data in case the cops come back, so the question is "when".

The bouncers won't know and whatever they do say isn't going to be reliable. So grin and bear it or don't.
Right, we left as soon as she came back with receipts saying they had scanned our licenses and sent back our beers. But it'd be nice to know which establishments have this type of license without having to go in and check. This particular place has a great beer list so we enjoyed going there.

And I also don't think it's totally fair to say "deal with it" when state law mandates something as ludicrous as this.
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Old Oct 14, 2016, 12:49 pm
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Things are easy now. On top of the odd alcohol regulations we used to have and still do for a limited set of establishments have Blue Laws that restrict when things can be purchased.

With that said and keeping in mind that I do not booze as much as I used to, I think private clubs are fairly rare these days. It is not a problem you are likely to encounter all that often. YMMV
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Old Oct 17, 2016, 4:50 pm
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I'd tell them to go F- themselves if they asked to scan my ID.

I would not be a member of any club that would have me (and much less one that wanted to scan my ID)!
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Old Oct 18, 2016, 7:08 pm
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I don't know if this is a Texas only thing or widely used in the Bible Belt, but this is not really a club. It is just a wink, wink, nod, nod way of selling alcohol in geographic locations where you cannot otherwise do so until the local population approves the normal way at some point in the future through a local option election.

Back to the scan the license point. I still do not see what the problem is. They write the information down with a pen, they photocopy it, or they scan it. They still have it. The same thing applies when you give a regular restaurant your credit card, fill out the information sheet at a doctor's office, and so on and so forth.
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