Under pressure from a boycott campaign by privacy groups, a third San Francisco gay bar is limiting the use of Patronscan, a digital identity verification technology that photographs faces.
Earlier this month, Castro district bars Badlands and Toad Hall said they would pause their use of the AI-powered platform after learning of the boycott campaign’s myriad privacy and accuracy concerns. Now, the Mix Bar is pausing its use of Patronscan to photograph customers.
The platform is marketed as an easy way to verify IDs and ages and flag problem patrons across all venues. Critics have called the technology facial recognition, though Patronscan says its product used in North America does not map or collect biometric facial geometry and does not share patrons’ personal information with other companies.
The Mix Bar said it would stop using Patronscan to photograph patrons, but will retain the ID scan function to verify government-issued identification and the customer’s age, according to a story in the Bay Area Reporter, a newspaper serving the LGBTQ community.
Still, Fight for the Future, the digital rights group behind the campaign, called the Mix Bar’s decision a “huge step” in the right direction.
The controversy erupted after a June 10 article in the SF Gazetteer news outlet questioned why Castro bars had “TSA-style” face scanners, prompting Fight for the Future’s call for a boycott.
Other consumer tech advocacy groups have raised repeated concerns about facial recognition tech’s accuracy, especially for identifying Black and brown people.
Fight for the Future said Friday that surveillance “takes its own victims” during a time when the federal government has begun targeting the LGBTQ community.
“To allow for any third-party surveillance of the queer and trans community is simply too dangerous and too risky in this political environment. Queer spaces are meant to be joyous and safe, and nothing kills the vibe more quickly than AI surveillance,” the group said in a statement. “Let this be a teaching moment for any establishment that surveillance does not make us safer.”
A bar manager told the Reporter the controversy had gotten “out of hand” and that the tech helps keep the establishment’s employees safe, noting that the Mix began using it after one staffer was assaulted.
