Longtime readers may recall a pair of stories in 2023 regarding state laws and convenience stores scanning the barcodes on people’s driver’s licenses. The outlets had foregone looking at the front to confirm the age for cigarette and alcohol purchases, instead scanning the barcode on the back to pull in that and a pile of other data to which they were not entitled.
It is against the law without consent, but who among us, when asked for ID to purchase age-restricted products balks? Almost no one. You give the ID expecting them to check the front, not thinking twice, perhaps, when they scan the back. And it’s not just convenience stores. DoorDash does this when delivering medication, for example.
The DMV rules also allow scanning with a few as long as conditions you can find here.
The concerned citizen who contacted the NH AG’s office about it wrote two articles for GraniteGrok in 2023, here and here, and shared an all too common tale. The AG didn’t do anything about it, was dismissive, and didn’t want to be bothered.
Since writing the first article, Are Convenience Stores Violating Your Privacy, I have been gathering more information and find the Driver License Scanning issue to be quite the bottomless rabbit hole.
Here are some key takeaways:
- The AG’s office is still trying to get me to go away.
- I did have a conversation with the Director of DMV, John Marasco, who says he has concerns.
- There is a committee of state legislators that must approve the rules of most departments, but as far as I can tell, the Department of Safety is “exempt” from having its rule-making overseen by the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules.
- It has been reported to me that Macy’s is now scanning driver’s licenses to verify identity during credit card purchases.
- (According to another reader) LHS Poll Pad Training in Manchester is instructing people to scan driver’s licenses (must ask first) to verify voter identity: https://lhsassociates.com/resources/Poll-Pad-Sell-Sheet-(NH)-(1).pdf
- We are still not absolutely sure exactly how much information can be scanned off of the license. One State Representative told me that everything on the front of the license can be scanned. Others think less information can be scanned. As taxpayers, I believe we have a right to know.
Jump forward to the 2025 Legislative session and HB77 – “prohibiting businesses from scanning individuals’ licenses when selling alcohol or tobacco products,” which has its first hearing scheduled for 1/14/2025 at 10:45 a.m. Location: Legislative Office Building Time: 10:45 a.m.
The bill would clarify existing law by prohibiting “any person selling alcohol or tobacco products from scanning, recording, retaining, or storing, in any electronic form or format, personal information, as defined in RSA 260:14, obtained from any license.“
The proposed change in the law is meant, I presume, to protect the privacy of people who are unaware of the sum of data available from that barcode. It’s actually not much different from what is visible on the front, and while 20+ states share a lot more, any vendor who scans your New Hampshire ID will have the potential to store your full name, date of birth, complete address, height, eye color, license number, type, and any driving restrictions (eyeglasses, etc.).
When all they need is your date of birth.
What they may (or may not) do with the rest of your information is unclear, so HB77 is poised to save you from yourself, so to speak, something for which we don’t typically advocate. The alternative would be an expensive public service campaign to educate people about what happens so they can decide with actual knowledge whether they should consent to the more detailed data capture or ask that their license not be scanned.
If you don’t care, have at it, but this seems a lot easier for the rest of us, and given the digital world in which we live, assuming the data hasn’t already been mined dozens of times in other ways, at least you can say not like this, thank you very much.
