Gay bars in San Franscisco are installing ID and facial scanners and requiring patrons to give it up if they want to get in, with Cydney Hayes in The San Francisco Gazetteer likening the gates to the TSA and Jacob Ogles in The Advocate pointing out the loss of anonymity and safety in LGBTQ+ spaces. Here's Hayes: Owen had just handed her ID to the bouncer when she was directed to turn and face a small camera before being allowed into the bar. "I was just kind of taken aback," Owen recalled. The camera was hooked up to a monitor and a forensic ID scanner. It looked like the sort of high-security kiosk you'd find while going through airport security. "Why is this at a gay bar, of all places?" At least three Castro bars (Mix, Badlands and Toad Hall) have deployed these PatronScan Guard+ kiosks (previously at Boing Boing), which scan IDs and photograph patrons at the door. The devices record names, birthdays, photos, genders and ZIP codes as well as when you came in. The data is retained for "up to five years" and shared across the network of venues using the system. Bouncers are not required to tell patrons they are being photographed. The Electronic Frontier Foundation questions the legality of the kiosks because they build patron databases that California law forbids. The state's ID privacy statute bars businesses from retaining or using scanned ID data except to verify age or prevent fraud; Joe Mullin wonders why such a serious violation of this law goes unchecked. Californians should be deeply concerned about businesses that collect information from government-issued IDs and use it to build databases about where people go, whom they associate with, and whether they should be allowed into other public gathering places. That concern is