The Canadian Privacy Law Blog: Developments in privacy law and writings of a Canadian privacy lawyer, containing information related to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (aka PIPEDA) and other Canadian and international laws.

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The author of this blog, David T.S. Fraser, is a Canadian privacy lawyer who practices with the firm of McInnes Cooper. He is the author of the Physicians' Privacy Manual. He has a national and international practice advising corporations and individuals on matters related to Canadian privacy laws.

For full contact information and a brief bio, please see David's profile.

Please note that I am only able to provide legal advice to clients. I am not able to provide free legal advice. Any unsolicited information sent to David Fraser cannot be considered to be solicitor-client privileged.

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The views expressed herein are solely the author's and should not be attributed to his employer or clients. Any postings on legal issues are provided as a public service, and do not constitute solicitation or provision of legal advice. The author makes no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained herein or linked to. Nothing herein should be used as a substitute for the advice of competent counsel.

This web site is presented for informational purposes only. These materials do not constitute legal advice and do not create a solicitor-client relationship between you and David T.S. Fraser. If you are seeking specific advice related to Canadian privacy law or PIPEDA, contact the author, David T.S. Fraser.

Monday, September 19, 2005

New technologies for scanning IDs

For those bar and nightclub owners who are not content with reading the magnetic stripes of patrons' ID cards, a UK company has added to the ID-capturing arsenal with ClubScan. It's a all-in-one scanner, OCR driver and database management system to slice and dice customer information:

idscan
"idscan incorporates the cutting edge of Optical Card Recognition OCR technology. It uses advanced image processing and field identification capabilities to read and process the information on driver licenses, Idcards, passports and other forms of ID.
idscan application has an OCR system that is pre-trained to recognize and interpret a wide variety of font types on ID cards. Including Passports, Provisional UK, European, US, Australian, Middle East and Far East IDS & Driving Licenses.
idscan OCR technology begins reading the text information, the application uses its intelligent processing engine to correctly place the text data into appropriate text fields i.e. ID Number, Name, Address, Issue Date, Expiration Date and Date of Birth.
The combination of accurate OCR with advanced image processing yields a perfect system for scanning and filing driver licenses and ID cards and offers the only OCR system that delivers 99% accuracy. ..."

For those who want to share with other users, Sharescan adds "troublesome" former customers to a worldwide database accessible to other idscan customers. Oddly, there's no mention on the website of how this jibes with the UK Data Protection Act.

Via Engadget: The Clubscan ID scanner for nightclubs.

For a somewhat related blog entry, check out: The Canadian Privacy Law Blog: Calgary student challenges nightclub over scanning ID.

Labels: id swiping, information breaches