Big Brother Might Be Watching You Booze

Feb. 5, 2009— -- The governor of Utah has two problems with a State Senate proposal to scan the IDs of everyone who visits a bar in the state and make that database available to law enforcement officials.

For starters, it is an "Orwellian" breach of privacy, he said. And second, it makes his state look kooky.

"I think that would enhance the oddness of our laws," Gov. Jon Huntsman told The Associated Press. "I think that for most people that is a rather frightening, almost Orwellian, proposition."

Utah already has the strictest alcohol laws in the country, requiring tipplers to become members of any bar they patronize by paying a small fee and filling out a brief application. Bars in Utah are open to the public, but they're still classified as private clubs and only members and sponsored guests may enter.

In principle, the decades-old statute is intended to limit the number of places one would go to drink alcohol. In practice, according to the governor and others, it's little more than a cover charge and a deterrent to out-of-state visitors.

In an effort to boost the state's $6 billion a year tourism industry, Huntsman, a Republican, at the behest of bar and restaurant owners, asked the state legislature to review the club law and consider replacing it with electronic scanners that could determine if a patron was under the legal drinking age of 21 years.

In doing so, some lawmakers from his own party realized that the information obtained by those scanners could be used by the police to investigate drunken driving incidents and proposed creating a database to store that information.

The proposal has met with opposition from the governor, bar owners, civil liberties groups and drinkers who believe it encroaches on individual privacy.

"If we're going to have a database, I think that's great but it needs to be open to the public," said Jay Chambers, 33, of Salt Lake City. "I want to see everyone, every legislator's record of what bars they've been to."