from the surveillance-society dept

Recent reports have raised alarm about the use of PatronScan, an ID-checking and face-scanning system, at multiple LGBTQ+ bars in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. Much of the attention has focused on reports that the system photographs patrons as they enter venues and questions about whether those images are used for facial recognition.

A broader privacy concern also deserves scrutiny. For years, PatronScan has marketed itself not just as an ID-verification tool, but as a system that allows bars and clubs to identify patrons, keep records about them, and share information across venues. As one news article published in 2019 documented, PatronScan built a network that allowed participating bars to flag patrons and share information about them with other establishments. 

And in California, it’s not at all clear how PatronScan’s business model of scanning IDs and sharing the information from those scans with other bars comports with the law. California’s ID privacy law, which was amended in 2018 to add ID “scans,” states that no businesses shall “retain or use” any information from a scanned ID card except for limited purposes such as to verify age, comply with a legal requirement, or prevent fraud. 

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 especially strong in LGBTQ+ spaces, which have long served as refuges for people to go without being tracked, monitored, or put on lists. 

We reached out to Patronscan with questions regarding their practices and their views on California ID law. They referred us to their published FAQ question “Is Patronscan privacy compliant in California?” which claims that the use of Patronscan kiosks is legal in California. They also said “Patronscan does not do facial recognition in North America, or any kind of automated analysis of the ID or the live photo image.” 

The California Legislature Has Investigated PatronScan’s Business Model 

In 2018, the California Legislature published bill analyses (on that year’s AB 2769) that went into detail about PatronScan’s business. Reviewing PatronScan’s own materials, the California Senate Judiciary Committee found that the company had collected and retained information on 561,087 customers in Sacramento alone during the first five months of 2018—a remarkable figure for a city whose population had only recently topped 500,000.

Lawmakers also found that at that time, PatronScan retained information for at least 90 days or longer in some cases, shared information among participating bars, and maintained bans that lasted an average of more than 19 years. A PatronScan “Public Safety Report” used 10,000 scans collected on a single day to report on “where customers live, how far they have traveled, and how many different venues the customers patronized.” 

This was not simply checking IDs at the door. PatronScan was building a database. 

An immigrants’ rights group, the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), wrote about its concern at the time with these growing ID databases, saying that “placing individuals on a database that labels them a “threat to public safety” has “significant immigration consequences that could lead to deportation, revoking of current status, or denial of future immigration relief.” 

Today, PatronScan states that it retains personal information about all customers for 21 days, and about flagged customers for up to five years. This includes the customer’s name, date of birth, photograph, gender, and zip code. It also includes the dates and times that the customer entered particular bars. Such databases are a grave privacy threat. Personal data is routinely stolen by thieves, misused by a company’s employees, seized by government agencies, and diverted to new purposes by a company’s executives. 

California Law Still Bans ID-Scan Databases, And Bars Should Follow That Law

In 2018, California lawmakers closed what they viewed as a loophole. Existing law already prohibited businesses from retaining or using information obtained when they “swiped” a driver’s license, except for the narrow purposes of legal requirements (like a judicial warrant) or “preventing fraud, abuse, or material misrepresentation.” 

After reviewing companies like PatronScan, the Legislature amended the law to make clear that the same restrictions that apply to businesses that “swipe” ID cards also apply when those IDs are “scanned.” PatronScan opposed that change, arguing it wanted to preserve the ability to share information among bars so participating venues could decide whether to admit patrons.

The bill became law anyway. Yet PatronScan continues to market and sell a system that apparently retains information from scanned IDs, and allows participating venues to flag patrons and share information across its network. 

At a minimum, that raises serious questions about how those practices fit with California’s existing ID privacy law. Bar and nightlife venue owners who utilize PatronScan should think twice about its effects on their customers, and consider going back to standard, visual ID checks. These physical checks have been effective at keeping underage patrons out of 21-and-over venues for decades, and don’t present the serious privacy dangers of creating a private database of bar patrons. 

For venues serving vulnerable communities like immigrants or the LGBTQ+ community, the stakes of using this technology are even higher. It’s disappointing and alarming to see some of California’s more well-known LGBTQ+ nightlife spots instead lining up as PatronScan’s early adopters. A venue cannot claim to be a safe space while feeding its patrons’ data to a third party database. These businesses should reject PatronScan, return to the standard ID checks that every other bar has been able to utilize, and prove to their customers that their privacy and security still matters. 

Originally published to the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: age verification, california, id privacy, id scans, id verification, privacy

Companies: patronscan

I couldn’t believe it. Had Roku really just casually inserted global viral raccoon sensation Jimothy into Roku City? I’d seen a post claiming so, but knowing how easy it is to fake things with AI, I had to see it for myself.

I powered up one of my home’s half-dozen Roku streaming boxes and spent 10 minutes trying to force the platform into screen-saver mode, which then opens up Roku City. Ever since the most recent Roku platform update, I see this interface far less often than I used to.

It’s a complex world out there, and more than ever folks may find themselves in a situation where they want to keep particular bits of information away from prying eyes. At the same time, overly complex methods of file security can make it difficult to share said information with the intended recipients impractical. So what’s the solution?

One proposal from [Ryan Walker] AKA [machinehum] is the Phantomdrive — a fully open source USB flash drive that features a secret secondary filesystem. Not only is the existence of this data hidden from the operating system under normal circumstances, but it’s encrypted with AES-256. Rather than relying on software running on the computer to handle the decryption, the CH569 chip that powers the drive does it internally.

To complete this platform-agnostic approach, [machinehum] had to come up with a way for the user to unlock the secure storage that didn’t require running any code on the client machine. A hardware solution such as a keypad is the obvious answer, but in this case, was out of the question as it would immediately tip off an observer about the drive’s true nature. A covert storage device needs a similarly inconspicuous method of authentication.

That’s why the firmware on the Phantomdrive keeps an eye on all the write operations to the unsecured section of the drive looking for the string password:. Once it sees that, it treats whatever follows as the decryption key. If it’s correct, the previously inaccessible data will appear to the operating system as a new drive.

[machinehum] cautions that none of this has been professionally audited from a security standpoint, and that you should treat this whole concept as an experiment. In other words, it’s probably more than sufficient for the average person, but no guarantees on how long it would last should a three letter agency gets too interested in what you’re up to.

If this seems a bit familiar, it’s because the Phantomdrive follows up [machinehum]’s self-destructing USB flash drive from a few years back. The concept is essentially the same, except this time there’s no Magic Smoke getting released.

Protection against unauthorized remote logins to your cloud server is a matter of SSH key-based authentication, a strict security policy on the firewall, two-factor authentication, and a secure communication channel – no individual component will give adequate protection by itself. The major risk point in breaches is not the server but the open door to remote login. To patch that vulnerability, you need a series of countermeasures, not a magical setting.

Why Remote Server Access Is a Common Attack Vector

Every cloud server exposes at least one remote access point – usually SSH on port 22 – and that port is scanned constantly by bots looking for weak credentials. Password-based login is the most common way a system can be attacked by brute force, and it is quite common with a standard setup that the system is left in a state where an admin/user of that system – “root user” – can log in directly by guessing the user ID and the password combination. Add in shared team credentials, forgotten firewall rules from old projects, and staging servers left publicly reachable, and it’s clear why misconfigured remote access – not zero-day exploits – is behind most cloud server compromises. The fix is simple, though you’ll need to do some setup yourself instead of trusting the default setting.

How to lock down SSH access in the right way

The best way to secure remote access is through a series of small improvements rather than one major overhaul. The following is a real working method:

1. Switch to SSH key authentication, then turn off password login completely in the same location: sshd_config. Keys are far harder to brute-force than passwords.
2. Disable root login over SSH and require a non-root user with sudo privileges instead; this is a security advantage that even without any change, one key compromising would limit the impact.
3. Change the default SSH port away from 22 to cut down on automated scanning noise (not a security measure on its own, but it reduces log clutter).
4. Restrict access by IP using your firewall or security group, allowing SSH only from known office or VPN IP ranges rather than the entire internet.
5. Add a VPN as a connection layer for anyone accessing servers from outside a trusted network – a VPN like Planet VPN’s free VPN service can encrypt the connection between a remote worker’s laptop and the server before SSH traffic ever leaves their device, which matters especially on public wi-fi or shared networks.

Every step you take closes the doors that the attacker may open slightly, and when you combine everything, you would have a door to a series of locked gates.

Why Do I Need a Bastion Host?

When it comes to teams working with many servers, deploying a bastion host (jump box) may be a clean and effective way to solve the long-term problem. With this method, you only expose SSH to the bastion, and the other servers accept it only when it’s from the bastion’s internal IP. This centralizes logging and makes auditing access far simpler.

Using a virtual private network (VPN) and a bastion host together is perfectly fine – and many solutions use both: a safe way to access the private network via a VPN, followed by use of a bastion host to restrict which servers can be accessed. Some teams may decide to forgo the bastion because they don’t have the manpower to manage one, and so use a combination of a VPN and a set of firewall rules that still quite a bit lowers the exposure, but without the extra effort.

Mistakes Leading to Leaving Cloud Servers Open

The Mistakes That Cause Leaving Cloud Servers Open: Even the safest development teams may have slip-ups from time to time. One of the most frequent is leaving staged, or test servers with relaxed firewall rules equivalent to those of the production environment – hackers don’t concern themselves with which environment they first land on. Another frequent error is reusing the same SSH key on several servers and clients, causing one hacked laptop to compromise all servers that key has access to.

Another common human error is not removing or changing access when someone leaves the team, so stale credentials remain valid and accessible. At last, putting trust in the strategy of “security through obscurity” – meaning one thinks that setting up the unusual port or hiding the hostname from the public is actually sufficient security – creates a wrong impression of security. This is mostly true; in reality, modern-day attackers scan all ports anyway, and there is no way to hide from them.

System Administrators Guide to Secure Remote Access 

Prohibit SSH password logins totally and depend exclusively on key-based authentication

• Surely no one wants to type in the password every time; because of this, use only key-based authentication 
• Deter the user from logging in as root by default and instead use the sudo command to do root tasks
• A firewall or security group rule can provide great help with IP address-based restrictions on SSH logins 
• For access that comes from untrusted sources or external networks, use a secure tunnel like a vpn or bastion host
• Periodically change SSH keys and inspect access lists
• Maintain records of login attempts and detect brute-force attacks as quickly as possible

Frequently Asked Questions

The El Capitan Theatre and the Walt Disney Studios lot have long been reserved for some of Disney’s biggest moments. Citizen Kane held its Hollywood premiere on that same stage in 1941, and decades later, The Lion King, the Avengers films, and a steady run of Pixar premieres have rolled out the red carpet at the same historic Hollywood venue.

This September, though, Disney is handing the spotlight to a different kind of storyteller… creators. Created in LA is a new two-day creator summit and film festival conceived by creator Jon Youshaei and presented by Disney. The event will bring 350 creators and storytellers together on September 17–18 for a premiere event at the El Capitan Theatre before moving to the Walt Disney Studios lot for a day of conversations.

The Triangle AIO Twin was already one of the better dressed wireless speaker systems under $1,000, but apparently French audio companies consider standing still a form of surrender.

Triangle has introduced a new Macassar finish for the AIO Twin, wrapping its compact cabinets in a genuine wood veneer inspired by Macassar ebony. The dark brown base is crossed by vertical grain and fine golden highlights that shift in appearance depending on the lighting and viewing angle.

In other words, it should look considerably more expensive than another pair of rectangular black boxes parked beside your turntable.

The new veneer is paired with the AIO Twin’s familiar oblong magnetic grille, now covered in a deep brown fabric supplied by Scandinavian textile specialist Gabriel. The combination gives the system a warmer, more traditional appearance that should work particularly well in Art Deco, mid-century and contemporary interiors.

Related Reading: Triangle AIO Twin Wireless Speakers and Thetis 340 Subwoofer Review

Same Speaker, Better Suit

Triangle has not made any acoustic or connectivity changes for the Macassar edition.

The AIO Twin remains a two-speaker stereo system built around one active loudspeaker containing the amplification and connections. The second passive speaker is powered through the supplied three-meter speaker cable.

Each cabinet uses a 1-inch silk-dome tweeter and 5-inch midrange/bass driver, with 50 watts of Class D amplification available for each channel. Triangle specifies a frequency response of 56Hz to 22kHz and recommends the system for rooms measuring up to approximately 269 square feet.

Wi-Fi streaming supports files up to 24-bit/192kHz, while Bluetooth 5.0 includes aptX, aptX HD, aptX LL, AAC and SBC. AirPlay, Spotify Connect, UPnP/DLNA playback and Triangle AIO multiroom support are also included.

Available streaming services through the Triangle AIO app include Spotify, Qobuz, TIDAL, Deezer, Amazon Music and TuneIn internet radio.

Physical connections include a switchable RCA line-level/MM phono input, 3.5mm auxiliary input, optical digital input, Ethernet, USB-A for storage devices or charging and a mono subwoofer output. The USB connection does not operate as a USB DAC input for a computer.

Why the AIO Twin Still Works

When we reviewed the AIO Twin, its warmer tonal balance, texture, dynamic punch and fatigue-free presentation made it a more appealing long-term listen than Triangle’s less expensive Borea BR03 BT.

The AIO Twin also produced surprisingly convincing bass for its size, although adding a subwoofer remains worthwhile for larger rooms, movies or listeners determined to remind the neighbors that they still own a copy of Madvillainy.

The system’s versatility continues to be its strongest selling point. Buyers can connect a turntable, stream high-resolution music, add a CD player, improve the sound from a television and build a multiroom system without purchasing a separate amplifier or network streamer.

The omissions have not changed either. There is still no HDMI ARC/eARC input, which makes TV integration less seamless than it could be, and the USB-A port cannot be used as a digital connection from a laptop or desktop computer. Optical works perfectly well with a television, but HDMI would make volume and power control easier.

Macassar veneer cannot fix that, although it does make the disappointment look rather elegant.

The Bottom Line

The Macassar edition does not improve the sound, add HDMI or turn the AIO Twin into an entirely new product. It simply gives one of the most versatile wireless stereo systems under $1,000 a more luxurious finish.

For listeners who want real stereo sound, vinyl playback, high-resolution streaming and TV connectivity without filling the room with components and cables, the AIO Twin remains a compelling option. It now also looks considerably less likely to have arrived with the office furniture.

Price & Availability

The Triangle AIO Twin wireless speakers are available for $899/pair at Amazon and Best Buy in English Green, Abyss Blue, Linen Grey, White, Black, Brown Maple, Eggplant, and now Macassar. However, the Macassar finish appears to be out of stock on Triangle’s U.S. website at the time of publication.

Related Reading:

Fans of “Widow’s Bay” in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco can catch a free screening of the series’ final three episodes of the first season at select AMC theaters.

“Widow’s Bay” made its debut in April, quickly becoming an Apple TV hit. The series has been praised for blending genuine horror with character-driven comedy.

Even with its late premiere date, it earned 19 Emmy nominations. That includes the coveted Best Comedy Series.

Now, Apple TV wants to do something for “Widow’s Bay” fans.

According to Deadline, Apple TV has teamed up with Rutgers University, alma mater of “Widow’s Bay” creator Katie Dippold, for free, one-night-only fan screenings of the first season’s final three episodes. The screenings will take place in select AMC theaters on Wednesday, August 12, in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco.

If you’re interested in going, there’s a helpful Apple TV Screenings site that shows which theaters are participating.

Apple TV continues to churn out hits under the direction of Eddy Cue. Cue was recently honored with Cannes Lions’ Entertainment Person of the Year.

The Albany Police Department did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Flock’s Savannah video centers on an interview with then major of police Robert Gavin, who praised how Flock facilitates data-sharing between different law enforcement agencies.

“We spent a lot of time doing community talks about what we’re gonna use them for, what we’re not gonna use them for,” Gavin says, adding that the overall objective is to “keep everybody safe.”

On July 31, Savannah police mayor Van Johnson wrote in a Facebook post that the allegations involving the six employees had been referred to the GBI to determine whether criminal charges should be filed.

The Savannah Police Department did not respond for comment. The GBI confirmed that it investigated the incidents in Savannah and Albany, but didn’t provide information, noting that the Savannah investigation is “still active.”

According to Johnson, the Savannah Police Department conducted an internal investigation through the Flock Safety Audit Assistance Program, which Flock introduced in April. In a press release announcing the tool, Flock said it “continuously monitors system activity and surfaces search patterns that fall outside an agency’s typical usage.” Savannah police chief Lenny Gunther told a local news outlet that the investigation surfaced 127 inappropriate searches out of the 39,000 it conducted this year.

“Public trust is non-negotiable,” Johnson said in his Facebook statement. “These tools exist to keep our community safe, not for personal or unauthorized use.”

In 2020, Flock posted a video by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Sandy Springs Police Department’s arrest of a porch pirate. The video did not feature any interviews with Sandy Springs Police Department personnel, but noted that the man was arrested after a Flock camera captured the license plate of the suspect.

About five years later, the Sandy Springs Police Department launched an internal investigation into whether one of its officers had misused Flock’s technology. According to investigators, the officer allegedly ran ALPR searches to support beta testing for Signal 8, a law enforcement software company that employed the officer in a second job.

This officer, the police department claimed, did not cooperate with its investigation and was subsequently terminated.

Meanwhile, Flock showcased the Baytown Police Department in 2025 as part of a brief series highlighting cases where police said Flock was instrumental in apprehending a suspect.

“We use it multiple times every day, and once I log in to my computer, Flock is the first thing I click on,” a Baytown police officer says.

On July 30, Baytown police chief John Stringer announced the resignation of a police officer who had been under investigation for allegedly misusing Flock’s technology. The Baytown Police Department did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

In his video statement, Stringer said that two investigations into the officer’s alleged misuse—one internal, one criminal—remained ongoing.

“Accountability to the fullest extent of the law will be pursued,” Stringer added.