The New York State Senate is moving forward with proposed legislation that would allow bars and restaurants to use facial recognition or fingerprint scanners to verify patrons' ages before allowing them to purchase alcohol, tobacco or e-cigarettes, the New York Post reports.
"This is the new frontier of age verification," said State Senator James Scorphius, who sponsored the biometric bill. "It really promotes the benefits of convenience."
Skoufis envisions bars and restaurants scanning customers' fingerprints, faces or retinas to avoid the hassle of showing id on future returns. The proposed legislation would require all data to be encrypted and ban companies from selling biometric data to third parties.
"No one is forced to use this technology, but they can choose," Skoufis said. "No big brother involved."
Age verification based on facial recognition technology is common in China but has yet to catch on in western countries, where critics have raised concerns about consumer privacy.