The UW-Madison plans to help some downtown bars and liquor stores identify underage drinkers by providing free ID scanners that can read driver’s licenses or identification cards to find out if they are real.
University of Wisconsin officials want to offer scanners to those businesses based on UW’s successful use in the Memorial Union’s Rathskeller for the past year and a half.
The technology has been gradually upgraded and about 100 false IDs were found last year, according to Union spokesman Marc Kennedy.
“We have found identification scanners to be very effective,” said Dawn Crim, acting special assistant to the UW-Madison chancellor. “We plan to offer them to establishments to assist them in making responsible sales.”