The following email response to the BBA2011 nomination was received from 
Bill Gianoulas, General Manager, Chasers Nightclub, Melbourne on 12 April 2011
 
“The facial recognition scanner and photo id came into effect here at Chasers nightclub in May 2009 due to an incident that occurred the month before. 

In April 2009 a male patron entered Chasers nightclub with a sulphur bomb and released it in the venue with 900 patrons here at the time. The venue was evacuated within 5 mins, with some patrons having breathing problems, ambulance, fire brigade and police all attending. The CIU and Piranha task force were all involved in finding the person or persons involved. The problem at the time was we only had CCTV and a clear picture of the offender was not enough to prosecute him and the 2 witnesses at the time were not sure when it came to a line up. 

From that point on we knew that we had a duty of care for our patrons once in the venue as we were lucky this time no one was injured. 

After carefully researching the various measures we could implement, the Facial recognition scanner was chosen for a few reasons. The facial recognition scanner matches the photo id scanner (everyone entering must produce photo id) which can tell us firstly whether they are fake ids and not the person. (Underage being a key part in that). If an incident occurs in the venue as (the sulphur bomb) the CCTV image will match the person we are looking for through the facial recognition scanner. 

CCTV information is required under our licensing to remain accessible for 28 days and then automatically erased. Our facial recognition scanner information is only stored for 28 days and then automatically erased. The only persons that can obtain this information is The Victorian Police upon request from an incident that may have occurred in the venue. No information is shared with any other venue or persons.

We understand how the issue of privacy may have been raised. But hopefully now that with the above explanation the public can understand this is not designed to invade people’s privacy but to uphold our duty of care we have for patrons entering our venue.”