Nope, I work as an operations manager for a grocery chain in 19 states. I can tell you identity/card theft happens at the store level all the time. I personally dealt with over a dozen cases last year alone. You'd be surprised. There is no reason for driver's license IDs to be scanned. It is not required by law and with proper training isn't even needed. The liability to them under a major personal information breach would be far, far larger than any alcohol fine would be.
This is a huge issue and I’m glad someone is bringing some light to it. These machines aren’t new. They’re just more widespread now. I encountered one of them at a college-town bar in 2004. I handed an ID to someone who shined a light on it, bent it, looked up at me and back down against the ID, all normal activity in a college town. Then he handed it to the other bouncer who ran it through a machine. Without asking me. I did not consent to that and I probably would not have entered the bar had I known it would be done.
It’s also happening when you try to buy Sudafed (the real kind, that actually works, over the counter).
Texas obviously isn’t one of those states. In probably a good 3/4 or more of the state a unicard (google it) is required to drink, and one of the requirements to get a unicard is your driver’s license number on file. It’s been that way for a good 15-20 years, and so far, there haven’t been any huge lawsuits.
Well, and not just traditional ID theft, but the fact that the supposed “right” people have no right to be ammassing this information either. It’s the government and the corporations that scare me more than the (relatively) amateur ID thieves.