goldiron

Source: Cryptogon

Blackwater has probably been used for U.S. Government narcotics trafficking operations before, but it looks like that is going to be a major component of their business going forward.

Note the phrase “aviation support” in the story below. Aviation support is synonymous with narcotics trafficking. If you read, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, this will all make much more sense.

Also note the mention of West Africa as a venue for increased Blackwater/Xe activity. In this context, see: Global Cocaine Trade Moves to Africa:

West Africa is an unlikely center for the international cocaine trade. It is not a producer of the drug nor is it a consumer, as the vast majority of its people are very poor.

Yet a startling 50 tons of cocaine is transported through West Africa each year, according to the latest United Nations estimates. The value of this illicit trade dwarfs entire economies and has the potential to corrupt the region’s fragile states, which are just pulling out of decades of bitter civil wars.

In the past Africa has been a treasure trove looted by covetous colonialists, voracious rebels and kleptocratic rulers — over the last 300 years think slaves, ivory, gold, diamonds, tin and coltan. Now it is a transit point and storeroom for the cocaine trade.

“Drug money is perverting the weak economies in the region,” says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The wholesale value in European streets of cocaine passing through West Africa is $2 billion, he says.

South American cartels used to transport cocaine to the big U.S. market via the Caribbean. But dwindling American consumption, stricter control of the West Indies drugs route, growing cocaine use in Europe and weak law enforcement in West Africa have conspired to bring the drug to the region. It is the path of least resistance.

Grown and processed in South America, the refined cocaine is transported by boat or plane across the Atlantic: The shortest line of latitude brings the cargo straight to West Africa. From there the cartels move the drugs onwards to Europe, along the way paying off West African officials in order to be able to operate freely.

So, we have Blackwater/Xe increasing “aviation support” activities in two of the hottest narcotics trafficking hubs in the world. Coincidences.

Blackwater/Xe/ or whatever those crooks are calling themselves this week, are probably going to be performing the same role as Barry and the Boys did at Mena, Arkansas in the 1980s. Running contractors and cutouts, training drug pilots, retrofitting aircraft, and actually carrying out narcotics trafficking operations. Soup to nuts.

In other words, same shit, different decade.

Via: AP:

Blackwater Worldwide is still protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq, but executives at the beleaguered security firm are taking their biggest step yet to put that work and the ugly reputation it earned the company behind them.

Blackwater said Friday it will no longer operate under the name that came to be known worldwide as a caustic moniker for private security, dropping the tarnished brand for a disarming and simple identity: Xe, which is pronounced like the letter “z.”

It’s a rare surrender for a company that cherished a brand name inspired by the dark-water swamps of northeastern North Carolina, one that survived another rebranding effort about a year ago, following a deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The decision to give it up underscores how badly the Moyock-based company’s brand was damaged by that incident and other security work in Iraq.

“They have established themselves as the bad guys,” said Katy Helvenston, who sued the company following her son’s death during a mission in Fallujah while working for Blackwater in 2004. “They’ve established such a horrible reputation. Why else would they change their name?”

Blackwater acknowledged last year in an interview with the The Associated Press the damage to its reputation had persuaded the company to focus on lines of business other than private security contracting.

The issue came to a head last month, when the State Department said it would not rehire Blackwater to protect its diplomats in Iraq after its current contract with the company expires in May. The company has one other major security contract, details of which are classified.

“It’s not a direct result of a loss of (that) contract, but certainly that is an aspect of our work that we feel we were defined by,” said spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell.

The company is also replacing its bear paw logo with a sleeker black-and-white graphic based on letters that make up the company’s new name. In a note to employees, president Gary Jackson said the name change reflects the company’s new focus, and he indicated Xe would not actively pursue new security business.

“This company will continue to provide personnel protective services for high-threat environments when needed by the U.S. government, but its primary mission will be operating our training facilities around the world,” Jackson said.

It has expanded other businesses such as aviation support, recently building a fleet of 76 aircraft that it has deployed to such hotspots as West Africa and Afghanistan. The company got its start in training and continues to build up that business. Last year, some 25,000 civilians, law enforcement and military personnel attended a Blackwater class.

The company’s changes aren’t entirely voluntary. The 2007 shooting in Nisoor Square involving Blackwater guards left at least a dozen Iraqi civilians dead, infuriated politicians in Baghdad and Washington, triggered congressional hearings and increased calls that the company be banned from Iraq.

Late last year, prosecutors charged five of the company’s contractors — but not Blackwater itself — with manslaughter and weapons violations. In January, Iraqi officials said they would not give the company a license to operate. The State Department responded by informing Blackwater it would not renew a contract that comprises a third of the company’s nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.

“It would hurt us,” company CEO Erik Prince said in an interview before losing the State Department deal. “It would not be a mortal blow, but it would hurt us.”

Blackwater has rebranded before, introducing a new name — Blackwater Worldwide — and slight changes to its logo about a year ago. But Friday’s announcement cuts ties entirely with a name created in 1997 when Prince and some of his former Navy SEAL colleagues launched the company.

Xe will cover the parent brand for the two-dozen subsidiaries, and none of those subsidiaries will retain the word “Blackwater” in their names.

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and a longtime Blackwater critic, said the new name won’t change the fact that its actions have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.

“Blackwater’s notorious reputation will outlast its name,” she said.

S.C. becomes focal point to track funds for gangs, narcotics

South Carolina’s political and military leaders fear that U.S. street gangs are conspiring with international terrorists, an alarming scenario they said highlights the need for a specialized unit that targets major drug runners and their bankrollers.

And they want the South Carolina National Guard to run the federally-funded pilot program.

U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson and Henry Brown, both Republicans, have asked U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to back the creation of a military unit that would bridge a perceived security gap between the international drug trade and the war on terror.

“The National Guard has the capacity and the authority to play a unique role in our nation’s counter-narcotics mission,” Wilson told The Post and Courier. “The counter-narcotics pilot program would specifically target the illicit finance generated by the narcotics industry here at home and abroad which is used to fund terrorist operations around the world.”

Proponents said a successful program in South Carolina could serve as a national model and that several factors make the state a strategic location to set up shop:

–The state boasts an abundance of major military installations and resources that already serve key national security roles, including Charleston Air Force Base and its fleet of C-17s, Charleston’s port and the Navy brig, which has housed terrorism suspects.

–Organized gangs with international ties already are operating in the state. One of these organizations, the notorious Mara Salvatrucha-13 (MS-13), has possible links to hostile groups in Afghanistan and the Middle East, according to Wilson and Brown.

–Wilson cites a new report by the Congressional Research Service on the emerging international threat posed by the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. The report states that “alarms have been sounded in some circles that international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda could exploit alien and narcotics smuggling networks controlled by these gangs to infiltrate the United States.”

–The state National Guard already is working in some counter-narcotics programs, and its citizen soldiers are accustomed to collaborating in drug investigations with state and local law enforcement.

But questions remain. Among them: How strong is the evidence linking terrorists, gangs and drug-trafficking? How would this new program square with existing federal, state and local drug enforcement efforts? And is South Carolina the best place for this mission?

The gang connection

Gang activity in South Carolina has increased steadily over the past decade as these criminal organizations have spilled from urban centers into rural and suburban nooks across the nation in search of new territory and customers.

In 2004, the state Law Enforcement Division had identified 84 groups in South Carolina that fit a general definition of a gang: an organized group of five or more people who adopt a common name and engage in crime. By 2007, that figure had ballooned to 325 identified gangs, authorities said.

The number of crimes attributed to gangs has mushroomed as well. In 2007, gangs were linked to more than 950 crimes in South Carolina, including drug trafficking. By comparison, 370 gang-related crimes were reported statewide in 2001, according to SLED.

Many of these groups are what police describe as “hybrid gangs,” small, independent groups connected by turf or friendship. But highly organized gangs with cross-border connections also are present — gangs such as MS-13, Surenos, 18th Street and the Mexican Mafia.

“The number of Hispanic gangs is drastically growing,” said Special Agent Nicole Bryan, SLED’s coordinator on gangs in the Midlands. “As the Hispanic community has grown, Hispanic gangs have increased as part of that growth.”

Across the country, MS-13 and other gangs increasingly have become involved in narcotic trafficking at the wholesale level. They’ve cultivated connections with Mexican drug cartels and other power criminal organizations to gain access to international suppliers and large- volume shipments, according to the National Drug Intelligence Center. These affiliations have increased the availability of illegal drugs and the profits flowing out of the country.

The revenue stream is huge, with traffickers employing myriad of methods to launder and smuggle drug money to foreign destinations. The drug intelligence center estimates that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers generate and launder as much as $39 billion in wholesale profits annually, much of which is smuggled out of the United States along the Mexican border.

Over the years, South Carolina has emerged as a key distribution point in this narcotics pipeline, serving as a smuggling route for drugs from California, Florida, Georgia, New York, Texas and Mexico. South Carolina’s location along Interstates 95 and 85, between New York and Florida, makes it ideal for drug runners shipping marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin along the Eastern Seaboard, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

“Project 9496″

The pilot program would target this stealthy underworld of drugs and money. The new unit is shrouded in secrecy, with scant details of its origin, funding and status. The Pentagon refers to the program as “Project 9496.”

Col. Pete Brooks, director of public affairs for the S.C. National Guard, said it’s too early to talk about the effort in detail. “We are not even out of the blocks yet. This whole new mission is at the ‘good idea’ stage and is not funded.”

But a Jan. 14 letter from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard J. Douglas to the National Guard Bureau indicates the pilot program already is approved. The letter states that the South Carolina Counter Narco-Terrorism Pilot Program is to be run and funded separately from an existing network of states’ National Guard counter-drug units.

Brooks said the pilot program would expand the South Carolina Guard’s anti-drug unit, which employs 40 full-time employees and hires about a dozen temporary workers each summer to help destroy marijuana crops.

The program receives about $1.6 million in federal money each year in support of the drug eradication efforts of SLED and local police agencies. How the two agencies would partner under the pilot program is unclear because SLED considers it only “an idea at this point,” according to a statement the agency issued in response to questions from the newspaper. Exactly how much the program would cost also remains unclear.

The letters of support from Brown and Wilson suggest that Gov. Mark Sanford also is pushing for the new mission. But Sanford’s press secretary, Joel Sawyer, said the governor was unaware of the proposal until The Post and Courier inquired about it.

After discussing the plans with state Guard officials, however, Sanford thinks the program is “an intriguing idea,” Sawyer said.

Still, the program’s status and future remains unclear. The National Guard Bureau said federal seed money was set aside only to study the program’s feasibility. The agency couldn’t provide a figure.

Tracking the money

Efforts to choke off terrorist financing began in earnest after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with then President George W. Bush announcing two weeks later a “major thrust of our war on terrorism … a strike on the financial foundation of the global terror network.”

Within months, the U.S. government froze the assets of dozens of alleged terrorists, banks and nonprofit groups.

Investigators learned that al-Qaida financiers used everything from electronic transfers to camels to move money and fund their operations. Making matters even more challenging was the existence of the hawala system, a centuries-old money loan and transfer system that is based on the honor system among brokers across the world.

Unlike traditional banking systems, which leave trails of paper and records, hawalas typically don’t keep records of individual transactions.

But financing experts and government officials have said tracking down terrorism financiers has suffered in recent years. A report last year by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force said international efforts have had limited success and that the United States and other countries need to create new counter-terrorism techniques.

Reports by the Government Accountability Office in the past two years have said the nation needs an “integrated strategy to coordinate the delivery of counter-terrorism financing training.” A Pentagon report in 2007 called for “one over-arching organization” devoted to international terrorism financing.

John Cassara, a former CIA officer and U.S. Treasury Department agent, said the military in recent years has become more focused on narco-terrorists and their paymasters. He said that this emphasis is a natural outgrowth of the military’s efforts in Afghanistan, where most of the world’s opium is produced.

“We’ve seen over the years how the Taliban has used it to bankroll their operations,” said Cassara, author of “Hide & Seek - Intelligence, Law Enforcement and the Stalled War on Terror Finance.” “The classic line is that if you take away the money, there’s no terrorism. The military realizes this.”

But Cassara said he hasn’t seen any solid evidence showing connections between Latin American gangs and Central Asian and Middle Eastern terrorism. “Could it happen? Absolutely. Does it happen? Frankly I don’t know,” he said, adding that organized criminal gangs are “opportunists, and they will naturally reach out to organizations that can facilitate their operations.”

A recent assessment from the National Drug Intelligence Center reached a similar conclusion, saying such connections are possible but not supported by evidence. The report identified U.S. prison gangs that have spread outside the bars as having the most potential for relationships with terrorists.

While government officials know of no concrete connection between gangs selling drugs in the United States and Middle East terrorist groups, authorities have long known that terrorist organizations in South America, especially in Colombia, fuel much of their activity with drug money. And authorities say they have watched with growing concern as Nigerian criminal groups increasingly have brought drugs, some of it from the Middle East, into this country, including the Southeast.

40 States + D.C. Indicate Highway Deaths Down in 2008

WASHINGTON, DC — A survey from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) reveals that deaths on our nation’s roadways declined significantly in 2008. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia provided preliminary data. Of those, 40 states and D.C. indicated a decline in fatalities, while four indicated an increase. Overall, the average decline was 10.7 percent.

Most surprising about the survey was that many states saw a percentage decline in fatalities higher than their percentage decline in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). Most states are not yet able to release an indication of VMT from 2008. Notably, however, of the 19 states that indicated a decline in fatalities and provided an estimate of VMT, 17 reported their fatality percentage decline was more than the percentage decline in VMT—in most cases double, triple or even quadruple the decline in VMT.

What does this all mean? GHSA Executive Director Barbara Harsha interprets the numbers to mean that a variety of factors may have contributed to the declines in 2008. Harsha says, “Clearly, the high gas prices in the first part of the year and the difficult economy in the second half caused people to drive less, thus reducing fatalities. However, there’s more occurring here than just economic factors.”

According to Harsha, state highway safety agencies report other factors may have contributed to the fatality reduction, including: gains in seat belt use, stronger state laws and increased enforcement of these laws. Harsha notes that multiple states have reported experiencing a reduction in driver speeds mainly because drivers want to improve their fuel efficiency. For example, the speed of the average Oregon driver was down more than 1 MPH in 2008. Harsha notes, “This may not sound like a lot, but reducing driver speeds means that more people are surviving crashes. Drivers may not slow down to save a life, but clearly they will slow down to save a buck.” Harsha expects more states will use the economic argument to urge drivers to slow down.

GHSA’s survey results mirror a December report from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). In that report, DOT noted that the federal government projects the number of people killed in traffic crashes to reach a new record low for 2008. Early DOT projections revealed a 10 percent drop in deaths for the first 10 months of 2008.

The GHSA survey was conducted during the week on January 26. States were asked for their percent increase/decrease in fatalities and VMT. Fatality data is preliminary and VMT is based on estimates. Fatality estimates generally were based on data from 12 months in 2008 while VMT estimates were based on 11 months of data.

View survey results >>

Source: IPS

NEW YORK - In what promises to be the first major test of the Barack Obama administration’s new approach to the rule of law, the Supreme Court will soon hear what could be one of the most consequential cases in U.S. history.

It will be asked to answer the question: Can a U.S. president declare a legal resident an ‘enemy combatant’ and hold him or her indefinitely without charge or trial?

The legal U.S. resident in question is Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been detained in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since June 2003. Al-Marri is the only remaining person held in the United States as an “enemy combatant”. He is being represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The case, Al-Marri v. Spagone, is a habeas corpus action, challenging al-Marri’s indefinite detention. The defendant is Navy Commander Daniel Spagone, who runs the Navy brig in South Carolina where Al-Marri is being held by the military.

The central pre-Supreme Court question is what position the new Obama administration will take when it files its brief, currently due on Mar. 23. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments during the last week of April and is expected to hand down its ruling in June. The brief filed by the government in the lower courts during the George W. Bush administration defended the president’s authority to designate “enemy combatants” and to detain them indefinitely.

The ACLU says that the Al-Marri case “provides the Obama administration with an early and critical opportunity to repudiate the abuses of the past eight years and restore the rule of law.”

Jonathan Hafetz, ACLU’s lead attorney on the Al-Marri case, told IPS, “This is one of most extreme examples of the Bush administration’s abuse of executive power. It is a case where President Bush sought to push the outer limits of the Constitution. It is legally and morally indefensible.”

A separate case, Al-Marri v. Gates, is contesting al-Marri’s abusive treatment and conditions of confinement at the Navy brig.

Al-Marri, a Qatari national, came lawfully to the United States in September 2001with his wife and five children to pursue a master’s degree at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He was arrested by the FBI at his home that December and subsequently indicted for credit card fraud and false identification.

Al-Marri asserted his innocence and prepared to contest the charges. But on Jun. 23, 2003, on the eve of a hearing to suppress illegally seized evidence and less than a month before trial, President Bush declared al-Marri an al Qaeda agent and designated him an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terrorism”. That same day, the military took custody of al-Marri and incarcerated him in the Navy brig, where he has been detained without charge ever since.

At stake in Al-Marri v. Spagone is whether the president can order the military to seize and detain indefinitely, without charge or trial, individuals lawfully residing in the United States, including U.S. citizens, based on government assertions that they planned to commit terrorist activities.

In 2007, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the government cannot hold individuals arrested in this country in military detention without charge.

But in July 2008, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in a narrowly divided decision that the president had legal authority to imprison al-Marri indefinitely without charge based on the facts alleged. As one judge noted in dissent, however, to accept the government’s claim of extraordinary detention power would have “disastrous consequences for the Constitution - and the country”.

The ACLU says Al-Marri’s detention represents “one of the gravest expansions of executive detention power since Sep. 11.” The United States was founded on the principle that “individuals living in this country cannot be imprisoned without charge and that civilian government must remain supreme over the military. Al-Marri’s detention represents a radical departure from that celebrated legal tradition - one that was never authorised by Congress and that violates the Constitution.”

According to the ACLU, documents recently obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that standard operating procedures developed for Guantánamo Bay “were secretly applied at the Navy brig in an effort to create a prison beyond the law within the United States. Today, al-Marri remains in virtual isolation at the Brig, denied even meaningful communication with his family.”

“It is clearly illegal to imprison legal residents of the United States without trial. It is also the type of false choice between our safety and our ideals that has pervaded America’s approach to fighting terrorism for the past eight years,” said the ACLU’S Hafetz. “We are confident that upon review, the Court will strike down this radical departure from our nation’s most basic values and traditions.”

Former United States Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, former FBI Director William Sessions and numerous former generals, admirals and diplomats joined the ACLU in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject the president’s authority to indefinitely imprison a legal resident of the U.S. without charge or trial. These and other top military and civilian leaders have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

“A decision upholding our government’s right to arrest and imprison anyone within its borders, without charge, will not only undercut our ability to convince dictatorial regimes to abandon similar practices, it will substantially undermine efforts to restore our international reputation and to obtain more cooperation from our allies in combating terrorism,” they said in the brief.

The second Al-Marri case, Al-Marri v. Gates, contests al-Marri’s treatment and conditions of confinement since he was declared an “enemy combatant”. During the first 16 months of his military confinement, al-Marri was held incommunicado and subjected to a range of highly coercive interrogation measures, including being held in total isolation, exposed to painful stress positions, shackled in a freezing cell for hours at a time, and threatened with violence and death.

Al-Marri is the second U.S. person to have been held as an enemy combatant within the United States. The first was José Padilla, a United States citizen. Padilla was arrested in Chicago in May 2002, and was detained as a material witness until Jun. 9 2002, when President Bush designated him an illegal enemy combatant and transferred him to a military prison, arguing that he was thereby not entitled to trial in civilian courts.

Padilla was held for three-and-a-half years as an “enemy combatant” after his arrest on suspicion of plotting a radioactive “dirty bomb” attack. That charge was dropped when his case was moved to a civilian court after pressure from civil liberties groups.

In August 2007, Padilla was found guilty by a federal jury of charges that he conspired to kill people in an overseas jihad and to fund and support overseas terrorism. He was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison.

Source: WWLTV

NEW ORLEANS – Residents in and around New Orleans have been hearing the sounds of low-flying helicopters and what sounds like bomb blasts over the past few nights, but the sounds are part of a training exercise for some of America’s elite military troops.

At one Lakefront home, Gigi Burk normally hears her son, 6-year-old Beau, practicing the piano, but last night she heard something much different at around 10 p.m.

“I said, oh my God! They’re bombs. That’s what I thought it was, somebody dropping bombs,” Burk said.

Burk said she panicked, not knowing why she was hearing what sounded like explosions and low-flying helicopters.

“We’re a little skittish around here with things that have happened,” Burk said.

But according to military officials, it’s a training exercise that brought about 150 U.S. troops from the U.S. Special Operations Command to train in New Orleans for urban warfare.

“They are regularly engaged in combat operations,” said U.S. Special Operations Command staffer Kimberly Tiscione. “They are the best of the best we have to offer across all the branches of the military.”

Black Hawk and “Little Bird” helicopters are transporting troops to several locations around New Orleans, according to Tiscione.

“They’re going to be flying near buildings, doing approaches on them,” Tiscione said. “You might see them landing on the roof tops or landing on the ground near them as well.”

“I heard a bunch of explosions starting at about 10 p.m. They were about ten seconds apart, and then they’d stop, and we thought it was over, but then they started again,” said Burk.

Tiscione said that the ground troops were performing “breeches at several different locations.

“So, they’re moving through doorways or walls or that sort of thing. They’re also doing weapons proficiency,” Tiscione said.

The forces are using simulated ammunitions, almost like paintball pellets, to conduct the training. And even though the noise may affect your neighborhood, the night-time training is only supposed to last from sundown to 11 p.m., according to Tiscione.

“They are the best of the best because they get these kind of training events,” she said.

Burk said she wishes the training had been better publicized before-hand to avoid a scare Tuesday night.

“People were talking about it everywhere today,” Burk said.

The NOPD did put a press release out about the training, and WWL-TV aired a story about it; however, that was a week ago.

Since U.S. Special Operations Command hasn’t done a similar training here since 2000, it has caught many people by surprise.

The training will go on every night through the end of this week.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

A proposal to scan the driver licenses of bar patrons and keep it on file in a state law enforcement database is a good start, says Senate President Michael Waddoups, but he wants to see the program go further.

Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, says he wants to see the database idea start with private clubs, but extend to restaurants that serve diners beer and liquor.

That would greatly expand the scope of the data collection and create a new requirement for restaurants, which are not required to have people sign up as members in order to serve beer and liquor. There are fewer than 400 clubs and taverns and nearly 1,100 restaurants licensed to serve alcohol.

Bar owners pitched the idea of doing away with Utah’s unique requirement that all patrons be members of a private club, replacing it with the use of electronically scannable driver licenses to prevent underage drinking.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who wants to eliminate Utah’s private club laws to make the state more tourist-friendly, is amenable to the idea.

But the governor and bar owners have expressed concern toward a bill that Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, is crafting. He would store the information in a central database that law enforcement could access for accident investigations or in the event of a traffic stop.

“In a restaurant, if they’re serving alcohol, the person ordering the alcohol should show the ID,” said Waddoups, who was receiving a demonstration of the license scanners after the Legislature’s budget meeting Friday. “At some point, the restaurant would feed [the information] into the central database.”

That way, he said, if the restaurant patron left the restaurant and went to a bar, the bartender could know the customer may have already been drinking and might need to be watched more closely.

Tom Guinney, a partner in the Gastronomy family of restaurants which includes Café Pierpont and The New Yorker, said the mandatory scanning of restaurant patrons’ licenses to add it to a central database would be “an absolute customer relations fiasco.”

“It’s inconceivable that that kind of legislation could be passed for public restaurants, or for private clubs, for that matter,” he said.

He said the electronic scanners can be a tool for weeding out underage drinkers in private clubs, but that is not a serious problem for restaurants. And he said business owners — whether bars or restaurants — need to have discretion in who they scan, so grandparents aren’t being asked to turn over their driver licenses.

Melva Sine, president of the Utah Restaurant Association, said she had not heard of what Waddoups described to The Tribune , and said she wanted to meet with him to discuss it.

Waddoups has already objected to restaurants that he said are becoming too much like bars. He has advocated for requiring restaurants to prepare drinks and store alcohol away from where diners might see it.