The use of biometric identification is becoming a real-time case study in how the public is incrementally conditioned to accept the total erosion of privacy for supposed convenience and security.
As I’ve been covering over the last several months, a 15-year-old mandate from the federal government to implement biometric ID for airline travel is finally being implemented at various airports throughout the United States. Meanwhile, countries like Australia and the UK also have airport biometrics programs rolling out, with Australia seeking to make it a requirement nationwide by 2020. The UK has gone even one step further and has been testing a system to be used on trains as well, also with a target date somewhere around 2020.
People have been acclimatized to biometric ID in various forms, with increasing frequency in the areas of banking and personal computing, but only now is it being rolled out into the wider world. In some cases, the use of facial recognition for targeted advertising and even to monitor political views and for pre-crime policing has been done in public spaces without any consent whatsoever.
According to MassPrivateI, a company called Zenus is at the forefront of spreading facial recognition even wider into conferences and events. It heralds the next step toward increasingly pervasive biometric ID requirements to function in modern society.
Zenus a startup company based in Texas, claims their facial recognition software can speed up check-ins at conferences and events.
Attendees have registered for a conference ahead of time, providing pertinent personal information and uploading a photo. On-site at the conference, that person steps up to a device—usually a tablet—where a camera scans the person’s face, using the image to call up her information and completing the check-in process digitally. (Source)
At the Zenus website we find the video below, which makes a direct appeal to convenience and security by databasing attendees with facial recognition as well as social media log-ins, illustrating how the virtual world and the real are melding into one and the same thing.
Step by step, people are being transformed into digital organisms made easier for scanning and processing. The political will is there, the databases exist, and the technology is clearly being rolled out across every meaningful area of human activity.
Nicholas West writes for ActivistPost.com. He also writes for Counter Markets agorist newsletter. Follow us at Twitter and Steemit.
This article may be freely republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link.
Image Credit: Zenus Biometrics
Watch it show up in the Rest Rooms next…
Next will be WalMart…. City Parks…. State Parks…. Grocery Stores…. Hotels…. Theaters…. WORK……anywhere people walk or gather…. they already have microphones listening everywhere… “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should”…..
Where is all this security and convenience I keep hearing about? Swipe the card, enter the pin, no I dont want cash back, wait for approval…or just hand someone a fifty! Data breaches with every major retailer and bank, all my personal info floating in cyberspace instead of locked up in a file cabinet. I am less secure now than I have ever been, people you will never meet on the other side of the world can mess with you.
Bah, I got them all fooled anyway. I continually wear a rubber. 🙂 Been doing so since the 1980s when they said sex was bad and caused nasty deadly viruses that wiped out entire populations.
They already have bio-metrics at our local general hospital. You can sign in using a fingerprint on a light scanner, it is simply used to identify you and secure your now fully electronic medical records. Yes, we can still get paper copies but all the “overhead” in the last two years was Federal mandated to be made all electronic. The Feds want all of this done to eliminate bureaucracy (so they say) and possibly to instill transparency.
If it is continued to be handled responsibly and ethically, I do not mind such advancing of technology as to actually help people. This “security theater” though is a bunch of bunk. Anyone that uses Linux / Unix can explain access control lists. We call them guests lists for things like events, manifests for planes, trains.
“Got an invitation?”
“No but …”
“Get lost or I call in 50, let them drag you out of here.”
Access control lists function much the same. They deny users from using whatever they are not on the list to use. Gee, guests lists, manifests cannot do that?
Oh that’s right we cannot keep it simple as that denies using xenophobic racist and imperialist policy at home as well abroad in unholy and illegal wars. Almost forgot, sorry.
I understand the security of facial recognition, biometrics, etc. I install this stuff for a living.
How are you going to get my face? Will I have to stand for a picture beforehand somewhere? I don’t have a driver’s license, and the picture on the state ID is over ten years old. I don’t have any social media presence, how will I sign in?
But seriously folks, when you are in a public place there is NO privacy; never has been.
Official statement
Thank you for posting a blog about Zenus. We founded this company to ensure that the implementation and deployment of face recognition will be used to benefit people. We care a lot about the security and privacy of the end users.
To safeguard data, Zenus uses compliant cloud service providers and enforces strict security protocols. Specifically, the attendees can choose whether or not they would like to upload their photo during registration and decide whether or not to use the face recognition service.
Moreover, Zenus never receives personally identifiable information such as names and emails. Instead, the registration platforms send to Zenus only the anonymized images which are fully encrypted. The images are deleted immediately upon extracting the face geometries and all metadata (including the face geometries) are also deleted right after the event.
To summarize, the service is opt-in only. Zenus does not receive or use personally identifiable information such as names and email addresses. Finally, all data are deleted.