In response to the alleged terror attacks that have taken place at music venues and sporting events globally, anti-terror efforts are being increased as a result.
Sports security at the Sydney Cricket Ground is now on steroids, with roughly 800 new facial recognition cameras that have been installed to look over every single seat and every corner. The system costs over $3.5 million and the grand surveillance system has also been installed at the Sydney Football Stadium.
This is reportedly the first time that this system is being used for a major sporting event in the country.
And they say that they want folks visiting the stadiums to feel comforted by the new extra measures.
An enhanced surveillance system is also going to be used at the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo that's been designed by NEC Corp. And that system has been described as one of the most accurate in the world.
That system that they are using is allegedly so efficient that it's alleged that it can distinguish between identical twins.
Facial recognition software can be found in a myriad of different places in the market today: banks, airports, casinos, restaurants, hotels, retail stores, and more. It's been used for years now to help companies investigate things like customer engagement with billboards and menus.
The technology can also be used to estimate the mood of shoppers in malls and track their gaze to see what things they look at as they pass through a certain location etc.
It's also being used at hotels and casinos to identify VIPs and guests who've been banned from the hotel. Same thing with sporting events, the facial recognition is also helping to identify troublesome fans who might have been banned from the venue. The technology has also been used to help the police to identify criminals and search for missing persons.
Aside from the various companies that might be interested in the data, the government has also acknowledged that it plans to use these enhanced surveillance systems to improve their CCTV network. In China they've been working on a system there that they hope will be able to locate any one of its over 1+ billion citizens in just 3 seconds flat.
In some tests, the facial recognition technology has demonstrated over 99 percent accuracy in matching.
But tech experts insist that they aren't fool-proof. These systems can allegedly be thrown off by simple changes such as wearing glasses or changing your hairstyle, or a scarf that might be covering part of the face. Age can also play a part, because if the police for example have a certain image of someone that they are looking for, someone to match with that image, they might be using an image that is several years old.
The police have falsely identified people on numerous occasions using facial recognition technology.
Some states, like Illinois, have legislation in place that seeks to protect citizens from having their biometric information collected and stored by a company without their notification or consent. If they do collect the data and share it, they can be sued and they have been.
Facebook has allegedly played a detrimental role in helping to erode these laws in a variety of states. And we know that there are already a great deal of businesses that are currently using facial recognition software today and we don't know who they might be sharing that information with.
A Disgusting Procedure In A 'Free Society'
Civil liberties advocates have warned about the dangers of expanding this sort of technology into various aspects of our life and what that will mean for our semblance of privacy. It's been painted as an effort to promote safety and security but it feels like the sort of surveillance contraption you'd read about in a dystopian novel like 1984. It is something you'd expect to find in a draconian state and not a free society.
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