National facial recognition database to use loyalty rewards to identify American shoppers
MassPrivatei.blogspot.com
Nov 13, 2014
For years, I have been warning people about facial recognition in retail stores, but this story might convince you to avoid retail stores altogether.
A recent article in Biometric Update. com (BU) reveals that retail stores have a master plan to convince Americans to accept facial biometrics.
BU interviewed four facial biometric company CEO’s and what they revealed is frightening.
The article starts off innocuously enough by telling us that U.S. retail biometrics is used primarily in loss-prevention but things quickly take a turn for the worse.
BU’s interview with FaceFirst CEO Peter Tripp is especially disconcerting, as he reveals how retailers plan to use a “facial recognition opt-in environment.”
“There is another step though that exists which has more to do with consumer loyalty, and consumer experience, that is not quite as expensive an endeavor, and I think there are lots of folks looking at ways of doing that in a friendly opt-in environment, where privacy is not the cornerstone issue, Tripp said.”
Biometric companies are trying to convince Americans to accept digital drivers license by tying them to loyalty rewards programs. Last year the Lincoln Motor Company installed “complimentary” TSA PreCheck biometric scanners in all their new vehicles so customers can get through airport and sport stadium check-in lines quicker.
Corporate-run national biometric database
According to a recent ZDNet article a new partnership between SureID a biometric fingerprinting company and Robbie.AI a facial recognition company “could create a national biometric database.”
“Adding facial recognition from Robbie.AI gives the two firms the building blocks of a nationwide biometric database that could be used in a number of settings, from retail authentication and employment verification to more speculative applications like driver-identification for keyless self-driving cars or even user recognition in future robotic platforms.”
The Rest…HERE
