Biometric Face Recognition At Your Local Mall 120
dippityfisch writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that face recognition is being considered at Westfield's Sydney mall to catch offenders. The identification system matches images captured by surveillance cameras to an existing database of faces. Police said they could not comment on the center's intentions, but would welcome any move to improve security and technology in the area."
Re:Solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
etc.
Re:It's private property people ... (Score:2, Interesting)
And when every business participates in a facial ID program to help stop theft, the excuse will be "it's private property and everyone else does it." When cities start putting facial ID systems in public places the excuses will be "It's to help catch bad people, and anyway it already happens every place you go into, so we might as well connect it all and know where you are at all times."
Maybe that won't happen, but why the hell are we letting them risk it? This is to catch "thieves?" Give me a break. That's a stupid reason to start this crap.
Great, start your own store and cater to those who dont want to be filmed while shopping. Either you'll get rich or you'll get robbed blind, either way you'll have figured out how most people feel.
Re:Media bias? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what planet you're from, but this seems to me a fairly unremarkable canvassing of opinions on the topic without editorial comment. The format of the article goes:
Introduction
Police opinion
Westfield uses some words and says nothing
Australian Privacy Foundation opinion
Contextualisation
Professor Maciej Henneberg's opinion
Just because you don't agree with the opinions doesn't make the article biased, it makes those people wrong in your view (and in mine). But you can't deny that their opinions are relevant to the issue - the police, a privacy advocate group and an academic. The only failure on the part of the journalist is the selection of the academic they spoke to, who according to a quick search is in the field of biological anthropology and anatomy.
Re:Solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe sullen teenagers with hoodies are on to something...
They were onto it years ago: Mall bans shoppers' hooded tops [bbc.co.uk].
Re:What the fuck? (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone once said: one pole isn't really all that different from the other if you're stranded there.
Extreme libertarians and extreme communists have a lot in common: they have ideology, will sacrifice anything for their ideology, consider it the perfect solution to every problem, refuse to listen to any indication that there might be a problem with it, etc etc. The end result of either ideology getting control is an economic and humanitarian disaster. The same is true of every ideology: taking a good idea too far turns it into a parody of itself. That's why people who want economic and personal freedom end up building a private police state. The state with the smallest possible government is known as a jungle, and only the biggest gorillas have freedom there, the rest having only the freedom to obey or die.
I wonder how many "libertarians don't support corporations" replies will I get? They all miss the point, of course: the shield of limited liability is not needed if you're too big for anyone to hold you liable. That's why you can't sue the government: who would enforce the judgement?
Re:Solution? (Score:1, Interesting)
And although malls are, on a legal technicality, a grey area as far as being public or private (the entire property is private, but open to the public and exempt from any expectations of privacy) photography is forbidden, though nothing about that is posted on the entrances. So good luck taking a few snaps of you and your friends having a good time, if that segway security "officer" is anywhere around!
Re:Solution? (Score:2, Interesting)