Your Face Could be Scanned at Retailers Without Your Permission

   The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and eight other privacy focused groups have walked out of a sixteen month long discussion regarding face recognition at retail stores.  The reason for the EFF and the other groups to walk out of the discussions?  Because the other stake-holders wouldn't listen or agree to even modest protections to protect our privacy while we are shopping.

   If this doesn't upset you, I don't know what will.  Big corporations and governments are getting more and more into big data, and part of that is starting to get into creepy boundaries of privacy.  Another such measure, called beacons are supposed to be able to enhance the shopping experience of customers, but at the expense of giving these corporations more data about us.  Granted, these beacons offer tangible benefits, such as coupons or even assistance when in a store, but it seems easy this could get out of hand quickly... such as the face recognition.

I'm worried that more data is going
to be collected on me
that I don't have a say over.

 Seeing this from the other perspective, this can be a good thing.  If a store recognizes a repeat customer, they might offer more generous discounts.  If tied into criminal databases, it could be easier to catch criminals.  My concern here is that we have eight privacy advocate groups who walked out of a sixteen month long talk because they couldn't make progress on getting some basic privacy minded options in place, such as opting into the program in the first place.  If they won't even allow us to opt-out, then they care more about their bottom line than caring for their customer's privacy.  

   With the Internet of Things is poised to be the next big thing in Technology, I'm worried that companies and governments are going to push against our basic right to privacy to the point where we may not have any real right to it anymore.  Granted, I don't plan on leaving the grid and cutting all access to technology over this, but I'm worried that more data is going to be collected on me that I don't have any say over.  We all know how well some of these companies are at keeping our data safe, you know with all these breaches that happen on a regular basis.  Are we doomed to be in a society where nothing is private anymore?  I really hope not, but when events like this happen to where we're not even given a choice, it's looking more and more like 1984.

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About Jimmy R. Tassin

Jimmy Tassin is the IT Manager of Midwest Regional Bank and has been involved with the Technology field for over thirteen years. His two hobbies are overseeing the daily operations of OmniKraft, a Minecraft server community, and writing at Goblinbyte.com.