Was researching age verification and came across this absolute nightmare:
Tracks everything you do around the entire store for “loss prevention,” tries to verify your age through facial scans. It also records your history and keeps it on record forever until it re-identifies you again.
There’s a lot of buzz around online age verification but it seems we need to be worried about age verification systems in physical stores as well. This is why I believe we need privacy-preserving age verification systems based on cryptography, so we can avoid things like this.
Physical stores are worse for tracking than online stores these days it seems. Not sure what stores employ this but it would be good to have a list of shame for every store that has terrible systems like this in place.
These solutions will specifically integrate with other aspects such as tracking you around the store, across other stores, and linking your purchases via the POS terminals.
No need for a full blown ski mask. Medical face mask and maybe shades should be enough but honestly I do not know if it is actually more weird or less weird.
I second this. The ski mask remark sounds like a joke, but let me say this. If someone walks into a shopping mall with a ski mask on, the mall’s security or police (maybe other shoppers too) will probably stop them at first sight. Everyone’s experience of COVID gives people some level of cover to wear a medical mask without the level of stigma that existed before COVID. That said, some shops and services (banks just to name one) ask mask wearers to deanonymize themselves, and depending on where people live (anti-mask areas vs pro-mask areas) some people treat mask wearers as suspicious. I have been refused entry into some shops (and experienced other mild mistreatment) because I wore a mask, shades and hat.
If these surveillance systems link purchases to identities, it would appear paying with cash won’t save people from these systems. The cash payment would no longer be anonymous from these systems. Cash payment would still be anonymous/private from banks and credit card companies.
On the ftxidentity page, the pic showing the smiling lady having her face scanned by the camera is fkn creepy.
I can’t believe this kind of intrusive abuse is tolerated and positively marketed in today’s modern society. Without doubt we’re living in a techno dystopia.
I wonder if shops that operate these systems display a privacy notice before they are subject to that abuse, or if this form of abuse is restricted by GDPR.
I read somewhere that putting a small rock in your shoe is an effective countermeasure against gait analysis. No idea if that’s true with current tech or not though.
