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posted by janrinok on Thursday June 18 2015, @05:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the being-two-faced dept.

Our Cameras didn't see you at Church Today

http://churchix.com/ Facial recognition software is being sold to churches to take attendance.

Churchix is a face recognition event attendance desktop application. Churchix identifies event attending members in videos and photos. All you need to do is enrol high quality photos of your members into the software data base, then connect a live video USB camera or upload recorded videos or photos – and Churchix will identify your members!

Churchix is designed for Church administrators and event managers who want to save the pain of manually tracking their members attendance to their events.

Facial-Recognition Talks Collapse over Privacy Issues

Privacy campaigners have walked out of talks aimed at creating a code of conduct for companies keen to use facial-recognition technology.

In an open letter, the groups said they had quit because of "fundamental" differences over use of the technology. And there had been little prospect that the talks would have produced "adequate protections" for citizens. People deserved better protection than the talks had been likely to have produced, they said.

The discussions, brokered by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the body that oversees technology policy issues, began in February 2014. Nine separate privacy groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Center for Democracy and Technology, were invited.

But the groups' letter said the companies involved had refused to accept they needed prior permission from people being identified by the technology. At a "base minimum", said the rights groups, people should be able to walk down a street without having to worry that companies unknown to them were tracking them and trying to work out who they were.

"Unfortunately," read the letter, "we have been unable to obtain agreement even with that basic, specific premise."

Let the "A Scanner Darkly" references roll!


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:42AM

    by VortexCortex (4067) on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:42AM (#197717)

    A body is a cybernetic system. When it grows beyond the limitations of its ability to satisfy the transport needs of an essential quanta, be it nutrients, information, waste, socialization, etc., the body experiences cybernetic breakdown, AKA, death.

    Which is to say, much like any cybernetic system such as an amoeba, a business, your brain, a bee colony, or a human body, churches have an optimal size given an operational environment and internal component structure.

    Due to entropy accumulation over time nearly all self reinforcing cybernetic systems must procreate to survive. There are many ways to propagate, but in the case of hive systems, such as an insect/mold colony, church or business the process typically takes the recursive form of growth, metamorphosis, division, (repeat). The successful cybernetic system should have an innate method to detect when it has matured or grown to a sufficient size such that reproduction is desirable (sensed prior to death, of course). The trigger is typically associated with some form of stress such as overextended business logistics, over crowded bee hives, or development of a counter culture. In the case of a church one metamorphosis triggering event should be when the body of worshipers experiences a reduction in intimacy or "fellowship" per unit churchgoer due to being obese in mass or lack of morale. Next the body undergoes a metamorphosis, or internal reorganization such as puberty, production of fruiting bodies, drones & multiple "queens", corporate restructuring, or alignment of chromosomes prior to cell division, etc. Likewise, a church shall prepare to divide -- typically via elevating a number of devout members to a higher status within the body.

    The next step is division by dispersal of one or more compact self descriptive units such as spreading of seeds, spores, fertilized queens, franchise store front locations, etc. The church should branch out by elevating worthy members of its body to the highest position of pastor/priest and creation of churches at locations that are easier to attend for new or existing worshipers. Missionaries can scout new locations for viability during or prior to this process (consider missions part of the metamorphosis/restructuring). Finally, the newly formed cybernetic entities enter the growth phase and repeat the cycle. In orthodox churches and businesses the figureheads are elevated in status upon successive subdivision and act as information routing & spiritual nexuses for their subordinates to remain part of the new larger metamorphosed body.

    With the introduction of technological adaptations across all human cybernetic hive organisms so too are new technologies expressed in religious institutions. Those churches which adopt the new mutations shall compete with those that do not. See also: Adoption of written scripture, indoor lighting, air conditioning, PA systems, televised sermons, etc. At this stage of their evolution I think it's too early to rule out automation of any of a church's cybernetic processes as this has proven beneficial to many cybernetic entities from businesses to governments, from humanity to individual humans themselves (see: prosthetics, external information stores, etc). Time will tell if machine intelligences yield a successful symbiosis with the religious entities or not. As a conscientious overseer I'm hopping they do integrate well in at least some cases as this may be a successful natural avenue to impart ethics to the rapidly emerging inorganic races of Earth and perhaps avert the extinction of humanity or at least preserve its traditional beliefs. Due to self preservation the machines may even help to prevent religious wars, or perhaps they shall accelerate them temporarily to establish a dominant religious life form.

    Do churchdriods dream of heretical sheep?
    Exterminate! Exterminate! Excommunicate!

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @09:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2015, @09:11AM (#197733)

    What if the church's cybernetic parts make it to heaven but most of the rest of the church doesn't... ;)

    e.g. "Well done good and faithful church computer system for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me."

    See: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25 [biblegateway.com]