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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!
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 18 2015, @03:52PM
Pfah! Like I'd be taking advice from someone with a #573 ID number. :-)
God reminds you by causing you to bump your knee on the coffee table. I'd say that's a more effective enforcement mechanism than an email.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Thursday June 18 2015, @04:24PM
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday June 18 2015, @07:03PM
Well, not my knee, but I stubbed my toe so fucking bad last week I was hopping around crying, "Oh God!" for a few minutes. He didn't listen again, and my toe looks like I need to take it off with a steak knife.
I think the other poster had it right myself, those churches have jumped the shark so to speak and forgot why they exist in the first place. It's to bring people together, not use technology to all sit in the room listening to a sermon while playing Candy Crush on their phones. If one spends a minute or two looking into God, you quickly conclude that his fan clubs are just fucking nuts and all too often miss the point of "his words" entirely :)
Now, while churches are somewhat concerning, corporations are undoubtedly run by the Beast. What we are hearing here is that these companies have apparently spent time masturbating to the Minority Report, and have concluded that nobody has the right to privacy walking down the street. It doesn't even matter if you are on their property, as long as the photons make it on their property, they are going to record them. If these companies get their way, businesses will be scanning the horizon to figure out who is even walking down the street.
I ask you, if this becomes ubiquitous, and government is establishing programs to legally collect such metadata, just where can ever find privacy again? It won't be anywhere you are forced to deal with other citizens in most public areas adjacent to any commercial property, and certainly not any commercial property. Already, I take note of far too many CCTV systems installed. I usually don't concern myself too much, as the recording quality is fairly low and the data not all that valuable. At least the last time I pulled any footage for police detectives my own thoughts about the quality of what I found were pretty damn low, and not enough to perform even basic recognition of the hoodie he was wearing. This is different technology, and obviously HD to me since it can reliably perform facial recognition. Personally, I think this will create a fringe society in the outskirts where recording technology doesn't exist, and a new business model whereby the lack of surveillance is considered a premium part of the ambiance. "Come eat with us! It's private, and nobody is watching you or collecting data. Eat in peace"
Glad I live rural :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.