[–] HEY_GURL_PM_ME 0 points 5 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago
Bingo!
It's the resources-expenditure defense of previous surveillance techniques that doesn't hold today: it takes very few marginal extra resources to analyze data and identify 5 people as it does 5,000 with this technology (for whatever purpose).
The issue is that with this technology in place, if "they" want to find you (they being businesses, governments, law enforcement - anyone with access to the database), they can, easily.
Seems like placing barriers to entry in the "fully identify individual people exactly where they are" is a worse future than the "require hard work and expense to find individuals thus requiring a cost/benefit equation."
Could you imagine if a parking ticket was automatically deducted from your bank account immediately? It's not like the technology doesn't make that reasonably feasible - it's the current privacy hurtles in place that prevent it.
[–] totes-my-voats 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I can see this type of data being subpenaed if it becomes known that stores keep these records. Imagine at your divorce proceedings, being asked why you were identified by <insert grocery store name here> through facial recognition and your frequent shopper card records as having purchased condoms on the night of the 14th. Your wife was out of town that week, right?
[–] Avnomke 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
What scares me more is potential for error and abuse- what if the database accidentally confuses somebody else for you? How are you going to contest that? What if somebody intentionally makes it look like you did something you didn't do? What then?
[–] VicariousExp ago
This is why it's confusing to me why other countries don't have identity cards already. It's probably easier to accept if you've grown up in a culture with them - they make impersonation a lot more difficult since they include biodata that is very difficult to fake, such as blood type and thumbprints.