Many cities around the world are now introducing facial recognition into their cameras which monitor the streets. In other words, the government will know who and where you are. New York City is introducing this technology. This is by no means about terrorism. It is being employed to find anyone accused of any crime and that will include tax avoidance. In fact, facial recognition technology in Britain has been employed and they made their first arrest using this technology. They already have some 500,000 people’s faces in their database. Under the protest of data protectors in Germany, they too have begun a test run for the facial recognition detection by video camera in Berlin. The systems of three manufacturers are to be tried out for face recognition.
Video surveillance is claimed to be an important contribution toward greater security by helping to deter and assist in the detection of terrorism which is the excuse. The problem is that the application is for everything and not simply terrorists. Years ago when I had a parking ticket in London I had not paid when just a tourist, upon returning to Britain at customs I was pulled over and had to pay the ticket before entering. The same is being done in many other countries. Add to this facial recognition and you will see that it is not profitable to employ all this expense for terrorists. They will be looking to use it for all offenses.
