PRIVACY IS DEAD

OMG!  Wegman’s supermarkets are using artificial intelligence and facial recognition?   Outrageous!  Alert the authorities!  Cancel dinner!

Never mind the fact that on your way to shop you passed by dozens of video cameras and license plate readers.  Or the fact that your cellphone has been constantly pinging your location enroute.  Attention shoppers:  you have no privacy!

Supermarkets are not alone in their use of this tech.  CVS, Home Depot, Macy’s, Target and Walmart do too.  They say it’s just for controlling theft (of which there is plenty), but I’m not buying it.  By knowing your face they know everything about you:  your online shopping history, social media posts and credit history.

With digital price shelf tags that update in seconds, the only real question is how long before the algorithm decides your face looks like it can afford to pay another 12 percent.

Even turning on your cellphone may involve recognizing your face.  Calling Customer Service?  They may use voice recognition or even measure your tone of voice for signs of stress and frustration.

Airlines can deduce the reason for that last minute trip you’re booking.  If it’s for a funeral, critics wonder if they might charge you more because you absolutely need to travel ASAP.  Airlines insist they’d never raise fares because you’re flying to a funeral.  Of course not. They just happened to notice you booked one way, last minute, to Des Moines… right after your phone searched for “obituary.”

And when you do board your flight, it may be facial recognition scans that will get you on the plane, not just a boarding pass.  Coming home from overseas your quick processing will depend on facial scanning by Customs and Border Patrol.

Did you buy anything overseas you didn’t declare?  With a few (pesky but legal) steps, your credit card statement becomes a travel diary, complete with timestamps, locations, and a helpful list of things you “forgot” to declare.

Want to catch a Knicks or Rangers game at Madison Square Garden?  Facial recognition may deny you access, even with a ticket, if you’re a lawyer who’s sued them in the past.  Justice may be blind, but MSG security definitely isn’t.

In your car your face is less visible so companies like Flock depend on your license plates, color and model of your vehicle to ID you.  That’s why cops are cracking down on obscured or “ghost” plates used to avoid tolls, the automotive equivalent of shoplifting.  Here’s a site showing Flock cameras near you.

Flock also can also deploy drones to keep an eye on things… useful in law enforcement but a bit too scary for the Bridgeport City Council which, in a rare moment of restraint,  overwhelmingly rejected a $500,000 contract covered by state funding.

Bridgeport joins a growing list of cities rejecting Flock out of privacy and data-sharing concerns.  Those cities claim that Flock does more than scan license plates, but also the faces of protestors.  And shares its data with the Feds.

Imagine the possibilities.

In China facial recognition identifies jay-walking pedestrians, shames them publicly and gives them demerits.  Rack up too many points and you must take re-education classes… and you’re not allowed to ride high speed trains.

Washington got upset about TikTok and its ties to China.  The Feds panic about a funny app while quietly building their own all-seeing data ecosystem.

Not that there’s much you can do, at this point.  Privacy is dead.  Our lives are an open book.  The only question left is who’s still pretending not to read it.