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This Facial Recognition Tech Will Let Stores Quietly Track and Share Your Shopping Habits

Hey look, big brother's coming to Wal-Mart. The Japanese company NEC has designed "affordable facial recognition tech":http://www.diginfo.tv/v/12-0209-r-en.php to be deployed in big box stores; it's supposed to "gather consumer data" to help owners...

Hey look, big brother’s coming to Wal-Mart. The Japanese company NEC has designed affordable facial recognition tech to be deployed in big box stores; it’s supposed to “gather consumer data” to help owners formulate “sales strategy.” Especially for stores that have more than one location—if you went looking for an iPad in one store, this tech will remember your face in case you drop by another. It will know your age, gender, and facial bone structure, and it will upload that data, along with your purchase info, to a cloud server so other stores in the chain can compare and analyze it.

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See, these nice stores equipped with auto-face-recognizing tech will be able to sell you your things more efficiently; it really is very thoughtful of them. There will also be a wealth of data about your purchasing or perusal habits in the labyrinthine datalogs of giant corporations, but, stop whining, there already is.

Dvice worries that the tech will be used to give freeloaders who drop by Best Buy just to play the video games the boot: “No longer will you be able to spread your visits out between the various stores in your area, because they will all have the same information about you and your freeloading habits.” Good riddance, I say. Kids like that ruin the efficiency models that auto-face-recog-tech is designed to enhance. They are a blight on the economy; they should be working, trying to save up money so they can buy the video game, not loafing around enjoying themselves.

But I am not worried. I look forward to the day where I might enter a store, extend my hands, and, without uttering a word, wait for a (robot) employee to place the product I desire into them. I will gladly allow my face to be autotracked, analyzed, and uploaded to the cloud if it means a perfectly efficient consumer experience.