Mandatory Facial Recognition Introduced at Japanese Pokémon Card Stores to Help Kill Scalper Market, for Adults and Children From Elementary School Age
Japanese Pokémon card retailers have begun requiring facial recognition scans from all customers, including elementary-age children, as a measure to curb scalping. The system is designed to identify and block bulk buyers who resell cards at inflated prices.
Why this matters: Stopping scalpers is a real problem. Biometric surveillance of children is a serious one. These two things should not be traded against each other without a hard look at what is actually being built. A child's face is not a loyalty card. Once that data exists in a retail database, the store decides how long it keeps it, who can access it, and what else it is used for. The scalping problem is annoying. A facial recognition database of kids, normalized through a card game, is something else entirely.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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