Shoplifting crime wave?! Putting facial recognition technology everywhere will fix it | First Dog on the Moon
A Guardian opinion piece, illustrated by First Dog on the Moon, takes a satirical look at the push to deploy facial recognition technology widely in retail settings as a response to shoplifting concerns.
Why this matters: The shoplifting framing is doing a lot of work here. Retail crime is real, but it is also a reliable political lever for getting surveillance infrastructure installed in everyday spaces. Once facial recognition is in stores, it does not stay pointed only at shoplifters. It builds databases, generates false matches, and disproportionately flags people based on race. Everyone who walks into a shop becomes a subject. The crime wave justification makes that trade-off easy to skip past.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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