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Police Scanning Every Face At UK Download Festival

Posted by timothy on from the look-forward-with-a-neutral-expression dept.

AmiMoJo writes: Leicestershire Police have announced that they will be scanning every face at the popular UK Download music festival. The announcement article on Police Oracle (paywalled) reads, "the strategically placed cameras will scan faces at the Download Festival site in Donington before comparing it with a database of custody images from across Europe." The stated goal is to catch mobile phone thieves. Last year only 91 of the 120,000 visitors to the festival were arrested, and it isn't clear if the data will be deleted once checked against the database. The linked article provides at least one image of a costume that would probably trip up any facial recognition technology yet devised.

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why would the festival cooperate? by anmre · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Directly from their privacy policy on their website.

    Information on your preferences. We may collect information about events you like or products you buy or enquire about (e.g. as part of a survey or from your review of an event). We may also hold information on interests and demographic categories inferred from your interactions with us in order to provide you a better service and to provide you with more focused information. For example, if you buy tickets to a certain show and lots of people who went to that show also bought tickets for a different concert, we might send you information about that concert.

    Cashless payment wristband usage information. If you use a cashless payment wristband during one of our events, we may collect information relating to your use of the wristband such as check-in information and the purchases you make with your cashless payment wristband (i.e. purchase of products and merchandises).

    Understand that you are NOT the customer here. You're the product.

  2. I wonder if they would arrest you for wearing this by tomxor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/...

  3. Re:Why would the festival cooperate? by dave420 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Stop with that tired meme. Seriously. It's not insightful, it doesn't explain anything, and it's usually flat-out wrong. It's clearly wrong in this case as the customers are purchasing a product. I'm surprised you didn't chime in with "1984 was not an instruction manual!" to finish it off.