Taylor Swift used facial recognition to track stalkers: Details here
What's the story
Authorities have long been using facial recognition to track and identify offenders hiding in crowds. The tech is evolving, but if the latest reports are anything to go by, even celebrities have started using it. Case in point, Taylor Swift's May 18th Rose Bowl show, where a covert facial recognition system was used to scan faces and find the pop-star's stalkers. Here's more.
Issue
Fans secretly scanned by a display kiosk
Rolling Stone reports a facial recognition system was hidden behind a regular-looking kiosk put on the show, which had some 60,000 attendees. The machine displayed highlights of Swift rehearsals, drawing the on-lookers. But, as they looked, the hidden system and camera scanned their faces. The data was immediately transferred to a Nashville-based command post, which matched it with hundreds of Swift's known stalkers.
Quote
Statement from security officer witnessed the system
"Everybody who went by would stop and stare at it, and the software would start working," Mike Downing, a security officer who observed the kiosk at work, told Rolling Stone.
Legality
But, is this legal?
Though the goal of the system was to weed out Swift's stalkers, a hidden tech snapping people's faces raises some serious privacy concerns. Technically, a concert is a private event, which means its owners can use any tech, including facial recognition, to track guests. But, many questions still remain like who controlled the system and if the recorded information was wiped after cross-referencing.
No comment
No comment from Swift's representatives
The report has gone viral, but so far, Swift's team has not commented on the matter. Not to mention, it is also not clear if the covert scanning strategy was successful in tracking any of her stalkers. To recall, just a few months back, the Chinese police was able to track a suspect from a crowd of 60,000 with its "Xue Liang" monitoring system.