Arts Big Brother Is Bouncing You
It’s billed as “the future of nightclub security.” According to an article in by Patrick Sisson in XLR8R, BioBouncer is an “electronic face book” based around “a system of unobtrusive cameras that uses 2D and 3D facial recognition technology to identify unwanted or troublesome customers.” The system doesn’t collect personal data; it simply captures facial images. Sisson continues:
BioBouncer is a simple setup. A pair of video cameras scans and analyzes patrons and checks them against images in the club’s database of problem customers. These customerswho were kicked out for causing trouble or violating club policyhad their pictures captured by trigger cameras at the exits and added to the system’s database. When they try to re-enter the venue at a later date, BioBouncer picks their photo out of the database and alerts the owner and security personnel (via a computer screen or wireless message), and the real-life bouncers get to work.
New York-based BioBouncer founder Jeff Dussich of JAD Communications and Security wouldn’t comment on when and where the system made its debut, but he notes that club owners from the U.S., Germany, Italy, and New Zealand have expressed interest in it.
Does BioBouncer make you feel safer or is this going too far to keep out the riff-raff?
Face recognition software is notoriously bad. Tampa Bay installed a system that used existing surveillance cameras, and they never identified a single criminal in the two years it was running. They abandoned the system in 2003.
Simply changing your expression from a smile to a frown is all it takes to thwart the system. I can't imagine this working any better in bars.