And Then, Eye Spy With My Little Camera….

A couple of gays ago a Tesco spooks-person announced to a hushed audience that they were to roll out trials of facial recognition cameras to target advertising.  If I shopped there, what would I get? Nuts; various - as my face looks like I could be a member of the walnut family?

I thought to myself, as I always do, when thinking, as it’s usually me that’s thinking, how will that work then?  Let’s find out. And this is what I found;
Known as OptimEyes the digital display advertising system incorporates built in cameras above the till to monitor people before it in real time.
This data stream is then made available to advertisers to allow them to discern how successful their campaigns have been and adjust it throughout the day.

After digesting that, I thought to myself; how will that work then?  Nah. There’s more to it than advertising.

The good Captain has his take on this issue but what caught my attention was down in the comments. Down there, other than my two comments, both of which are short, sharp and have absolutely no bearing on the subject, was, and indeed, still is this from the good Caratacus, which I have shamelessly, as is my wont, copied below. My apologies Sir.

Caratacus
Polissman addressing Caratacus: “You know the saying – If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”
Caratacus (who was having a bad day): “Have you got curtains in your house? You have? Why’s that then?”

Love it!!  Nails, heads for the hitting, right?

There are many suggestions as to how to avoid this technology, ranging from the obvious, avoid Tesco, to wearing a mask, a balaclava or a burqa. Me? Rather than fancy dress, I’m going to, over time, master approaching check-outs walking backwards. The only downside I see to this is having to employ the constant use of, “Sorry.” I could, however, find my old Seebackroscope from times past…..

In further spooky news today our spy bosses, Andrew Parker, head of  MI5, GCHQ Director Sir Iain Lobban, MI6 chief Sir John Sawers and local Tesco shelf-stacker Darren, have been defending "freedom and democracy" before a panel of MP’s. Is that an oxymoron or wot?

Darren made no contribution to the ‘meeting’ other than waving to his mum on the face recognition camera and his closing summation when he stated how much he’d enjoyed sitting in a big, warm room and giving the internals of his nose a thorough clean-out. “It wuz, like, cool ‘till me iPhone went dead an’ I couldn’, like, text or dig ma sounds no more.” Darren said. “The meetin’? I’m like, are these dudes fo’ real? They be talkin’ in foreign? No clue man, but nobody wuz, like, talkin’ in English, innit. It wuz still way cooler’un stackin’ a shelf wid anodder, like, two tousand tins o’ tuna; all wid du fish pictures linin’ up an’ all. Innit.” Darren then left as his mum was picking him up.

Mr Parker, Sir Ian and Sir John made equally indecipherable statements and left shortly after Darren; with similarly clean noses.

Quote;  Glenn Greenwald.

“The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do; that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do; that's why we're called private individuals.”