Face recognition advertising – sign the petition
News broke yesterday that supermarket giant Tesco is set to install hi-tech screens that scan customers’ faces in petrol stations so that they can be fed targeted advertising. The screens will be provided by Amscreen, whose chief executive seems to think that implementing a system like “something out of Minority Report“, the dystopian science fiction film, is something of which to be proud. ( Here’s a hint for Alan Sugar’s son: that’s like recommending Nineteen Eighty-Four as a blueprint for running the United Kingdom. Ed.)
It isn’t. What is being proposed is a gross intrusion of privacy and an affront to dignity.
Naturally, this has caused a storm of outrage on social media.
However, it’s not just Tesco that’s planning this. Some parts of the UK’s healthcare sector are also planning to implement it.
Fortunately, someone with some gumption and a great regard for their own and others’ privacy has set up a petition on the government’s e-petition website. The petition reads as follows:
Face recognition software is about to be used to see what adverts you are looking at. It recognises your gender, age and will be used in GP surgeries, hospitals, dentists whilst you wait for your appointment and other public areas. This is a complete invasion of privacy.
Finally, let’s not forget how George Orwell described advertising in 1936 in Keep the Aspidistra Flying:
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.
