Biobouncer.

Now here’s a scary development – BioBouncer (although it’s a bloody horrible name) Basically, it’s a facial recognition system for bars – it scans each customer’s face as they come in, and then can check it against a list of “undesirable” customers.

Using advanced facial recognition biometric technology, BioBouncer™ quickly and accurately identifies these potentially dangerous people as they walk in the door – so they don’t even have a chance to ruin someone else’s experience. Powered by a combination of patent pending performance enhancing software intricacies, BioBouncer™ captures facial images of all club patrons as they enter. These images are then matched against a database of individuals who have broken club policy in the past and who are not welcome anymore. Maybe they are known to carry a weapon, have been removed for violence, or violate the club’s illicit drug policy.

Should a match occur, an alert is sent to your security personnel via wireless network and informs them of the alert location, accompanied by a photograph of the individual. Depending on club protocol, your staff can react quickly and effectively to either remove the person or at least be aware of his location. And speed? BioBouncerâ„¢ matches against 1,000,000 faces in less than one-second.

And if you’re just an innocent punter, out for a night? Supposedly those images that aren’t needed or referenced are deleted at the end of the night.

As Bruce Schneier says in his Crypto-Gram email (which is where I got this from),

Anyone want to guess how long that “automatically flushed at the end of each night” will last? This data has enormous value. Insurance companies will want to know if someone was in a bar before a car accident. Employers will want to know if their employees were drinking before work — think airplane pilots. Private investigators will want to know who walked into a bar with whom. The police will want to know all sorts of things. Lots of people will want this data — and they’ll all be willing to pay for it.

And the data will be owned by the bars that collect it. They can choose to erase it, or they can choose to sell it.

It’s rarely the initial application that’s the problem. It’s the follow-on applications. It’s the function creep. Before you know it,
everyone will know that they are identified the moment they walk into a commercial building.