When you’re going out for a dinner, someone is watching you. When you are going out to attend any musical concert, someone is watching you. Even when you are out for clubbing, someone is watching you again. Yes, you heard it right- uppar wala sab dekh raha hai.
Now, how would you react if some stranger captured your picture when you were out and every now and then used that photo to find out your original name and other information about you?
For sure, it will raise your hackles. That nightmarish imagination of ours has now transpired into reality. Yaa, you got it right. This is a tale of 21st century where the technology is turning out to be creepy.
Pop music sensation Taylor Swift has now caught herself in a controversy for surreptitiously scanning faces of her fans in order to track her stalkers by using face recognition technology. Call it a creepy or cool, but she did it.
According to Rolling Stone, during her “Reputation” stadium tour, the software was used at a kiosk that displayed Taylor’s rehearsal footage in Lose Angeles’ Rose Bowl and New York’s Madison Square Garden. When concert-goers stopped to watch that clip, their picture was taken clandestinely. Those images were then whisked to ‘Control Center’ in Nashville Tennessee where they were reviewed and cross-referenced against a database that cataloged hundred of Swift’s stalkers.
In a detailed interview with The Rolling Stone, she also shared to what extent Taylor had gone to protect herself. She reportedly purchased a US $5 million apartment opposite her own New York penthouse for her security team. Swift also won a legal case against David Muller, a radio host from Denver, who had groped her during a photo-op. Mueller was ordered to pay $1 to Swift in symbolic damages, which he paid reluctantly.
This act of tracking her stalkers using face recognition technology has sparked off a controversy on whether this is a creepy invasion of privacy or savvy use of technology. Mille Graham Wood of Privacy International raised questions about where the images are going, the deletion practice and which company is using them.
Why Taylor Swift Went to Such Length?
Taylor Swift has had her fare share of stalkers, earlier this year a man was arrested after being found asleep in the singer’s New York home, after also reportedly having had a shower in the singer’s bathroom.
Another man was found standing outside her house while holding a knife, and another stalker had robbed a bank and threw the money over her fence.
When it comes to legality of using face recognition in her concerts - the concert was a private event, therefore event organizers can subject concert-goers to almost any kind of surveillance.
Now after this, the use of facial geometry to identify us has gone mainstream and left us with a question that whether perfect surveillance society is that much closer.
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