Video analytics confirmed mommy was kissing Santa Claus

That’s right everyone, I’m back from vacation, and you know what that means? Yeah, I’m ready to have another vacation from my vacation.

Allow me to both physically and metaphorically crack my knuckles because I have two more of these blogs to knock out in 2023. Once the new year starts, I’m contractually obligated to spend at least a month talking about everyone’s 2024 predictions before getting swept off to new adventures. It’s probably going to be about artificial intelligence (AI) and ransomware but I’m holding out hope for something new and exciting.

Instead, this week we’re going to be treading old ground, especially for all of you because it’s a topic that you, dear reader, have covered before, and I’m talking about facial recognition and privacy rights. Cast your mind back to February this year, where Editor Cory Harris discussed the results of our monthly news poll regarding an incident in November 2022, when Madison Square Garden used biometric data to prevent a lawyer at a firm that had pending litigation against one of MSG’s holdings from entering Radio City Music Hall’s Rockettes’ Christmas show, despite not being involved in the suit.

We asked, and you answered. 57 percent said that facial recognition technology violates the privacy of those screened, and 24 percent noted that it “may be” viewed as a violation of people’s privacy. Unsurprisingly there wasn’t a lot of support for using security tech to eject families from Christmas programming. If you’re wondering why I’m digging up now ancient history as far as news stories go, yesterday U.S. pharmacy chain Rite Aid was banned from using AI facial recognition for the next five years (for surveillance purposes) by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violations it said harmed consumers.

The FTC charged that between 2012 and 2020 Rite Aid had used the technology to identify shoplifters, but managed to flag innocent shoppers among the rest of them. Rite Aid noted in a public statement to Reuters that its agreement on the matter with the FTC is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court overseeing its insolvency case.

We’ve exited the loose, preliminary fact-finding stage for recognition technology with 2023, and 2024 will be the “finding out” part of the process. Which is to say that legal is coming in from the top rope. I think I put it at number 3 on my 2024 bingo card, but this coming year is going to see legislation for a number of security and security adjacent technologies. AI being the big one, but remember that impressive Amazon biometric wrist scanner that just launched? No way is that getting out of this unscathed.

There’s going to be a lot of sore knuckles and busted rulers next year.