A group of musicians have rallied with activists in a campaign to get live music companies to ban facial recognition at concerts and festivals.
Fight For The Future, a digital rights advocacy group, has gotten support from a variety of artists like Speedy Ortiz and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello. The group have looked at Ticketmaster and Live Nation specifically, who invested in Blink Identity, a facial recognition technology company, in 2018. According to The Fader, a leaked note to investors revealed that the company would allow security to identify ticketholders in “half a second.”
Fight for the Future launches new campaign to oppose the use of facial recognition tech at music festivals and gigs https://t.co/oDfgjHaADa pic.twitter.com/3tn61ZXIFp
— Tech News Tube (@TechNewsTube) September 10, 2019
“Facial recognition surveillance is uniquely dangerous,” Fight For The Future’s Evan Greer explained to Vice. “It doesn’t keep fans or artists safe, it just subjects them to invasive, racially biased monitoring that will inevitably lead to fans getting harassed, falsely arrested, deported, or worse. We’re calling on all artists to stick up for their fans’ basic rights and safety by speaking out against the use of Big Brother style biometric surveillance at live music events.”