That's like, so 2001

MAY, 2013
Boston PD Tested Facial Recognition Software By Recording Every Face At Local Music Festivals (Daily Caller)

Concertgoers at last year’s annual Boston Calling music festivals weren’t just there to watch the show — they were watched themselves as test subjects for Boston police’ new facial recognition technology, which reportedly analyzed every attendee at the May and September two-day events.

Employees at IBM — the outside contractor involved in deploying the tech alongside Boston Police — planned the test of its Smart Surveillance System and Intelligent Video Analytics to execute “face capture” on “every person” at the concerts in 2013.

FEBRUARY, 2001
Welcome to the Snooper Bowl (Time)

In a move that has been both hailed and decried, the Tampa Bay police department used the occasion of Super Bowl XXXV to conduct a high-tech surveillance experiment on its unsuspecting guests. In total secrecy (but with the full cooperation of the National Football League), the faces of each of the games' 72,000 attendees were scanned and checked against a database of potential troublemakers. The news, first reported in the St. Petersburg Times, raises some urgent questions: is this the end of crime--or the end of privacy?

The surveillance system, FaceTrac, is based on technology originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to teach computers to recognize their users, and was installed by a Pennsylvania firm called Graphco Technologies.

The technology and key personnel from Graphco were acquired by SecurLinx in 2003.

Brazilian police to use Face-Rec eye glasses at World Cup

Brazilian police will use futuristic 'Robocop-style' glasses fitted with facial recognition equipment to identify and root out troublemakers at the 2014 World Cup (Telegraph.co.uk)

Major Leandro Pavani Agostini, of Sao Paulo's Military Police, said: "It's something discreet because you do not question the person or ask for documents. The computer does it.

I'd like to know more about this proposed deployment.

UPDATE: Twitter bot Bixby Snyder: I'd buy that for a dollar!
I should have thought of that!

UPDATE II: Since this has gotten so much attention, I think it's appropriate to add a little to this post.

The effective use of facial recognition technology in a surveillance environment requires significantly more training, environmental control (or compensation for environmental factors), and user judgment than other biometric modalities that depend on voluntarily user interaction.

2014 is still a long way away, but I suspect what is being discussed is a re-run of the "Snooper Bowl" experiment featuring our very own FaceTrac in 2001.

If the "Robocops" involved act as anything more than discreet mobile tripods, I'll be surprised.