You don't even need facial recognition to track customers in brick-and-mortar stores without their consent. The company Nomi does exactly this by tracking MAC addresses of mobile devices[0].<p>This is an opt-<i>out</i> product, and the only way to opt out is to register your MAC address with them: <a href="http://nomi.com/privacy/" rel="nofollow">http://nomi.com/privacy/</a><p>[0] <a href="http://nomi.com/" rel="nofollow">http://nomi.com/</a>
Based on what I've seen of the quality of video captured by most in-store surveillance systems, they are going to have to be upgraded quite a bit.<p>Every time the local newspaper publishes an image from a bank or convenience story robbery, the quality is so poor you wonder why they bother at all. About the best you can do is say "white man, about 6' tall, wearing something red."
Even with top of line, new equipment, accuracy problems are quite significant for this application. This is sadly little more than a commercial for these companies.<p>You need a lot of pixels. Even if you have full HD 1080p, that still means FoV 20 foot wide or less, which is quite narrow for real world, outdoor applications.<p>You need good angles. Even if you can cover a wide area, if the person is at the edge of the shot or looking the other away or looking down (very common), accuracy plummets.<p>You need good lighting. Even with WDR/HDR capabilities, glare is an issue with sunlight. And forget about in low light, night time conditions, the noise from gain control is a major, major issue.<p>You are dealing with huge numbers of people. With tens or hundreds of thousands of people passing, a lot will simply look alike. It's hard for a person or a computer to make such a call, especially with bad angles, glare, etc.
<i>“Just load existing photos of your known shoplifters, members of organized retail crime syndicates, persons of interest and your best customers into FaceFirst,” a marketing pitch on the company’s site explains. “Instantly, when a person in your FaceFirst database steps into one of your stores, you are sent an email, text or SMS alert that includes their picture and all biographical information of the known individual so you can take immediate and appropriate action.”</i><p>I can imagine that shoplifter identification systems will have the same kinds of problems as no-fly lists. Let's say you look exactly like someone who is on the no-shop list (shoplifter database) and every time you walk into any store, you're ejected by security guards. The company that runs this database has no accountability to the public, so there's no way to get yourself removed from the list.