Becoming a reality now. This shows how China is already at the forefront and it'll be over here before too long. We already have ANPR cameras networked through the country and these facial recognition cameras will be the follow-on. Civil Liberties supporters will bleat but it is inevitable, maybe 40 years after 1984 Orwell had it right...
The technology is great, if used in the right way. If it can pick up wanted criminals, fly tippers, moped vandal identities etc, I'm for it. When I started working, just off Oxford Street, there were small time crooks on soap boxes selling false perfume to tourists (stuff that was only worth throwing down the toilet but encased in smart Dior packaging) with look outs searching for coppers, so that they could all scarper around the corner until the police had gone. Tourists were being utterly ripped off. Camera's came in - the crooks had nowhere to hide and this practice died out.
I remember them well, I worked in the building that does all the music copyrights and royalties back in 1972 and there were regularly 'men with suitcases' on nearly every corner, to see them suddenly pack up and leg-it just like that was something else...
