Last year, San Fransisco bars installed video cameras to provide live feeds on the internet. Now, several bars have begun testing facial detection programs, which will record anyone entering or exiting the premises. The app, known as SceneTap, is designed to detect numerous facts about people entering an establishment.
Using a free iPhone or Android App, you can get a snapshot of the San Francisco bar scene, including male-to-female ratio, average age, and crowd size — all in real time. In short, you can find out if there are enough women to hit on before you bother getting decked out for the night.
Hidden sensors will discreetly record the age and gender of the people entering and leaving and broadcast that information out to SceneTap users so that they can make an informed decision about going to that venue based on how crowded it is, the male-to-female ratio or the age range, said CEO Cole Harper.
Bar owners don’t see a problem with the system because they say it is detection rather than recognition and they don’t keep any identifying information long-term. They fail to recognize the intrusive privacy concerns and seem only concerned with how to monetize the information that they have gathered.
They will have access to this aggregated demographic information, and over time they can use it to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. In other words, did that ladies-drink-free special actually draw more women to the bar?
SceneTap is already up and running in a half-dozen other cities, and to date, the company’s cameras have tracked more than 8.5 million people in bars and restaurants in these cities. In any event, here’s a list of the bars that will be watching you, according to SceneTap:
- Bamboo Hut
- Bar None
- Eastside West
- Fluid Ultra Lounge
- HiFi
- John Colins
- Kozy Kar Bar
- Manor West
- Mayes Oyster House
- McTeague’s Saloon
- Milk Bar
- Monaghan’s
- Mr. Smith’s
- Noble
- Polo Grounds
- R Bar
- Southpaw
- Taverna Aventine
- The Ambassador
- The Wreck Room
- Tope
While many people think that SceneTap is a useful tool, many more are calling out the flaws of such a system. The “creepy” folks that like to stalk women will have access to the data via the app. While bars are busy trying to figure out how to bring more ladies into their establishments, creepers will use the information to harass women.
The fact that even some identifying information is kept, even in the short-term, is worrying. As long as it’s being stored, there is the potential to have that database hacked. Used in conjunction with door ID-scanners, there is a wealth of information collected about an individual that is valuable to corporations, advertisers, and identity thieves. The only way you can opt out is not to visit such establishments.
The problem, however, is that more and more people are becoming accustomed to being tracked in all aspects of their lives. This leaves those who are concerned about privacy issues with fewer and fewer places that they can venture out to and remain mostly anonymous. Once programs, such as SceneTap, are integrated into other programs like Facebook, it will become impossible to go anywhere in public without that information being used to market a product to you or track everything you do.
The only real solution is to boycott businesses who think such practices are acceptable. Individuals still have some privacy options left. They need to exercise their right to privacy now before it’s voluntarily taken away from them by others.
