Facial Recognition for Fags

Jun 19, 2009

This gent bending down to have his face scanned by a fag/cigarette vending machine - one of those beautiful urban scenes that, for better or for worse Japan excels at: a high technology vending machine that uses a combination of facial recognition and ID card to authenticate that the user is indeed legally of age to purchase. I'm unsure whether the face is remotely assessed, and no information is posted about what happens to the database of faces that each vending machine collects.

The vending machine comes complete with mirror, two strips of white LEDs and no less than five sets of instructions on where to stand, and what you need to do to deliver a fix. The only thing missing is a remote voice providing instructions - a notion that you might laugh at if it were not already in widespread use in ATM/loan machines and rural train stations ticketing machines.

After the government mandated that all cigarette vending machines validate the consumer's age - most machines use a pre-registered TASPO identification card. Getting hold of a false ID is however easy and some neighbourhood machines even leave a card dangling from a piece of string.

Facial recognition technologies are becoming more accurate - it's only a matter of time before the tools to identify photos of faces in close-to-realtime are in people's pockets. How might these photos be used today? In five years time?

Location:
Japan » Tokyo » Jyu Gaoka Keywords:
authentication | cigarette | facial recognition | identity | TASPO