Neoborn Caveman delivers a pro-humanity critique of facial recognition surveillance turning shoppers into suspects, exposing how stores like ShopRite, Wegmans, and UK chains like Sainsbury's scan faces without meaningful consent to create digital fingerprints checked against ban databases, warns of permanent data retention and sharing even on mistakes, highlights disproportionate harm to marginalized communities through error-prone tech, and calls for resistance through boycotting, legislation, and refusing normalization before infrastructure locks in total tracking linked to digital IDs and currencies.
Key Takeaways
- Facial scanning erodes privacy without consent.
- Databases turn errors into permanent records.
- Tech normalizes surveillance as safety.
- Marginalized groups face amplified harms.
- Corporate profit drives data collection.
- Resistance preserves future choices.
- Normalization leads to expanded control.
- Boycotts challenge infrastructure growth.
- Transparency exposes system biases.
- Humanity demands alternative paths.
Sound Bites
"Have you been paying attention to what's happening when you walk into a grocery store?"
"cameras mounted at the entrance are scanning your face, measuring the distance between your eyes, the shape of your nose, the contours of your jaw."
"They're creating what they call your 'facial geometry'—basically a digital fingerprint of your face—and checking it against a database."
"You didn't agree to this. Most people don't even know it's happening."
"ShopRite stores across Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey have been doing this for years."
"ShopRite keeps your facial data for 90 days if you're not flagged. If their system thinks you match someone who's been banned—even by mistake—your data gets kept permanently and shared across all their locations plus their third-party tech provider."
"This isn't just ShopRite. This is becoming standard practice."
"Wegmans is doing it. In the UK, Sainsbury's just expanded their facial recognition system to additional stores after what they called a 'seismic' drop in theft at their trial locations."
"This is about normalization. This is about building the infrastructure. This is about getting people used to the idea that being surveilled is just part of shopping now. Just part of existing in public."
"Once that's normalized, once the cameras are installed and the databases are built, the scope of what they're used for will expand. It always does."
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keywords: facial recognition surveillance, shoprite scanning, wegmans tech, sainsbury's system, digital fingerprint, data retention, privacy erosion, marginalized harms, infrastructure normalization, digital ids
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