From AFP via TechXplore, March 10:
From cameras criss-crossing the city to payment systems popping up at metro gates and supermarket checkouts, facial recognition is rapidly taking root in Moscow.
The initiative has gained ground since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with authorities using it as a tool to enforce lockdown measures while Russians increasingly turn to contactless payments.
But as the network grows with plans to expand across Russia, the technology is celebrated by some while alarming rights activists who warn about creeping state surveillance.
The latest development came Wednesday, as the country's leading food retailer X5 group announced the rollout of a facial recognition payment system at dozens of its Moscow supermarkets.
It said some 3,000 stores across the country will feature the technology by the end of the year.
"This is convenient for customers since they don't have to carry a wallet or take their phone out of their pocket," X5's innovation director Ivan Melnik told AFP.
"They can just use a button and pay with their face.".....
....MUCH MORE
VIDEO: 🇷🇺 Russia's X5 group, the country's leading food retailer, is launching a #facialrecognition payment system in more than fifty Moscow supermarkets, with plans to extend the technology to its entire network pic.twitter.com/xEmNL4qnwo
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 10, 2021
As noted in 2019's "Silicon Valley’s final frontier for mobile payments — ‘the neoliberal takeover of the human body’":
All of which is reminiscent of a line from Randall "Tex" Cobb on his
heavyweight boxing match with world champion Larry Holmes, every round
of which went to Holmes ("Larry Holmes didn't beat me — he just won the
first 15 rounds"):
"Well, I stuck to my game plan and led with my face."He also said, about the first time Holmes knocked him down"
"When I got up I stuck to my plan… stumbling forward and getting hit in the face"One more Cobbism:
When a reporter said Cobb was a fat cocaine snorting drunk
"I’m not fat."—Randall “Tex” CobbThose were from "Just One-Liners"
Here's the face:
