Free Republic

Deputies in this corner of western Oregon outside ultraliberal Portland used to track down criminals the old-fashioned way, faxing caught-on-camera images of a suspect around the office in hope that someone might recognize the face. Then, in late 2017, the Washington County Sheriff's Office became the first law enforcement agency in the country known to use Amazon's artificial-intelligence tool Rekognition, transforming this thicket of forests and suburbs into a public testing ground for a new wave of experimental police surveillance techniques. Almost overnight, deputies saw their investigative powers supercharged, allowing them to scan for matches of a suspect's face across...

Back in January, Food and Wine reported that KFC China would be introducing a facial recognition system that would predict your order (it’s not as creepy as it sounds). Now it looks like the brand is enhancing that technology with additional features. According to Reuters, the system lets customers pay by face, just by approaching one of the store's newly unveiled monitors. The new device is located at a KFC outpost in the city of Hangzhou. The facial recognition system is called Smile to Pay, and it’s being featured at a Yum Brands (the company behind KFC) so-called concept store...

A police force has defended scanning the faces of 90,000 festival-goers this weekend and checking them against a list of wanted criminals across Europe. Leicestershire Police, which used facial recognition technology on revellers at Download, said it had now destroyed the information it gathered. It was believed to be the first time the software had been used at an outdoor event in the UK... ...A cashless payment system was put in place for the first time in a bid to cut crime. Thousands of revellers braved the rain at Download, held at Donington Park, to see headliners Slipknot, Muse and...