Facial Recognition Software

Reuters, in a recent report about the success of facial-recognition software company AnyVision, mentioned that a hospital in Los Angeles, California is one of its customers.

I've never heard of a hospital using such technology before so this was something of a jolt. Is security such a problem in US hospitals at present that they have to recognize potential trouble makers by face, so the private guards know who to encircle?

Perhaps it isn't so much violence that caused the admins at Cedar Sinai to make a purchase from AnyVision. Perhaps it is drug fraud. Joe Smith may be known to the police as someone who goes into emergency rooms, fakes an injury, and begs for a scrip for a powerful pain reliever. Could the AnyVision algorithms alert Dr. Jones before he writes that scrip? Or sends Smith home with a bottle of the stuff with a high street value?

I would imagine the latter is more important than the former. And that the next time you, dear reader, visit a hospital, perhaps only to visit a sick friend, cameras picking up your face will be locked into software checking on your past. The surveillance state gets more normal all the time, does it not? Thanks, here as in so many other respects, to the War on Drugs.

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