Taylor Swift fans were subjected to facial recognition software at her 2018 Rose Bowl performance — and they didn’t know about it.
According to Quarts, a kioske featuring footage of the singer’s rehearsal was created for fans to watch. What fans didn’t know was that they were being secretly recorded. The recording was being sent 2000 miles away to center in Tennessee that attempted to use the images to match them against images of known Swift stalkers.
“Everybody who went by would stop and stare at it, and the software would start working,” Mike Downing, chief security officer for Oak View Group, told Rolling Stone.
Whether the footage was archived is unknown. But concert venues are most often private locations that have every right to subject venue-goers to any type of surveillance they’d like- including facial recognition.
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