By Nicholas West

The use of biometric identification is becoming a real-time case study in how the public is incrementally conditioned to accept the total erosion of privacy for supposed convenience and security.

As I’ve been covering over the last several months, a 15-year-old mandate from the federal government to implement biometric ID for airline travel is finally being implemented at various airports throughout the United States. Meanwhile, countries like Australia and the UK also have airport biometrics programs rolling out, with Australia seeking to make it a requirement nationwide by 2020. The UK has gone even one step further and has been testing a system to be used on trains as well, also with a target date somewhere around 2020.

People have been acclimatized to biometric ID in various forms, with increasing frequency in the areas of banking and personal computing, but only now is it being rolled out into the wider world. In some cases, the use of facial recognition for targeted advertising and even to monitor political views and for pre-crime policing has been done in public spaces without any consent whatsoever.

According to MassPrivateI, a company called Zenus is at the forefront of spreading facial recognition even wider into conferences and events. It heralds the next step toward increasingly pervasive biometric ID requirements to function in modern society.

Zenus a startup company based in Texas, claims their facial recognition software can speed up check-ins at conferences and events. Attendees have registered for a conference ahead of time, providing pertinent personal information and uploading a photo. On-site at the conference, that person steps up to a device—usually a tablet—where a camera scans the person’s face, using the image to call up her information and completing the check-in process digitally. (Source)