By MassPrivateI

The state of New York is using facial recognition cameras to identify drivers and passengers at toll booths.

A recent article in the New York Post revealed that toll booths use facial recognition to identify everyone.

“We are now moving to facial-recognition technology, which takes it to a whole new level, where it can see the face of the person in the car and run that technology against databases,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. (Click here & here to learn more.)

Police are also testing facial recognition cameras that can identify people based on the shape of their ears!

“Because many times a person will turn their head when they see a security camera, so they are now experimenting with technology that just identifies a person by their ear, believe it or not,” Cuomo said.

NYC’s spying bridges

image credit: Vocativ

Last year Vocativ revealed that NYC is using toll booth gantries to create a ring of spying cameras.

The Authority is interested in implementing a Facial Detection System, in a free-flow highway environment, where vehicle movement is unimpeded at highway speeds as well as bumper-to-bumper traffic, and license plate images are taken and matched to occupants of the vehicles (via license plate number) with Facial Detection and Recognition methods from a gantry-based or road-side monitoring location.

Police facial recognition to identify drivers within seconds

According to the NY Post, toll booth gantries can identify vehicles within seconds.

License plates scanned at the toll plazas, at least, are already being checked for warrants, suspected felons, parole violators, terrorist suspects and the intel is passed within five seconds on to cop cars stationed at the crossings.

How long before NYC uses facial recognition cameras to identify drivers and passengers within seconds?

Currently there are at least thirty-one states that allow police to use facial recognition to identify people from drivers licenses and state IDs.

Roughly one in every two American adults—117 million people—are in the facial recognition networks used by law enforcement, according to a 2016 report.

DHS and law enforcement have created an Orwellian nightmare in NYC.

Imagine a future where police install facial recognition cameras at two thousand bridges and tunnels throughout NYC.

Now imagine that happening in your city or town.

Facial recognition cameras and license plate readers are being used to create secret hotlists and watchlists that track our every movement.

It is time for Americans to stop letting DHS and law enforcement use 9/11 as an excuse to destroy everyone’s privacy.

You can read more at the MassPrivateI blog, where this article first appeared.