ID technology raises privacy concerns

At the CardTech/SecureTech show here, the latest technologies are on display -- including one system that will allow retailers to identify individual shoppers by hooking up in-store cameras to a computerized database.

Soon everything -- billboards, TV ads, vending machines -- will be customized for you, says analyst David Coursey. And won't that be a wonderful world.

While biometrics is generating considerable interest from corporations and others, sales are still small. Last year, the identification technology accounted for $27 million in sales, according to Miller; this year sales should hit $38 million.

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The concept is similar to Web site "cookies." On the Internet, cookies are markers which make it possible for sites to tag and track visitors, as well as personalize information for them.

Biometrics could provider a similar service in the brick-and-mortar world. Using face-recognition software, a store with video cameras and a central server could track customers.

While the system has obvious security applications such as catching shoplifters and identifying wanted criminals, the technology can also measure the effectiveness of a store's layout and its product promotions.

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For example, advertising displays at the end of a store aisle may be attracting people, even if they are not buying the advertised product. While a store today can only guess the efficacy of such a promotion by sales, in the future the store manager may be able to see how long people considered their purchase before buying, or not buying.

That level of recognition technology is not here yet, but the technology is not science fiction, either. Massachusetts Institute of Technology startup Visage Technology Inc., based in Littleton, Mass., showed off its system for picking faces out of a crowd and identifying them.

"This is the first technology that can identify people as they are walking around," said Gretchen Lewis, marketing director of the company's social services group.

Still, that's no easy task. The recognition system uses eyes as a starting point to identify a face, which means that the person has to be facing toward the camera.

Good for airport security
For that reason, using the system in a store might not yet be possible, but it will work well in such places as airport security stations, through which people have to walk facing forward, single file, said Lewis.

"The privacy concerns are real," said Lewis, "but it's like everything else. It's a tool. If used properly, it's not bad."