The following report is by PIX 11:
Bodegas across the Bronx and Upper Manhattan are getting new facial recognition technology cameras they are hopeful will be paid for by a state pilot program that is in response to repeated robberies and theft.
The cameras also blare a warning to tell bodega shoppers, loud and clear, what is happening.
The Bodega and Small Business Association is hopeful funding for the cameras will come from a $1 million pilot program from State of New York, first announced a year ago.
Francisco Marte, with the bodega association, has been helping members install the camera system. Sixty will be installed by next week. Three hundred in total will go up.
“We’ve been having a lot of problems with shoplifting, robbing the store, violence in the store,” Marte said. “So when you come, you’re going to be recognized. We’re going to know you are here.”
Here is how the cameras work: They take a high-resolution picture of everyone coming and going from the store. Using a computer interface, the owner of the bodega can flag repeat troublemakers.
Bodega owner Luis Bello took PIX11 News behind the scenes in his office to see. He showed how it was logging all the faces of the group of construction workers who came in for lunch.
The system can send a push alert when it spots someone who is flagged by an owner, and there’s an option for an alarm to sound in the store.
The bodega association initially said it was working to develop a database and share pictures between stores, but it later clarified to say it no longer plans to create this database.
The New York Civil Liberties Union has raised concerns, saying this sort of facial recognition and data collection could violate privacy and be problematic if the data is shared with the wrong people.
“Security tools that bodegas and other small businesses use to keep their staff and customers safe should be effective and unbiased — facial recognition technology is neither: it could violate New Yorkers’ privacy rights and result in dangerous situations,” said Daniel Schwarz, senior privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
“This invasive technology has a high risk of false identification, especially for people of color, and it is unclear how shops will safeguard the biometric data they collect and if they will share that data with others. Keeping New Yorkers safe is critical — that includes making sure their privacy isn’t invaded, their likeness isn’t shared with the government or corporations, and they are not mistakenly denied access or harassed.”
Separately, another part of the pilot program equips bodegas with panic buttons. It’s something that has been talked about a lot since 2018, with the high-profile gang murder of Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz at a Bronx bodega.
“If you press once it goes to the ambulance, if you press twice it goes to police,” said Marte, who said it has already improved NYPD bodega response times.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
The WinePress has noted on several occasions the number of times, especially in this last year or so, just how rapidly the city and state is rolling out highly invasive and biometric surveillance.
The takeover and oppression is obvious to see. In this case, the city is allowing ridiculous levels of crime to take hold, wait for an outcry, and then give them an even more intrusive surveillance nanny state.
The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy: yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully.
Ezekiel 22:29
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Saw this today and made me laugh that 200 years of hard work and tones of geopolymer later came to nought and sits in ruins lol
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/take-3d-tour-ancient-temples-lebanon-180977451/
Talk about wasted efforts huh (scratch my head)
They’re also providing special ‘grants’ to church building people: they can use the money any way they like, so long as it includes the installation of those huge, digital screens. Ain’t that a coinky-dink & a honeyed trap?!
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I was trying to explain to my sister why that was NOT a good idea, as those churches already have the rock music to ‘keep the kids’ & are on their way to being whole hog darkened antichrist Luciferian hellholes but she believes that since the pastor is conservative & not for any of those things, but thinking he can counter them in his disobedience….& because her children like it, that all will be well.
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They’re in the North Carolina terminus of the ‘Bible belt’ where those grants are luring in MANY.