America's Pastime? MLB Goes Full Commie With China-Style Ballpark Biometric Facial ID Scans
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
Major League Baseball is jumping in with both feet into the use of facial recognition technology for fans to gain access to ballparks, but Americans should be aware of its dangers.
The program is voluntary, but certainly raises concerns about privacy and the rise of the surveillance state, not unlike what’s seen in communist China.
To join the program, fans simply send a selfie through the MLB Ballpark app. Then ticket holders to the game can walk in through a designated gate without having to show a ticket or barcode on their phone, KYW Newsradio reported.
Ballgame attendees, “Don’t have to get out a phone or even stop. It’s a free flow, full walking speed experience,” MLB senior vice president Karri Zaremba told the outlet.
The pilot program of “Go-Ahead Entry” was set to launch at Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philadelphia on Aug. 21.
The MLB plans to expand the program to other ballparks next season.
Biometric entry is already used at New York Mets and Cleveland Guardians games, BiometricUpdate.com reported.
Of course, the concern with storing people’s biometric data is the potential for governments or businesses to use it to control people’s behavior.
What starts as convenience could end up in tyranny.
The pandemic made it abundantly clear what governments, especially when armed with what they think is right and good, seek to do to curtail people’s liberty.
Picture a future when grocery stores, gas stations or other retailers that provide the essentials of life have a “go” and “no go” database for would-be customers trying to enter the store.
“Just toe the party line and you can go in.”
Communist China is at the forefront of all this use of artificial intelligence.
“Facial-recognition scanners are deployed at hotels, banks, shopping malls and gas stations. Movement is tightly controlled through ID checkpoints that include face, iris and body scanners,” Paul Scharre, vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, wrote in February piece for The Los Angeles Times.
“The problem is not just that AI is being used for human rights abuses but that it can supercharge repression itself, arming the state with vast intelligent surveillance networks to monitor and control the population at a scale and degree of precision that would be impossible with human agents,” he added.
Kristin Tate, with Young Americans for Liberty, explained in a 2021 story for The Hill how government surveillance monitoring people’s actions is combined with social credit scores by Beijing.
“China’s social credit system is a combination of government and business surveillance that gives citizens a ‘score’ that can restrict the ability of individuals to take actions — such as purchasing plane tickets, acquiring property or taking loans — because of behaviors.”
“Given the position of several major American companies, a similar system may be coming here sooner than you think,” she contended.
Tate explained that the same companies that track your movements and purchases for rewards programs could soon employ it to penalize you.
“At what point does free speech — be it against biological males playing in girls’ sports, questioning vaccine side effects, or advocating for gun rights — make someone a target in this new system?” she asked.
“When does your debit card get canceled over old tweets, your home loan denied for homeschooling your kids, or your eBay account invalidated because a friend flagged you for posting a Gadsden flag?”
That type of tyrannical behavior was seen by the Canadian government last year when officials shut down bank accounts for truckers and their supporters who were protesting vaccine mandates.
“Banks have been told they can’t provide ‘any financial or related services’ to people associated with the protests, a move that will result in frozen accounts, stranded money and cancelled credit cards,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported at the time.
Is Major League Baseball’s use of facial recognition technology the beginning of communist Chinese-style tyrannical takeover?
Not necessarily, but this sort of positive, soft introduction into this way of monitoring people can one day easily be turned against the American people to take away their freedom.
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