Microsoft’s Kinect system does a pretty good job of recognizing your face and automatically signing you into your Xbox account. That same technology though is being used by other companies in fascinating and potentially frightening ways. Monte Richard wrote:

• Japanese railway staff are required to have their smile checked by a computer every morning to see if it is genuine.
• Saab, a car manufacturer, has started installing systems that monitor your face to see if you’re paying full attention to the road. If it seems like you’re drifting off to sleep then it’ll ring an alarm to jolt you.
• However this same technology could be used in the workplace to calculate exactly how much attention you were paying to the work you had to do.
• Security services are developing lie detectors that monitor your face for subtle, unconscious muscle movements that indicate deception.
• One company is trying to set up cameras at the entrance of night clubs which identify the gender, race, and other physical characteristics of the people entering and exiting. People could then find the bars with their preferred demographic mix of partiers.

Read more about how dictators could use this technology, mood-sensitive advertizing, and what legal protections you have to prevent yourself from being monitored (hint: none) over here.

Source: Cracked