Company Rolls Out Covert Facial Recognition System for Stadiums and Events

A recent announcement describing the creation of a ‘stadium & event strategic alliance’ might be one of the most tone-deaf announcements to come out of the sports world since the outbreak of COVID-19.

GlobeNewsWire reports that an AI company, a soccer league, and an events stadium are working together to covertly spy on event-goers across the globe.

“Together, Patriot One, the Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) and Banc of California Stadium will form “The Stadium & Event Safety Strategic Alliance,” which will utilize groundbreaking security technology to turn Banc of California Stadium into a global showcase venue to advance the vision of safety and security for public gathering spaces.”

As Patriot One Technology’s website reveals, “PATSCAN” is specifically designed to secretly use facial recognition and other sensors on event-goers.

“PATSCAN™ is a next generation security solution which covertly deploys as a layered multi-sensor platform to detect and combat active weapons and explosives threats before they occur.  The fully integrated platform cost-effectively shares proprietary networked machine learning software for maximum effectiveness to covertly secure perimeters (i.e. parking lots, walkways), access/egress points, and facility interiors.”

Sports stadiums like the Banc of California Stadium will also secretly bombard fans with microwaves, magnetic fields and more, using PATSCAN™ Platform software.

“The PATSCAN Platform integrates the power of artificial intelligence (AI) with diverse threat detection sensor and software solutions (microwave radar, magnetic reaction, chemical sensing, and video analytics) into an easy to use intuitive command and control platform.”

All of this is strikingly similar to a story I wrote about “HEXWAVE” which is being used to secretly scan people in amusement parks, sports fans and even residents of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Stadium & Event Safety Strategic Alliance wants to covertly use multiple PATSCAN sensors on everyone who enters a stadium.

“Each sensor detects threat feature anomalies that are not expected to be present at specific locations or in everyday scenarios, such as threat object shapes, metallic anomalies, airborne chemicals elements, and weapon or disturbance images.” 

As the GlobeNewsWire announcement explains, the Stadium & Event Safety Strategic Alliance was created to covertly spy on event-goers.

“The objective of ‘The Stadium & Event Safety Strategic Alliance’ is to establish a consortium of professional sports, and stadium security professionals to evaluate and pilot new physical security technologies, including those focused on health and safety due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown,” explained Phil Lancaster, SVP of Business Development & Government Relations.”

The LAFC and the Banc of California Stadium are excited to covertly spy on event-goers worldwide.

“Our venue in the heart of Los Angeles will become the center for new and innovative physical and health threat identification and detection technologies, and we are looking forward to facilitating direct collaboration with other venues and teams around the world,” Christian Lau, Chief Technology Officer for LAFC and Banc of California Stadium said.

What has not been talked about is Patriot One’s plans to use PATSCAN VRS-D (video disturbance detection) on stadium-goers.

Beginning in the Fall of 2020, PATSCAN VRS-D will allow stadiums to identify and blacklist people for aggressive behavior, it also allows them to tag protagonists and people of “elevated interest” in real-time.

The end of the GlobeNewsWire announcement reveals that starting this June,  Patriot One Technology will begin covertly using real-time facial recognition called VRS Video Recognition Software in stadiums.

The Stadium & Event Safety Strategic Alliance wants to turn our stadiums into a mirror-image of the American police state, complete with real-time facial recognition cameras, airport-style scanners and blacklists.

This is a perfect example of why the “defunding police” movement is so important — because it permeates everything we do and everywhere we go.

Editor’s Note

Private companies are rapidly becoming intertwined with government law enforcement, creating a massive, national surveillance state. 

There are many technical and legal problems with facial recognition, including significant concerns about the accuracy of the technology, particularly when reading the facial features of minority populations. During a test run by the ACLU of Northern California, facial recognition misidentified 26 members of the California legislature as people in a database of arrest photos.

With facial recognition technology, police and other government officials have the capability to track individuals in real-time. These systems allow law enforcement agents to use video cameras and continually scan everybody who walks by. According to the report, several major police departments have expressed an interest in this type of real-time tracking. Documents revealed agencies in at least five major cities, including Los Angeles, either claimed to run real-time face recognition off of street cameras, bought technology with the capability, or expressed written interest in buying it.

In all likelihood, the federal government heavily involves itself in helping state and local agencies obtain this technology. The feds provide grant money to local law enforcement agencies for a vast array of surveillance gear, including ALPRs, stingray devices and drones. The federal government essentially encourages and funds a giant nationwide surveillance net and then taps into the information via fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment (ISE).

This article was originally published at MassPrivateI