By MassPrivateI
I hope you enjoyed America’s favorite pastime, because by the end of this year nearly every Major League Baseball (MLB) team will be using facial recognition.
Last year, there were only nine MLB teams using CLEAR’s facial recognition to spy on fans. But all of that is about to change.
This year, the MLB has decided to go full-blown TSA and put facial recognition cameras in 23 stadiums, which is just seven shy of the entire league.
According to a Business Wire article, the MLB plans to scan the faces of millions of baseball fans.
The partnership will develop a first-of-its-kind collaboration of emerging technologies from CLEAR and Tickets.com, ultimately allowing millions of fans to use biometrics to enter ballparks, eliminating the need to present a paper or mobile ticket. With CLEAR, you are your ticket.
The article also warned that CLEAR’s “broader roll-out” plan, means they will be in every stadium by the end of this season.
With CLEAR becoming the “official biometric identity partner” of the MLB, the future of spying on sports fans and their families will only get worse.
CLEAR to spy on kids for free during the MLB All-Star weekend
Just how much worse will things get?
A Cleveland.com article revealed that CLEAR biometrics will be scanning fans faces during this year’s MLB All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, Ohio.
In July, the company is offering its technology at Progressive Field during the 2019 All Star Week through its partnership with Major League Baseball.
Big Brother’s appetite for tracking kids is out of control.
Clear membership is $15 per month with the option to add an additional family member for $50 per year. Members can also bring their children under 18 with them through the CLEAR lane for free.
CLEAR’s horrifying marketing idea, no doubt dreamed up by DHS is to scan kids faces for free!
It is apparent that CLEAR’s goal is to turn every sporting event into a mirror image of the TSA’s facial recognition airport program.
How do fans know if CLEAR is secretly using facial recognition to spy on you? The answer is you don’t.
Last year, the N.Y. Times revealed that Madison Square Garden was secretly using CLEAR facial recognition to spy on fans.
It is unclear when the face-scanning system was installed. The people familiar with the Garden’s use of the technology, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it, said they did not know how many events at the Garden in recent months have used it or how the data has been handled.
For years, I have been warning sports fans that the MLB, NFL and NHL have been using facial recognition. So it was not too hard to guess that the N.Y. Times was talking about CLEAR.
As a recent Madison Square Garden announcement confirmed.
“We are pleased to welcome CLEAR into the Madison Square Garden family,” said Ron Skotarczak, executive vice president, marketing partnerships, The Madison Square Garden Company.
CLEAR is so confident that every sports stadium will be turned into a TSA-style venue, that they opened a hub in Austin, Texas to help them do just that.
CLEAR’s Austin hub is its first corporate development office outside of New York and will develop new technologies for airport and stadiums.
Because who does not want to be searched and groped by TSA-style security guards at sporting events?
If you think that I am exaggerating and that this is just another fear-mongering story, I leave you with this gem of a quote taken from the N.Y. Times article.
“The days of having 40,000 to 60,000 people in the stadium and not knowing who they are, I think those days are going to disappear,” said Charles Carroll, a senior vice president at IDEMIA.
You can read more at the MassPrivateI blog, where this article first appeared.
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