NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A New York-based privacy and civil rights group launched a petition Tuesday to stop the Mets baseball team from utilizing facial recognition technology for tickets.
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The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) named the petition “Steal Bases Not Faces” and condemned the Major League Baseball team for adopting the new ticketing system in partnership with computer vision company Wicket. The system encourages ticket holders to upload their image on MLB.com which registers their face before checking-in at Citi Field gates.
"When I'm at a Mets game, I want an overpriced hot dog, not a facial recognition scanner in my face," said S.T.O.P. Development Director Sam Van Doran. "Fans shouldn't have to give away their faces when a barcode will do just fine. Surveillance vendors push tech solutions for problems that don't exist, without considering the consequences. As a Mets fan, I'm an optimist - but when biometric data is collected by a private company for unknown purposes, we all lose."
Wicket, and other commercial facial recognition providers, could possibly store and trade collected images which means consumers’ biometric information is vulnerable to hackers, the petition argues.
The organization also said the information uploaded to Wicket could be made available to agencies such as the NYPD and ICE.
“Facial recognition technology is biased, broken, and puts BIPOC communities at risk of false arrest and police violence,” the petition’s fill-in template reads. “Facial recognition software routinely is 10 to 100 times more error-prone for Black and Asian people.”
Wicket did not immediately respond to 1010 WINS' request for comment.
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