There\u2019s nothing quite as identifiable as a face. <\/p>\n
Retailers use facial recognition technology to more easily nab shoplifters. Casinos have deployed it to keep card counters away. Even a popular New York City venue<\/a> allegedly uses it to blackball people its millionaire owner considers adversaries. <\/p>\n So, it comes as no surprise to many Disneyland guests that it\u2019s now being used at the entrance to the Happiest Place on Earth. <\/p>\n \u201cPretty much every other place is doing the same thing,\u201d said John LeSchofs, 73, who visits the park roughly every six weeks with his wife. \u201cThe police, the government, they\u2019re all using facial recognition. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to stop.\u201d <\/p>\n Photographs of a guest\u2019s face taken at the entrance to Disneyland and California Adventure are run through biometric technology to convert the images into unique numerical values. The images can then be compared with pictures taken when a customer first used the ticket or annual pass. <\/p>\n Disney officials say the technology helps make entering and reentering the park easier and prevents fraud. But the rapid growth of facial recognition over the last decade has raised concerns among privacy experts who caution that such data can easily be turned over<\/a> to law enforcement entities or make companies hacking targets.<\/p>\n \u201cThe normalization of facial surveillance is really problematic,\u201d said Ari Waldman, a professor of law at UC Irvine. \u201cWe can\u2019t go around life hiding our faces, so this isn\u2019t just next step in surveillance, it\u2019s qualitatively different. In a world of facial recognition, when people leave their house it automatically means they\u2019re identified.\u201d <\/p>\n Venues over the last decade have increasingly begun to lean on facial recognition to speed up entry and purchases for guests. <\/p>\n At Intuit Dome visitors can use \u201cGameFaceID\u201d to more quickly enter the stadium for Clippers games or other live entertainment. To use it, the guest just needs to upload a selfie and the technology generates face recognition data to identify them at the arena. The venue\u2019s privacy policy states they \u201cmay also infer whether you are over 21 from your selfie photo.\u201d <\/p>\n Dodger Stadium also employs facial recognition technology for guests who want to use the \u201cGo Ahead Entry\u201d at certain gates into the ballpark. The technology allows parkgoers to enter without having to produce a physical or digital ticket. <\/p>\n Some groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised concerns about the possibility of facial recognition and other biometric tracking technologies being used at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n But at Disneyland on Friday, vacationers in matching T-shirts, toddlers in princess dresses and mouse-eared parents pushing strollers made their way through security checkpoints giving little attention to signs posted nearby notifying guests of the theme park\u2019s new facial recognition policy. \u201cUse of this technology is optional,\u201d the signs adorned with red, green yellow and blue Mickey Mouse silhouettes reads. <\/p>\n The majority of the lines into the theme parks use facial recognition technology. Guests who don\u2019t want to run their face through the technology can enter through a separate entrance marked with a silhouette of a head and shoulders with a slash through it. Of the dozens of lines to enter Disneyland and California Adventure, there were only four on Friday that didn\u2019t use facial recognition. <\/p>\n Guests in those lines still had their photos taken, but the company said biometric technology wasn\u2019t used. Instead an employee was seen manually validating tickets. <\/p>\n Facial recognition technology has long been criticized for making mistakes when identifying people, particularly people of color. Research found that systems were less likely to accurately classify the faces of women with darker complexions and that certain makeup patterns could render the technology null<\/a>. There\u2019s also a risk of data breaches, experts say.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you collect this type of data you have put a target on your back for people to steal it,\u201d said Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The nonprofit, which opposes government use of facial recognition data, has advocated for strengthening laws to protect consumers when the technology is used by private businesses.<\/p>\n Parkgoers who swarmed the entrance to Main Street on Friday morning as the cheery tune to \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World\u201d played on the speakers outside the theme park seemed to pay little attention to the technology. <\/p>\n Many who spoke to The Times said deciding between the more than a dozen lines to enter the theme park came down to a simple calculation: which queue had the fewest people.<\/p>\n Outside California Adventure, Robert Howell, 30, was sitting near the entrance waiting for the park to open for his first visit. Howell, who is visiting from Virginia, hadn\u2019t heard about Disney deploying the technology to check in parkgoers until he arrived at the park that day. The idea of it made him a little uneasy, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a little scary because it\u2019s not clear how it\u2019s going to be used,\u201d Howell said. \u201cWith TSA I know that\u2019s an option that you can opt out, but I didn\u2019t realize you could here so I just did it.\u201d<\/p>\n