Taylor Swift tracked stalkers with facial recognition tech at her concert
theverge.com
theverge.com
And then there's the regular crazy Swiftie fangirls who obnoxiously battle each other on Tumblr and concerts to get noticed by Taylor while despising all the people who have gotten picked to meet her. There have been numerous incidents at concerts of people jumping up on the stage and trying to grab her. I remember a few moments during the Reputation tour where she appeared very distracted between sets, snapping her head to the side as if she thought someone was about to jump her. I don't blame her for being paranoid, fans can be crazy.
I think also these big ticket venues are rightly more paranoid as of late, especially since Manchester and the shooting in LA. I made this really cool (I thought so at least) wearable LED matrix tee shirt (RGB Neopixels driven by a Teensyduino and cellphone battery pack) that displayed various Taylor related animations, but was only able to get it in 2 concerts out of uhm...several that I went to (Hackers can be Swifties too ok). The rules seemed arbitrary and highly dependent on what security guard you got when entering, which did not instill me with much confidence (one guard said the LED's were fine but I could not take the battery. Well ok then, even though the battery was just a regular cellphone charger that they explicitly did allow. And several times after I had been denied I go into the concert only to see other people with light up LED signs on full display).
Anyway, it's one thing for a private venue to employ these measures for security to voluntary participants who knew damn well they were surrounded by guards and had to abide by certain rules, and an entire other sinister thing for governments to arbitrarily collect this data on everyone to do god knows what with backed by the power of the state.
Between you know, John Lennon and the recent sad story of Christina Grimmie, I'm very glad Taylor Swift is taking security seriously.
It's not that I don't believe you. I can rationally accept that what you've said makes sense. However, being on the outside, it takes some mental effort to make the fame you've described not seem extremely nice.
A long time ago, I remember the difference being illustrated at a Dragoncon in the early 2000s. Guests on the fame level of, say, Babylon 5 cast members, could walk around the convention just fine. They could do standard things like, say, go to the restaurant and have a meal without being heavily interrupted. Walking around they'd maybe get some hellos and photo poses and whatnot but it didn't seem terribly intrusive.
And then there was Alice Cooper, who walked around the main convention floor one day and instantly got mobbed by a huge crowd.
My hunch is that Taylor Swift probably is at the fame level where she needs security of some sort merely to walk around in public. That's a negative in my mind.
There’s no magical set of circumstances that result in happiness or joy. In fact I think the external things that we most often identify as bringing happiness or joy, apparently when most people are faced with these things, it results in quite the opposite.
In my opinion Taylor Swift has one of the hardest and most unrelenting jobs on the planet. Going out night after night trying to appeal to the teeming masses sounds like absolute hell. Everyone you meet more likely to be a vampire than not. No thanks!
Maybe I'm just old :-)
Are you insinuating that the goal wasn't to have sex with a pop idol but instead to blackmail them?
Full-disclosure: I was a very excited mid-20s adult male when Taylor finally decided to be on Spotify.
There are dozens of us!
(1989 won me over.)
It sounds like you were not subjected to "certain rules" but rather arbitrarily enforced, unknown rules.
If you wonder how much damage a stalker / obsessed fan can do at a public event like a concert, just ask Christina Grimmie (who was many, many orders of magnitude less famous or visible than someone like Taylor)
This sounds very dystopian to me.
I bet a lot more of these private events integrate more of this kind of technology for both good reasons (prevent stalkers) and bad reasons (prevent opposition) from attending an event. Let's say Hillary has a talk but she doesn't want hecklers. Or Cheney, same thing. That would be unfortunate use of this tech.
> Let's say Hillary has a talk but she doesn't want hecklers. Or Cheney, same thing. That would be unfortunate use of this tech.
Why? Your right to free speech is not a right to prevent others from exercising their right to free speech, and that's exactly what a heckler is doing. Your rights end where others' begin.
The purpose of free speech is to not stifle the free exchange of ideas and arguments, and "shut up," is not a particularly novel or valuable contribution to any conversation. and therefore does not deserve the same level of protection as an actual argument or idea.
For fuck's sake why would we want to start sucking the spontaneity and chance engagement out of everything?
Not all forms of engagement require spontaneous unplanned interaction to be considered interesting or useful by those partaking.
That's a ridiculous analogy. You go to a play to be entertained, because it's a live experience, it'a performance that will always be slightly different and unique from performance to performance depending on any number of variables. In fact a play is great example of why spontaneity is so important.
>"Not all forms of engagement require spontaneous unplanned interaction to be considered interesting or useful by those partaking."
Really? Name one live event that doesn't presume some level of unplanned interaction? You go to see someone speak - there might be laughter, groans, facial expressions - a feedback loop. You go to see a band - there will be between song banter, audience reaction, requests. It's a kinetic ritual. You go to a book signing and there will be an audience Q AND A with an author.
Please share some examples of which live events that are completely devoid of any unplanned human interaction are interesting?
It's not exactly spontaneous when an organized group of hecklers decides to attend an event with the specific purpose to disrupt it and interrupt or prevent the speaker's message from getting across.
As long as events actually stay spontaneous, I doubt speakers/performers will be motivated to become early adopters of the tech. When attendees with bad intent or repeated bad behavior become too frequent, then it's actually maintaining spontaneity to filter them out.
No but not allowing for any possibility of it is absurd.
>"It's not exactly spontaneous when an organized group of hecklers decides to attend an event with the specific purpose to disrupt it and interrupt or prevent the speaker's message from getting across"
Oh no not hecklers! How have we survived up until now? Yes we should definitely optimize for avoiding that at the expense of of normalcy i.e not having to be vetted to attend a public event. How serious of a problem to society is heckling really? I have never heard of "an organized group of hecklers" before. Pre-screening against potential hecklers sounds like ham-fisted to solution to a societal problem so small it doesn't even register.
So please take me down this slipper slope. What's the criteria for "heckling"? Is protest heckling? Is verbally voicing disagreement heckling? Is someone deemed a heckler entered into a database and prevented from attending other public events?
When a group of your sacred hecklers organizes to disrupt an event to the extent to the degree that it destroys the spontaneity of the rest of the audience.
Believe it or not, many people attend events to hear the speakers, and interested members of the audience, and not some randos that want to monopolize the attention on for themselves.
I suppose you're one of the people that is against ad-blockers, because they prevent those marketers from spontaneously changing everyone's internet experience?
No. That's your word. You introduced that.
You haven't bothered to answer any of the questions have you? No, you resorted to ad-hominem attacks about ad-blockers? Seriously? Grow up.
I can't even remember the last time I saw someone get heckled. And I live in city where I go to either a speaking engagement, a comedy show or a concert at least once a week. It happens with absolutely no regularity. The prospect is about as concerning as having a hang nail.
See [1], [2], & [3] for some examples, all of which involved organized groups doing premeditated actions to stop speech or disrupt a concert, in one case with mass murder. And of course TFA, about the serious premeditated security threats to a famous performer.
It's apparent that we're talking about two different things.
In your anecdata set, a heckler is apparently an over-drunk loud-ass in a comedy club. Sure, that's a "so what?" event.
I'm talking about the much larger issue of actual premeditated and/or organized disruption, which does exist, even though you "have never heard of it".
I'll agree that there are MANY good arguments to regulate and manage use of facial recognition tech, having to do with sound security (vs. security theater), individual rights & avoiding improper discrimination, general human rights privacy protections, and even maintaining normalcy as you noted in kind of an afterthought.
However, your "spontaneity" reasoning is especially weak and unconvincing, despite your apparent feeling that it should trump all others. The ad-blocker comment was specifically a rhetorical analogy and definitely not intended as ad hominem; it is interesting to see that you took it that way (if I wanted to make an ad hominem argument, I'd say that the 'spontaneity' arg sounds like someone from a sheltered background who doesn't get out of their bubble to read news, but I don't bother with ad hominem arguments).
For the "criteria for heckling?" question, I'd refer back to the previous answer, when a known person or group would disrupt an event to the extent that it destroys the spontaneity of the rest of the audience.
Slippery slope? Likely, but there are obviously degrees, and easily recognizable ends where it's appropriate to exclude or not. I think we'd agree that shooting the performer would be very exciting, but quite out of bounds. Wearing a funny hat, as long as it isn't too tall so as to obstruct the view of those behind is in bounds. Stopping the performance, out... Stalking? out...
I'm willing to recognize that there are both valid use cases, and arguments against, and that it needs to be tuned.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/22/manches....
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201....
[3] pretty much any event with Milo Yiannopoulos, some of which have nearly ended in riot. While I object to almost his entire attitude & view set & would likely agree with the protesters, when he's booked in and people want to come see him speak, they want to see him, not the protesters, and it seems to me that he ought to have the right to decide whether he wants them outside or in.
I get why you want to keep out known trouble makers and such from concerts, and why you want to keep stalkers away from your private sphere, but I am not quite sure how obsessively watching the performer at a concert is causing other concert goes any trouble.
>The Orlando Police Department said Loibl had traveled by taxicab to Orlando from his home in St. Petersburg, Florida,[80] bringing two handguns, two extra magazines full of ammunition, and a hunting knife.[d] Orlando Police Chief John Mina stated, "We believe he came here to commit this crime."[82] Loibl did not have an arrest record in his home county and did not appear to know Grimmie personally.[83] Police did not offer a motive,[e] but said Loibl had shown an "unrealistic infatuation" with the singer and tried to make himself more physically attractive through weight loss, hair and eye surgery. Loibl's family said they were not aware of his plans to travel to Orlando nor that he possessed any guns.[78]
"On January 26, 2018, a fan armed with a handgun broke into Turney's and Free's home, breaking a window to enter and firing one round as he did.[38] Turney and Free hid in a closet and called police. When the man could not find the couple, he left but was confronted by police outside. The suspect fired one shot and police returned fire; when officers approached the suspect's vehicle, they found him dead. Whether the suspect's death was from self-inflicted shots or shots fired by police is under investigation. Turney and Free were unharmed during the incident. It has been assessed the suspect had developed an obsession with Turney, and he was attempting to cause harm to Free, against whom he felt resentment.[39] Turney ceased updating her YouTube channel for nearly half a year following the incident, citing concern for her safety in sharing her life with an audience.[40]"
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Turney#Home_Invasion
Someone also fired Bullets through and broke a window of a fairly popular streamer DrDisrespect while he was streaming.
Him: “I’ve sent her a few letters” The cop: “How many is a few?” Him: “A few, not that many” The singer’s bodyguard: “two hundred in the last six months”
Terror is the currency of today.
Fuck, what a mess we are in.
It seems that it's a big problem in US. People in US are scared as nowhere else (even in the zones of open warfare). Cops are killing harmless people being afraid of them, celebrities are afraid of their fans, moms are afraid of this strange-looking guy standing near their children, common people are afraid of a foreigner even though the statistical probability of him being a terrorist going to kill you is three times lower than that of a lightning bolt unexpectedly doing the same.
The more secure and wealthy our world become, the more scared people get. It's pretty the same with the economy. Out ancestors had no toilets in their homes and faced starvation, yet nowadays people feel deprived of wealth as never before.
Oh wait, he doesn’t. Because some crazy fan shot him and he’s been dead for decades.
This is nothing new.
Lennon was killed on the street walking into his apartment building not at a concert. Lennon also lived like a regular New Yorker picking up his own dry cleaning and prescriptions from the drug store on 72nd and Columbus, taking the family to the park across the street etc. You couldn't have chosen a worse person.
>"This is nothing new."
No setting up a "command post" as mentioned in the article, facially ID'ing "fans" and introducing police culture to concert venues is indeed very new and very creepy. It's also about the most un-rock and roll thing I've heard of. Any venue larger than a club has security and metal detector as the door. This is just a self-aggrandizing control freak.
It's when they're announced and surrounded by huge crowds, that's a bigger risk.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-co...
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I agree that celebrities have a smaller chance of random murder, but fans harming celebrities is definitely a quirk of human nature. Beyond the one deaths that make wikipedia, there are plenty of crazies that get caught before being able to act, or the celebrity survives the attack with injuries. X percentage of humans are crazy, and once you have 113.8m instagram followers, that's 1,138 instances of 1 in 100,000 crazy.
I think its technically funny they decided to make that distinction, because like obviously? Although I do see people misinterpreting their rights often times, I guess saying it this way helps steer the discussion
In Finland they are considered public events. The definition is that if you do not need an invitation it is a public event, even if you pay for access.
I guess it's similar thought the EU. The surveillance would violate GDPR as it requires an affirmative action/consent.
Youll have to check the user experience and supporting local legal precedent
I would definitely hire an appropriate lawyer if I wanted to understand the legality of something like this in a given jurisdiction!
Such as overriding default treatment
> Courts tend to look unfavouravly at..
Common practices can successfully shield liability and go unchallenged for a hundred years.
A lot of incorporation strategy and contract law is based around deterrents and cost prohibitiveness of testing them, with a bit of thought into how actual litigation would wind up.
Really the only thing to do if you are curious is to find a good lawyer and get some real advice.
The public event mostly means here that you cannot have alcohol consumption inside except in the super regulated way like in normal restaurants. And regulations that you need X guards per Y visitors and whatnot stuff.
In a true private event you can do whatever. Those are the same as you'd just sit home with your friends.