100 Musicians Including Morello And De La Rocha Boycott Venues That Use Face Scan Technology

Zack De La Rocha (Instagram @rageagainstthemachin)

JAKARTA - More than 100 musicians, including Tom Morello and Zack De La Rocha, boycotted the venue using facial scanning technology.

The boycott was initiated by the digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, and called for a ban on facial scanning technology at all live music events.

Artists who have signed the pledge include Boots Riley, Wheatus, Anti-Flag, Urban Boys, and more than 80 other artists.

A number of smaller independent venues in the US such as the House of Yes in Brooklyn, Lyric Hyperion in Los Angeles, and the Black Cat in DC, also promised not to use facial recognition technology in their performances.

The surveillance technology company used biometric data tools as 'innovative' and helped to improve efficiency and security, saidSUdvi Nashashibi, a campaigner at Fight for the Future, in an official statement.

"This is not only wrong, but also morally damaging," he continued

For starters, this technology is so inaccurate that it actually creates more losses and problems than solving them, through misidentification and other technical errors.

"However, what's more frightening is the world where all facial recognition technologies work 100 percent perfectly in other words, a world where privacy doesn't exist, where we are identified, and supervised wherever we go.

The campaign began after it was revealed that Madison Square Garden used facial recognition technology to get rid of lawyers who were in the process of suing them from a number of events.

"This invasive biometric surveillance is unsafe, especially for black and brown people who have been wrongly arrested or expelled from public places for discrimination by technology," the pledge reads.

In recent years, the coalition of musicians, fans and human rights groups has managed to get more than 40 of the world's largest music festivals, including Bonnaroo and Coachella, to say they will not use facial recognition in their events," the promise continued.

"But now this technology is starting to spread - not only as a means of surveillance, but also as a form of ticket and payment of 'without paper'."

In 2018, it was reported that Live Nation Entertainment the parent company of Ticketmaster partnered with a company called Blink Identity. The Austin-based startup Texas "has cutting-edge facial recognition technology, allows you to connect your digital tickets with your images, then go straight to the show," Live Nation president/ CEO Michael Rapino told investors at the time.

Resigning to May, police have been criticized for using direct facial recognition at Cardiff during the Beyoncé concert.