only P via 1984

[Brian Kempf]

Disney's controversial "NextGen" initiative goes beyond linking photos to tourists. The company invested $1 billion in essentially a data mining program that, on the visitor's side of things, would (theoretically) allow a projection in a dark ride to have a personal greeting (via RFID) or be used for swipless hotel room entry but was primarily designed to be used to track park visitors, what they're spending money on, what rides they're riding, how long someone is sitting on a bench, etc.

What goes mostly uncommented upon is that Disney World in Florida exists in the Reedy Creek Improvement District, a fully autonomous area of jurisdiction in the state of Florida that the company essentially controls (such as specialized building codes). Disney actually had (and probably still has) the power to build a nuclear power plant on Disney World property and to invoke eminent domain. 

On Aug 16, 2012, at 9:24 PM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:

> When a corporation becomes as large and capitalized as Disney, it can
> seem almost as its own nation, government, society, culture. Disney in
> particular exhibits these characteristics. Think of the technology
> involved in the current level of animation. They should be able to
> produce facial recognition software in-house.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Naomi Wolf ponders the new "totalitarianism of surveillance": A software
>> engineer in my Facebook community wrote recently about his outrage that when
>> he visited Disneyland, and went on a ride, the theme park offered him the
>> photo of himself and his girlfriend to buy – with his credit card
>> information already linked to it. He noted that he had never entered his
>> name or information into anything at the theme park, or indicated that he
>> wanted a photo, or alerted the humans at the ride to who he and his
>> girlfriend were – so, he said, based on his professional experience, the
>> system had to be using facial recognition technology. He had never signed an
>> agreement allowing them to do so, and he declared that this use was illegal.
>> He also claimed that Disney had recently shared data from facial-recognition
>> technology with the United States military.Yes, I know: it sounds like a
>> paranoid rant.