Computer vision and facial recognition is available now and is only getting better.
Crime
Imagine a fleet of bird size drones available to local police departments that can be dispatched immediately in response to an emergency call. They can have suspect images uploaded in flight and programmed to find the suspect given his last known location. Yikes. I see no reason this can't be done now. Why isn't it being done ?
Alternately the drone swarm could be dispatched to a location and just used for broad surveillance to gather information at a potential crime scene or high crime area. Imagine a thousand different high resolution videos of a crime. With that kind of data there should be little doubt about guilt or innocence.
I can also imagine having facial recognition cameras at the entry to future grocery stores to spot known criminals potentially up to no good. Nice. If I owned a store I know I would like to know when shady characters entered my store so I could keep a closer eye on them.
Facial recognition is now being added to home security cameras. It seems just a matter of time until these are connected to crime databases such that home break-ins can accurately ID the offending person. This should bring down crime rates, but criminals may also get smarter and start wearing masks.
Military
Similarly imagine the military having a swarm of a thousand drones to look for a terrorist after a recent sighting. Facial recognition would prevent them from ever stepping outside.
So if you're a member of an old school hard religion that believes in chopping off the heads of anyone that says something you don't like it might be time to rethink your beliefs...
