This is not directly a story about religion and law, though it would not surprise me to hear of a few lawsuits filed that are related to the technology being used in churches.
A new facial-recognition technology by Face-six has been installed by a number of churches around the world. The technology uses security camera footage at the churches to compare faces with a database of the members’ faces (99% accuracy, says the company.
Face-six CEO says:
Event attendance stats help the church to measure the success of each event, see what event types are more popular than others and also track the attendance of specific members.
Churches can check attendance at specific events to see who they are popular with, check gender ratios, or find out when elderly members are not present and check up on them.
Those who know me know I love technology, but I am not so sure about this. Leaving aside how any of us might feel about tracking technology, there is a deeper theological and ecclesiastical problem, in my opinion. While knowing if elderly members might have a problem, shouldn’t there be people in the congregation who are close enough to them to know they are absent and call? Rather than a notice coming up on a computer so that a church staff member could call them?
More troubling is the CEO’s words about “success” and “popular.” While it is the duty of ministers and pastors to make sure they do not bore their flock to death, a church is not selling a product, and the gospel message will not always be popular or well-receive. (See “Jesus,” “Paul,” and “Roman Colosseum.”
What do you think? What would you think about your church installing this system?