http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/were-watching-malls-track-shoppers-cell-phone-signals-to-gather-marketing-data.ars Seriously? No one bothered by this? No one investigating if this is LEGAL?

Not that bad if you think about it. They can triangulate where people are(though not WHO they are or any other info) by the strength of their cellphone signal...akin to those life signs indicators you get in some games and which is featured in alot of scifi. It just detects where people might be(or where someone left their phone as it only detects the phone itself) so store owners can tell if anyone might be hiding out in the darker corners of their stores to wait to loot after closing or to tell where people are at for other reasons while the store is open for business.

As for the facial recognition......it's no different than stores current practice of putting the name's and pictures of known local shoplifters up in their breakrooms/etc for cashiers to memorize, it's just a bit more hightech and up-to-date is all.

An aside: Did you know that at major football games guards can and often scan for any known wanted criminals through security footage/crowd cam feeds?

It bothers me a little bit, their pushing the line of intrusion but still haven’t cross it yet. I’m not a fan of big government watching your every move but at the same time I understand the problems of shoplifting and crimes. The intentions are good but will the use soon infringe on are rights?

Shoplifting is sure as hell no excuse for such an intrusion. Generally is survialance no use against most crimes, the UK can sing a song about that.

Techonlogy as above is far more interesting for market research. And those "paypack" cards or the data drawn from your CC cards is a lot more problematic.

I didn’t mean to apply that preventing shoplifting justifies intrusion on people rights. I was just stating the store owners are trying to find ways to stop such acts. What you said is true for the time being. I just think we need to keep are eye on what their doing because there is a potential to abuses such a system.

Watch George Carlin. The gov't is already in every aspect of our lives and knows more than you think. As such nothing worse can be done(covertly and with current tech they have) so why even bother worrying/caring?

They will have to go a lot farther than this before I start worrying. Stores already have cameras pointing everywhere. This isn't invading your privacy any more than a security guy looking at you through one of those. Actually I think I rather prefer it. Now security guy doesn't have to try to watch everyone. He only needs to look at the ones the computer decides are suspicious.