Australia

We made jokes and memes when the Chinese started doing this and introduced their whole "Social Credit Score" scheme. And a decade later, here we are.

On the one hand, there's a certain attraction to being able to tell someone who deservers it that they can't come into your shops/restaurants/cafes again. Imagine being so obnoxious that you've been banned from Colesworth, Aldi, Bunnings, Maccas - you are prevented from entering any of their stores. As much as we dislike some of these stores' practices, not being able to enter them at all would be a real hassle.

On the other hand, giving employees the power to dispatch that sort of judgement on someone would obviously come at risk of being abused. You'd have people banning their exes, school bullies or for just any random reason.

Supermarkets started with exit gates and bagging-area cameras.

Fun fact: Those gates are decorative. You can just swing them open.

"Are you banned for life from all supermarkets if you walk out with a pack of chewing gum?" he said.

Here's the other side of the coin: I do believe stores should be able to deny people with a history of shoplifting. My concerns with the technology have to do with my privacy - and to the devices being accurate or abused. I don't really have sympathy to people who have genuinely done something to earn a ban. If everyone did the right thing, they wouldn't have any excuse to try introducing this technology in the first place.

But that doesn't mean I want the stores to be able to intrude on my privacy using "safety" as an excuse. I don't trust that safety is the real driving reason behind this technology.