Public records and a 2019 version of its user guide show just how invasive AnyVision's facial recognition software can be; AnyVision's customers include schools
One school using the software saw that a student's face was captured more than 1,000 times during the week Tweets: @evan_greer , @evan_greer , @jessedamiani , @themarkup , and @alfredwkng Tweets: Evan Greer / @evan_greer : I've been warning for a few years that one of the nightmare scenarios with facial recognition is if retail stores start using it to just ban people with prior convictions, amplifying existing discrimination. Now a grocery chain in Spain is doing just that https://themarkup.org/... Evan Greer / @evan_greer : Companies like AnyVision would love to see facial recognition “regulations” so that they can continue selling this invasive, racist, dangerous software to anyone who will buy it while washing their hands of the results by saying “well they complied with all the laws” Ban it. https://twitter.com/... Jesse Damiani / @jessedamiani : “'Overall, we had over 164,000 detections the last 7 days running the pilot. We were able to detect students on multiple cameras and even detected one student 1100 times!' Taylor May, then a regional sales manager for AnyVision, said in an email” https://themarkup.org/... @themarkup : NEW: We reviewed hundreds of exchanges between a Texas school district and a facial recognition firm it bought software from. The software detected faces more than 164,000 times during the school's weeklong pilot period. https://themarkup.org/... @alfredwkng : New: Facial recognition firm AnyVision boasts hundreds of customers, including in schools, stores like Macy's, airports and stadiums. We reviewed public records, including a 2019 version of its user guide, which showed just how much people are tracked: https://themarkup.org/... Expand More For Next Unexpand More For Next
Context & Ripple Effects
TheMarkup's findings land on a market that security contractors have spent years cultivating: since at least 2018, vendors have been pitching unproven facial recognition to US schools terrified of shootings (as the Washington Post documented), with New York's Lockport City district an early adopter of a combined face-and-gun detection system. What is new here is the scale of capture inside a single deployment — public records and a 2019 user guide show AnyVision's software detected faces more than 164,000 times during a weeklong Texas school-district pilot, flagging one student roughly 1,100 times.
AnyVision is not a niche case: it claims hundreds of customers spanning schools, Macy's, airports, and stadiums, putting the same invasive capability across retail and public venues. That mirrors the trajectory privacy advocates like Evan Greer have tracked — from retail deployments against shoplifters with no legal restrictions on abuse toward outright exclusion, such as the Spanish grocery chain reportedly using facial recognition to bar people with prior convictions.
First-order effects
- Students in districts running AnyVision pilots are being biometrically surveilled at extraordinary frequency — over 164,000 detections in one Texas district's pilot week — under systems marketed as safety tools rather than tracking infrastructure.
- AnyVision's broad customer base — schools, Macy's, airports, stadiums — now carries documented evidence of invasiveness, raising immediate scrutiny for every venue deploying it.
Second-order effects
- Retail customers face a fork: keep the technology as loss-prevention or follow the pattern advocates warn about — using it to exclude people, as the Spanish grocery chain does with prior convictions — which converts a shoplifting tool into a discrimination amplifier.
- Vendors in adjacent surveillance niches, including image-scraping operators like Clearview AI already used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies, can expect the same records-based accountability reporting to extend to their deployments.
Third-order effects
- With CNET having flagged years ago that US retail facial recognition operates with essentially no legal restrictions, sustained documentation of school and store deployments builds the evidentiary base for regulation — the outcome companies like AnyVision have openly lobbied to shape rather than ban.
- If schools remain the proving ground, the industry structure consolidates around a few multi-vertical vendors selling the same identification stack to education, retail, and venues — making procurement decisions by individual districts a de facto policy choice for entire communities.
The trend: Facial recognition is migrating from law enforcement into schools and storefronts faster than legal restrictions are being written, leaving deployment volume — not consent — as the de facto standard.