BANGKOK, Thailand (PNN) - October 6, 2020 - A new technology being used in shops in Thailand and other countries to enforce unlawful coronavirus restrictions conducts a face scan to check if the customer is wearing a mask and refuses entry if he/she doesn’t have one.

The system resembles something you’d see as part of airport security. The customer walks up to a screen that displays the words “Face Detector”. The system then scans to check if the customer is wearing a mask before allowing him or her to pass through a barrier.

Many people support the idea, but others warn that this is another example of how people are being forced to accept the “new normal”.

“I wish people would stop championing and normalizing this nonsense,” commented one person. “We will never get back to 2019 normal if we continue down this road. A global overreaction of epic proportions - we’ve been utterly played by the Chinese over this one. I bet they can’t believe it themselves.”

With the world increasingly heading towards a Chinese-style social credit score system, it’s possible that in the longer term, the technology will be used beyond masks to refuse entry to people whose faces have been entered into a database.

It could also be used to enforce myriad other restrictions, such as forcing people to face scan before they use the Internet (already being introduced in China) and refusing access if their social credit score has dropped.

China has already combined its COVID-19 track and trace system with the Communist country’s social credit score program.

In August 2019, the Communist state bragged about how it had prevented 2.5 million “discredited entities” from purchasing plane tickets and 90,000 people from buying high-speed train tickets in the month of July alone.