BY MATT O’BRIEN

BOSTON (AP) — Concert promoters in the U.S. are stepping back from plans to scan festivalgoers with facial recognition technology, after musicians and others gave it some serious side-eye.

Although it remains entirely possible that music venues will eventually take a second look at the controversial technology.

Live-entertainment giants AEG Presents and Live Nation both recently disavowed any plans to use facial recognition at music festivals, despite earlier indications to the contrary. Their public pronouncements have led a group of musicians to declare victory after a months-long campaign to halt the technology’s use at live shows.

Advances in computer vision have enabled businesses to install cameras that can recognize individuals by their face or other biometric characteristics. Venue operators have talked about using the technology at gateways to secure entry for select groups or to offer perks for repeat customers.

Privacy advocates worry that such uses might also pave the way for greater intrusions, such as scanning audience members in real time to analyze their behavior.

Both concert organizations seemed to be edging toward remembering more faces. In May 2018, for instance, Live Nation Entertainment subsidiary Ticketmaster announced it was partnering with and investing in Texas facial recognition startup Blink Identity, saying in a note to shareholders that the technology will enable music fans to associate their digital ticket with their image and “then just walk into the show.”

AEG, which operates the Coachella festival in southern California and other major events, updated its online privacy policy earlier this year with language stating that it may collect facial images at its events and venues for “access control,” creating aggregate data or for “personalization” — a term commonly used by retailers trying to tailor advertising or promotions based to a specific customer’s behavior.

Now, however, both organizations have done an about-face. AEG’s chief operating officer for festivals, Melissa Ormond, emailed activists earlier this month to say: “AEG festivals do not use facial recognition technology and do not have plans to implement.” AEG confirmed that statement this week but declined further comment.

Live Nation said in a statement that “we do not currently have plans to deploy facial recognition technology at our clients’ venues.” The company insisted that any future use would be “strictly opt-in,” so that non-consenting fans won’t have to worry about potentially facing the music.

Facial recognition isn’t seen in many musical venues. The biggest location known to employ it is New York City’s Madison Square Garden, which confirmed this week that facial recognition is one of the security measures it uses “to ensure the safety of everyone” in the arena. It declined to say what it looks at and why. The New York Times first reported its use last year.

While the music industry paused, Major League Baseball stole a base by rolling out biometric ticketing in the U.S., usually involving fingerprints or iris scans to get into ballparks. Authorities in some parts of Europe have bounced around the idea of using either facial or voice recognition to keep tabs on unruly soccer fans, such as those participating in racist chants. Police agencies in China have used facial recognition at concerts featuring pop singer Jacky Cheung to identify and arrest people wanted as criminal suspects.

American music event promoters this fall have been pressured to disclose their facial recognition plans by digital rights group Fight for the Future, which asked dozens of festival organizers to pledge not to use a technology it describes as invasive and racially biased.

Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello co-authored an opinion column in BuzzFeed last week that described the pledge as the “first major blow to the spread of commercial facial recognition in the United States.”

The CEO of Blink Identity says opposition to its Ticketmaster partnership is misguided.

“They’re talking about mass surveillance,” said Mary Haskett, who co-founded the Austin, Texas startup. “We’re against mass surveillance…. Nobody’s talking about doing what they’re protesting against.”

Haskett said Blink’s system allows concertgoers to opt in by taking selfies with their phones, which the company transforms into mathematical representations and deletes. The system might offer access to a shorter line or a VIP section.

But protesting musicians fear their fans’ mugshots could still end up in the hands of law enforcement or immigration authorities.

“Of course it’s going to be used by security,” said Joey La Neve DeFrancesco, a guitarist for Rhode Island punk band Downtown Boys, which played Coachella in 2017. “Of course it’s going to be used by law enforcement.”

Punk rockers aren’t the only ones fixing the technology with a death stare. A June survey by the Pew Research Center found that while people are generally accepting of facial recognition used by police, only 36% said they trust tech companies to deploy it responsibly. Just 18% trust advertisers.

By DEB RIECHMANN and AAMER MADHANI

WASHINGTON (AP) — The helicopters flew low and fast into the night, ferrying U.S. special forces to a compound where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hiding in Syria. Half a world away, President Donald Trump watched the raid in real time via a video link as troops blasted into the hideout and sent the most-wanted militant running the last steps of his life.

The daring raid was the culmination of years of steady intelligence-gathering work — and 48 hours of hurry-up planning once Washington got word that al-Baghdadi would be at a compound in northwestern Syria.

The night unfolded with methodical precision and unexpected turns. This reconstruction is based on the first-blush accounts of Trump and other administration officials eager to share the details of how the U.S. snared its top target, as well observations from startled villagers who had no idea al-Baghdadi was in their midst.

Events developed quickly once the White House learned on Thursday there was “a high probability” that al-Baghdadi would be at an Idlib province compound.

By Friday, Trump had military options on his desk.

By Saturday morning, the administration at last had “actionable intelligence” it could exploit.

There was no hint of that interior drama as Trump headed to Camp David on Friday night to celebrate the 10th wedding anniversary of daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Then he was off to Virginia on a brisk fall Saturday for a round at one of his golf courses.

He teed off with Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, in town for the World Series, and Sens. Lindsey Graham and David Perdue.

Trump got back to the White House at 4:18 p.m. By 5 p.m., he was in a suit in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing to monitor the raid. One official said they monitored the operation with real-time imagery, but Trump’s vivid description of al-Baghdadi’s final moments was based on conversations with military commanders.

They named it after Kayla Mueller, an American humanitarian worker abused and killed by al-Baghdadi.

The rest of Washington had its focus on Game 4 of the World Series about to get underway a few miles away at Nationals Park.

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PANIC THEN DEATH

Moments after the White House team had gathered, U.S. aircraft, mostly twin-rotor CH-47 helicopters, took off from Al-Asad air base in western Iraq.

Within hours, al-Baghdadi was dead.

The first inkling that something was afoot came when villagers saw helicopters swooping low on the horizon.

“We went out in the balcony to see and they started shooting, with automatic rifles. So we went inside and hid,” said an unidentified villager. Next came a large explosion — Trump said soldiers blasted a hole in the side of a building because they feared the entrance might have been booby-trapped. Al-Baghdadi fled into a network of underground bunkers and tunnels that snaked through the compound.

The stout, bearded militant leader wore a suicide vest and dragged along three children as he fled from the American troops.

Trump, happy to play up the drama, said that as U.S. troops and their dogs closed in, the militant went “whimpering and crying and screaming all the way” to his death.

“He reached the end of the tunnel, as our dogs chased him down,” Trump said. “He ignited his vest, killing himself and the three children.”

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‘IT WAS HIM’

Al-Baghdadi’s body was mutilated in the blast, and the tunnel caved in on him. To get to his corpse, troops had to dig through debris.

“There wasn’t much left,” Trump said, “but there are still substantial pieces that they brought back.”

That’s when the military raid turned into a forensics operation — and the special forces had come prepared.

They had brought along samples of al-Baghdadi’s DNA.

The soldiers who conducted the raid thought the man who fled looked like al-Baghdadi, but that wasn’t enough. Various accounts had heralded his death in the past, only for him to surface yet again.

This time there could be no doubt.

Lab technicians conducted an onsite DNA test to make sure and within 15 minutes of his death, positively identified the target.

“It was him,” Trump said.

Al-Baghdadi’s body wasn’t all they retrieved.

Trump said U.S. troops remained in the compound for about two hours after al-Baghdadi’s death and recovered highly sensitive material about the Islamic State group, including information about its future plans.

After the American troops retreated, U.S. fighter jets fired six rockets at the house, leveling it.

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THE BIG TEASE

Trump was so excited he couldn’t contain himself.

He hinted of the successful military operation late Saturday by tweeting obliquely that “something very big has just happened!” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley announced the president would make a “major statement” Sunday morning.

That sent reporters in Washington and the Middle East scrambling, and news organizations soon confirmed that U.S. forces believed they had killed America’s most-wanted man.

It was a measure of the strained atmosphere in Washington that two top Democrats — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, who heads the House intelligence committee — didn’t get a heads-up from Trump about the operation.

Trump didn’t trust them to keep it secret.

“Washington is a leaking machine,” Trump said. In this case, he said, “there were no leaks, no nothing. The only people that knew were the few people that I dealt with.”

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THE REVEAL: ‘THE BIGGEST’

Trump chose the Diplomatic Room to make his big announcement on Sunday.

In announcing al-Baghdadi’s death, he leaned into comparing the successful operation with the 2011 mission to kill 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

While bin Laden orchestrated the deadliest militant attack in U.S. history, the killing of al-Baghdadi — who helped the IS group at its height control more than 34,000 square miles of territory in Iraq and Syria — was “the biggest there is,” Trump said.

Reveling in the moment, Trump spent more than 45 minutes speaking and taking questions about the raid.

By late Sunday afternoon, Trump’s reelection campaign was ready to turn the raid into political capital. It sent a text to supporters that said, “Trump has brought the #1 terrorist leader to justice-he’s KEEPING AMERICA SAFE.”

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Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Zeke Miller and Nancy Benac in Washington contributed to this report.