Simplicam brings face recognition to home video monitoring, cool or scary?

Security is very much in the news these days, with government surveillance, hacks and the like. However, what about video cameras that can recognize you simply by recording your face? Yes, that technology is also available, it's one of the things that scares people about Google Glass, The technology is there, so folks might as well get used to it.

Simplicam is debuting a home monitoring camera with built in facial recognition at the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. But it also goes a step further, telling the user who is at home.

"Setting the stage for a completely connected home, simplicam is the first and only home monitoring Wi-Fi video camera with both Face Detection and Face Recognition capabilities, enabling unprecedented privacy features such as choosing to automatically delete footage if a specific person is recognized, and the ability to set alerts only if an unrecognized person is in the home", the announcement reads.

The technology goes a step more -- the company plans to add zones, allowing the user to not only recognize the person, but determine where in the home he or she is. Detection Zones will be coming later this month.

Customers can register and store as many as ten people, giving ample latitude for knowing what is going on in the home. It also promises a quick setup process for all of this -- two minutes is the claim.

"ArcSoft is a pioneer in Face Detection and Face Recognition technology, and we are excited to bring this expertise to the connected home. When we released simplicam powered by Closeli earlier this year, we got invaluable feedback from customers and press. Now, new and current users can provide us with feedback directly from within the Closeli app that may be incorporated into the product", said Caroline Tien-Spalding, Senior Director of Marketing, ArcSoft.

All of this will be available in beta right away, though the final product is a bit further off. The Closeli camera sells for $149 and you'll have an out-of-pocket bill of $4.99 per month for the monitoring. The pricing isn't bad given what it can do. The question is, do you trust this technology?