How do you get Minority Report-style invasive biometric security ingrained in society? Tie the technology to something millions can’t do without-like cigarettes-and you’re on your Orwellian way!

Japanese company Fujitaka is planning to roll out face recognition cigarette vending machines designed to prevent smokers under the legal age of 20 from purchasing the products.

The system will compare the facial characteristics of the would-be customer such as wrinkles, bone structure and skin sags to a database of over 100,000 faces in order to determine if the person is of legal smoking age. The idea sounds a bit ridiculous, especially in light of the fact that smoking is known to prematurely age the skin, thus an underage heavy smoker might actually have enough facial wrinkles and sags to beat the machine at its own game. But as ridiculous as this might sound, don’t be surprised is this is a look at the future of identity/legal age checks.

Via Reuters