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> Supermarkets in the UK point cameras at your face at self-checkout. Just want to add, the overhead cameras at checkout are pointed straight down and can read your phone password as you put it in to pull up Apple Pay.
Don't 99% of people just use face or fingerprint unlocking?
They weren't? That's more surprising given the UK surveillance state.
The concept of the UK "surveillance state" is actually quite overcooked. It's largely based on myth and dramatisation. BTP probably have a national live feed of railway station cameras. I bloody hope they do, considering it's a rather small, quite centralised police force that covers an enormous rail network, but they are known to have hired "super-recognisers" — skilled CCTV operators — instead. We have had generati…
The US has none of those laws at the federal level.
Every researcher and product designer who leaned into this just has helped speedrun the world into a nasty place. But I guess I don’t have to type my passcode into my phone anymore!
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Or perhaps facial recognition would leave even less time for decision making. Someone who's face resembles that of a known terrorist was detected entering the station 8 seconds ago. He's carrying a backpack and will be on a crowded platform in 37 seconds time. There are armed police in the ticket hall. What do you do? Only 31 seconds now...
There are armed police in the ticket hall. What do you do? Only 31 seconds now... Is the suspect black? (I'm asking this because there is evidence suggesting current facial recognition technology is less accurate at matching faces from some demographics, including black people. Why, what did you think I meant?)
Just gonna drop this here for no particular reason https://urban-privacy.com/pages/anti-surveillance-clothing
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Do you even have crackheads in London? I was familiar with "crackhead" only as an American concept.
Yes actual crack is pretty popular among that demographic, the UK has a very good relatively low cost supply of cocaine. The classic combo is Afghan buj + crack but synthetic opioids are starting to make an appearance now the CIA isn’t producing heroin anymore. It’s nowhere near as bad as the west coast of the US obviously, that’s a whole other level. I would normally use a different word than crackhead but I thought…
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Oyster is still anonymous, in the sense that no details are required to buy a card, and it can be topped up using cash. The cards can be returned or disposed of as necessary. But as you say, it knows your movements at least in so far as your entry and exit point in the system, with a timestamp, though you can use a separate card for each if you don't mind paying the full fare that gets charged when a journey is 'inco…
you don't even need all of that to track people. there was a bit of a kerfuffle where a dataset that literally only contained the start, end and time, and some deanonymized data of NYC taxi rides was successfully deanonymized and used to track celebrities. Most people have fairly sparse, unique travel patterns, and so armed with only a few known paparazzi photos you could accurately derive their whole travel history.…
It’s a moot point. I’m saddened at the invasion of privacy and the intrusion on an individual’s civil liberties, but anonymous travel on the London Underground died when they made bank cards and contactless the primary way to get through the barriers. I’m not saying that “this doesn’t matter because it’s slightly worse than before”. I’m saying the frog has been boiling for a long time. I don’t want people being surpr…
Though this is true, many supermarkets use this as a scare tactic instead of surveillance. I know a few people who work in supermarkets and when when incidents happen they can't use footage from the self-checkouts because they're not recording.
I do wonder if the cameras exist in the machines so one day they can be recording and performing face recognition however.