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A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

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Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#251

Post by _-_T_-_ »

(Supposedly) Lee Gambles comment on Reddit -

"Hi. I am the original taker of the photo. There is a screen that normally shows peppes pizza advertisements in front of peppes pizza in Oslo S. The advertisements had crashed revealing what was running underneath the ads. As I approached the screen to take a picture, the screen began scrolling with my generic information - That I am young male (sorry my profile picture was misleading, not a woman), wearing glasses, where I was looking, and if I was smiling and how much I was smiling. The intention behind my original post on facebook was merely to point out that people may not know that these sort of demographics are being collected about them merely by approaching and looking at an advertisement. the camera was not, at a glance, evident. It was merely meant as informational, maybe to point out what we all know or suspect anyway, but just to put it out in the open. I believe the only intent behind the data collected is engagement and demographic statistics for better targeted advertisements."

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/norge/comments/67jox4/denne_kr%C3%A...

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#252

Post by bigbugbag »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #84
colmvp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. And when you consider that research is improving on the topic of guessing someones race, age, gender, emotion via facial video/stills, as well as identifying other quasi-unique features such as gestures, gait, and facial expressions, well... it seems like it'd be hard to evade advanced ad or government tracking.

It really annoys me that these are deployed in public spaces where you essentially can't opt-out or fight the tracking like you can online (ad blockers, script execution control etc).

IIRC this was something Cory Doctorow addressed in a talk or book, right now we can do something in the digital online realm, but as soon as this hits public space we're fucked and it had already started at the time.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#253

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ioquatix wrote: post #83
paulcole wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is here: "WorkSmart can track workers' keystroke activity and take webcam images to ensure they're doing their jobs." http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2017/05/j...

We used to do this in a school - it wasn't creepy - hear me out: We had labs of iMacs and if anything happened to a machine, kids would (more often than not) just yank the power cord. Occasionally this would foobar the machine entirely and create unnecessary work. We couldn't catch the culprits. So, if the machine managed to boot up successfully, after an unexpected power loss, we would take a photo using the built i…

There was a minor scandal a few years ago when a school was sending laptops home with kids and randomly snapping photos via the webcam for similar reasons

I think this is the original story, you can follow the "related stories" links at the bottom to see how it developed:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/02/school-under-fir...

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#254

Post by ffriend »

bigbugbag wrote: post #217
abalone wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ethics are simple: If you don't get opt-in consent, many subjects are going to feel violated. Even if you assure them you anonymize the data. It's not enough to put a warning next to the camera because you've already captured them at that point and it's too late. If anywhere it would need to be at the entrance to the store. But guess what? Customers HATE this stuff. The backlash and lost business is not worth it.…

If a store has a warning at the door that this happens inside, it's good because now I can avoid getting inside the store and silently hate and boycott the brand. If a store has a warning label on the device engaging in this, it's bad because it's too late for not entering the store. I'm gonna complain right now at the store manager, maybe call the cops or sue. I'll be vocal about actively hating the store, the brand…

Thanks for the detailed comment. Couple clarifying questions if you don't mind:

- do you know that loyalty cards are often used in stores to collect customer data (a kind of offline cookie)? do you consider it a bad/dangerous/unethical or does it sound ok for you?

- if instead of a camera there was a person looking at customers and recording his observation, would you feel bad about it?

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#255

Post by tluyben2 »

_kb wrote: post #15

You'd be surprised / scared / outraged if you knew how common this is. Any time you've been in a public place for the past few years, you've likely been watched, analysed and optimised for. Advertising in the physical world is just as scummy as it's online equivalent. Check out the video here http://sightcorp.com/ for an ultra creepy overview. You can even try their live demo: https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basi…

I take my glasses off, but with exactly the same expression and position; 15 years younger, suddenly a lot African(?) and very happy.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#256

Post by ianai »

arximboldi wrote: post #249
ffriend wrote: post #208

As someone working on a similar project (specifically, emotion recognition) I'm highly interested to hear how such a product should look like to be not considered unethical. So far from the comments I see that: - it should be made clear that you are being analyzed e.g. by big yellow sticker near the camera - no raw data should be stored - it should be used to collect statistics, not identify individuals (?) Is it suf…

The only ethical possibility in my view is for it to not exist. I don't like having my emotions manipulated to make me buy more stuff, regardless of whether I am anonymized or not. But then again, I think similarly of a lot of the non-targeted advertising; the recognition just add whole new level of disgusting.

It feels both like an invasion of privacy and unhelpful beyond a point. I don't see the benefit rising above the societal cost.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#257

Post by bigbugbag »

convolvatron wrote: post #55
avg_dev wrote: post #2

Well, that's disturbing. I bet we'll see much more of this in the coming days.

can you imagine a world where automatic identification/classification, tracking, and targeting would decrease? seems like you would either need a collapse of the economy to such a degree that cameras and computers aren't affordable...or some kind of extremely aggressive regulation. i can't see how the latter would ever come about or be effective.

> i can't see how the latter would ever come about or be effective.

Try picturing a future where having access to clean drinking water is a privilege that only some have, with no cheap energy available and unstable climate. This is the future we built for ourselves and admittedly internet and computer are useless when you don't have electricity.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#258

Post by funnyfacts365 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #25
tyingq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that haven't seen it, here's the scene where all the digital signage knows who John Anderton is: https://youtu.be/7bXJ_obaiYQ The movie was released in 2002, so fairly prescient.

I thought of the film as well. I think we should remember that for all the cool cars in the setting, it was meant to be dystopian.

Dystopian? I think it was meant to desensitize people to the point of acceptance.

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#259

Post by daemin »

lucaspiller wrote: post #191
adenner wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the credit card terminal will ask especially at gas pumps for my zip code as an anti fraud measure, and will reject the transaction of you enter the wrong number. If a cashier is asking I always use 90210.

I had same issue when visiting the US. I tried some fake numbers but it wouldn't accept it (my actual postal code has letters, so that wasn't possible), so I just ended up paying by cash.

Post codes in Australia are just 4 numbers, so when buying subway tickets in NYC, I just put in 10000 or something (I believe that's close enough to the local code?).

Re: A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system

#260

Post by pbhjpbhj »

applecrazy wrote: post #132
nateberkopec wrote: post #16

I saw a pitch for this tech 5 years ago. Not sure the name of the company. The idea is they can measure engagement (how long you looked), approximate age and sex. Five years ago it didn't seem so sinister. A lot has happened since then, I guess.

I guess public perception of the technology is based on how "creepy" (read: accurate) it is.

So they show erratic data on screen, preferably flattering (eg younger, happier) or just obviously wrong and record the real data on the back-end. Instant public acceptance without even writing big numbers on a red bus.
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