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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

#281

Post by developer2 »

e12e wrote: post #171
pavement wrote: post #40

Okay, time to start wearing ski masks and Santa Claus costumes in public at all times.

Bring out the ugly t-shirts! (see: http://jesse-pearson.com/interviews/william-gibson/ from: "(..) What’s interesting with regards to the book while thinking of this stuff is that the garment that sort of helps to save the day is a t-shirt. You call it the ugliest t-shirt in the world." for some expansion on the reference.)

If you're talking about shirts with faces on them, those won't work whatsoever. Even if there is evidence that it appears to work right now, it's an entirely solvable problem today, with very little effort required.

a) You're assuming that the AI is looking to find the first face it sees, rather than all faces in view - both your shirt and your real face will be picked up as two separate individuals. Even if it's "one face at a time", why would you assume the shirt gets picked up instead of your face?

b) It really would not be difficult teach a neural net to detect one real face located above a face on a shirt, and ignore the lower one. The only potential false positives would happen with a taller individual walking with a shorter person in front of them, whereby the shorter person may be filtered out as a shirt.

So no, shirts with faces on them are not a countermeasure. You're adding additional noise, but you're not eliminating your own face from being picked up as well.

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

#282

Post by bigbugbag »

nkkollaw wrote: post #175
e12e wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure my 300 friends have given fb more data about me, than I have. [ed: and that doesn't even interlude the tracking from "like"-buttons etc]

Sure, but you can choose not to be on Facebook.

Which is not enough to not be on facebook or even preventing facebook from profiling you.

I've chosen to not be on facebook and I've been shown an account in my name made by someone else, pictures where I'm tagged, public posts and comments mentioning me, private message mentioning me.

This is the tip of the iceberg, I have not been shown the facial features facebook has associated to me, the "social graph" they have linked to me and countless other internal facebook stuff the general public is supposed to not know about.

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

#283

Post by thunder-ltu »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #85
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...

The future was here in 1995.... I worked for the U.S. Postal service for a time doing data entry (here as a matter of fact... http://www.sltrib.com/news/3445651-155/the-first-and-last-of... ). That job measured the number of keystrokes per hour of each employee. You had to maintain a 10,000 keystrokes per hour minimum data entry rate, they also spot checked for accuracy. Capturing the data you were suppose to enter (…

This is a very sad sad life people agree to :(

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

#284

Post by smoyer »

_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…

Fearful with my glasses on and angry with them off - I'm sitting here while my morning coffee is steeping so I was expecting sleepy!

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

#285

Post by gedrap »

To be honest, I am fairly surprised at the reaction here on HN. It's not really surprising to see such system, it would be more surprising if such system did not exist because offline ads is a huge business and the technology is here. This goes together with conversion tracking at physical shops, etc.

I am equally surprised by the comments about how come engineers implement such systems, how they find it ethical, etc. I'm sorry, but it sounds just a bit out of touch with the real world, or just outside of HN bubble. Given the things that money motivates people to do, it's probably one of the least unethical things that has been done.

I am not judging that this is right or wrong, I am simply stating the fact that nothing about this should be surprising. Yes, this is slightly sad, but that's simply the reality of technological advancement. It's not really possible to expect the rest of the world to use the technology only for things considered 'right', etc.

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

#286

Post by TeMPOraL »

gedrap wrote: post #285

To be honest, I am fairly surprised at the reaction here on HN. It's not really surprising to see such system, it would be more surprising if such system did not exist because offline ads is a huge business and the technology is here. This goes together with conversion tracking at physical shops, etc. I am equally surprised by the comments about how come engineers implement such systems, how they find it ethical, etc…

Well, nothing here is surprising beyond maybe the scale of things (if a random pizza joint now uses facial recognition in ads, who else is using them?). But those things still need to be called out and opposed, because peer pressure is an important part of morality in society. People are social animals, and are less likely to do things that are disliked by their friends.

Looking at things from a little distance, the whole thing is abhorrent, and paints a really sad state of our society. I wrote this many times, and will keep writing it: if you did the same things personally to your friend that people in advertising industry do to everyone, you'd most likely get punched in the face. And yet somehow marketing became a respectable occupation.

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

#287

Post by jstanley »

gedrap wrote: post #285

To be honest, I am fairly surprised at the reaction here on HN. It's not really surprising to see such system, it would be more surprising if such system did not exist because offline ads is a huge business and the technology is here. This goes together with conversion tracking at physical shops, etc. I am equally surprised by the comments about how come engineers implement such systems, how they find it ethical, etc…

It's not surprising that it's possible. It's surprising that it's already happening.

It feels straight out of Black Mirror.

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

#288

Post by Shivetya »

_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 will be honest, I have no real problems with this. Then again I enjoyed some of the concepts for advertising shown in Minority Report which did feature ads which could identify you.

the idea of collecting who looked at your display is invaluable. It would be beneficial for both government and ad agency. Ad agency is obvious but government could learn if displays present information people want and it was presented in a manner to catch their attention. The negative aspects of government use could be limited through privacy laws and such.

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

#289

Post by TeMPOraL »

deadbunny wrote: post #265
mattcoles wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel it was ethical to work on that?

Not GP but I've worked in a similar industry. For me I knew how our data was anonymized. So while our system would be able to say "I have seen person 1234 at locations 4,7,9,11 on dates x,y,x" we had absolutely no way of knowing who 1234 was or anything about them, even the unique identifier was just a hash. Obviously it depends on how much data you collect/store, personally I don't think the things shown in OP are a…

A friendly reminder that there's no such thing as "anonymized data", there's only "anonymized until combined with other data sets".

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

#290

Post by TeMPOraL »

glubGlub wrote: post #266
hawski wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would putting my newly bought shoes into a microwave be a good countermeasure?

Next month: new shoe regulations require the use of materials that melt or burn when microwaved.

Nah, they won't need to push that hard. "Warranty void when microwaved" will most likely be enough.
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