A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system • Hacker News Board

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

#511

Post by Retra » Fri, May 12, 2017, 2:38 AM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #435

throwaway91111 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, i'd give away a lot of information for a candy bar. I get nothing from ads; they lower the quality of everyone's life.

Often, you're more-or-less getting the content surrounding the ads from the ads, albeit indirectly. My local gas station upgraded its pumps recently to allow it to play video ads on the screen used to do the credit card transaction. I don't doubt it's partially the reason that gas station is still operational when similar non-franchises vendors in town have gone under.

There's no real reason to believe that, though. If someone has a space for an ad, why wouldn't they sell it, even if they don't need it to produce the content? This is one of the problems with profit-maximization: it means every avenue of efficient revenue generation should be exploited whether it's needed or welcomed or not.

Even the pay-for-no ads model doesn't hold up, because if you pay for content, why wouldn't they just double-collect and make you pay for ads served with the content? I purchased my phone and my phone service, but I still get ads in my notifications. Because I didn't pay "enough" to avoid it.

It's like paying off a blackmail ransom. You give them $100 and they come back next week and say "how about another $100?"

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

#512

Post by Retra » Fri, May 12, 2017, 4:13 AM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #462

iamnothere wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are applying binary "all or nothing" logic to the real world, which contains many more shades of grey. It is true that technology (both social and digital) continues to progress, and that the genie can't be put back in the bottle once it escapes. However, you don't have to put it back in the bottle. Speed limits don't stop speeding, and laws against murder don't stop homicide. The legal and regulatory system exis…

I don't think that either, because I correctly recognize that in public, you do not have privacy, either de jure or de facto. Especially if you're not even wearing a burqa, which would today at least give you de jure privacy because it demonstrates intent. I'm sure that in the future, we will also create cheaply available opaque faraday cages that you can roll around in if you wish. And that most people will not care…

You do have privacy in public. Both the de jure "reasonable expectation of privacy" and the de facto privacies of anonymity, free association, and predictable rules of social engagement.

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

#513

Post by thatwebdude » Fri, May 12, 2017, 4:43 AM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #473

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that work for him for things that do credit checks?

He's been dead for 10 years, but he didn't use it for those. As I remember it, in the 80s-90s it was more common for SSNs to be requested for normal consumer things.

!!!!!!! Can't wait for those numbers to leak out!

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

#514

Post by abalone » Fri, May 12, 2017, 4:55 AM UTC

ffriend wrote: post #487

discreteevent wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the parent commenter but: - 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? Yes I do know that loyalty cards are used to collect data. I think most people do. I don't take loyalty cards for this reason and I'm glad that they are opt in although there is some financial pressure…

> I would feel bad about it and I think the person should ask my permission first. But if that person just memorizes customer reactions to understand how people on average react to particular products or actions, that's ok, right? Because this is what sellers and business owners do to improve their product. So is it about human-to-human interaction or some more subtle detail? I'm biased here, so sorry if I miss somet…

It's not subtle. If there was an employee standing next to you or following you around the store with a clipboard taking notes on you and your facial expressions, only then would you have something approaching an apples to apples comparison. Stop pretending that's normally "what sellers and owners do" and you're just automating it. Customers Do Not Want.

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

#515

Post by Kliment » Fri, May 12, 2017, 6:17 AM UTC

alanfalcon wrote: post #509

Kliment wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 100% guarantees I'll never complete a purchase with you, and I'll warn others to avoid you too.

But for every you, there's ten people who complete their purchase using the code they received, and my boss makes more money and I keep my job. Until and unless those ratios reverse, it's going to be that way and you'll have fewer and fewer places to shop. (I'd happily make the case to my boss that he makes more money without retargeting tactics like this if such were the truth.)

I'm okay with that. I find your practices disgusting but I'm not in a position to be telling your customers what they should be choosing. So all I can do is vote against it with my money and reward shops that don't do evil. There's very few things that I need badly enough to put up with that crap.

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

#516

Post by dwaltrip » Fri, May 12, 2017, 6:20 AM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #382

baldfat wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still a BIG ethical issue for some people. Myself I see this as just the natural progression we are headed. If we don't have rules about this kind of technology it will very much be "Minority Report" in a decade.

How is it an ethical issue for strangers to look at your face when you are out in public?

This is a gross mischaracterization of the issue. You aren't looking at the bigger picture.

Do we really want to commodotize the simple act of walking down the boulevard? Make every moment in public space (and private digital space!) sliced, diced, and scrutinized by God knows how many data munchers, middlemen, analytics brokers, and ethically challenged people in order compel as much thoughtless consumer spending as possible, long term consequences be damned? Allow incredibly detailed profiles to be built up on every person, spanning the decades of their life? And of course, there is always the danger of governments co-opting and abusing this information years or decades in the future, after adminstrations have come and gone, and laws have been overturned, drastically altered, or ignored. As the tech and richness of the data increases, the temptations will as well. Well meaning people can do nefarious things in certain contexts.

I believe our societal institutions and corporate entities are not mature enough to safely handle the power granted by unrestrained, high resolution data on the entire populace

Granted, I don't think things would get too terrible without overwhelming protest, but I don't see why we should bet on that.

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

#517

Post by vizeroth » Fri, May 12, 2017, 6:22 AM UTC

white-flame wrote: post #479

_kb wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, so this got a bit of interest. To be honest I'm a little surprised this seems to be news to the HN crowd. I feel a little bad about calling out one API provider specifically, so here's a bunch more: https://www.kairos.com/ https://skybiometry.com/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service... http://www.affectiva.com/ http://www.crowdemotion.co.uk/ http://emovu.com/e/ https://www.faceplusplus.…

I've lost track of how many times I've said this on HN: We need HIPPA for all personal information, not just medical. We have an expectation of privacy in being "lost in the crowd" when we're out and about. Our physical & online whereabouts, who we're physically with, who we're communicating with, our personal contact information, and obviously payment information is private information that can be harmful if not kep…

HIPAA does not make your medical information private, it makes it Portable. Whether it has improved the protection of your digitized medical records is debatable, but it definitely forced almost every industry remotely related to medical care (and some previously unrelated industries) to digitize their records and share them.

Sure, paper medical records suck and aren't inherently more or less secure, but no one breaks into a car and runs away with 500 patients' medical histories when each patient's record fills pages, folders, or filing cabinets, rather than bytes on a hard drive (or even better, it slips away through a network connection that no one in the hospital even knew existed thanks to a back door on a piece of medical equipment).

HIPAA largely means that your medical information has been outsourced to whatever software/network/hardware provider claimed they could do the job (and whoever they outsourced the job to in some cases). If you don't sign whatever HIPAA agreement(s) your provider puts in front of you, chances are they can't treat you, so what choice do you really have?

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

#518

Post by Sunset » Fri, May 12, 2017, 6:31 AM UTC

mfarris wrote: post #120

laen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was blown away by the accuracy of Microsoft's https://how-old.net/ This just kicked it up a notch.

Counterpoint: this tool pegged my 8-year-old as 13 (and she looks younger than her age) and me as 56... well into the double-digit error zone. Someone recently thought I was 30. People aren't any better than computers.

Are you by chance of a specific ethnicity? (no offense). These systems fail spectacularly if the training set includes only certain ethnicities and the test-ee is not one of them.

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

#519

Post by WillyOnWheels » Fri, May 12, 2017, 7:28 AM UTC

throwaway91111 wrote: post #442

fixermark wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often, you're more-or-less getting the content surrounding the ads from the ads, albeit indirectly. My local gas station upgraded its pumps recently to allow it to play video ads on the screen used to do the credit card transaction. I don't doubt it's partially the reason that gas station is still operational when similar non-franchises vendors in town have gone under.

Often times i don't give a damn about the content it sponsors. I'd much rather be able to do my business without being assaulted by ads, which often have little to do with reality, and often act as an alienating and dehumanizing force. It's very difficult to see the good. I would rather have no content than ad-supported content. of course, nobody will ever offer that! You can't sell ads if people can opt out, and too…

Gas stations in the US make very little, possibly zero, from the sale of gasoline.

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

#520

Post by rhizome » Fri, May 12, 2017, 7:53 AM UTC

thatwebdude wrote: post #513

rhizome wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's been dead for 10 years, but he didn't use it for those. As I remember it, in the 80s-90s it was more common for SSNs to be requested for normal consumer things.

!!!!!!! Can't wait for those numbers to leak out!

I gotta say, it's possible he never actually used it in my lifetime, but he could sure tell that story and rattle off the digits at a moment's prompting.