7 ms·

A HN contest: Provide an elevator pitch, to completely non-technical end-users, that will make them aware of this issue and persuade them that it is important t

• JupiterMoon 11y ago
  www.cantheyseemydick.com
  • fsargent 11y ago
    More like "Do they know that it's MY dick?"
    • JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Yes they do.
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Link for the lazy: https://cantheyseemydick.com/ https://cantheyseemydick.com/
  • zardo 11y ago
    How reliably does dick pic recognition work at this point?
    • JupiterMoon 11y ago
      Very well if you use one of the many popular email or messaging services which does not use end-to-end encryption to send it or one of the popular cloud service providers that does not encrypt to data on your computer first to store it.
• lifeisstillgood 11y ago
  HusbandWatcher - provide a photo of your cheating husband, and we will scan hotel, car and street surveillance to show you who he is with every moment he is out of your sight Employee-motivator - using simple webcams we can monitor the facial emotions of your employees moment to moment. Are they reacting positively to your email about the new executive jet purchase? Are they showing signs of morale fatigue as they fall behind their schedule? We can send them morale boosting emails such as ... "Smile, you still have your job".
• MichaelApproved 11y ago
  It's now easier than ever for the political party in power to spy on the opposition. Imagine what Nixon would do if he had the NSA surveillance powers that are available to the current President. Republican, Democrat, or independent. Do you want any party to have that much power while in office?
  • avn2109 11y ago
    If history is any guide, you've got the surveillance directionality mixed up here. Most fallen regimes that we have good records for - e.g. the Khmer Rouge, the Nazis, and (kind of) the East Germans had various factions competing overtly or covertly for power. Each faction had an intelligence service constructing dossiers on/blackmailing the chiefs and other interesting people associated with other factions. The nominal chief executives were spied on by everyone except their own ultraloyal people. I don't see any reason to expect different outcomes in America, so most likely the NSA would be closely watching Nixon and everyone else, while Nixon's people tried to do the same. And of course this isn't a special property of Nixon - it would be very naive to believe there aren't various dossiers on Obama floating around the Virginia/Maryland suburbs.
    • Estragon 11y ago
      This is a strange perspective on the history. Why are you emphasizing comparison to the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis, and dismissing the similarity to the East Germans? Why not look at what domestic intelligence has actually already done in the US, which seems quite reminiscent of the Stasi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung
      • avn2109 11y ago
        I just mean that the surviving Stasi records are incomplete. The Stasi parallels to our own surveillance state are indeed eerie.
• scott_s 11y ago
  In the near future, I will be able to point my phone at you, and know who you are.
  • msellout 11y ago
    Why bother pointing the phone, just use the camera built into your eyeglasses.
• pkinsky 11y ago
  Real-life targeted advertising: bus-stop ads that scan your face, look up your private browsing history, and try to sell you the complete works of Nickelback or something equally embarrassing.
  • fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    "Other customers who purchased Nickelback also liked..."
  • crisnoble 11y ago
    The EFF should by a bus ad with this pitch on it.
• pkinsky 11y ago
  Automatic social network shortest-path finding: point your phone at someone and find out if you're friends-of-friends, if you went to the same school, worked at the same company once, etc.
  • mmanfrin 11y ago
    I hate to say this, but: I think this would be very cool. See someone interesting at the bar? Scan and check to find a convenient ice breaker. "Oh! We both went to the same summer camp as kids!"
    • DamnYuppie 11y ago
      That is cool until every man uses it on you daughter.
      • caskance 11y ago
        Your daughter would be fine if her paranoid luddite father hadn't forbidden her from getting her own setup.
        • DamnYuppie 11y ago
          I am not sure I follow this comment. No one said anything about forbidding anyone from anything It was simply a statement about how upsetting it would be as a parent.
      • mmanfrin 11y ago
        Hopefully by then we'll have progressed past this patriarchal protect-the-defenseless-women mentality. Who's to say my daughter won't be the one using it on men at the bar?
        • DamnYuppie 11y ago
          Who said anything about protecting? It is simply a statement about how men feel when other men are interested in their daughters.
• edwhitesell 11y ago
  Did you know some businesses have the ability to instantly identify you by nothing more than physical features? Did you know the storage and exchange of that identifiable information can be used by businesses or governments to violate your rights and privacy? By the way, there is no regulation regarding the use of this information, nor can you do anything about it. Have a nice day.
• macNchz 11y ago
  You've spent years saving up to finally buy a home. You're having a baby in a few months, and you really need the space. You have the down payment ready, your credit is great, you've ticked all the boxes on the application, but you're turned down for the loan. Why? Maybe you walk home through a bad neighborhood. Maybe you sometimes grab a beer at a bit of a divey bar near your office. Maybe you've visited an old friend who's been in some trouble recently. Whatever the case may be, your face has been in a photo with some questionable folks, whether it's a security camera or a stranger's Facebook photo. So the bank's computers noticed, and flagged you as a risk. People who hang around questionable people aren't very good at repaying their loans.
  • newman314 11y ago
    Decent example. I generalized this as "You have something you really want (everyone has different goals). Right when you think you are about to achieve your goal, it is taken away (because of something stupid you did in the past; everyone has done something stupid at one point). This is why unchecked data collection is bad"
    • caskance 11y ago
      The problem is that there is no reason to believe that is more likely than the opposite case of "You have something you really want (everyone has different goals). Right when you think you are about to fail to reach your goal, it is achieved (because of something clever you did in the past; everyone has done something clever at one point). This is why unchecked data collection is good"
      • newman314 11y ago
        Information in this case as in many is asymmetrical hence leading to the phrase "information is power". Lack of information does not grant the same benefits/advantages as possession of information. Why do you think so much effort is expended to possess information?
        • deleted 11y ago
• scrollaway 11y ago
  Leaflet: "Congratulations! You have been selected for our beta testing program. Based on data we collected on you when you were browsing the internet, we found that you [insert controversial subject, political statement, political affiliation]. We matched this data to you using facial recognition. If this is not correct, please write to us at [website], we are always looking to improve our algorithms. [website prominently displayed]" The controversial characteristics can be obtained by hot reading of some sort or by simply sending party affiliation leaflets in an area where a specific party makes sense. No data actually has to be gathered. Website reveals the trick and what you, the user, can do about it. Should piss some people off.
• pasbesoin 11y ago
  Your friend / family member is down on their luck. Or, you help "those less fortunate." You are tagged/associated with them. Now, you're down on your luck. P.S. Because, proprietary algorithm.
• SilasX 11y ago
  "Would you tell your full name to a random person at a bar that scares you? No, because they can find a lot about you just from knowing that. "Okay, you don't have that choice anymore. They can get it just from seeing your face now."
• kefka 11y ago
  I have a great way to explain Facial Recognition and why it's important.... _________________________________ I wrote a program called uWho(https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho) for our hacker/maker convention, Makevention. Our goal was to determine how many people showed up to the convention, as it was a free-to-attend with a suggested donation event. With a permissive license (OpenCV) attached to a GPL3 (Qt), I was able to make a real-time face scanner. My version was nice, in that it saved a one-way hash of the person's face. It is a 2 liner to save the full face instead of the nice method I did. I did this using software anyone can get. Now, imagine having this software, with mainframes combined with the ability to trawl through a user's facebook profile... Because a like allows that. And do you have a company's Facebook permission? Now they can see your whole profile, as well as your friends. Now, tell me this: what would happen if a company downloaded every face in a user's profile, checked the names of tagged faces, and ran all of them through a face recognizer like what I already made? That's why it is important.
  • IanCal 11y ago
    I think you're coming from this already feeling that privacy is very important. The people you're trying to explain it to probably don't really care. With that in mind, here's how I'd see you explain in that way to a lay person who doesn't get why it's important: > I wrote a program called uWho(https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho https://github.com/jwcrawley/uWho) for our hacker You're a hacker? > With a permissive license (OpenCV) attached to a GPL3 (Qt) I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about already. > My version was nice, in that it saved a one-way hash of the person's face. It is a 2 liner to save the full face instead of the nice method I did. If I was following, the only thing so far is that you were taking pictures of people and recognised faces and it was really useful, and you're trying to convince me that we should be worried about others taking pictures of us and recognising faces? > Now, tell me this: what would happen if a company downloaded every face in a user's profile, checked the names of tagged faces, and ran all of them through a face recognizer like what I already made? What would happen? The company can recognise who people are, like facebook can and I already allow and don't care about / like?
• bigiain 11y ago
  I reckon some subversive art projects. Set up a camera and an SDR in a fairly well trafficked public place (shopping mall, train station concourse, etc) and have the camera do face detection/recognition and the SDR grab MAC addresses from bluetooth and wifi radios. Collect a few weeks worth of data, then put a screen on it so it can put up a big sign "Hi again! Haven't seen you since Tuesday, when you were with this person [photo of other face seen with them]! Have you been OK? You haven't missed a Wednesday before?" Make it intentionally innocuous-but-creepy.
• bigiain 11y ago
  I reckon some subversive art projects. Set up a camera and an SDR in a fairly well trafficked public place (shopping mall, train station concourse, etc) and have the camera do face detection/recognition and the SDR grab MAC addresses from bluetooth and wifi radios. Collect a few weeks worth of data, then put a screen on it so it can put up a big sign "Hi again! Haven't seen you since Tuesday, when you were with this person [photo of other face seen with them]! Have you been OK? You haven't misses a Wednesday before?" Make it intentionally innocuous-but-creepy.
• InclinedPlane 11y ago
  It might be too late for that, it's not a matter of elevator pitches anymore. People are already ok with being tracked constantly. I think it's a matter of going back to the fundamentals and re-instilling an appreciation for individual liberty and the value of privacy. That's not something that happens with an elevator pitch, that's something that takes essays, and blog pieces, and conversations, and lots of time.
  • Silhouette 11y ago
    People are already ok with being tracked constantly. You and I must know very different people. Being resigned to it, feeling they can't do anything about it, or accepting some level of (usually ad-related) tracking in return for some other service are all different to being OK with being tracked constantly. It's also striking how often people don't realise the full implications of these technologies. They're OK up to a point because nothing bad ever seems to happen to them, until it does. Sometimes they're also OK with it up to a point because they think it's necessary for some greater good, which may or may not actually be true.
• jensen123 11y ago
  I don't think it's possible to educate non-technical end-users (ie. most of the general public) about this. They're too dumb. But on the bright side, surveillance technology will probably mean the end of democracy. With extensive surveillance, it should be easy enough to eliminate/sabotage people who speak up for the common man, such as labor union activists, universal suffrage activists or politicians before they become major problems. Then we über-nerds can finally rule the world! The common people will make useful servants. And we get to impregnate their women, eventually, slowly but surely, turning all of the Earth's population into nerds! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
• caskance 11y ago
  A carriage manufacturer contest: Provide an elevator pitch, to completely non-technical end users that will make the aware of the danger of automobiles and persuade them that it is important.