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A crashed advertisement reveals logs of a facial recognition system
- avg_dev 9y agoWell, that's disturbing. I bet we'll see much more of this in the coming days.
- colmvp 9y agoFor 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.
- FridgeSeal 9y agoIt 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).
- state_less 9y agoMight be time to pull out the regulations (a.k.a protections). You could destroy the market for this sort of thing if executives went to jail or were fined out of business.
- mdpopescu 9y agoAs much as I can't stand the guy, I think David Brin is right here. The government does this to you anyway; the solution might not be regulation (which they won't care about anyway - see the NSA) but reciprocation. Let's watch everyone (in public), and make that data accessible to everyone.
- bigbugbag 9y agoIIRC 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.
- convolvatron 9y agocan 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.
- bigbugbag 9y ago> 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.
- ludjer 9y agoHow is this disturbing? its just like some a public webcam that gets used to identify people. If it is in the public you have no privacy. If you want privacy go home as soon as you are out of your house you lose your privacy. I am a big voter for privacy in your home and private but out in the public your are not private anymore and therefore privacy falls away. Privacy and private kinda go hand in hand. you cant have privacy in a public space it is impossible.
- dagw 9y agoIf it is in the public you have no privacy. Norwegian law disagrees with you.
- Nursie 9y agoUtter crap. Just because I am not in my house does not mean I consent to being tracked everywhere I go. We make the rules in our society, and with enough political will we can restrict this stuff.
- Scea91 9y agoThis is not used for tracking.
- orthecreedence 9y ago...Yet?
- bigbugbag 9y agoAssuming there is no privacy in public space, please tell us all the name, age, address, SSNs, CC numbers, health records, gender, buying history, sexual orientation, facial features of everyone you walked by in public space over the course of one day last week. Now that you have failed to do that, try doing it for one day 5 years ago, a whole week, a whole month, everyday since you were born. A public surveillance apparatus such as the one featured here who record everyone, every day, not forgetting a single thing or person. Try thinking a bit and free yourself from the backfire effect before making claims that make you look bad.
- Cyph0n 9y agoI wonder how accurate these measurements are in practice. They could just be placeholder implementations, right?
- emilga 9y agoAt Vitensenteret (science center) in Trondheim they have a web cam hooked up to a TV screen where they show a live view of some face scanner software (multiple faces simultaneously). It estimates your gender, age, and mood (happy, sad, angry, surprised). Every time I've visited it's been quite accurate on me, my friends, and on the other visitors. EDIT: here is a pic of what I'm describing: http://fredly.fhs.no/dancemixbloggen/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/03/IMG_1913-300x225.jpg http://fredly.fhs.no/dancemixbloggen/wp-content/uploads/site...
- gpvos 9y agoThey could, but chances are someone is trying, and may succeed soon, in actually doing this.
- bigbugbag 9y ago20 years ago they were adequately accurate in university lab experiments, 10 years ago it was very accurate, nowadays it is scary how accurate and fast this is.
- modssuckdxk 9y agoSays 'adult' each time, wonder if it's even legal in the EU to grab underage faces.
- cyberferret 9y agoUh, I got sidetracked and brain hammered by the devolving discussion on that Twitter thread, thus couldn't find the context for this pizza shop kiosk - Is it a customer service portal that attempts to identify the person in front of it to try and match up with an order, or a plain advertising display that is trying to capture the demographics of the people who happen to stop in front of it and look at it?
- nom 9y agoIt's an ad. May be targeted advertising, or just simple engagement analysis. http://www.dinside.no/okonomi/reklameskilt-ser-hvem-du-er/67552025 http://www.dinside.no/okonomi/reklameskilt-ser-hvem-du-er/67... Edit: there is more information in the article. Not going to read it, though.
- vilhelm_s 9y agoTo summarize, it's an experimental project, there is so far only one such screen at the train station. If someone stands within 5 meters of the screen it will try to classify their age and gender and show a targeted ad, and record how long they looked at it. The raw images are not saved. The screen uses a software called Kairos to analyze faces. It can estimate age, gender, and whether you are "white, black, hispanic, asian, or other". According to the marketing manager at Peppe's Pizza, he thought there would a label on the screen saying what's going on, but in fact there is just a small sticker on the back of it, which is quite hard to see. The company making the screen, ProtoTV, says that people should be okay with this because ads on the internet are even more targeted. A government representative says that the system might violate laws about surveillance cameras.
- shandor 9y agoThank you, this was the first comment actually telling more on the matter after all the "it said I'm X years old!" comments :) I guess using such a system just to analyze people in real-time might already violate some surveillance laws like you said (in my country all such cameras must be warned about, even traffic cameras). But do you have any idea if those things also record data on customers? I could see how keeping such a database on customers might be dancing on the fine line of creating a "registry", which is pretty heavily regulated by laws at least here. Even more so if there is a possibility to identify real persons from that data.
- nom 9y agoWindows.. TeamViewer.. using the primary screen to display the ad.. and the camera is not even hidden.. Amateurs. I wouldn't be alarmed by this, they probably don't even now the accuracy of the algorithm they are using or how to interpret the collected data correctly.
- Rusky 9y agoWho says the same people set it up and receive the data?
- yegle 9y agoIs this new? Things like Affectiva has been out for a long time.
- sbuttgereit 9y agoI was at a retail technology conference ~1998 and I remember IBM presenting their work in the area; point of sale cameras was the topic. Not as advanced as this, obviously, but industry has been thinking about ways to do automated visual analysis like this for a long time.
- bigbugbag 9y agoCan confirm, this was already a thing 20 years ago.
- korethr 9y agoThough not at the level depicted in the movie, I am nonetheless reminded of Minority Report.
- tyingq 9y agoFor 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 https://youtu.be/7bXJ_obaiYQ The movie was released in 2002, so fairly prescient.
- Apocryphon 9y agoI 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.
- funnyfacts365 9y agoDystopian? I think it was meant to desensitize people to the point of acceptance.
- Apocryphon 9y agoBesides the movie's premise of psychic surveillance using disabled people and indefinite detention of pre-perpetrators, there was plenty of dystopian elements in that movie, even if the future wasn't specifically a dystopia. The spider bots, the vomit sticks, and the ads: Spielberg: "The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. they can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we're part of the medium. The scary thing us, we'll lose our right to privacy. An ad will appear in the air around us, talking directly to us." http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/spielberg-and-cruise-and-the-movies http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/spielberg-and-cruise-an...
- mysterydip 9y ago"Your video will play after this ad" oh the irony
- ddmma 9y agoCognitive Services enabled applications, why so complicated? It's like spotted an new hipo into the wild https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
- kimburgess 9y agoYou'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/ http://sightcorp.com/ for an ultra creepy overview. You can even try their live demo: https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basic/ https://face-api.sightcorp.com/demo_basic/.
- noobermin 9y ago>You can even try their live demo I'd rather not give them my facial image so they can optimize for me.
- frakr 9y agoMatched to your IP none the less. I wonder why Microsoft made that "how old are you?" web app...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- aub3bhat 9y agoEverytime I eat at Chipotle I smile at the sign on door that proclaims this property is protected by Envysion.
- 9y ago
- nateberkopec 9y agoI 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.
- wingerlang 9y agoI don't see why it is sinister today, so they show healthy food to women and meat to men. Seems like a win-win situation. I think this is what they did, anyway.
- ninenexus 9y agoI think this becomes sinister when it makes the move to being free for the business with the service provider records & collects the data to sell to third parties.
- bigbugbag 9y agoWhy would it be sinister to have an automated eye able to instantly sort humans in dubious categories ? Maybe in a different political context where one category is sent to death camps, another to forced labor camps, etc.
- applecrazy 9y agoI guess public perception of the technology is based on how "creepy" (read: accurate) it is.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoSo 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.
- bigbugbag 9y agoIt was sinister 20 years ago (probably even before that but I'm not aware of it), and was a problem enough for the industry that they looked for way to condition the population to accept the technology over a few generations.
- DonHopkins 9y agoThere should be one of these in front to the ad to give passers by more privacy: http://hackaday.com/2010/10/15/window-curtain-moves-to-screen-pedestrians/ http://hackaday.com/2010/10/15/window-curtain-moves-to-scree...
- anabis 9y agoIn Japan at least, before automated facial recognition, cashiers recorded buyer demographics by hand. I would think other places do it too. Edit: Here is what the buttons look like. Gender and age. https://image.slidesharecdn.com/hvc-c-android-prototype20141223-141224131940-conversion-gate01/95/hvccbleandroid-6-638.jpg?cb=1419427358 https://image.slidesharecdn.com/hvc-c-android-prototype20141...
- logicallee 9y agoCould you be more specific? What could they possibly [Edit:] have recorded in a second other than male/female, Japanese/foreigner, or child/adult? Facial recognition is a unique identifier but cashiers have access to almost nothing they can record... [Edit] What was it? Edit: clarified that I am asking about the history here, what information was manually collected by cashiers as parent stated
- anabis 9y agoDemographics and sales data is a primary example of big data. The tweeted advertisement system also looks like it's only recording demographics. Not individual personal IDs.
- logicallee 9y agoSorry, I wanted you to expand on this: "cashiers recorded buyer demographics by hand". Give me an example of what they used to record by hand. All I can think of is "male, adult". I am specifically interested in what else you say they used to record. I wasn't asking about the present status quo, only your historical statement about cashiers recording by hand.
- anabis 9y agoOh, OK. I edited in a link to the buttons the cashiers used, in the original post.
- 9y ago
- Freeboots 9y agoNot many smiles :(
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pavement 9y agoOkay, time to start wearing ski masks and Santa Claus costumes in public at all times.
- bisby 9y ago"It's that guy in the ski mask and santa claus outfit again" sadly makes you MORE identifiable (unless you can talk a ton of other people into doing the same).
- rhizome 9y agoA defense using makeup and hair: https://ahprojects.com/projects/cv-dazzle/ https://ahprojects.com/projects/cv-dazzle/
- hn_throwaway_99 9y agoHah, looking through all those looks reminds me of the captcha problem though: computers won't be able to detect your face, but neither will people.
- jes5199 9y agoEh, what's so great about other people anyway.
- dingo_bat 9y agoI have a feeling if this becomes widespread this will become part of training sets.
- gscott 9y agoOr at least while driving http://tucson.com/news/arizona-s-monkey-masked-speeder-gets-photo-tickets-w-photos/article_f73dd9df-e761-58a7-b952-e2064205172b.html http://tucson.com/news/arizona-s-monkey-masked-speeder-gets-...
- e12e 9y agoBring out the ugly t-shirts! (see: http://jesse-pearson.com/interviews/william-gibson/ 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.)
- gech 9y agoDespicable. Any authors of this work should be publicly shamed and punished. And don't get me started on what should befall the owners of capital that drove this.
- samtho 9y agoDuring 2010-2012, I was part of a startup called Clownfish Media. We basically created something very similar to this and got scary accurate results then. Given how accessible computer vision has become, the image in the tweet comes at no surprise to me. Best part - we got a first gen raspberry pi to crunch all the data locally at 2-5fps. Gender, age group (child, youth, teen, young adult, middle age, senior), and approximate ethnicity were all recorded and logged. Everyone had a unique profile and could track people between cameras and days (underlying facial features do not change). Next time you look at digital signage, just be aware that it is probably looking back at you.
- mattcoles 9y agoDo you feel it was ethical to work on that?
- csmattryder 9y agoI work on digital signage, our product isn't using facial expression recognition yet, but it has been asked and will eventually be a part of the system. What's the difference between this and an anonymised dataset? No PII is tracked, it's just looking at you and calculating what emotion you're likely feeling to show more targeted advertising. I mean, I'm personally against it but we've got to prove a higher and higher ROI to justify the cost of digital signage, this leads to just that.
- bigbugbag 9y agoIf you were actually against it you would not take part of making this happen. Inadvertently spill the name of the company making this and those wanting to use it to the public so they can receive their well deserved backlash.
- csmattryder 9y agoYou going to offer me another job that has comparative pay and work-time flexibility? I'll take if one's going, but right now this is my gig. If you want to start a war, have a quick Google for the big players, they'll have this tech in and will be proudly advertising it on their site. The thing is: People don't care. Not your HN reader (evidently), but your Joe Bloggs. Hell, Snowdon told them the Five Eyes are reading their email and they barely gave a damn.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- lostgame 9y agoI guess being transsexual is kind of a hack around this eh?
- spsful 9y agoOh look, Ghostery's product pitch comes in handy now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKzyifAvC_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKzyifAvC_U
- bigbugbag 9y agoGhostery was this tool aimed at privacy minded people that collected their data to provide advertisers for their effort of defeating measures taken by privacy minded people. No way I will trust this ever.
- lfender6445 9y agojust so im clear, this is someone in a pizza shop looking at a windows kiosk with a camera? it would be interesting to see the ad and how / if it changes based on who is watching
- dghughes 9y agomale young adult I think they zeroed in on their demographic, good job!
- kristofferR 9y agoMales are offered meat ads, while females are offered salad ads. Kinda sad in a way.
- cerved 9y agoWhat kind of psychopat buys sallad at a pizza joint?
- funnyfacts365 9y agoMe? And I'm not even female...
- NoGravitas 9y agoA Caesar salad goes great with a slice of pizza.
- Breefield 9y agoWhat if I have resting bith face?
- Breefield 9y agoWhat if I have resting bitch face?
- cheetos 9y agoIs this unethical if everything is done locally and no data is stored or resold?
- sixothree 9y agoThen what would be the purpose of collecting that data in the first place?
- rubatuga 9y agoNothing unethical, just the fact that it is hidden may cause some outrage.
- kbart 9y ago"Is this unethical if everything is done locally and no data is stored or resold?" If it is hidden (no clear warning) and there's no way to opt-out, then yes, it is unethical imho.
- bigbugbag 9y agoYes. It is unethical regardless of how it is done.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Smushman 9y agoOriginal Reddit post with background: https://www.reddit.com/r/norge/comments/67jox4/denne_kr%C3%A6sjede_skjermen_p%C3%A5_peppespizza_viser_en/ https://www.reddit.com/r/norge/comments/67jox4/denne_kr%C3%A... "...peppes pizza in Oslo S."
- kirykl 9y agoWith this much personal care to really know their customers by face I'm sure they put just as much personal care into the quality and craft of the product /s
- tjpnz 9y agoIt saddens me that there are people in our profession for whom implementing such a thing presents no moral or ethical dilemma.
- andbberger 9y agoHas nothing to do with morals - people gotta eat
- tspike 9y agoThe alternative in our industry is not starvation.
- bigiain 9y ago"You can’t buy ethics offsets for the terrible things you do at your day job." https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-cant-be-a-side-hustle-b9e78c090aee https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-cant-be-a-side-hustle-b... and from the same guy: "Don’t ask how you’re going to pay your rent working ethically. Ask why you’re open to behaving unethically in the first place." https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-and-paying-rent-86e972ce9015 https://deardesignstudent.com/ethics-and-paying-rent-86e972c...
- bigbugbag 9y agoHas everything to do with ethics and morality. You can eat without being a cog in the mega big machine trying to crush us all.
- ihm 9y agoAgreed. Who is agreeing to build such dystopian technologies?
- grayhatter 9y agoI would totally get interested in building this, have a half-good working prototype. All before I'd even considered that someone else might use it for evil...
- yalogin 9y agoIt just makes too much sense to show ads based on the demographics. They now have robots in malls too. They are just recording everything, processing, logging, extracting, selling and up selling. There is no privacy. The problem is not only does it make economic sense just to have these robots, the added intelligence from the data mining makes it even more attractive.
- PeterStuer 9y agoThere are many solutions that do this, both proprietary and Open Source. Accuracy is influenced by lots of factors, some to do with the setup (camera angle, lighting) the hardware (camera quality, computation speed) and the subjects (race, facial hair, glasses). We used this in research projects involving elderly mood assessment and in television viewer's emphatic responses. The package we used was marketed by Noldus ( http://noldus.com http://noldus.com ) and developed bu Vicarvision ( http://vicarvision.nl http://vicarvision.nl ), but most of these packages perform at about the same level.
- dsmithatx 9y agoHere is the software the sign is using. http://www.adflownetworks.com/audience-detection/ http://www.adflownetworks.com/audience-detection/
- azm1 9y agoIts absurd people are outraged about something like this, relatively harmless and at the same time use Facebook. The social network has your face, all your life, moods, expressions, interests,personal conversation etc. Now THAT is worrying and not some pizza shop which gathers stats to know what type of customer is their frequent visitor.
- nkkollaw 9y agoYou're in control with Facebook. It's you who gives them the data. If this is true, it's all stuff that they're taking by stealth.
- e12e 9y agoI'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]
- nkkollaw 9y agoSure, but you can choose not to be on Facebook.
- bigiain 9y agoYou can't choose to not have a shadow profile tho...
- e12e 9y agoHow does that help? Fb will use facial recognition and track you in pictures, build up a friend-graph - and if they can - associate that profile with tracking data from "like"-buttons etc. You can choose not to use the Internet, or only use hardened devices over tor - but it's not exactly the same as "you can choose not to drink coca cola" (incidentally, it might be difficult in places to completely avoid products by the coca cola company, as opposed to just "coke, the coca cola soft drink"). Added to this, the network effect make fb hard to avoid - people use fb/messenger for a lot of communications, volunteer groups, political groups, education... You are free to argue it's I'll advised (and I agree). But wishful thinking alone does not mean "choosing not to use Facebook", might not include: missing social, educational and work opportunities.
- pfarnsworth 9y agoThe subsequent Twitter thread featuring @justkelly_ok et al. is probably the worst things about Twitter all bundled up in in one. It's a pure cringefest.
- mschaef 9y agoAgreed... I had a response written, realized life is too short, and just closed the window before posting.
- littlecranky67 9y agoThis is nothing new; Ad Companies are actively marketing this features. See i.e. http://livedooh.com http://livedooh.com Quote from their website: "Audience Measurement included The information and statistics needed in order to realize audience targeting in DOOH is gathered through livedooh’s integrated anonymous video analysis, which collects information about gender, age and length of view. Audience metrics are used by the ad server’s decision engine to optimize advertisement delivery and increase performance."
- bschwindHN 9y agoI wonder if someone wore a shirt with this pattern while walking in front of it https://thenextweb.com/tech/2017/01/04/anti-facial-recognition-apprel/#.tnw_UEmpUCsC https://thenextweb.com/tech/2017/01/04/anti-facial-recogniti...
- ffriend 9y agoAs 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 sufficient to consider such a software as a fair use? What else would you add to the list to make it reasonable?
- tawayway 9y agoAn opportunity to opt out? If I need to be near the unit for whatever reason I would be more comfortable if I could switch it off.
- fhars 9y agoIt should work without taking pictures or movement profiles of people that did not give consent in writing or using a qualified digital signature.
- abalone 9y agoThe 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. See: http://abc7news.com/business/philz-to-stop-tracking-customers-via-smartphones/83943/ http://abc7news.com/business/philz-to-stop-tracking-customer...
- bigbugbag 9y agoIf 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, the manager, the employees. If I went to a store engaging in this without telling and I later learn about it, then I'm calling Keyser Söze and it's pitchforks and beheading time. I suppose it will take a couple more generations of brainwashing to have the population ready to accept this kind of highly invasive technology. IIRC about 10 years the big brother awards was awarded to a french industry group for their blue book describing how to condition a population to accept surveillance and control technology over a few generations.
- stefek99 9y agoWhy it doesn't surprise me?
- BenGosub 9y agoFunny that this has been posted by ambient/experimental music producer Lee Gamble https://soundcloud.com/leegamble https://soundcloud.com/leegamble
- throwaway74727 9y agoIndia is forcing this Orwelling nightmare upon all its citizens (under very shady circumstances). http://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-aaadhar-effect-say-bye-to-your-privacy/20170325.htm http://www.rediff.com/news/column/the-aaadhar-effect-say-bye...
- Shinchy 9y agoGod the comments on that tweet are enough to make me lose all faith in humanity, honestly what is wrong with people.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- _-_T_-_ 9y ago(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%A6sjede_skjermen_p%C3%A5_peppespizza_viser_en/dgrltgl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/norge/comments/67jox4/denne_kr%C3%A...
- sleepyhead 9y agoNot Lee Gamble. He just shared the photo without any source. See this article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dinside.no%2Fokonomi%2Freklameskilt-ser-hvem-du-er%2F67552025&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr.... Photo taken by Jeff Newman.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- baldfat 9y agoIt 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.
- 794CD01 9y agoHow is it an ethical issue for strangers to look at your face when you are out in public?
- spangry 9y agoI'm a little surprised about the HN reaction on this one. You guys didn't seem to care about collection of passive biometrics a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11172652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11172652 . What's changed?
- mostlyskeptical 9y agoThat's the one benefit of Trump getting elected: half of the US cares about civil liberties and privacy again.
- spangry 9y agoI suspect you're right; I've noticed we also like the 'news' media again. I guess it's only a problem when it's not "your side" invading people's privacy, spreading false propaganda, destroying liberal democracy etc. etc.
- oelmekki 9y agoI think that now, my favorite subversive street action will be to put mirrors in front of ads.
- clydethefrog 9y agoFor consideration : How to ZAP a Camera: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Camera Sensors http://www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html http://www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html
- gedrap 9y agoTo 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.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoWell, 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.
- fixermark 9y agoDo they need to be opposed though? There isn't really much consensus---even on HN---that passive demographic data collection is a bad thing alone. People claim it is, and I believe they feel it is---then they turn around and do things that compromise their stated beliefs because it's convenient. I liken it to the gap between the rhetoric around open source and free software and the reality that Windows and Mac OS make up approximately 90% of OS marketshare. You can believe what you want to believe, but from a business standpoint you'd be putting yourself at a disadvantage if you structure your business requiring FOSS operating systems to climb to even 25% of marketshare; there's a similar situation, probably, for customer data tracking and advertising preference tracking.
- Kliment 9y agoAnd just today I got an ad (in the paper mail) from an electronics distributor notifying me of new parts they stock. Among them was an embedded face and expression recognition engine that would emit pretty much this data, in a convenient text output you can read into any little microcontroller and act on (omron B5T-007001-010 if anyone is interested). This is no longer exciting cutting edge technology, it's off the shelf. And terrifying.
- alanfalcon 9y agoIf you visit my website and fail to complete a purchase, you may find a physical postcard in the mail from us in a few days with a surreptitious coupon code. No, you did not actually tell us your mailing address at any point; knowing your e-mail is sufficient.
- Kliment 9y agoThat 100% guarantees I'll never complete a purchase with you, and I'll warn others to avoid you too.
- alanfalcon 9y agoBut 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.)
- Kliment 9y agoI'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.
- alkonaut 9y agoThis is in itself not scary compared to what a random website does when I visit. That is - given that what we see in this log is actually all it does. What's scary is what we don't see (does it store this? does it cross reference anything? does it target ads based on it)? I don't really think that's the case (here, yet) but I do think it's scary that it's so easy to do that its not just done as a proof of concept but actually used in production in a low tech industry. Gathering demographic or sentiment without storing, cross referencing (has this person been here before etc) or otherwise using the data for anything such as targeting ads - is kind of acceptable. I mean it wouldn't be hard to do that manually via a camera if you wanted to test the engagement of an ad. I'm sort of hoping this is just some tech project from a university or something, and not an actual product you can buy and hook into some adtech service. Edit: as someone else pointed out - it's not a proof of concept it's an adtech off the shelf product. Because of course :( http://www.adflownetworks.com/audience-detection/ http://www.adflownetworks.com/audience-detection/
- sly010 9y agoThis is one case where a tinfoil hat might actually be effective.
- jlebrech 9y agohow does it detect which gender you identify as? mind reading?
- kabes 9y agoWhy are people so surprised by this? Imagine you're a company building digital signage/advertising products. Wouldn't this be one of the first ideas that pop in your head? The technology is out there for free...
- josteink 9y agoA norwegian article on the subject: http://www.dinside.no/okonomi/reklameskilt-ser-hvem-du-er/67552025 http://www.dinside.no/okonomi/reklameskilt-ser-hvem-du-er/67... Google translate is readable, if not super-mega-accurate: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dinside.no%2Fokonomi%2Freklameskilt-ser-hvem-du-er%2F67552025&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
- staticelf 9y agoThis is illegal in both Sweden and Norway though.
- cmdrfred 9y agoI think the worst thing is that system assumed their gender.
- sleepybrett 9y agoThis has been a feature of these digital sign products for a few years, generally they aren't interested in specific faces, just if faces are seen looking at the sign and for how long. It's all just simple opencv stuff.
- khasan222 9y agoMakes me wonder if this is something snapchat does whenever you look at some of their featured stories.
- treyfitty 9y agoI've sifted through 80% of the comments here, and I couldn't find a mention about the unintended consequences of this technology. Ethical vs. Unethical, Pro-Privacy vs. Against Privacy are the two common discussion points. I, however, think the bigger problem here is that there's a very non-zero probability that this technology may cause unintended consequences simply by relying on false/inaccurate data. For one, I work in analytics (loaded catch-all occupation) and I work with people who would marry their "data skills" if they could. In my industry, false positives of 80% is acceptable, and openly admitted errors in "machine-learning" logic (quoted to highlight my company's buzz-word usage, but practically non-existent) are made daily. People create algorithms, and people make errors. Let's let our imagination run wild here for a second: It's 2030, and this technology becomes ubiquitous to the point where no one objects. Businesses take all the data from sentiments, gender, age...etc. to optimize for their target demographic, and price accordingly. In other words, let's assume this tech is used for perfect price discrimination. Economic theory dictates this is a win-win for everyone since everyone starts paying their willingness to pay. But, let's assume there's a catastrophe and medicine is in dire need. Price discrimination works fine assuming perfect competition, and is a useful framework, but it breaks down empirically where we live in a society that doesn't behave so rationally. Who survives? Those willing to pay the most, and the algorithm worked flawlessly here. But it was not intended to dictate who survives. What I'm trying to say is that we should be cognizant of the fact that we don't live in a perfect bubble, and technology like this should be scrutinized for it's effects exhaustively- including any unintended consequences. We live in a society (duh), and as a society, it is up to us, with the help of policy makers, to determine the fate of this technology.
- ctdonath 9y ago"Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP!" - Minority Report, after protagonist (Tom Cruise, clearly not Asian) buys black-market replacement eyeballs to avoid retina-based security
- antisthenes 9y agoThe future is beginning to look a lot like the worst parts of Ghost in the Shell, Minority Report and Brave New World combined. But I would love to come back to this post in 2050 and be proven completely wrong!
- JensRantil 9y agohttp://www.cognimatics.com/Products/TrueView-Demographics http://www.cognimatics.com/Products/TrueView-Demographics
- tps5 9y agoI don't see any evidence that this is a "facial recognition system." It's likely hard to legislate against software that attempts to detect if there is a person, what their expression is, and guesses at their gender. You could imagine that job being done by a person (just noting how many people stopped at the advertisement, and what their expression was). I don't think there's really a way to make that illegal. I suppose I think it's something that people should be aware of, though.
- stanmancan 9y agoThis has been happening for at least a decade. I had to do some updates on a system in 2008 that had this same functionality built in, and they were far from the first company to do it.
- bighi 9y agoI work in a big retail company here in Brazil. If you enter most of our stores with a phone in your pocket, you're being tracked. They track where you went, in front of what shelves you stopped and for how long, if you went to the cashiers of just left... And if we track people here in the third world, you can be sure you are being much more tracked in first world stores.
- johnmarcus 9y agohrm....so as it turns out burkas really are the new expression of freedom. whom would have guessed?
- PascLeRasc 9y agoFrom that thread I learned all you have to do to get away with evil is get the technologists to argue over "logs" vs "code".
- AmaterasuSolar 9y agoWe might want to solve for the psychopaths in control on OUR planet (stolen from Us by Them through "trusts" and deceit). Money is the key - accounting for Human energy added into the system that accounts for Human energy added, and moves the bulk of OUR planet to very Few (psychopaths). I AM anti-New World Order - A Better Way http://tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/99/anti-new-world-order http://tapyoureit.boards.net/thread/99/anti-new-world-order
- beached_whale 9y agoThe Island Airport(Billy Bishop) in Toronto is littered with adverts that are camera connected. Other than, maybe power management, looking at what is possible in OpenCV gives a good indication of what can, and probable is, being done. From tracking where you look to matching faces.... The problem is that this is an agency(of the government) owned facility.
- nsgi 9y agoFor an even more disturbing idea, Titan Park in Beijing has machines in its toilets which scan peoples' faces before dispensing toilet paper. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/03/21/park-uses-facial-recognition-to-wipe-out-toilet-paper-thieves/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/03/21/park-uses-facial...
- infectoid 9y agoLPT(1984): Keep a roll of small round dot stickers handy. Black dots are harder to notice on the lens.
- carapace 9y agoHas no one watched "Person of Interest"!? Just watch the show intro, that's all you need to know. Ubiquitous surveillance is only going to get more, uh, ubiquitous. It's the end of privacy but also the end of crime...
- ddmma 9y agoImagine you can automatically track customer loyalty and offer them discounts. Here is an integration example using arduino also https://www.hackster.io/dasdata/dascognitiveservices-c2d991 https://www.hackster.io/dasdata/dascognitiveservices-c2d991
- killin_dan 9y agoIs this illegal? They have the right to process their own footage, I would think.
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