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The Secretive Business of Facial-Recognition Software in Retail Stores
- mattnewton 8y agoEven more reason to shop online.. Though just not going outside is not a solution, we definitely need legislation for this.
- stupidbird 8y agoNote that unless you're explicitly blocking it — you're giving away much more information when you shop online than with facial recognition in a physical store. Cash is one of the last remaining bastions of true transactional privacy (and of course, with some legwork and a warrant, law enforcement can connect the dots). This is is the same thing that tends to bother me about people worrying about hackers spying on them via built-in webcam. Unless there's a very specific reason for it, they simply don't need to. Tracking your data/activity/input is easier and much more valuable.
- Johnny555 8y agoNote that unless you're explicitly blocking it — you're giving away much more information when you shop online than with facial recognition in a physical store. I'm not sure that's true -- cameras can track you around the store, seeing how long you linger at each product display, recording every time you reach out to touch a product. Which seems similar to the information online merchants can collect. One thing they can collect in the store that they can't as easily track online (unless you're sending product links around) is who you are shopping with -- they can see that you come to the store with your friend, spouse, or children.
- stupidbird 8y agoGoogle/Facebook and others know how long you look at a specific post/ad/video/etc and knows who you're with, even when in a private residence. If you're in someone's house on their wifi network and they're shopping for socks... you might start seeing ads about socks. It's way easier to track this based on network information than creating facial recognition databases. A lot of the "Facebook is listening to your conversation" fears stem from the fact that people don't realize that they can use data to make connections like this. If you're remotely concerned about privacy, at the very least Facebook should not have an app on your phone (Google's doing it too).
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoThis is absolutely an invasion of our privacy, tracking our every move, but is shopping online any better? The only real difference is that online they can't track your face, and in real life they can't link you to your taste in pornography.
- mattnewton 8y agoAs long as adblockers and multiple browser profiles aren’t illegal I’m okay with this.
- stochastic_monk 8y agoBut face-obscuring masks will almost certainly be banned. What are our other recourses?
- 14 8y agoI have wondered about this as well. Sometimes when entering Walmart I intentionally look way down as to try avoid any part of my face on their main camera. I know they have other cameras in the store but as a small for of protest I like to avoid that first cam.
- monocasa 8y agoA lot of the time the obvious cameras are the fake ones.
- 14 8y agoWell, I wonder if they can link you to your taste in pornography? Facial recognition detects you keep showing up in the adult health aisle in Walmart every few weeks for condoms and lubrication. Also facial recognition noticed you spend 15% more time looking in the direction of other males verses females we predict there is a 74% chance that you are homosexual. I agree facial recognition is an invasion of privacy and seems to have all sorts of bad uses. I hope we as a society at least limit corporations from using it against us. I highly doubt we will stop the government from using it but we don't need Walmart tracking us.
- xamlhacker 8y agoHow is this better? I need to give out my address and my credit card information.
- TomMarius 8y ago> Though just not going outside is not a solution, we definitely need legislation for this. Eh... should I remind you about NSA, CIA, FBI? Do you seriously trust the government with this tech? And even if you did, how do you think you'll regulate something anyone can download for free and run on their $50 computer?
- olivermarks 8y agohttps://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/10/17/facial-recognition-technology-nyc-councilman-ritchie-torres/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/10/17/facial-recognition-t...
- mixmastamyk 8y agoI'd prefer the law require opt-in consent for facial recognition, but would take a sign over nothing.
- olivermarks 8y agoI agree, the least we should hope for is an informational warning with details of what data is being collected, like the agreements we click to sign with social networking sites that most people don't bother to read....
- amelius 8y ago"But it's only to provide the customer a better experience"
- sharkweek 8y agoThis reminds me of that facial recognition shopping scene in Minority Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDMlFycNrw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDMlFycNrw Of course I thought this movie looked 100 years in the future, not 15
- bowmessage 8y agoI'm on the verge of wearing an infrared LED baseball cap everywhere I go now. Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but better to start earlier than later? Also, are infrared LED disguise devices easily defeated? E.g. can camera installers just add an additional infrared filter to their setup?
- peteretep 8y agoSimpler solution: move to Europe.
- maxxxxx 8y agoWe are creating a really nice world. At work you have to wear headsets to be able to focus. And in the public you have to wear some variation of a tinfoil hat to avoid being tracked everywhere. Soon the idea of doing anything without the knowledge of dozens of companies and governments will be a quaint memory.
- fossuser 8y agoIt won't save you - gait detection is also being used in places like China and that's a lot harder to protect yourself from. Systems also tend to use regular and infrared images for detection too (at least in the case of ALPR). We need people to care about these things and how the data is used, we need laws for rules around collection, access, and rights. We need to work together towards maintaining the ideas that support western democracy rather than moving towards nationalism. I worry that instability from climate change and the refugee crisis that comes from that instability will make things worse, along with the current centralization of wealth/inequality issues and rise of more populist right wing movements. Individual technical solutions will likely not do much to protect you if we lose the cultural framework around democracy.
- kardos 8y agoI thought the workaround there was to put a handful of gravel in your shoes to disguise your gait
- 8y ago
- MrTonyD 8y agoYeah, I have some friends working on this for WalMart. They get all the social media info for every customer, and they track across their stores. Of course, there are NSA databases available too, and they are probably using those (many NSA databases are run by private companies so that the NSA can deny any knowledge and skirt any privacy laws.) And WalMart is known for firing people who are trying to Unionize and finding reasons to fire all the people they have been talking to (wonder how Walmart knows who the pro-union people have been talking to?). This is not good. Essentially, any activity which is not approved can be stopped with sufficient monitoring. Getting very frightening.
- btbuildem 8y agoTime to start wearing these: https://www.instagram.com/p/BE_3z2XPMac https://www.instagram.com/p/BE_3z2XPMac https://www.instagram.com/p/BRO4R_9DlUW https://www.instagram.com/p/BRO4R_9DlUW https://www.instagram.com/p/BV2SmYnDXSy https://www.instagram.com/p/BV2SmYnDXSy
- miketery 8y agoOh cool! where do i get one?
- hartz 8y agoThe article mentions that Food Link and Giant (both part of Ahold Delhaize USA) are two supermarkets that responded to the ACLU survey saying that they do not use face recognition. I searched around and found the more complete list of companies' responses: https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/are-stores-you-shop-secretly-using-face https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te... (near the bottom). The tl;dr though is that most companies refused to answer.
- bradknowles 8y agoDid you mean "Food Lion"?
- mkgolden 8y agoI have always found those cameras in the Walmart self check-out lines extremely sketchy. They DO NOT need to be there.
- skh 8y agoIn an effort to combat the rise of Amazon retail stores have decided to make going to them a miserable experience. From dumb questions asking if you are a rewards member to personally intrusive questions asking what big plans you have this weekend to this. More and more I dread actually going to a store. Amazon’s cashierless stores use cameras but that cost is compensated by making the shopping experience better.
- Zelphyr 8y agoThe annoyance and inconvenience of having a cashier ask me about my weekend pales in comparison to what Amazon is doing with my data. And I think we'll find in the coming years that they are every bit as nefarious when it comes to the use of our private information as Facebook is.
- J5892 8y agoWhat's your definition of nefarious? If using your data to get you to spend as much money as possible fits that definition, then sure. They're absolutely doing that.
- skh 8y agoMy sarcasm was to make a point. The way for retail to combat Amazon is not to become even more annoying and give people reasons to not want to go to a store. People value convenience a lot. Hence Facebook's rise despite their shenanigans. If you insist on doing the nefarious you must make certain to make it convenient. Retail stores shoot themselves in the foot with their annoying behavior because they are neither more convenient or less annoying. I've resolved myself to the fact that I live in a surveillance world now. My goal is to limit the knowledge to as few companies as possible. What I'm not willing to do is to be annoyed whilst giving my information to stupid retail stores.
- plaguuuuuu 8y agoDON'T TALK TO ME, PEON
- chris_engel 8y agoI wonder what happens if you paint an additional pair of eyes on your cheeks.
- 40acres 8y agoAt this point it seems like we've lost the "war" against intrusive data collection. Between my google searches, credit score, bank transactions & location data, you could build a really accurate model of my life, probably yours too. The only respite we have is that all this data is discrete and spread among different actors, but we've already seen that the massive data collectors are just getting bigger and bigger, every new product is an avenue to collect another data set.
- whatshisface 8y agoHow could we write a law to ban this without putting undue restrictions on legitimate technology? We could just have them stop.
- polskibus 8y agoData tax? Pay 100 USD / month or 0.01 % revenue per one personal record?
- whatshisface 8y agoI think people should have copyright over everything their creative human brains produce, including their purchasing decisions. Copyright can't be transferred away from the author, only licensed. My credit card history happens to be a piece of performance art commenting on consumerism, thank you very much.
- epicide 8y ago> Copyright can't be transferred away from the author, only licensed. I'm not a lawyer, but this statement seems to be false according to this: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html
- kaybe 8y agoHm.. there must be a way to incorporate purchasing decisions into an art piece that make them very obviously part of copyright for that case..
- LeoPanthera 8y ago"CV Dazzle" is a style of hair / makeup that is designed to prevent facial recognition. https://cvdazzle.com https://cvdazzle.com
- walrus01 8y agoAn interesting art project, but I don't know many people who can make an ongoing commitment to doing makeup that resembles a World War 1 battleship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
- leetcrew 8y agoi could see it becoming part of future fashion trends for the elite and/or criminal elements. then again maybe i watch too much cyberpunk.
- walrus01 8y agoThe hairstyles in there look totally suitable for the cyberpunk 2077 45-minute preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjF9GgrY9c0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjF9GgrY9c0
- lozaning 8y agohttps://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/ And now all the security people are on the lookout for the person in strange makeup.
- LeoPanthera 8y agoYou know what - I'm OK with that. Security people have been tracking other people since the dawn of civilization. It's security robots I have a problem with.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoWell, so what. Those are really two separate problems. Security and law enforcement is something you want to enable up to a point. Where that point lies is up to debate, but a different one. The topic here is fucking things up for advertisers. This I want to do indiscriminately. If they have to track me manually, that's a win too, because it's more expensive fro them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- avip 8y agoFace recognition is a publicly available built-in feature of security cameras market leaders s.a Motorolla, Honeywell, Hikvision and probably more. Had been so for quite the time (1 year? 2 years?). So I'm not sure how the word "secretive" made its way into this piece.
- paulcole 8y agoIt's a way to make the headline more appealing without changing the article. Another good use of this is "quietly." https://www.geekwire.com/2017/tech-news-sites-quietly-rely-word-create-drama-headlines-analysis-reveals/ https://www.geekwire.com/2017/tech-news-sites-quietly-rely-w...
- frickenx 8y agoI would think with this technology and the right implementation, there would be no need for jails in the distant future.
- VikingCoder 8y agoI don't think I follow. Bob killed his neighbor. On camera, recorded for all to see. Now you're saying we can continue letting Bob walk around, just because the camera will see it again? I don't mean to be insulting, I don't get what you're trying to say.
- swsieber 8y agoI think they're suggesting that Bob won't kill his neighbor if he's on camera.
- VikingCoder 8y agoThanks for explaining. But there are bank robberies today. And everyone knows banks have cameras. :)
- ChrisArchitect 8y agoHello Mr. Yakamoto! Welcome back to the GAP! How'd those assorted tank tops work out for you?
- tyingq 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ for anyone that missed the reference.
- Nasrudith 8y agoReally this whole business with tracking obsession is highly silly in my opinion. They gather this data with all of this overhead under the assumption that it will somehow boost sales instead of improving service or price margin. You know things that actually helped Amazon gain retail traction. Shoplifting is an even worse excuse given that most retail theft is done by their employees and they seem to show no signs of trying to boost loyalty and engagement.
- dsnuh 8y agoInteresting stat on employee theft being bigger than shoplifting, can you link to some support for that?
- toomanybeersies 8y agoAnecdotally I'd say that customer theft is the bigger culprit. A lot of shops require that a manager checks the employees' bags before they leave at the end of their shift to ensure that they haven't pilfered anything.
- Nasrudith 8y agoHuh apparently things shifted some that it managed to drop to number 2 despite it being the status quo for years. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-sources-of-retail-shrinkage-2890265 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-sources-of-retail-shrinkag...
- davidkuhta 8y agoThank you for still posting.
- Spooky23 8y agoEmployee shrink consists of all sorts of stuff... theft, pilferage, spoilage, fraudulent transactions, etc. It can be as minor as giving an employee two cups for hot coffee or as serious as fraudulent receiving or running two cash tills.
- rvense 8y agoAll the advertisement screens in the Copenhagen metro have cameras now, in addition to the security cameras.
- bjelkeman-again 8y agoAny good source one can read on this? How does that square with GDPR?
- rvense 8y agoI don't know if anyone's written about it. I don't even know if they're on, I've just noticed that they all have small but obvious cameras. They're marked ClearChannel, so I assume they own the boards and cameras.
- roordan 8y agoI worked for a retail analytics company that would do things like track WiFi/Bluetooth devices, faces, and general shopper traffic. It had been a few years since I've worked there but the real problem was that all of this didn't work. All these promises to our clients that's you would get data equivalent of online shoppers, in store, but it simply wouldn't work. Guess people age, gender, previously seem face, tracking where they walked. All horribly inaccurate. Though apparently it's an industry wide thing as "imputing" was common practice. Don't have the data? Make it up!
- hammock 8y agoWhat was the company called? Have you heard of Barvision?
- avip 8y agoTrue. Most of it is marketing BS. Overpromise is the norm. But if you read the comments here, you see that even technical people are buying that. And possibly it will work later, so we can worry now.
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoYea you just “stitch” the data together to get your perfect customer data profile. Actually you end up with about 5% of your customer base properly tracked, and those people are already buying the most stuff anyway. I would bet that nailing the supply chain and focusing on your margin would be a better investment in most cases.
- TomMckenny 8y agoI don't know about retail but if you are ever in Las Vegas or Reno, go into a casino and walk past every slot machine to the reservation desk and ask for a room. Availability and prices will be far worse than booking after gambling or even phoning from the parking lot.
- bradknowles 8y agoYeah, well -- LV is the original source of much of what we know today about data mining. So, it makes sense that they would still be decades ahead of the rest of the field.
- hammock 8y agoHow can you have this article without a mention of Amazon Go, the store that literally allows you to walk out of the store without paying, due to facial recognition?
- imgabe 8y agoTime to start buying everything used. There's enough crap out there that whatever you need, someone else is probably already trying to get rid of it. Let them take the tracking hit.
- justtopost 8y agoGonna pass on used food. They will get you somewhere.
- JMCQ87 8y agoGrow your own food! ;)
- LinuxBender 8y agoAre there any laws that protect minors from this form of tracking and data collection?
- cmac2992 8y agoSeems like it falls under COPPA
- collyw 8y agoIs no one selling glasses or whatever that can crew up the cameras? I remember seeing proof on concept things a couple of years back.
- faleidel 8y agoMaybe this? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivancash/irl-glasses-glasses-that-block-screens https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivancash/irl-glasses-gl...
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