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Facial recognition error message on vending machine sparks concern at university
- ryandrake 3y agoGlob of epoxy putty over the camera. Simple fix. Everyone's bloviating about how "concerned" they are, but nobody can even think of a simple step to protect themselves? This is a university with smart students in it?
- mixmastamyk 3y agoSomeone didn’t read the article. Also not a complete solution.
- ryandrake 3y agoThe article mentioned them trying ineffective solutions and complaining. Chewing gum and post-its?
- mixmastamyk 3y agoThey work perfectly in the short term. Ineffectual is allowing this kind of tech to be legal.
- roarcher 3y agoThose are perfectly effective, they're just easily removed. Something permanent like epoxy would be crossing the line into vandalism. I imagine nobody wants to take one for the team, seeing as how they're on camera.
- the_third_wave 3y agoThat'd easily avoided by first putting a sticker over the hole and only later injecting some epoxy through the sticker. Do it neatly and they could even remove the sticker once the epoxy has hardened and paint over the former hole in a similar colour as the machine.
- gambiting 3y agoIt's still vandalism. Being really really really clever about damaging property you don't own doesn't make you any less liable for it.
- michaelt 3y agoPutting a sticker on the camera inconveniences the college, who have to send someone to remove it. They are an innocent third party with no power to replace the vending machine with one without a camera. Putting epoxy on the camera inconveniences the vending machine owner, who has to replace it. They're the assholes who put the camera there in the first place, and when they replace the machine they can easily put in one with no camera. If you're going to engage in civil disobedience, why not do it right?
- gambiting 3y ago>>Putting a sticker on the camera inconveniences the college, who have to send someone to remove it. The college doesn't care(or even know) about the facial recognition functionality, so presumably they don't care about this sticker either. If the sticker stops the machine from working, then the manufacturer would be called to fix it.
- gouggoug 3y agoSure, these are simple fix. They don't address the real issues though: (1) the use of facial recognition (2) without users consenting to it (3) and the resell of the data.
- neilv 3y agoMaking noise about this isn't a sign that students weren't smart enough to think to cover the camera. The article said that students had covered it. But that's only a very immediate reactive response. A more proactive and impactful response would be to hurt the companies involved (e.g., bad PR, loss of sales, machine recall costs, legal problems), put fear into other companies doing things like that, and hopefully also prompt long-lacking better privacy legislation. Hence, the noise.
- BHSPitMonkey 3y agoThe next model will just have the camera behind some part of the LCD.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoCheaper 'fix' is to rename the error message to 0x100014h.
- fifteen1506 3y agoYup. And since screens can now output music (saw some high-tech article about it) it won't be long to also record sound. You know, just to identify the topics which resonate with better ad viewing.
- everdrive 3y agoThere are patents to put cameras inside the screens, so I imagine that this is what we'll see in the future.
- barbazoo 3y agoRead the article and you’ll find out you’re wrong.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- robinduckett 3y agoDon’t walk into any McDonalds then…
- mixmastamyk 3y agoAm a privacy advocate, yet think this might be an (understandable) overreaction. I remember older generation tech used in digital signage applications that wanted to identify ages and genders to show them appropriate content, say apparel for example. It ran locally and was well meaning (enough). Unfortunately in a world with Meta, ubiquitous telemetry, Ring doorbells, NSA, and data breaches and brokers, … we can’t trust anyone to do the right thing any longer. So this type of benign-ish functionality, which would have been all local just two decades ago, unfortunately now can’t be trusted either. Still, I’m very happy to hear a young person or two being concerned. Last trip to a college campus there was mandatory app and no cash accepted in many places.
- NoPicklez 3y agoI think the key difference here is that the digital signage technology you speak of, the recognition was a necessary requirement to show the appropriate content, clothing for example. In this case, the recognition doesn't do anything for the end user of the vending machine. It is purely data for other brokers to use. The vending machine didn't say to the user that people of their demographic were buying Diet Coke over normal Coke. Slapping facial recognition on something that didn't have it before, without any obvious functionality or benefit for the persons face being scanned is very much cause for concern, in my opinion.
- QuantumG 3y agoI don't know why you think it's relevant. All that matters is the privacy law in the local jurisdiction. Some people will be fine with it, others wont. The real question is: what's the harm?
- NoPicklez 3y agoBecause I don't necessarily think that local privacy law is all that great in the digital age, nor is our ability to ensure that we're complying with it, especially when third parties are involved. People were clearly concerned about it, because the nature of its services weren't all that clear to the end user. Students protested, it was investigated and found that no PII information to taken, great no further action required. My point is that the situation was clearly cause for concern because we have a lack of trust in these technologies and those who use them. Case in point from the article "the embedded cameras inside Cadillac Fairview’s digital information kiosks used facial recognition technology to record over five million images of shoppers at malls without their customers’ knowledge or consent."
- Someone1234 3y agoI pulled the vendor's brochure; if you were curious what a vending machine would use this information for... They collect demographics on WHO is purchasing what items including gender, age, etc. They use this information for targeting advertising (inc. with "partner media brokers"). They're also proud that when users install their app, it uses "gamification" to increase sales (whatever that means). See here, they're super proud of it too: https://a.storyblok.com/f/184550/x/e7435c019e/brochure-svm_generic-dark-netflix-ui.pdf https://a.storyblok.com/f/184550/x/e7435c019e/brochure-svm_g...
- disillusioned 3y agoThe machines use the charitably named "demographic sensor" which is obviously the embedded camera linked to a "facial recognition" application, BUT, it doesn't appear that it actually recognizes (or records) faces. Meaning, it's not linking your face to any online identity, or recording your face at all. In fact, the company is European and claims that their entire platform is GDPR compliant, which is... probably true? Rather, it throws out a series of guesses and confidence values of a person's age, gender, and race, and allow the planogram (and OOH advertising) to change dynamically based on that information. Which is not necessarily great, but also an entire order of magnitude less invasive than every interaction any casual user has on the internet with any ad ever. Or, frankly, with any POS system recording a repeat purchase from your credit card, from which motivated vendors can back into the rest of the demographic data. I'm not excusing it, but while the error reads "facial recognition", it's more "stereotyping enablement platform," which, while only marginally better, is probably still better. It's also hilarious to think of the thing displaying the green M&M if you're a "probable" woman, and the red or yellow M&M if you're a "probable" man, and seeing how long it'd take for anyone to correlate the change.
- rwmj 3y agoThat's what the company claims, and maybe it's right, but how do we know? Do we have access to the source code? Will it change in future? You can be absolutely sure that if the company thought they could make more money by storing the photographs or somehow associating them with real identities then they would.
- heads 3y agoI’m sure this is real but just for fun I’m entertaining the idea that someone is trolling — either with a fun dialog title or the app name. I worked at a company in the late 2000s that moved to an office with automatic urinals. These were fairly novel at the time and had a matte black plastic unit with a flush handle that also had a shiny window made of dark, IR transparent plastic. It was clearly some kind of proximity sensor for the autoflush but some joker made an official “do not touch the cameras” sign that wound a few people up.
- gotoeleven 3y ago[flagged]
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoI know the HN guidelines say not to comment that someone hasn't read the article, but the comments section can be a little useless when literally all of the top comments I see are from posters who appear not to have read the article. In summary (and, in fairness, these technical details are pretty far down the article): > The machines are owned by MARS and the manufacturer is Invenda. > MARS did not respond to requests for comment from CTV. > Invenda also did not respond to CTV’s requests for comment but told Stanley in an email “the demographic detection software integrated into the smart vending machine operates entirely locally.” > “It does not engage in storage, communication, or transmission of any imagery or personally identifiable information,” it continued. > According to Invenda’s website, the Smart Vending Machines can detect the presence of a person, their estimated age and gender. The website said the “software conducts local processing of digital image maps derived from the USB optical sensor in real-time, without storing such data on permanent memory mediums or transmitting it over the Internet to the Cloud.”
- moi2388 3y agoYes, the actual image data doesn’t get sent, but all the information gained from said image data does.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jjav 3y ago> The website said the “software conducts local processing of digital image maps derived from the USB optical sensor in real-time, without storing such data on permanent memory mediums or transmitting it over the Internet to the Cloud.” The most important thing to keep in mind about clauses like this is that at any time it's only one software update away from changing the behavior and suddenly starting to send everything. You'd never know. (And: That point in time may be in the past.)
- ourmandave 3y agoBy purchasing this candy bar, you agree to our updated Terms of Service.
- notRobot 3y agoI hate that with time there is just going to be more and more covert non-consentual facial recognition everywhere. It should be outlawed, but obviously that does not align with the interests of the powerful so it'll never happen.
- stainablesteel 3y agothere's a lot of roads all leading to the same place, there needs to be a constitutional amendment about the right to own your own data, and if someone collects it from you they need to pay you to collect it, and you should receive a tax on any transaction where its sold at least that's my suggestion if people collected my information and sent me a check in the mail every month for a decent amount, i might not be so annoyed.
- Nihilartikel 3y agoI'm looking forward to a growing culture of mask wearing in public spaces. It worked in Venice, and what a fine method of self expression!
- offtrail 3y agoJust smash it if you see it. Or someone suggested super glue. If we all actively destroy these devices, it'll eventually not be worth it to replace them.
- hiatus 3y agoExcept they would have you on camera vandalizing the machine.
- EMCymatics 3y agoWorked at a place that put your last four of your ssn for the vending machine. I really hated that.
- hexo 3y agoELI5 please
- bombcar 3y agoSome places (colleges were very bad about this) would use your SSN as both an ID and a password - so to buy at the cafeteria you’d swipe your student ID and your PIN was the last four of your social. Some workplaces did it too. It’s mostly gone now, but pieces still remain.
- oefrha 3y agoGiven that many college students don’t even have SSNs (international students have no reason to get one until they want to work somewhere), this makes zero sense. What college does this?
- bombcar 3y agoIt was standard 20-30 years ago. International students would be "assigned" some number that may or may not overlap with an actual SSN. Shit was wack, yo.
- c22 3y agoI'm pretty sure many big box places like Home Depot and Walmart are using actual facial recognition on everyone who is in or near any of their stores. This vending machine sounds pretty benign by comparison.
- jjav 3y agoJust because something can be worse, does not make a bad thing benign.
- c22 3y agoBy comparison... That is to say, my comment was meant to inform the concerned reader about other dastardly actors, not to excuse the behavior of the vending machine. (Not sure I have the authority even to make such an excuse.)
- fragmede 3y agoBut you phrased it in such a way that downplayed the vending machine doing it, the three reaction you got, which implies there's a different wording that would have gotten your point across better.
- c22 3y agoPerhaps, but one of the rules of this forum is to apply the most charitable reading of comments, so I don't always try that hard to craft perfect responses.
- neilv 3y ago> The website said the “software conducts local processing of digital image maps derived from the USB optical sensor in real-time, Is the "USB optical sensor" really a hidden camera, and "digital image maps" is images from the hidden camera? If so, then are they also being weaselly in the rest of the sentence? > without storing such data on permanent memory mediums or transmitting it over the Internet to the Cloud.”
- zoky 3y agoIt’s probably something like Apple’s Face ID sensor, which is a “camera” in the strict sense of the word but it captures a depth map rather than an image. I’m willing to believe that they aren’t transmitting images or even raw depth maps over the Internet (for one thing, it would be a lot of data and it’s hard to conceive of what the use of such data would be), but they are almost certainly attempting to correlate demographic information, or possibly even individual users, with specific purchasing patterns.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoThey don't have to transmit images. It's enough to generate a unique hash that can track your activity in the presence of the panopticons. Sweeten the deal even more by capturing your IMSI for future reference.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoYou don't need to transmit anything over the wire, someone has to restock the things. Unclear what the relationship is there.
- nusl 3y agoI wonder where the line in the sand exists for what people feel is “okay” tracking and “not okay” tracking. Here it seems to be that almost universally, the students dislike the facial recognition. Many folks I’ve spoken to otherwise don’t care about being tracked online. I suppose people are more sensitive to being tracked when it transitions into the real world and becomes more “real.”
- giarc 3y agoI don't mind being targeted online since it changes the ads I see from "Acai berry smoothies" to "beach vacations". Something I am not interested in, to something I am interested in (due to browsing history). That makes my experience better and I understand the trade off while using a free product (Google Maps, Facebook etc etc). However, the difference in this case is that the vending company (or someone along the chain) is using it to serve demographic ads to the customer of the vending machine. I still have to pay for the product and it's not changing non targeted ads to targeted ads (there were no ads before). I'm sure they aren't passing along some of the ad revenue to me since there's no competition (I'm sure all vending machines in the area are owned by the same company). So this is just a source of extra revenue for the company and serves no purpose to the user.
- nusl 3y agoAll right. I try my best to keep my adverts as random as possible(if they appear at all), since somehow it feels like I'm being passively influenced by viewing the same sort of adverts suggesting I buy stuff repeatedly. The way they're sticking ads on everything with or without tracking is pretty annoying. I hope they lose money with the tech they had to dev and install vs ad returns.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoInteresting. Instead I block most ads (the most unethical ones, if I can discern that), problem solved.
- KMnO4 3y agoThere’s an implied consent. I know that creating a Gmail account means that Google has access to all my emails. By using Gmail, I’m relatively aware that they’re building an ad profile on me, and I implicitly consent to that. But if I found out they’re collecting the bloodwork pdfs my doctor sends and selling them to insurance companies, that would be objectively beyond any reasonable consent. If you’re selling me M&Ms, I have a very very low tolerance for what I consider appropriate data collection.
- russellbeattie 3y agoAs multimodal AI becomes more prevalent and commercial AI attendants become the dominant user interface, there's going to be a basic expectation of object, gesture and facial recognition. "Welcome back to McDonald's, Mr. Beattie, would you like your usual?" Nods head and grunts while sending text "Very good. I'll charge your card on record and send a notification when your meal is ready. Thank you!" This will all require an integrated camera and microphone, and maybe other sensors as well. All turned on 24/7. This isn't science fiction, it's just a few years away from every day reality. So, in other words, get used to it.
- Nullabillity 3y agoThat's assuming a lot of givens.
- antfarm 3y agoThat’s not a camera, it’s a Demographic Sensor™.
- ale42 3y agoIn that case I want the Sensor™ to be physically unable to send out actual images to the computer that handles the vending machine, so no software update can actually start doing something else than they claim it to do originally.
- antfarm 3y agoI wouldn’t even want them to use my biometric data or even turn on the camera at all without asking for my consent. And in that case my answer would be a decisive NO.
- m3kw9 3y ago[flagged]
- frob 3y ago[flagged]
- kypro 3y agoIsn't facial recognition wide spread in the US yet? In the UK we're already using it everywhere. Most stores and checkout systems have it. It's used in CCTV across the country. It's used by police to identify protestors. Schools in my area even install spyware on kids phones to monitor them and their families. I can't imagine anyone would mind having being identified by a vending machine here lol... What's the risk?
- fifteen1506 3y agoThis isn't a noisy adult snitching to whoever walks by what you bought. This is a info collector which potentially disseminates information across the world, to sell better ads. Meanwhile, categories of you are being made. Do you buy a soda every friday at 05:00? "Party Animal". Or not. Who knows. Maybe they just spend the extra dollars on the software and camera because they really do want to lose money on it.
- scohesc 3y agoI knew the UK was going sharply downhill with the surveillance state nonsense, but that far already? Wow - I have even more respect for the people who risk their lives to damage and tear down government surveillance cameras for the common good.
- kypro 3y agoPeople here don't care. When I read the story that schools in my area had been installing spyware on students phones I assumed it was some kind of isolated thing. But my GF works in schools so I asked her if she knew of this app and she was like, "oh yeah, all the kids have it". I found this utterly insane but she seemed to think it was a good thing if it could be used to protect kids. And I guess I get the argument, but you could say the same thing about the government installing CCTV in everyone's homes... You need to draw lines, especially when there's an expectation of privacy. This is my concern with facial recognition in shops too. If I go into a shop I expect people to see my face, so a simple CCTV system seems fine. I even expect people who know me might recognise who I am, so again, if a human being I've interacted with before identifies me on the CCTV system I'm okay with this. What I don't think people expect is to be identified by some automated national biometric system which checks to see if you've ever stolen anything before so it can alert security, while also trying to understand your emotions and individual purchasing habits. I used to work for a large highstreet retail org and was literally pitched on a system which could identify our customers and tell us how they feel about their shopping experience and their shopping habits. But like I say, no one cares. I've spoken about this with people so often and they act like I'm some kind of privacy lunatic. That said, people here get very animated if someone can access data they've personally shared to Facebook and made publicly available.
- bborud 3y agoNothing a bit of superglue can't fix.
- rpaddock 3y agoIn 2018 Renesas had a "Facial Expression Kit Giveaway" contest and I was one of the winners. It was the "RZ Omron Facial Expression Kit giveaway". RZ being one of their newer, at the time, Micro lines. I had to sign an affidavit to get my prize, which I did. Never did use it and it eventually went to a local Hamfest. Their example code was a vending machine. This is the only related item I could find today: "OMRON Develops Real-Time Facial Expression Estimation Technology" https://www.omron.com/media/press/2012/10/e1023.html https://www.omron.com/media/press/2012/10/e1023.html
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoThis stuff drives me mental, but the article ends up not being quite the black pill it could be. Nice to see students fighting back at the grassroots, the University (hopefully) acting, and people feeling enpowered to do something under the law. We have to keep pushing for this stuff to become less and less normalised, and also for penalties to become more and more serious. When that happens, people will continue to feel more enpowered to fight this stuff. We should also make sure laws are clear that people have the right to "vandalise" such devices. In my opinion taking a bat to one of these things should at least be defensible in court.
- more_corn 3y agoI’m going to call bullshit on the claim that they don’t store data “It does not engage in storage, communication, or transmission of any imagery or personally identifiable information” They obviously store data. You have to write the image to disk after the camera takes it. I guarantee that if a 3rd party audit were conducted they’d find data stored on there. Heck, I’ll do the audit for zero upfront, payment contingent on finding images stored on there.
- itsTyrion 3y agoWhere are the vandals when you need them?