A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.
A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.
That doesn’t sound as cost-effective as just losing the millionth customers.
Because using FR for a payment system is dumb.
Everyone here seems to be hyperfixated on the payment system aspect.
I’m talking purely in the context of FR tech being vastly better than what people think, since everyone has this Idea that FR tech doesn’t work.
We’re also worried that it does work.
As another person said, it feels like there’s a lot more use cases for rampant authoritarian control, then positive benefits to society.
Recognizing sociopaths, sure. We do that already with wanted posters, and with political office advertisements.
But for everyone else who is just trying to live their life, this can be extremely invasive technology.
Now here’s where I drop what seems like a whataboutism.
You already have an incredibly invasive system tracking you. It’s the phone in your pocket.
There’s almost nothing a widespread FR system could do to a person’s privacy that isn’t already covered by phone tracking.
Edit: and including already existing CCTV systems that have existed for decades now. /edit
Even assuming a FR system is on every street corner, at best it knows where you are, when you’re there, and maybe who you interact with. That’s basically it. And that will be limited to just the company/org that operates that system.
Your cellphone tracks where are you, when you’re there, who’s with you, the sites you visit, your chats, when you’re at home/friends place, how long you’re there, can potentially listen to your conversations, activate your camera. On and on.
On the flip side a FR system can notify stores and places when a previous shoplifter or violent person arrives at the store (not trying to fear monger, just an example) and a cellphone wouldn’t be able to do that.
The boogyman that everyone sees with FR and privacy doesn’t exist.
Edit 2: as an example, there was an ad SDK from a number of years ago that when you had an app open that used that SDK it would listen to your microphone and pickup high pitched tones from TV ads to identify which ads were playing nearby or on your TV.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/16/silverpush-ultrasonic-tracking/
As a Cybersecurity expert running well configured GrapheneOS, I actually don’t.
So I, personally, have a lot more privacy to lose from facial recognition technology. Since my only path to reasonable mitigation is a socially ostracizing face paint pattern. (It would play well with my professional colleagues, who understand the risks, I suppose. But I have a feeling it wouldn’t play out so nice at my local grocery store…)
But I do take your point, that for most folks, it’s not a huge change.
A key difference is that, while it’s a lot of work, I can, and have, opted out of the phone tracking.
GrapheneOS isn’t a complete solution, especially if you still use things like Facebook and Whatsapp. Although it is a massive plus to privacy.
Quick question. I’ve been hesitating with jumping to Graphene for a little while now. The two things that have held me back is losing access to Google Camera and Android Pay (or Google Pay, or Google Wallet, or Android Wallet. Whatever Google’s calling it these days).
The Google Wallet feature I think has taken care of itself. They pushed an update that requires you to re-authenticate after the initial tap for “security”. Which means half the time the transaction fails and the cashier has to redo the payment process. So I just gave up and have gone back to tapping with my cards directly for the past month.
So that just leaves the Google Camera. How’s the quality with Graphene?
Yeah…speaking of my making myself a social outcast by painting my face crazy colors - I figure I am at least 20% of the way there by not using Facebook or Whatsapp.
I’m joking…mostly. But it really can feel isolating not to have either of those apps.
My experience matches. I did miss Google Pay for a few months after switching to GrapheneOs, until tap-to-pay reached all my favorite stores. Now I’m just mildly annoyed to carry a card to do something my phone ought to do.
I was very annoyed with how slow the Google camera app loaded, on my previous phone.
My Pixel with GraoheneOS is the best camera I have had in about a decade, because the stock camera app opens almost instantly. I had a big problem with the camera taking a couple seconds to open, on my previous two or three Android phones. Somehow it got worse with each generation of phone, while I paid more for stronger CPU and worse battery life.
I am vaguely aware that I maybe gave up some clever camera features that some of my phone vendors added, but I don’t miss them since I wasn’t using them. One had a 3d photo picture that I used exactly once, if I recall.
But compared to stock (Pixel) Android, it’s
literallyapparently the same camera app, except I swear it loads much faster. (I’m wrong, it’s not the same app.) The privacy implications of the load time difference I perceived freak me out a little, honestly. I hope I’m just wrong about that bit. (Thankfully, yes. I’m wrong.)I also missed Google Photos for backup, until I bought a Synology Network Attached storage device.
I’m using a Pixel 7 right now, and I love the camera. I’m not sure I’ll be happy if I lose all the camera features.
Thanks for replying
Sure! Incidentally, it looks like you can now install the GrapheneOS camera through Google Play, if you want to give it a test run without going full GrapheneOS.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.grapheneos.camera.play&hl=en&gl=US