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Borders Nixes Face Recognition
jeffy124 writes "Due to recent criticisms surrounding their implementation of face-recognition technology to watch known shoplifters, Borders Bookstores is suspending the approach. This doesn't mean it's gone for good, it may return in the future. They want to resolve the issues brought up by privacy and human-rights activists."
There are lots of unpleasant things that businesses could do that they don't do because people won't put up with them. It's important that this dynamic be put to work in the privacy area. If people won't put up with this, it won't happen.
Eternal vigilance, and all that.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
I swear, one day I'll just have to make my own company so I can make a point of not doing evil things like this.
I agree. Back is HS, i worked for a Kmart store, where we were shown pictures of known shoplifters on a semi-regular basis. Each one was an individual who had been caught shoplifting at the store. Our duty was if we see that person, have the manager call the cops because the town police would tell shoplifters that if they were to be caught in the store again (shoplifting or not), they would be arrested and charged with trespassing.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Another example of "Trial balloon management".
... and on & on.
The formula:
- We'll announce that we're doing something, but only introduce it on a low cost basis into a small target market.
- We'll watch the reaction.
- If it's bad, we'll denounce ourselves and retract our low cost trial balloon.
- If it works, we'll exploit the hell out of it.
This formula has been applied with both results to:
- SmartTags
- Windows Activation
- Borders Face Recognition
- Skylarov
- Implementation as a "Trade Secret" (ms & kerberos)
Other examples?
So, picking your nose in public is okay, but not if there's a camera around?
i worked for kmart back in hs. here's the guidelines we had:
We have store security dressed in street clothes patrolling the store. Employees know who s/he was. Same people usually spend most time in the room watching all the cameras (no, we didnt have cameras in the dressing rooms or bathrooms, so dont go there), or in the lofts looking out the one-way windows.
But not every shift could be covered, hence some shifts had no security staffed.
If staffed and you see suspicous activity, notify security. Otherwise, ask if you can help the person. Also attempt to give assistance if you think the suspicous person saw you. Another option is make a fake "Security section 7" call. This scared most shoplifters.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
What does this have to do with privacy? Borders is a corporation, and its property is private property. If they want to implement something like this, it's fine to complain to them on various grounds, such as that the technology can't be trusted (as though a person could), but to attack them on privacy grounds is absurd. If someone said you couldn't enter their house without being photographed or under video surveillance or whatever, would you attack them on privacy grounds, or would you just leave and tell them they were being silly? It is not your right to shop at Borders.
--- "TANSTAAFL" --Robert Heinlein (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)
what bigwig at borders actually thought this was a good idea and that the public wouldn't be pissed?
how stupid can people be..
There are always these huge detectors along the entrances, anyway. Most bookstores tag their books, and if you limit the kind of packages that people can take in, you should be able to control theft pretty well.
Besides, even with facial recognition, how are you going to define and detect "suspicious" behavior? Software might be smart enough to track both visible and obscured objects, but it could also make mistakes. Juggling books might also confuse the software.
Tagging the books might be better, and it doesn't raise all the questions about privacy and stuff. Of course, you need to make sure that the tags aren't removed...
May I just say, one private bookstore maintaining their own database of shoplifters shutting down is no doubt a victory for the privacy cause; it is a small victory. What if say, Borders got togeather and shared the system and database with, say, B&N. And they, in turn, shared with say another chain, say Walmart.
Well, it quickly becomes apparant where I'm going with this, you would have a very large database with lots of camaras that would be able to identify someone very quickly almost anywhere. Now, lets say some of these camaras are mouted by checkouts, they can place a face, to a name, and address, and credit card, and from there they have a full profile on you.
Applications: Hmm, who in my store right now is know for not paying off thier bills, who here talks a long time and doesn't buy anything? I won't help them. Who here is a real sucker for a sale and will buy whatever I tell him to? What does this guy want/ need / like / already have? Well, I won't serve person A and I'll give the slick Willy approch to person B.
Now let's say an institution already had lots of cameras set up to do this very thing, and they were already in the intial phases of it. That would be a very down right terrifing thought. Well, don't look now but it is, the British Government and many many other institutions.
What additional technology does my fear take to impliment? None.
Do you trust the governments of the world not to share this information or use it properly for your good? Neither do I.
There is only one solution, the cameras and system must be disabled. Each and every single last one of them. Write anyone who will listen, do your part, get them down before Jim and Borders that you've never walked into before says "Hello, Mr. Nobody, Good to see you today, may I show you the new copy of Wired and the new Playboy that you buy every month?"
nice to know that every once in a while a company actually listens to the consumer.
-
Trusting Borders to resolve and reconcile issues brought up by activists is like trusting them what got Microsoft's money, the government, to prosecute Microsoft.
.NET, and continue on their merry way because the Punishment bullet of the government, anti-trust prosecution, has already been shot, at least for the nonce!
A little comparison here.
Microsoft gets called a monopoly, gets threatened with breakup, probably WON'T get broken up since this got transferred to a new judge. They come out with XP and
Borders takes down its technology, "resolves" issues by doing something stupid like appointing a committee or a hearing board or something like that, or some kind of diversity officer.
Or there may be some other corporate solution that is cooked up by a lawyer in order to meet the constitutional requirements while conferring the bottom-line benefits, such as lower insurance premiums for the stores, that these cameras were designed to provide.
Goat sex free since 2001
Seems to me that such outcries without significant punishment or legal censure against future attempts are just signals to companies to keep this stuff in the back room.
It isn't too farfetched an idea- pretty much all of any large company's head staff would agree with such a plan, if it made their cost ratings better. A system such as this could be implemented without the knowledge of the store's staff (loss prevention in most large stores works as a hermetically sealed subsection of the store, so that all employees can be monitored freely) and if it made a difference, well, that would be one more reason for it to stay, and stay hidden.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
one of the interesting clashes brewing between the EU and the USA is the ongoing "ratcheting up" of intrusive and obtrusive "ubquitious surveillance" in the UK...
/. as i recall) to a Salon dot com article on email surveillance of Americans in the UK ....
i ti sh_carnivore/
the British people, after decades of things going "BOOM!" in the middle of London and other cities, have choosen to turn over many of their privacy rights (which are far fewer to start with in the UK than the USA, NO Bill of Rights in Limey Land)
here's a link (from last august, was also covered on
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/08/23/br
the recent tussle in Florida (WHY is it ***ALWAYS*** Florida????) over the use of face/rec is just the start of the argument over what s/f maven Bruce Sterling calls "perpetual surveillance", where any time we are in public, we are "on camera"..
those who support it argue that "personal crimes" mugging, robbery, rape, etc will be drastically reduced and more criminals will be caught and imprisoned and that living in a "fish bowl" is a small price to pay for the additional safety...the Brits seems to have bought this argument hook, line and sinker
if some organization(s) don't emerge to make sure that our "analog" privacy protections are transferred by law and statute to the digital world, which, so far, by and large they have not....our digital lives will become simple currency for the governments and corporations to trade in (Terry Gilliam, Prophet)
the corporations and their proxies, RIAA, MPAA, BSA, et al have their plans for our data, and so far, the US and European governments have either gone along with the corporations or just stood on the sidelines
The Bill of Rights needs to be attached to our digital identities, realms, behaviours ASAP, now's the time to support the EFF, or don't be surprised iff keyboard sniffers are built into OSs in the next decade...
We're all in it together...
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
While I'm sure we here on
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
No, he just doesn't want to get caught reading Wired.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
How do you keep it hidden when you have to kick out the first customer that your system THINKS is a criminal?
How do you keep it hidden when the first innocent person with enough time, money and guts SUES you?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Wonder if you had any misidentifications? (false hits). Did the police realize or were the innocent customers still kicked out or arrested? Did any human try to double check the computer (with physical photos) or was the computer's word treated as Gospel? Any lawsuits?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
eh, good point on the home burgler thing, except maybe I'd have my own at home video system :)
Your credit report analog, though, is by far the best reason I've seen yet on this forum as to why we should be concerned about these systems. Then again, I think credit rating report systems are a good thing, and believe me, I've seen plenty of my friends get screwed over by these things. But in the end, the problem really isn't that the credit report exists, it's that there's no good system for removing an incorrect entry.
I think what these video recognition systems really need, is a legal incentive to insure that the cost of a false positive is very high. That way, it would be the burden of the seller to ensure that their databases/reports are correct, unlike the way it currently is with credit reports.
Camera+radar speeding ticket generators have been around for decades, but never found wide-scale deployment in the USA. I've spent some time wondering why, and I conclude that the reasons are -
- probably vandalism of the devices;
- ineffectuality, because once people know about the devices they will slow down within their field of vision, and drive faster elsewhere to make up for it;
- most importantly of all, if traffic violations resulted in a near certainty of getting a ticket, people would stop violating the traffic laws and ticket-based civic revenues would plummet.
Also, I think the police by and large enjoy the cat-n-mouse games with violaters, and would be very disappointed to have it replaced by an automated system.Side note, especially relevant to my last bullet above: back in the 80's a lot of US cities got multi-million dollar federal grants of "get tough on crime" money, and at least one of them spent the money by putting 200 more cruisers out on speed trap duty.
City governments tend to have odd notions about what their obligations to their citizens are.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
honestly there werent any mis-ID's. crooks tended to respect the police warning. the pictures we were shown of caught shoplifters were polaroids of them and what they attempted to steal. The photos were kept on file in the security office and were never digitized or moved to a computer (i last worked there two years ago, i have little idea of what they do now, though an educated guess is they havent changed, as most employees are not computer-literate).
those falsely accused (if any) of trespassing could always show their IDs to police to verify themselves against the police and store records.
the banned shoplifters, on the other hand, could wait about 6-12 months for a staff turnover significant enough that most employees are new and never saw the photos, and those still there would forget the faces, hence crooks would just try again. Of course in this scenario, if the person is nabbed a second time, they walk themselves into a trap from the police dept as they will match the recods up and hit the crook with both shoplifting Nth offense and criminal trespassing (IANAL, but I guess conspiracy too if it's more than one person involved).
I do know of at least one incident where this happened. At christmas time, store hours are 6am-12midnight, and no one working the late shift one night would work at 6am the next morn. someone got caught shoplifting at 11:30 one night, then got caught again at 7am the next morning. The police (not store security) were the ones that connected the two incidents when they came to pick her up the second time. I beleive it was the same officer that came to take the person off to the station both times.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
and increasing data storage and processing capacity should concern everyone.
You go to the Circle K and buy a couple packs of cigarettes. There's footage of your car and your face. Just analog data, no problem, right? Some are starting to scan your driver's license to validate your age when you buy beer.
While driving home, you pass through 2 red light cameras and a photo speed trap. More data.
You also remember to swing by the local Meijer's (Michigan Supermarket) and pick up those tampons for your girlfriend (you're a sensitive guy, or just have a wierd hangup.) More movies. You pay with your debit card. More data.
If the local police dep't picks up one of those sweet daddy new IBM z-series servers with enough capacity to store and process all the data passing from our daily meanderings into digital form, we should be very concerned.
They would now know you drink on Monday, smoke too much and your girlfriend is on the rag. Cross-checking the police dep't's databanks they might find a couple domestic violence incidents that coincide with certain lunar phases and this Monday happens to be at the beginning of one. You might have a new guardian angel hanging around for the next 5 days.
Borders did the right thing. But, they could undo it in 3 months. I'd be amazed if there weren't at least 5 other major outlets that were implementing this technology with less media attention.
We should be canvasing the hell out of our legislators to make illegal any mass accumulation of visual data that can single us out by digital processing equipment, now before we're no longer in a position to do so.
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
i don't normally respond to vague AC postings, BUT, as your was so egregiously wrong, here we go (in brief and note, privacy rights in the EU are not separate but largely contained in the Human Rights Convention), hopefully, you'll respond with your own specific quotes and links...
8 /8 0042--a.htm#1
..........whenever made or given, so far as, in the *****opinion***** of the court or tribunal, it is relevant to the proceedings in which that question has arisen."
& L= E&M=$t/1-1-1-1/EMB1.asp
link to Human Rights Act of 1998
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts199
you particularly want to check out Sections 1, 2 and 3 language such as (asterisks are mine);
"1(4) The Secretary of State may by order make such amendments to this Act ******as he considers appropriate***** to reflect the effect, in relation to the United Kingdom, of a protocol."
"as he considers appropriate, eh???"
". 2. - (1) A court or tribunal determining a question which has arisen in connection with a Convention right must take into account any-
ah, yes, "..in the opinion of the court or tribunal..."
and my own personal favorite;
". 3. - (1) So far as it is possible to do so, primary legislation and subordinate legislation must be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Convention rights."
***love that phrase*** "So far as it is possible to do...*****
and let's not forget the Court of Human Rights own language;
" In accordance with Article 53 of the Convention, the Contracting States ******undertake to abide by the decisions of the Court******. To date States which have been ordered to make payments under Article 50 have consistently done so. The Court now (since October 1991) prescribes, in the operative provisions of the judgment, a period of three months from the date of the decision within which the applicant must be paid and (since January 1996) provides for interest in the event of failure to comply with this time-limit. "
for the non-legally inclined amongst us, all the language in the Convention is non-binding on the EU states, more properly it's as binding as the member states allow/want/let it be...some countries, the Benelux for example, take civil/privacy very, very seriously, some countries, like the UK, who we are speaking of here, are trashing individual rights for collective security
if you've ever carried a bag into a British train station or london hotel lobby, esp when the Provo's are on a tear, you know what i'm talking about.....
let's try this again, both the EU and the UK do NOT have SUPERSEDING and BINDING civil rights ***guarantees*** built into their legal systems, equivalent to those contained in the Bill of Rights addendum to the US Constitution, the Europeans do have many noble statements of intent and/or purpose, none of which have the force of a constitutional guarantee
check it out on the Council of Europe's own main portal;
http://www.coe.int/portal.asp?strScreenType=100
and last, but certainly not least, google the following; Britain's/British Official Secrets Act
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
"Kind of like a death penalty: If you kill someone and get caught, you know you'll most likely die. "
Um, no. Hasn't the notion of the death penalty as a deterrent been pretty well rejected by now? Witness Texas: most executions per murder conviction, and yet the homicide rate is still as abnormally high as ever.
OK - here's the scenario:
FR tags _you_ simply 'cause you _look like_ some shoplifter/thug/pedophile/terrorist. Congratulations... you now must _prove_ your innocence! Do you think store security or the police are going to believe you, or believe your (possibly fake) ID? Nooo... at the very least you'll be approached by security (embarrassed in public), maybe escorted out (denied patronage, and further embarrassed), perhaps even cited for trespassing (inconvenienced to attend misdemeanor court, thus harrassed by official process) - and that's just for the shoplifter variant. Use your imagination for the others - forcible arrest and a night in jail, at least. At worst... shot dead.
All made possible for millions of innocent, law-abiding citizens by FR tech of unknown accuracy installed without public consent by unaccountable corporations or even well-meaning but similarly unaccountable (and invariably stupid) government bureaucracies.
The problem is... _you_ didn't _do_ anything but walk into the store, or across the street! This turns "innocent until proven guilty" on its head. In case you slept through HS civics class, that happens to be one of the foundations of the US criminal justice system (along with a few other things like "right to confront your accuser" - how the hell can you confront a camera and software? - and "right to avoid self-incrimination" etc. etc.). In a court of law (in the US), prosecutors can't mention previous convictions. Goodbye to that, in essence. With FR in widespread use, some poor goof who shoplifted somewhere *once* could be unable to even enter the local supermart, with money, to buy groceries to feed the spouse & kids. Are you sure you want to live in such a society? Not me.
And any technology that can be abused, will be. San Diego has been accused of setting up "red light" cameras and cutting back the yellow time to pump up ticket revenues (by Dick Armey, U.S. Congress). And I believe it: you damsure cain't trust any of 'em gub'mint trough-hogs futher'n you can throw 'em. Remember that - it goes double for most inhuman corporations buying up our governments.
I lived in the U.S. for 4 months. In my first week, while riding the Metro out of D.C. I saw a guy who looked exactly like me. About the same age, same built, same face, same hair, only dressed with horrible taste. It was scary! People in the train were staring at us both. The guy was 100% absorbed in his reading, didn't even notice.
After I got home and considering how newsmedia in the U.S. are quick to show faces, I began to wonder, what if this guy is some maniac or drug pusher? We lived in the same neighbohood! I must say, at least once a week this thought came back. Paranoid? Maybe, but this Borders episode is a dangerous precedent. I've seen this patetrn before: you set up a system and tell people it is somehow error prone. The system gets it right about 6 or 7 times in a row and whoever is in charge begins to trust the system and believe its alarms are forensic evidence.
May I just say, one private bookstore maintaining their own database of shoplifters shutting down is no doubt a victory for the privacy cause; it is a small victory. What if say, Borders got togeather and shared the system and database with, say, B&N. And they, in turn, shared with say another chain, say Walmart.
That's exactly what they are doing. And you are right to be afraid of this. Despite what the Libertarian nay-sayers are saying, this is not a corp compiling a database. This is a corp working in conjuncture with local law enforcement, using their database. I think allusions to corporate police state are appropriate here. Americans may have laws to prevent double jeopardy, but apparently the Scarlett Letter punishment slipped through the cracks.
The article in the previous
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
I sent an email to borders discussing how much i was opposed to them installing this faceit software and here is the response i had received.
Thank you very much for your expression of concern regarding the Glasgow
Herald article ('Big Borders bookshop is watching you," Sunday 26 August).
In common with most large retailers, we use security cameras throughout our
stores as part of a range of security and loss prevention tools. We have
overt cameras installed in public areas throughout the store, as well as
behind the tills etc., for the protection of staff and customers. We do not
use cameras in any private space.
Borders (UK) Ltd. was approached by Dectel, the British distributors of
SmartFace, to pilot its security system that is designed to identify known
shoplifters. The device scans visitors entering a store and measures the
distances between 80 facial features to create a unique digital "face map."
The digital image is then converted to a mathematical formula and searches
the database for a match. Visionics, the USA manufacturer of this system
reports that images that are not matched on the database are discarded.
Borders was offered a trial of this system in our two London store locations
on Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street. We will not participate in a trial
of the technology and have made no commitment to implement this security
system.
Borders strongly values the human rights and privacy of our staff and our
customers. At Borders, we feel we have an obligation to provide a safe
environment for our customers and staff. Just as important is our obligation
to respond fully and honestly to customers' concerns. We promise to continue
to do so, while offering the best range and service available anywhere.
Thank you for contacting us.
Beaverton, Oregon does the same thingf (right outside of Portland, where all the intel and textronics geeks are) installed the cameras at a whopping $15,000 to install and $10,000 to rent a MONTH (EACH!!! i.e. multiply x 4 for an intersection)
The yellow lights used to be 3 seconds, but now are 2.3 seconds.
BTW, these are not accusations, an independent study has been done.
Personally, I wonder why the rent is so fucking high for these lights. I guess government corruption at its best, someone is definately making money.
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Borders is normally big enough that face recignition won't help much. But my local record store needs this. Or to put it better, they need a system that will recignise me, and have the robotic shelves get rid of that garbage that passes for music nowadays and put in some real bluegrass.
Now I know that 99% of the population or more can't stand blueGrass, but I like it. It wouldn't be hard to impliment this system either, though the investment in $$$ is a bit high yet.
In a bookstore I want this to connect to my comptuer when I pick up a book, and my comptuer then sends a message (I don't want them to know what is on my bookshelf from a trip to Barns and Nobel) "You already own that book, but it is a worn copy." At which point I get the choice: a) buy it to replace the copy I've worn out, or B) find the copy in my bookshelf. this is a problem with some authors who have written many good books over their lifetime, which is a lot longer then mine (so far)
Yes there are privacy issues, but it can serve me too, and I'd like the benifits of it.
Automobiles, airplanes, public mail, the Internet, broadband, artificial hearts, organ transplants, Big Macs, lowfat milk, organic food, vaccinations, ultrasounds, microwaves, cable TV, PVRs, linux.
...why this is a bad thing.
If you still don't understand, and you really want to know why, I implore upon you to read Database Nation, for the truth, fallacies, meanings, and danger that surround the whole information/data analysis, collection, and distribution systems in use.
This camera system doesn't match a face to another face - instead it matches data to other data. If the data can be changed, or used - it can be altered to "finger" anyone - and how do you prove which is the truth and which is the forgery? People are trusting now that "the computer is always right" - ever looked at your credit report? Pray that your name isn't "John Smith" or similar! Been denied credit lately?
Read the book - it goes over all this and a lot more. FR tech and credit reporting is only the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately. It is only going to get worse, unless you really understand what can be done with this information, and then act to protect that information.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon