Slashdot Mirror
Magazine Photos Fool Age-verification Cameras
gregor-e writes "Japan has scheduled a full-scale rollout of visual age-verification on cigarette vending machines. Unfortunately for them, a Sankei Sports news reporter has determined that this system can be fooled by holding up a magazine photo of an adult."
I'm one of those adults. I'm 28 and if I walk around with a backpack on I will get pulled over for smoking. been pulled over for curfew, ditching class etc. I would be pretty annoyed if I had to carry around a fake beard just to buy cigs.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
They are Japanese.
You really think THEY didn't come up with that technical idea by now?
TFA:
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Actually, in Japan you can not only buy beer and pornography from vending machines, you can also buy used panties...
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
So I don't know why any trust is given to a machine to guess someone's age based on the appearance of their face. A lot of retailers I've seen have a sign posted at the till that says they will ask for ID if you look under 35. 35! This enormous margin of error is due to the fact that you really can't tell if someone is over or under 18 without some seriously obvious clue. I was 30 before people stopped guessing my age to be 20. My neice was able to get service in a bar once at age 14, and it could easily be seen why.
They did. Read this thread more accurate. A possible solution would be to place digital photo on RFID chip and let face-recognition software compare both faces. But if a kid wants to buy cigarettes, it will buy it. By taking his father's RFID and printing his photo, for example. The cigarette machines are the real problem. Disassemble them, make only a few authorized sellers sell cigarettes anyway and make sure those few do have strict age controls.
Problem But tobacco companies' lobby will do anything to prevent it. So will do nicotine-addicted to get another cigarette.
more likely temperature. When taking a urine sample for example, one of the things the tester does immediately is check the temperature of the sample. This helps prevent people from bringing in a medicine bottle etc with a 'clean' sample to drop in the cup. if it measures much below 95 deg, they will know you brought it in.
Reminds me of something I read awhile back, guy tried this stunt and didn't get caught until later. "Mr Doe you'll be happy to know you passed your drug test. The doctors also felt they should inform you that you are approximately two months pregnant." oops...
So expect thermal (I.R.) sensors. Most digital cameras (CCDs) are highly IR sensitive anyway if you remove their IR filter, so this has to be a really easy mod for them to make. Won't be terribly easy to fool. A bit like those thermometers used to measure high temperatures of materials. They usually have a red laser light dot shine on the target, but that's purely for aiming. It shows where the IR sensor in the test unit is focused on. They can do this same thing with the face presented to measure the surface temp of the image. (without needing the red laser dot since the target is being presented in a known location)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
no, the truth of the matter is, they're just panties scented with the popular perfumes that are in vogue with highschool girls, with a statement that they're used' but it's rteally just marketing, it's much cheaper to buy perfume, spray it in a pair of cheap panties and package it in a machine as 'used' panties. actually using used panties would be gross, it's all about the 'image' people think they're really used by high school girls, and the perfume makes the buyer shell out the equivalent $80 got a $4 item, they think because it's perfumed that it's been warn, especially since the machine has big signs saying so!
most likely the item was dreamed up by some yakuza thug, of how to turn $4 into $80. I bet it's quite profitable.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The article is pretty skewed. The real story is that Taspo is starting July 1st. Taspo is a card based system that doesn't use any age verification. It's being deployed nationwide. You have to apply for a Taspo card using some form of state-issued photo identification. Maybe there's a weak link in the application procedure, but only one card is issued per person and cards that have been lost or are being abused can be disabled remotely. The article says that there will be 4000 age verification machines (in a country of 130 million), but I've never seen one. Every day, I see dozens of machines that say Taspo will be required starting July 1st. All the smokers I know have Taspo cards.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.