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Biometric Face Recognition At Your Local Mall

Posted by samzenpus on from the sunglass-and-disguise-hut dept.

dippityfisch writes "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that face recognition is being considered at Westfield's Sydney mall to catch offenders. The identification system matches images captured by surveillance cameras to an existing database of faces. Police said they could not comment on the center's intentions, but would welcome any move to improve security and technology in the area."

21 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Solution? by TheWizardTim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One possible solution that I can think of, if you want to keep your privacy, is to wear a mask. Security should not have a problem with that, right?

    1. Re:Solution? by ockegheim · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe sullen teenagers with hoodies are on to something...

      --
      I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
  2. It's private property people ... by phantomcircuit · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't know about Australia, but malls in the US are private property. They can and will issue a no trespass order against anybody who causes them problems (shoplifters mostly).

    If you don't want to be entered into their surveillance system don't shop at their mall.

    It's their property they can do what they want with it. It's no different from me running facial recognition against people who walk up my stairs. (which i dont do btw..)

    1. Re:It's private property people ... by crazybit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's their property they can do what they want with it. It's no different from me running facial recognition against people who walk up my stairs. (which i dont do btw..)

      No, they can't. People's rights must be respected even in private property, that's why local bars can't install cameras on girls bathrooms. You can install facial recognition, but people can still walk on the street with glasses and a hat.

      --
      - Human knowledge belongs to the world
    2. Re:It's private property people ... by phantomcircuit · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No, they can't. People's rights must be respected even in private property, that's why local bars can't install cameras on girls bathrooms. You can install facial recognition, but people can still walk on the street with glasses and a hat.

      The only reason local bars cannot install cameras in the girls bathroom is the expectation of privacy. When you go to the mall you have no expectation of privacy outside of the bathroom.

      The mall is perfectly within their rights to require people not wear disguises in the mall as well.

    3. Re:It's private property people ... by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you don't want to be entered into their surveillance system don't shop at their mall.

      And when every business participates in a facial ID program to help stop theft, the excuse will be "it's private property and everyone else does it." When cities start putting facial ID systems in public places the excuses will be "It's to help catch bad people, and anyway it already happens every place you go into, so we might as well connect it all and know where you are at all times."

      Maybe that won't happen, but why the hell are we letting them risk it? This is to catch "thieves?" Give me a break. That's a stupid reason to start this crap.

    4. Re:It's private property people ... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Insightful

      IANAAL (I am not an Australian Lawyer) but I believe shopping centres and other retail premises are designated as public places. Because of this people can not be excluded for arbitrary reasons. If this was not the case it would be possible to throw people out for any reason at all (possibly in contravention of anti-discrimination laws) and say it was because we thought they looked like a criminal.

      I think the best Westfield can do in this case is follow the suspects around either physically or on CCTV and wait for them to put a foot wrong. Either that or get a court order to keep them out but that would be short term and fairly expensive to obtain.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    5. Re:It's private property people ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When you go to the mall you have no expectation of privacy outside of the bathroom.

      Or maybe in changing rooms or phone booths or ...

      How about they have a guard follow you around watching your every move at close range, listening in on your every conversation, making notes of everything you touch, everything you buy and so on. That's ok too? How about random searches of your bags? After all, you might have stolen something and you're on their private property.

      The whole "no expectation of privacy in public" is nonsense. Just because you are in a public space shouldn't mean it's ok to protocol your every move, word and thought and store it in some database.

      Just wait till thought/feeling reading gets perfected. Hey it's a public place so we can record all your brainwaves. Yes yes of course, such technology will never come. Good for us.

    6. Re:It's private property people ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Disingenuous. A lot of people do care, and would be annoyed if they were aware of what was happening. But they won't be, and even if they are aware of it, they won't care enough to exert a competitive pressure against the stores using it. Especially if it gets widespread quickly. That doesn't mean it's right to do this, though. A law banning this sort of surveillance would probably have some decent popular support, but it'll never happen because people don't care enough to make it an issue, and the shitty voting system makes it impossible for small things like this to be handled democratically.

      You're wrong. People do care. But they care more about being able to shop at Walmart.

    7. Re:It's private property people ... by mdwh2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The only reason local bars cannot install cameras in the girls bathroom is the expectation of privacy. When you go to the mall you have no expectation of privacy outside of the bathroom.

      Says who? Remember, you said "It's their property they can do what they want with it." You never qualified that with expectations of privacy.

      The point is that there's no black and white issue here. Anyone can assert that you either do or don't have an "expectation of privacy" in a particular location - you're just making it up as you go along.

      You first made the argument "It's their property they can do what they want with it." - the example of the bathrooms shows that this isn't true. So do you now concede that you are wrong? If so, what is your argument?

    8. Re:It's private property people ... by mdwh2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'll start my own store, but what good does that do me if all the malls are owned by private companies? My customers will be subject to their rules whether I want them to or not, because they have to walk through the mall to reach my store.

    9. Re:It's private property people ... by locallyunscene · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your ignoring that loss of privacy for "the consumer" is an externalized cost to the "mall market" and therefore surveillance will need to be implemented by all malls in order to compete. Mall A sets up cameras and Mall B doesn't. Mall A directly improves its profit margin because it reduces shoplifting and more/better stores want to open in Mall A. Mall B loses business because it doesn't have the better stores/variety. Your strategy would only work if privacy were forced to be an internalized cost through gov't regulation, boycott, or corporate policy. This is also assuming you live in an area where the next mall isn't a substantially prohibitive distance away.

      Never mind the fact that acquiring the millions of dollars in venture capital required to buy land and build a mall in an already served area where your gimmick is you're intentionally handicapping yourself in the eyes of the market is a complete and utter pipe dream.

  3. Media bias? by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow. I'm not familiar with "Sydney morning herald" so I'm not sure what I was expecting, but they certainly didn't meet it.

    Half: "Police say this is great!"
    Maybe a third: "Besides, it's already being used and you didn't even know it, so it can't be bad!"

    And then: "Some academic loon has his panties in a twist over this"

    Quickly followed by: "Another professor... of various more important things... says it should be used more though."

    Australia often makes me feel better about the US. Right now, they're making me realize that as bad as Fox news is, it could get somewhat worse.

  4. Re:It all comes down to what you do with it by opposabledumbs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ah, yes. I should have been thinking of the children all along. This erosion loss of my own right to privacy is all good, because of the benefits to the children.

    No matter that most kids are abused at their home or in the home of another family member or close family friend. Let's put security cams up in the mall. That'll solve it.

    But seriously now, I'm not sure about the implications of these things: would a mall count as public or private? Generally, you wouldn't be allowed to take photos in a mall because it's private property, and they're obviously allowed to take photos of you, because they own the joint. However, what would Joe Public be able to do if he was flagged as a criminal through a false positive?

    I'd be pretty pissed if some fool tasered me while I was grocery shopping on a Saturday morning 'cos the camera erroneously ID'd me as the local pedobear or whatever...

  5. Re:It all comes down to what you do with it by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you ignore the possible invasion of privacy which is kind of moot in such a public place

    I find fault with that logic. You wear clothes in public, don't you? That's privacy in a public place, it clearly exists. Being automatically identified by a computer, WOULD eventually be used to track you between destinations and WOULD eventually be used for things which are not at all security related (such as in minority report, vending machines calling to you personally.) You can and will lose your privacy in public and in private if this shit continues.

    If you were being facetious, you need to be a little less subtle, or else it's just borderline trolling.

  6. Sounds like a good reason not to shop there. by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One false positive can ruin your whole day, week, or life.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  7. Know your rights. Stand up for yourself. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    In the UK at least nobody can arrest or detain you unless they have reasonable grounds to do so. The fact that their system sounds an alarm is unlikely to be sufficient grounds if that alarm often gives false positives (goes off when no offence has been committed). If they do detain you and you have not committed a crime you can sue and will probably win the case.

    From time to time a security guard asks if they can look in my bag because an alarm has gone off at the exit. If they ask politely and make it clear that they are asking me to help them, I sometimes let them look. If they speak to me as though I must comply, I refuse and walk on. If they persist, I tell them to arrest me if they believe I have stolen anything but that I will sue them if they do.

    I have always been allowed to leave and nobody has looked inside my bag without my agreement.

    It saddens me to see apparently respectable people submit to the public humiliation of a search, in the apparent belief that the security staff have the right to require it.

    The shopping mall security staff might be able to ask you to leave but they cannot arrest you for a breach of their arbitrary rules unless those rules are backed up by law.

    Stand up for yourself.

  8. Re:What the fuck? by Devout_IPUite · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This isn't police state, this is police corporation. In my experience people who make comments about the big government tend to vote in politicians that don't like regulating businesses. Regulating businesses is the only way to stop police corporations. This is the opposite of a police state, this is a free state that lets the corporations do whatever they want.

  9. Re:It all comes down to what you do with it by Nazlfrag · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are you seriously suggesting it's a good idea that anyone who has ever shoplifted should never be let near a shopping centre ever again in their life? In your think of the children rant did it ever occur to you that giving people who are in a position to abuse their authority tools to track and observe a childs every move is a terrible idea? Do you want your child to be living in a panopticon?

  10. Re:It all comes down to what you do with it by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you ignore the possible invasion of privacy which is kind of moot in such a public place, then if the algorithms to match faces work well enough, you could use it to identify criminals.

    There's a difference between "someone might see me" and "someone is watching my every move". The latter is stalking, and we have laws against stalkers. And I don't think "officer, I stalked him just in case he happened to be a criminal" would fly in court.

    I don't know if sex offenders are limited from being in malls with kid play areas, but if they are, that would be one good application I would stand for.

    I don't. I can understand why such people might be banned from working as kindergarden teachers or other positions requiring trust, but banning them from shops because there might be children in the same building is just ridiculous. The whole "sex offender" thing is nowadays simply used as an excuse to bully a socially accepted target; I find the practice every bit as disgusting as rape.

    Not that being a "sex offender" has anything to do with rape, or even with sex; you can get on the list for urinating in public.

    Also if someone loses a child in a mall, this could make finding said child a lot easier.

    Think of the chiiildren!

    Ironically enough, without the whole "sex offender" hysteria lost children would probably be escorted to security personnel, who would then find the parents. Instead everyone will steer clear of them for fear of being accused of being a "predator", the accusation being sufficient to get them inserted into the sex offender registry and apparently banned from malls forever, as well as being subjected to any arbitrary punishment someone who "thinks of the children" can come up with.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  11. Re:It all comes down to what you do with it by JohnFen · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't know if sex offenders are limited from being in malls with kid play areas, but if they are, that would be one good application I would stand for.

    Considering how easy it is to get on the sex offender list without being any sort of danger to children (or anyone else), I'm not so sure that would be a good thing.