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Facial Recognition Cameras Peering Into Some SF Nightspots
Fluffeh writes "On Friday, a company called SceneTap flipped the on switch enabling cameras installed in around 20 bars to monitor how full the venues are, the mix of men and women, their ages — and to make all this information available live via an iPhone or Android app. Privacy advocates are unimpressed, though, as the only hint that people are being monitored is via tiny stickers on the windows. Beyond academics and policy experts, some San Francisco bar owners that originally partnered with SceneTap have said that they're pulling out and will be taking down the company's cameras. An increasing number of bars still listed on the SceneTap's site are now saying that they're not working with the Chicago startup, including Mr. Smith's, Southpaw, John Colins, and Bar None."
FWIW, I've lived in San Francisco for 17 years and I've heard of maybe one of these bars. I wouldn't want to extrapolate any kind of "trend" out of this. As the summary suggests, I think there's more press release than reality here.
Breakfast served all day!
just need some vetted moderators to rank the attractiveness of people from either gay or straight perspective, then making tallies per gender per estimated age buckets (21-24, 25-28, 29-32, etc.) THEN you'd really have something.
With the reports of undercover officers instigating incidents at protests, I am waiting for the protesting activists to start a facial recognition database of police. In crowd hand held camera's and small toy remotes scanning and feeding images to a central system like this. Already at protests you see both sides scanning both ranks with cameras.
When you can snap a picture of someone with your iPhone and get a "police" or "not police" report - that will cause the *hit to hit the fan about all sorts of things.
to monitor ....... the mix of men and women,
How can they differentiate between them?
Have gnu, will travel.
I remember setting up a spare video camera in our lab back in the early 90's, capturing images and dumping them out onto an experimental web server we had running. This would be an early hack of the webcam concept.
I hadn't considered that it would be an issue. But my colleagues were distinctly not impressed, and so I quickly tore down the rig. I think that, to them, the lab was a private space. The camera violated their expectation of privacy, and they didn't like that. I've been thinking about it ever since.
The expectation of privacy is contextual, of course, and we each have rather firm internal rules about how it works. But often these rules are tacit even to us, so it's not easy to specify them in a way that would be generally useful. For example, is a bar a public space or a private one? See, it turns out to be both. We may go to a bar to meet people, in which aspect it's a public space. And we may also go there because it provides cover for having an intimate conversation, in which aspect it's private.
As an acceptable tradeoff between security and privacy, we may be okay with security cameras monitoring us, because we assume that those images ordinarily remain locked away in a box somewhere. If the same cameras were to put the same images on the web, we might consider that the tradeoff is no longer acceptable. What about the case where the images are to be scanned for identifying features by some third party? I think the answer will depend on whether we regard the resulting data as anonymizing us or identifying us and tracking our movements. And our legitimate reason to be concerned is that, once the images have been passed to other hands, we just can't know what will happen next.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
This seems just like a different manifestation of those ID scanners that some bars have installed, though less obvious to the patrons. Or perhaps they are linking the two systems so that they can tie the image captured by their cameras to the name, address, and date of birth from the scanned ID.
Glad I don't go to bars. :^)
Bugger that or a bad nightmare.
Just as I *refuse* to enter any bar/club which requires to scan my drivers license (no seriously, trust us we very carefully throw away all the information, it's as if you were never scanned), I would also find somewhere else to drink rather than put up with this massive invasion of my right to at least some semblance of privacy.
Vote With Your Wallets, People.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Around the world (eg central London) there are cameras covering some public spaces. I would like to see the output of those taxpayer funded cameras on the www. Privacy should be a non issue. Our culture will have to change because privacy in public places has (like copyright) been destroyed by technology.
If you want privacy, rent your own space, put it in a Faraday box and sweep it for bugs.
Otherwise all you do by not making those images public is deprive all but the powerful, the wealthy and the hackers of the information gathered by publicly funded cameras.
Oh, not that kind of facial?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
oh.. well if SOCIETY says so, it must be right.. my bad. A society made up of majorities who can't be bothered to learn to drive well in the first place. yeah fuck you. I want to take away your insurance and MAKE you drive 'naked' on the road.. maybe then you'll get the fuck off your cellphones, leave the sex for the bedroom, and keep away from drugs while on the road. Then, if you hit someone, you'll be really fucked instead of making the rest of us pay for your ineptitude.
Because not being "required" to have health insurance has made Americans the most health and safety conscious people in the world? Driving without insurance wouldn't change people's behavior much.
It is called Cans. It is know as a place to go if its getting late and you don't have a piece yet. Take that as you will.
Crowd: >90% full
* Normal Women: 50% * Normal Men: 43% * Down-On-His-Luck Private Detective: 1% * Mysterious Inside Contact: 1% * Hired Goons Preparing For Ambush: 5%
why? it doesn't increase safety.
Yes it does. The sort of person who doesn't have insurance probably doesn't care too much about a lot of other stuff, too, like maintenance, tire pressures, etc.
They're also raising the insurance rates of everybody who does give a damn.
Get 'em off the road, I say. There's no "right" to drive, it's a privilege.
No sig today...
Above you said "then no one has them."
There are lots of private webcams all over the place. In shops, parking lots and god alone (aka Tax Dept) knows where else. These are all accessible by government (subpoena as last resort). Since they are privately owned and on private property, you are unlikely to be able to access that information as a right. And I don't see any practicable way of stopping people from photographing what is going on in their own property. ("practicable" here in the same sense as it was impracticable to control alcohol in the 20's, or psychoactive drugs since then. Sure you can make laws, but they won't be obeyed.)
So stopping governments putting out webcams only makes the situation worse. The info is there. Governments can access it. You have no right to access it.
You also said (further down) "It is good that you don't feel threatened but when you do it will be too late."
Not if the government thugs are photographed on public webcams doing questionable arrests. The more open we make information, the harder it is for the government to keep secrets. And government wrongdoing relies on keeping government activities secret.
Also "And this information is kept forever and could be trotted out many years in the future. Do you want to be justifying what you did twenty years ago?"
OTOH. If some miscreant was doing something very naughty I would love it if he was caught even 20 years later. I view it as a situation similar to those people who are now being convicted or set free because genetic technology not previously available either proves or disproves their guilt.
I'm on board with the one that checks for current insurance. Install that fucker on every cop car.
why? it doesn't increase safety. If you want to protect yourself from litigiousness, do your part to minimize liability for traffic accidents. It's bad enough that insurance is marketed nowadays like it actually makes you safer on the road. it doesn't. it just makes insurance companies rich.
Because the next time some moron hits me because they are too entrhalled in the cell phone conversation they are having, or texting, there will be a better chance that at least their insurance company will pay for my repairs, rather than it coming out of my or my insurance company's pocket, which has happened before.