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Disney Wants To Track You With RFID
Antipater writes "Disney parks and resorts have long had a system that combined your room key, credit card, and park ticket into a single card. Now, they're taking it a step further by turning the card into an RFID wristband (called a 'MagicBand'), tracking you, and personalizing your park experience, targeted-ad style. 'Imagine booking guaranteed ride times for your favorite shows and attractions even before setting foot in the park,' wrote Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, in a blog posting on Monday. 'With MyMagic+, guests will be able to do that and more, enabling them to spend more time together and creating an experience that's better for everyone.' Disney does go on to talk about all the things you can opt out of if you have privacy concerns, and the whole system seems to be voluntary or even premium." With a theme park, at least, you can also choose to avoid the place entirely; that makes it, however creepy, a bit different from compulsory education settings, or mandatory car tracking.
After watching their recently acquired film THX 1138, CEO Bob Iger hailed it as a "feel good" movie although the ending had some flaws and promised to turn all Disney parks and resorts into the futuristic "utopia" from the film. Iger announced at a press conference that Mickey Mouse would replace OMM 0910 as the only approved deity of worship. Iger sat upon a chair made of the late Congressman Sonny Bono's remains while wearing his Grand Dragoon Mousekateer helmet although he refused to answer any questions from reporters who had not been taking their performance enhancing medications.
My work here is dung.
I admit I don't get the reflexive "defend my privacy" stance on slashdot. Why is this "creepy"? You can opt out if you choose, but you can use the system to enhance your experience at the park if you choose. Plus, it gives Disney data to understand patterns and behaviors of people who enjoy the park, and thus allowing them to enhance and modify the park to meet their customer's desires, which makes their experience more enjoyable and increases the value of the park which ultimately makes it more profitable; that sounds like a win-win.
Can someone please explain a scenario, especially when this is voluntarily opt out, where this is a bad thing for people? Note it's also based on your room card/ticket to the park, so it's not like they can track you outside of the park, only when you're on their facility.
Local news media are already saying it's not even available to everyone. They're bundling it for certain people and making it an optional extra for others, and they're really going to have to stretch to come up with good reasons why someone would want to pay extra for an RFID band on a single-day ticket, considering that single day admission is already nearly $100, and you'll be lucky if you get to ride 6 or 8 rides due to the length of lines.
Long signatures suck.
But it's a Magic Band. That's better than an ordinary wrist band. Why would you ever want to take it off?
Privacy concerns? What privacy concerns? This is Disney we're talking about. What could you possibly be concerned about?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"I'm going to build my own theme park! With blackjack! And hookers! You know what- forget the park!"
I am officially gone from
It's a wristband. You take it off when you leave the park.
I took my family on a Disney cruise and you booked all sorts of things before leaving port. It was nice and the combo room key/charge card/etc was super convenient.
I don't think Disney is hiding the fact that they want to squeeze you for every penny you are willing to give them. Any adult with half a brain can figure that out within a few hours of visiting a park/boarding a ship. They manage to make sure that no matter your budget you can have fun with them and that is no small feat.
Be realistic about your budget and stick to it. I for one really liked going up on deck to a pool that wasn't crowded and having someone bring me a bucket of beers that I had already picked out and paid for - without asking or waiting. If that isn't your style, you can always go with the competition and get overcrowded pools and long lines for a smaller selection of beers that really aren't any cheaper.
You said it yourself. It's their park, not yours.
evil Mickey for one.
And why is this RFID any worse than the extensive CCTV system they already use to monitor the entire park? You aren't dumb enough to think you have privacy in a theme park, right? Outside of restrooms that is.
I don't see an issue with this. You already have a room key tied to your credit card number, a pass with your name on it, and you have to book reservations at most of the eating places in Orlando. Disney already has my information for all of that stuff, and pretty much can already track me. Why not have an all-in-one system? Or is it just because its RFID wristband that everyone here is having an issue with?
You said it yourself. It's their park, not yours.
He said it himself, its not their park its ours, because we paid for it. We should have more say in how something we paid for is run, vs private property. If you don't like the rules for welfare, get off welfare.
Walt Disney World was granted a 20 year tax break from the government
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
yea someone might find out that you rode "Its a small world" 57 times when you were at the park.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I just finished re-reading Makers.
She bought it all: all the fast-passes and priority cards, all of it loaded into a grinning Mickey on a lanyard, a wireless pendant that would take care of her everywhere she went in the park, letting her spend money like water.
Thus girded, she consulted with her bellhop some more and laid out an itinerary. Once she'd showered she found she didn't want to wear any of her European tailored shorts and blouses. She wanted to disappear into the Great American Mass. The hotel gift shop provided her with a barkcloth Hawai'ian shirt decorated with tessellated Disney trademarks and a big pair of loose shorts, and once she donned them, she saw that she could be anyone now, any tourist in the park. A pair of cheap sunglasses completed the look and she paid for it all by waving her Mickey necklace at the register, spending money like water.
OK, so it's a bracelet, not a necklace -- otherwise, pretty much spot-on.
Great book, and you can read the whole thing (and all of his books) online for free in a variety of formats.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
And you can choose to not get the badge. Besides, you do realize all theme parks such as this use extensive CCTV systems to monitor the park, right? You've never really had privacy when you were in the park to begin. The whole argument is based on a flawed premise:
It'snot like they don't know where you are. Are you secretly attending their resort without them knowing?
This is all about a better experience at Disney resort. It's a good idea. It's not even creepy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I forget. Is evil Mickey is the one without the goatee?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"I've paid my entrance fee, to have free roam of the park in certain areas."
well, you don't. You might want to read it some time.
That said, how does this prevent that?
"I do not feel they have the right to track my every move."
that's great that you feel that way, but they do.
Just like you have the right to track guest in your home.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My decades long experience with CCTV is its mostly anti-employee rather than anti-public. When the rentacops aren't creeping at the hotties, they'll gather evidence against people on someone's list. "Oh look, kid-who-boss-wants-to-fire went to the can for more than the defined 3 minutes".
Adding RFID means those poor bastards in costumes will now have numeric metrics of how many kids they hugged and will be paid WRT competing with each other and so forth. As a social trend/goal I don't think its anything to be proud of or look forward to.
"human flesh worker drone 2426625-131253, the computer reports that your walking speed is 2.8 MPH and we have a meaningless metric that says we must terminate all human flesh worker drones who walk slower than 2.9 MPH so good bye security will escort you off the property" Yeah I bet that's a fabulous place to visit. Then again Alcatraz and the German concentration camps have a lot of visitors and they were not exactly the peak of human happiness, so maybe not so bad.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
" its not their park its ours, because we paid for it."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahaha.
No, they got a tax breaks to put it there, it's not the same as paying for it. A tax break that brought in a lot of jobs, BTW. Jobs that pay taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Tax break != you paid for it. By stating that Tax break = you paid for it, you must first make the assumption that all money belongs to the government and they only pay you what you are allowed to keep. Is that how you do your taxes? Asking the government how much of their money you are allowed to keep at the end of the year, or do you send them a portion of your money?
I am sure some toad at the DHS/TSA is looking into this.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Just to present the other side of the argument, they did create about 60,000 jobs in an area that prior to their arrival was primarily known for its orange groves.
Ah who needs civil rights when you can have jobs... After all, we need to frame the argument as a binary either or, even though it isn't.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proslavery_in_the_antebellum_United_States
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudsill_theory
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You are already in their park, quite probably staying at one of their resorts. If you bought a meal package they know when and where you are eating. Even if you didn't anytime you use your credit card they could determine what and where you are buying things. I am all for protecting my privacy in the general world, but I'm at freakin' Disney doing Disney things for a couple days. No this is not Orwellian. When Google/Apple/Microsoft/the Government start requiring these things, then we can talk.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I've never been to any amusement park so I can't tell whether they are actually fun and worth it, but whenever I hear of one I'm thinking of Westworld with Yul Brynner. Oh, and by the way, whenever someone mentions McDonalds or a circus, It comes to my mind.
Needless to say I avoid amusement parks and McDonalds.
Yeah, but when you're already booked and just spent 2 days driving 1200 miles to get there, already checked in and spent one night at a resort, then show up at a theme park where they ask you to stick a finger in a scanner.... That's not really the time to opt-out. Thanks Disney World.
here, please make sure it's secured around my wrist,...
Civil rights? Over a voluntary RFID badge? Hyperbole much?
You do not even want to know where they stick your personalized "hidden Mickey".
When someone says, "Any fool can see
imagine the awesomeness if they gave you a loaner nexus phone with google now to track you in the park, let you pay with google wallet, make some limited free calls, plan your vacation and track your movements to organize the park better
that would be a geek wet dream come true
i mean how awesome would it be if you put in your plan for the day and disney google now told you when to leave your hotel and where to have breakfast to make the most of your time
to Yul Brenner wearing a cowboy hat...
So where are we drawing the "evil rich scum" line this week? $200K? $100K? Anyone who makes more than you?
I took my family to WDW in Orlando last year for a week. We had a great time, no problems. But one concern I had the entire time was "what if we get seperated from the kids?" I'm sure this happens constantly at the park and there's a whole system in place.
Before we left I installed an App on my android that featured maps of the four parks, wait times for rides, locations of characters, restaurants and all that. What if you could your individual party members on your phone? "Person 1 scanned their wristband at Star Tours at 12:34pm"
It is a public place in that it is accessible to the public. This means e.g. no smoking as that is the law. Even if they wanted (which they don't) to allow smoking, I am sure that they won't be allowed, because it is a public place.
As there is already at least 1 law that has priority over what they want to do on their property, I can imagine a law that would forbid the tracking of human cattle as well.
I am sure there are many other laws that regulate what they can or can not do and not be able to use the defense: But it is their park.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You can fry it in the microwave once you've been mauled by enough actors dressed as giant mice (now THAT'S creepy).
After all, you're surrendering a lot of your normal rights when you agree to Disney terms and conditions and yu will be experiencing the corporation ethos on their premises. Its not as if you're going to be permanently chipped, like the family pooch, though I can see that as an option for those who buy an annual pass!
Apropos of nothing,in the UK, EuroDisney produces TV adverts showing little children wetting themselves with excitement because their loving parents have spelled out "You're going to Disney!" on the fridge door with magnetic letters. I'd love to have a sequence of thoroughly devastated kids who see a scrooge-like parent amend it to "You're NOT..." Perhaps Jim could fix it? But then we'd be back to those actors....
This. I was standing in a hallway at a Disney park and some guy starts trying to fight me for being in the way of his stroller on the stairs. Not being the type to back down, I said some things that made him feel stupid, such as repeatedly pointing out that there was a stroller ramp just off to the side of us, made for wheelchairs and strollers.
No sooner did he get tired of being a tough guy with nothing to back it up, he left the building (this was less than 1 minute). Immediately, several security guards were asking us what happened. I told them that some guy wanted to fight me for standing there, thanked them for their assistance, told them I was willing to let it drop because he was cranky after pushing a stroller all day and went on my way.
But, the point was that security was there in less than 1 minute, and this is probably the norm, not the exception, at Disney parks.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Unless they are identifying every person they see on the CCTV you can't really equate the two. RFID uniquely identifies people automatically, CCTV does not.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Everyone meets in the hotel lobby at the beginning of the day, and swaps wristbands.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Having been to Disney world this past august this is just a more advanced version of the system they currently have in place. The only real difference is you currently use your park pass and buttons (personal event greeting) instead of an wristband. The new thing is pre-booking some ride times which considering the lengthy wait times on some of the more popular rides (2 hours+ some days). Disney constantly tracks ride times, guest flow, guest approval and a whole host of things we would never think of all to improve the quality and safety of the experience to allow you more time in the shops and restaurants where they make the real money. Disney above all is into selling you as many of those trinkets and meals as they can manage. The rides are there to give you a reason to come back.
As for the other issue mentioned (scanning your finger print) it is to prevent people from buying one yearly pass or multi-day pass and renting/selling the use of the pass. Neither of which I can blame them from wanting to prevent as this does cut into there bottom line on ticket sales and skews park numbers.
You can choose to avoid car tracking. Remember, cars aren't people. (We tend to forget that.)
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
CCTV does not... without gait recognition software. Or other kinds of image processing.
As a general rule I am against any sort of tracking. But, knowing what I know about the "happiest place on Earth" from my college room mate who worked there in the summers, having a tracking wrist band on my kids while I'm there is something that I am 100% for. While the Mouse does everything it can to ensure that the "no child has ever been kidnapped FROM a Disney park" statement holds true, the fact is that things happen to kids there every year and the perpetrators don't have to leave to property to do it.
Yeah, try walking through the gardens or climbing over a fence or some place you shouldn't. The guards find you very quickly.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
With apologies to the right honorable gentleman D. Duck.
Hey! It was hot out and the line was short!
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
I'm going to open up an aluminum foil stand just inside the park entrance.
Disney World is the largest single-site employer in America IIRC. The Orlando area has been vastly more than paid back even if you only measure tax revenue. Can't you think for just a minute before repeating your screed?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
One of the cool benifits that they could offer would be locating members of your group. All the wrist band for a group would be grouped together in the system. All that you have to do is go to a Kiosk and select something like show group memeber locations. At which point a map of the park would show where each member was. From there, there are a lot of additional features that could be added.
Why are the collars on the wrist when they should be around your neck? Would be nice to have a tag on the collar with the name of the master and master's address.
Yes, yes, I see your point. German concentration camps and Disney World are just the same, and you're not a crackpot ranting nutbag. Pardon me as I back slowly away so as not to startle you.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I don't have extensive experience with park CCTV, but I have been accosted on my way out by someone selling my photos. They wanted me to buy the photos from a ride. I didn't link that ride to me in any way, and they came out with it fast. The only way I could think of is that they did facial recognition on me going in and out of the park, and compared that to the ride photos.
And I worked in a movie theater as a summer job in college. When I was robbed at gunpoint, I found that the 2-month old cameras (about 30 of them) didn't get a single shot of the guy's face, but there were nice zooms in on my hands handing the money over.
Learn to love Alaska
Big Bro...I mean, Mickey Mouse is watching you.
Disney World is the largest single-site employer in America IIRC.
Then that welfare queen should pay their taxes like everyone else, instead of making us pay more to make up for it.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If I can pay a fee to get the Disney Princess of my choice to surprise my daughter during our time at the park then I like this.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Florida has one of the lowest overall tax burdens in the whole country. There is no personal income tax. That 'welfare queen' has a whole lot to do with that.
... and so the man told the genie "I want you to kill my neighbor's cow". Far too many think that way, sadly.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You walk into any supermarket, if your right handed you turn right first. Thats were the sweets and fresh breads are. If you're a woman, you get milk first. Thats why its in the back corner. cookies are what you see after you get milk. People study people. if they aren't tracking your movement individually with RFID tags, they are watching you on video or using computers to track how an individual moves around an area.
They pay vast amounts of taxes. The taxes on the 80K or so employees that wouldn't otherwise exist. The property taxes on their homes, which wouldn't otherwise exist. The sales taxes on the vast economy created by the attraction (everything emploees and guests buy in the overall Orlando area), which wouldn't otherwise exist. Rental car taxes. Airport taxes. ect, ad nasuem.
You're just a fool if you think the Attatractions are somehow a net loss for the tax base of all of central Florida. Believe me, all those governments want more taxes to spend not less. This was their strategy for getting those more taxes, and it worked very well indeed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Similarly to the "Your Tivo Thinks You're Gay" problem, Disney might decide that you like "It's a Small World", and have its pinkness follow you around on TV screens and its music playing on any nearby speakers. And imagine(er) that they sell that information to the Hello Kitty people so it also follows you around the mall next time you're there.
I'm much more bothered by the California Transportation department's FastTrack than by Disney's. I don't need them tracking me fast, and they already charge $1 more for paying cash, and they're going to start making Fastrack use mandatory on the Golden Gate Bridge (or take your license plate photo and send you a bill.) I use that bridge 2-3 times a year, so buying a surveillance appliance is annoying. On the other hand, Disney World FastTracks were somewhat useful, not that I plan to go back. (I saw "It's a Small World" at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and once was really enough :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's a company that competes with other companies for my money.
I give my money to the company that fullfillis my needs best.
And that will be the company that analyses my needs in the best way.
With simple people counting, you can set up a park that appeals to the average masses. If I want a more individual experience, I need to give up some individual information.
bickerdyke
... they take the wristband off you when you leave, right?
Leave?
When people warned of projects to mass chip Humans at the birth of such tag technology, they were mostly dismissed as 'tin-foil hatted' nutters. Now we see governmental 'conditioning' programs in full flow.
The project currently has two main arms. Those where people are forced to be tagged, and those where people are told tagging will put them into an 'elite' status. Top-down and bottom-up schemes playing on the weak and the vain.
With every tagging project comes a careful list of plausible excuses for the 'slippery slope' fanatics to use when they justify such schemes on places like this.
Put simply, the government wants to know where you are, every second of the day. The mobile phone achieves this goal to an amazing degree, but isn't perfect as an intelligence gathering mechanism. A mobile phone checking a small embedded identity chip in the person him/herself would be very much better, and doable with today's tech.
That cretinous part of every population- the part responsible for the rise to power of monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Julius Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Tony Blair, etc, will say "what is wrong with the government tracking everybody- it isn't as if they give a damn about most of you anyway". It is the age old tactic of telling the sheep that as sheep, they have nothing to lose because they don't have individual importance in the first place.
Eugenics, forced sterilization and the gas chambers were great examples of "because we can now do it, we should now do it". Just because advances in technology give the monsters vast new opportunities does NOT mean society is obliged to change and experiment with incorporating these technologies into the everyday lives of people.
For instance, the EU has just enacted laws preventing insurance companies from discriminating between male and female clients. Technology PROVES there is a vast difference in life experience between the sexes, but it has been deemed socially beneficial to ignore these differences, and to treat the sexes the same for the purposes of insurance.
A pea-brained Slashdotter, after defending the chipping of people, will scream "how dare the lawmakers prevent the insurance companies from exploiting the statistics generated from mass computer analysis of claims". However, the rare Slashdotter who isn't constantly cheering Israel and demanding that every vaccine made by proven corrupt and criminal drug companies is forced by law into our bodies, will have a different, vastly more intelligent, point of view.
They will appreciate that the deployment of technology is never neutral, and never a good thing in and of itself. They will know that wicked people have been very good at finding excuses to justify their wickedness, in the name of 'science'.
Why are doctors, even in the USA, against the use of invasive, drawn out, expensive, painful, debilitating, and usually useless cancer treatments when it is THEY that have the cancer that will be treated this way? And yet the ordinary, chip supporting, all vaccines under any circumstances by law supporting, Israel supporting Slashdotter will cheer the drug companies when they introduce even more expensive, even more useless cancer treatments for profit only.
When people allow those that rule them to treat them cattle, then people will be cattle from chipped birth to the slaughter house (the battle-field, or euthanasia) when no longer of use. You only gain respect by demanding respect. "I am not a number, I am a free man" is the most profound philosophical statement when considering the role of the ordinary person in society.
Tagging people is both useful to your masters and degrading to the person tagged- a double whammy. The aim is to get 90%+ of the sheep to except tagging, so that the government can use the "how dare they refuse" argument against the hold-outs. Only a complete cretin would deny that many nations will be chipping newborns at birth by law within ten years, or that migrant workers in these nations will also require chipping. No Western nation will be first on this list, but unless we see radical change in the attitudes of the people of Western nations, within 30 years many of them will be doing the same.
It's way stupider than big brother. People go on vacation to experience things they won't at home. If you continue to offer them what you know they already like, they won't find anything new. They'll feel disappointed and not want to return. Even though you provided them exactly what you determined they wanted. I don't want a salesbot looking over my shoulder every minute of my vacation and neither will anyone else.
Ah.... Mooby, you delightful golden calf you. It use to be porn that led the charge in employing technologies.
Maybe the government should dump money towards this, purchasing the data mining algorithms etc that go along with these wrist bands and then find a way to retrofit the whole system back to suspected terrorists.
the mutual attraction of Jobs' and Disney makes more sense to me every time one of these news bits crops up: They had a shared, mildly predatory, vision of how to control the common consumer.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I think disney already biometrically tracks you.
If you have a multi-day pass, I believe they can find out if you have transferred the pass to someone else by your biometric signature. (hand size?)