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Facial Recognition Might Be Coming To Your Car
cartechboy writes What if you got into your car and you had to authenticate that it was you behind the wheel? That might be what's coming in the near future as Ford's working with Intel to bring facial recognition to the car. The idea would be to improve safety and in-car tech with this system which is being called Project Mobil. When someone enters a Project Mobil-equipped car the system uses front-facing cameras to authenticate the driver. If the driver can't be authenticated it'll send a photo to the vehicle owner's phone asking for permission for this person to drive the vehicle. Once identified, the car can then automatically adjust certain settings to the driver's preference. This could also theoretically allow parents to control how loud their kids listen to the music while driving, how fast they can drive, and even simply monitor them driving. Obviously this NSA-like surveillance tech is a bit creepy on some levels, but there could be a lot of terrific applications for it. While only an experiment, don't be surprised if your dashboard stares back at you eventually.
Now big momma is watchin you!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I drop off my car to get serviced and I'll be presented with a picture of the guy driving it into and out of the service bay. Maybe even a test drive.
I park my car and I'm presented with the valet driver. Of course, I hope it's only presented two times -- once when he parks my car and again when he brings my car around. No "ferris bueller" stunts allowed.
Someone stealing my car? Yes, let me disable the ignition for that.
1. Take picture of driver
2. Print mask
3. Wear mask
Not really any upgrade from a Key if i'am honest.
Man alive, I'm getting sick and tired of all the crap hipster technology we're being subjected to. There was once a time when new technology made us better off. It provided us with tools that let us do more with less. But new technologies these days are all about subjecting us to yet more advertising (even if it's called "online videos" or "social media"), or they're invasive, privacy-destroying devices of one sort or another. Silicon Valley used to be a place where real innovation happened, thanks to the hard work of scientists and engineers. Now it's a place overrun with hipsters who have stiff, raging erections for advertising and who don't give a fuck about basic freedoms.
I'm not an input.
I just realised that references to orwellian tech are scarcer and replaced by "NSA-like".
Seems like we've crossed some kind of milestoneÃ!
So this will stop the police from commadeering your car for an emergancy as they run down the bad guys in the movies. New plot device.
Cop yanks citizen out of car throwing them to the pavement and says, "I'm taking your car for police business!"
Car says, "Fuck off Fuzz Face!" and turns itself off or maybe wraps the cop up in a strangle hold with the seat belt.
AI gone Sane!
"Open the hatchback door, Ford."
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
Or just forget about all the facial recognition stuff and use the phone itself. We were looking at this back when I was in the auto industry. You can have it detect, via what phones approach which door, a unique identity for each passenger and have custom configuration or access rights for said users. The owner can require or disable the additional use of passwords or other athentication forms (swipe, thumbprint, whatever). And of course you and do various remote access features - for example, if the car is stolen, the ability to take pictures or video of the driver and passengers, the ability to communicate back over the speaker system, the ability to cut power, the ability to send out a code so that (for whatever car components support it) they're rendered inoperable until they receive a code to reinable it (aka, chop shop resistance - we were looking at several other things in this regard too, such as a facility to let parts authenticate on startup, with swap-out requring authorization), the ability to track the car, the ability to override door locks, and so forth. And we were looking at various ways to allow access but limit it, mainly for parents with teenagers or people loaning their car out - for example, accleration limitation, alerts to reckless driving, alerts to them entering certain areas, alerts to them driving outside of a given range, passenger limitations, etc.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
It looks dangerously similar to ITIL, and they don't like seeing vulgarisms in common texts.
Ezekiel 23:20
There is already technology available in some high-end models that will monitor the driver and take steps to warn them if they appear to be losing concentration. That technology is surely going to save lives sooner or later, given the amount of road accidents caused by tiredness or falling asleep at the wheel.
I'm as concerned about creepy surveillance and illusory security as much as the next geek, but image recognition technology does have positive applications as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I don't need the fucking car to update facebook, check to see if I shaved, adjust all the settings, make sure I'm not drunk, or ask the real owner whether or not I can drive it, and then not work if there isn't a WiFi or cell signal present. (I'm sorry but you do not have permission to operate this vehicle as zombies are trying to break in.).
I want my car to be a car, I don't need an ever bigger fucking cell phone to complicate up my life, and not to mention charge me yet another monthly service fee, along with spying on me to send the info to the gov't and marketers.
Eat a bag of dicks Ford.
Keys seem to be fine to "authenticate" to my car. If more security were really desired (and I can't imagine why), pins and fingerprints would work too.
Face recognition is a lousy authentication technique.
In new cars which are going to come with some sort of standardized infotainment system and which (unlike mine) are all going to have fully-digital clusters soon if not immediately, it will cost basically nothing to add that functionality to the cluster for at least the driver. You can literally use usb webcams with android today, although I don't know how well having multiple cameras actually works ("Since API level 9, the camera framework supports multiple cameras.") It therefore seems like something which would be easy to retrofit into cars in which the cluster does not fulfill major functions for the car. In some vehicles it acts as a gateway for various modules. On the other hand, the W126 Mercedes' cluster (300SD, etc) is really just a gauge-and-light package and it's all-electric, so an interface could be whipped up with the google io board, or arduino or what have you, in relatively short order. If my car had memory seats, I might give it a go myself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Never mind security, what about reliability? If I go hiking in the mountains where there is no cell phone coverage and e.g. scratch my face on a tree branch I do not want to get back to the car only to have it fail to recognize me and refuse to start. Frankly I also wonder about whether Ford are thinking clearly about this given the claim in the article that "Ford Motor Company [NYSE:F] already believes the technology can help improve privacy..". How can adding a camera to a car improve privacy? No matter what protections you put in place around the system if there is no camera there is no data on who is driving which has to be better privacy than a system which knows.
A car that snitches kids to their parents, the owner to the cops if he seems 'tired' seems just what we need.
I see the the following problems --
For at least 20 years, I have had a full beard. Since I am mostly (not entirely) bald on top, I do not get a haircut more than once in two months. When I get a haircut, I also get my beard trimmed somewhat short. Will facial recognition allow me to drive home from the barber shop?
I do not have a mobile phone, smart or dumb. When I leave my house, I want to leave my phone, computer, garden, etc behind me. Where would this feature send the photo?
"Obviously this NSA-like surveillance tech is a bit creepy on some levels" you must be one of them there conspiracy nuts. NSA is not undertaking any surveillance apart from of terrorists. You government loves you, please go back to sleep.
Sales of Chewing Gum and Duct Tape to owners of new Fords rise by 10000%
Being serious for a moment, is there really any demand from the public for this?
Is his being driven by the lawmakers who are frankly desparate to stop Drunks from getting behind the wheel?
Will the car refuse to start if the camera is obscured and the driver can't be identified?
As the Car not the driver seems to be the boss then who owns the pictures?
Who says that the pictures won't be sent to the NSA? Can you be sure.
This is not something I'd want in any car I drove.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
What a major pain when you valet your car. Ewww.
You: Google Car - Start please!
Car: Access denied, user not recognized.
You: (tries to get closer to the camera). Google CAR! START PLEASE!
Car: Access denied, user not recognized.
You: #%!" *ss car, GOOGLE CAR - START PLEASE!!!
Car: Voice unreadable, can't understand the word *ss car.
You: (getting mad, swearing excessively). GOOGLE CAR - START THE F******* CAR RIGHT NOW! (stares into the camera like a mad man).
Car: User Too Ugly Error 404
(now, imagine what happened to the car)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
If I were sure that I were in control of the data on my car, then that would be fine. If I roll-my-own and it's cryptographically sound and takes 2FA then okay, all is well. If it's got all the personal security of On* then fuckit, fuckit twice, and fuckit thrice.
I would love it if the cars had the cameras and the display with touch preinstalled, and they came out to USB cables in a special little compartment where you install whatever you want, whether that's a dedicated machine designed for the purpose, a RasPi and a USB hub, or a phone dock. But HAHAHAHA. So basically, I want it, but donotwanttheirs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If I'm going to need to log in to the car anyway, then there's no need to recognize a personal device that I might not have on me, or might have loaned to one of the passengers. They might even be using it for communications, and I don't want to have to get it back from them before approaching the vehicle. The face recognition is superior to any other solution provided you don't actually rely on it for security, or it's actually good enough to be useful for that, because I don't have to have anything but my face for it to work. Equally, I have to have an override, because what if there is something wrong with my face?
If you're already going to identify people, there's no reason not to do it with their face.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
GM came out with On-Star... That is expressly why I bought a KIA.
Me: "Does it call for help when I have an accident like Fords do with On-Star?"
Salesman: "uhh. No."
Me: "Good. I'll take it. I hate that spying crap."
I feel like I should be making a comment here about how the more they tighten their spying grip, the more star systems will slip through their fingers...
Only if your car has no way to reach you by phone. It will still ask you for confirmation.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Now my insurance company will want access to that data to verify that I'm not loaning my car to anyone.
what about Valet in a poor cell area / underground / inside parking lot?
What's a criminal to do? Gone will be the good old days where a man could feed his family by ripping off one car a week. And our prison system will have to lay off workers and buy less products to feed those that live off of the supposed criminal, justice system. And not only have companies like GM failed to provide strong locks for cars they have ignition switches that kill the owners of such cars. I don't want to get too real here and put folks into shock but compare the morals of car thieves to executives at GM and keep Ford in mind as well for those lovely Pinto gas tanks and don't forget the Corvaire by GM that could flip in a low speed corner all on its own. Could it be that car thieves have better morals than car companies?
If the car won't start without positive facial recognition, that rules out the duct tape over the lens fix.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's just a lil' it'll...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Facial Recognition Might Be Coming To Your Car
I really hate all this "your" crap in headlines. It won't be coming to my car, because I already have a car and don't need a new one, and when I do get one it probably isn't going to have all this fancy-schmancy crap got-to-be-connected crap in it. It's not so much because I'm a privacy nerd, I'm just cheap.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I think it sounds kind of cool. I really don't have any issues at all with facial recognition as long as it's done in a responsible manner. The data should be volatile and discarded when it's no longer needed. If the car is simply comparing the person behind the wheel to a small set of people it knows and then discarding the data, that seems like excellent tech to me.
even the idea that it might send my picture to the owner of the car doesn't bother me too much. i am after all in someone else's car. Again, it only doesn't bother me if I know that the picture isn't stored, and once it leaves the closed system of the car... Well, i don't have any real assurance that it isn't going to get stored somehow. So it's a little stickier there. Still, if it's just going to the owner and not staying on a server after delivery it sounds ok.
Now, if the car keeps a record of every person who's ever been in it and shares that with the automakers, that's creepy. it's double plus creepy if it also sends it along to the government.
The last thing I need, if I'm injured in a way that disfigures my face, is a car that won't let me start it to drive to the emergency room.
That's right up there with the federal experiment, back in the '60s or so, with mandating seatbelt and seat weight sensors that interlocked with the starter, so you can't start it if all the passengers aren't belted in.
(I, and about five of my friends, were very luck my car dated from before that mandate, the time we were visiting a friend who worked in a trainyard, my car stalled across a track, a train came {slowly but inexorably} around the sharp curve, and my right-front passenger unbelted in preparation to bail if I couldn't get it going again. We didn't have enough time to all bail ...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
...with a piece of paper? Unless there are secondary and tertiary sensors to verify the person in the vehicle belongs to the "authorized face", then this "security measure" is more "security theater". To add to this posted thought, I have to wonder if there are more nefarious plans for this technology(either desensitization to having cameras watching each individuals every moment of their lives), or if this is some uneducated idea from someone/multiple people in the Ford marketing department, who believe that cameras(or all electronic sensors) are infallible sensors.
This idea is almost as bad a biometric sensors on a firearm. This is just another point of failure on a critical tools used everyday, by millions of people. While I am well aware that movies are for entertainment, and are full of inaccurate depictions of technology(as well as many other aspect of the real world), I think back to a recent movie: Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Yes, the technology used by Nick Fury, during the vehicle chase from the faux police is mostly, if not completely possible, but even the made-up system wasn't without a few inserted flaws("Reboot, damn it", while Nick Fury's SUV was getting raped by a pneumatic battering ram, on a stabilized stand). Again, I know that was a fictional system, as a system failure would most likely be more catastrophic, and the system reboot would probably taken far longer(if successful at all).
This doesn't even begin to focus on the implications of privacy invasions with yet more network camera sensors. How long until some random corporation employee or government employee starts posting videos of sexual encounters engaged in front of entertainment equipment, or other electronics with camera sensors installed, which the couple, or group(yeah, whatever makes you happy, as long as you aren't harming anyone...or embarrassing yourself), when said people believed(rather naively, as one should never assume negative functionality of any device in his or her possession) the equipment in question was in a non-functioning state and not transmitting data. You know, because playing "electronic peeping tom" will stop "terrorist" activity.
Yeah, technology will make us all "Kim Kardashians", or the target of humor, based on the "sex lives" others consider the source of good and effective, but disparaging jokes. I know a lot of what I have posted is, for now, based on long odds. That doesn't mean those odds won't change in the near future, and for the worst.
This is a good thing as long as it can recognize shitfaced drivers and keep them of the roads.
Welcome back Ambassador Spock..
Organization? You must be joking..
"You didn't build that."
If it fails to recognize you, it will send your picture to your cellphone and ask you if it is okay for the unrecognized person to use your car.
Which is why I specifically used the example of hiking in the mountains where there is no cell phone service.
...when they want to steal my car. Or just kidnap me and take me with them.
Really fantastic idea.
I wish they would just focus their technological efforts on hurrying up and getting me an inexpensive car that can drive itself. Then it won't run into things, no matter who is driving it.
....it's a Ford, people who buy garbage like that just don't care.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Tell you what, Mother Government. YOU buy MY car for me and let me use it for free or near-free. When my phone is dead or I don't have it, just call up the cops and have the 'offender' shot on sight.
Automakers have been researching facial recognition and eye tracking systems for years, mostly because they can be used to reduce distracted driving. An audible warning whenever drivers take their eyes off the road for more than a few seconds, followed by a steering wheel shudder, taking off the throttle, etc. These systems can also detect drivers who are drunk/under the influence by measuring reaction times (assuming the system is mounted in a vehicle with some sort of collision avoidance radar, which is a system most cars will have in a few years).
Facial recognition is just the first step - once automakers nail that down, they'll be able to do quite a bit just be measuring where the driver is looking. Upgrade the camera system and you've got eye tracking.
There's a lot of debate in certain circles about what a car should do whenever this behavior is detected...Shut a car that suspects a drunk driver shut down at the next complete stop? Should it "taddle" to authorities? Should a log of this driver's behavior be kept, so the authorities can use it later to convict a suspected drunk driver? Obviously there's a hornet's nest of privacy concerns here too...imagine getting into an accident and having some attorney subpeona your vehicle's log file. Or an insurance company that wants to mount a tracking tool to your car to see if you ever drive drunk? This is big, scary stuff for a lot of people, especially people who drink and drive, get high and drive, take prescription drugs and drive, etc.
In any case, the lead has been buried here. Facial recognition to prevent theft and personalize is just a gimmick. This technology has a much taller ceiling.
already believes the technology can help improve privacy and give parents a way to monitor their kids as they drive.
Improving privacy and increased monitoring do not go well in the same sentence.