Slashdot Mirror
Ticketmaster Hopes To Speed Up Event Access By Scanning Your Face (engadget.com)
Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, has announced that they have teamed up with and invested in a face recognition company called Blink Identity. The ticket sales giant may have plans to scan your face instead of a ticket to grant you access to a venue. Engadget reports: In its first quarter financial report (PDF), Live Nation has explained that Blink has "cutting-edge facial recognition technology, enabling you to associate your digital ticket with your image, then just walk into the show." According to Blink's website, its system can register an image of your face as soon as you walk past a sensor. Blink's technology can then match it against a large database in half a second -- in a blink, so to speak. It's also apparently powerful enough that you don't even have to slow down for its system to recognize you: Just walk normally, and if the technology gets a match, it'll automatically open doors or turnstiles to let you in.
Which is even lower depending on the subjects, chances are high that if you just walk towards the gate, it'll open for you. After all that system will be optimized towards letting people through even if the match is not very accurate.
Scanning a ticket is never the slowdown at the entrance to a venue where I live. It's security do bag searches of people in front of who want to bring them into the venue. Of course it isn't really about security, it's about making sure you're not bringing outside food or drink so they can gouge you for food & drink at the venue. I've suggested to the venues that they should have lines for people that bringing bags to speed it up but they don't seem interested or "it would be confusing for other patrons".
Just like every other technology, it has the dark purpose and the nice thing they pitch it as to the public. This will be used to spy on people, people will accept it because they think it will cut down on lines. But really who cares, people who worship singers are basically cattle anyway.
... its system can register an image of your face as soon as you walk past a sensor. It's also apparently powerful enough that you don't even have to slow down for its system to recognize you: Just walk normally,
Seems like it would be even faster to just hold up my ticket (presumably w/ QR or Bar code) and have it scan that. Face matching seems more like a way to keep people from reselling tickets -- and stepping on your privacy.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I was just reading this earlier
https://www.theverge.com/2018/...
used by south wales police (uk) it identified around 2500 people as persons of interests and around 450 arrests were made but only around 200 were actual matches
is this likely to be better?
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
...and the companies involved will always be ethical and judicious in what they do with the massive amount of biometric data such a system would collect.
I mean, seriously, Ticketmaster. They're above reproach, right up there with luminaries like Monsanto, Haliburton, and Comcast. There's no way we could ever regret this move.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
So TicketBastards is going after scalpers? Again?
What ever happened to the doctrine of first sale?
This is eerily reminiscent of those citadel gates in half life 2, early in the game, where you try to walk through a passage and a camera just turns and goes red on you and signals a "Nope" sound. And if you try to talk to anyone after that, they're all like "I can't be seen talking to you I'll get in trouble".
In Soviet America, concert watches you!
Do you even own a face scanner?
It's online sales, how are they even going to scan people?
(Apple sheep aside)
No sig today...
The real reason they want to do this is to stop the secondary sale (or transfer) of tickets.
Ticketmaster is evil....
pro sports and some events have metal detectors now days.
While on one hand, it's good that they are - scalpers ruin the whole system for everyone else - but on the other, they're being unnecessarily deceptive and are going to make it impossible for someone to give their ticket to a friend if they can't go.
Thanks goodness that is solved; we wouldn't want a free market breaking out or anything!
Wow this is great, so if I buy my ticket with cash, bitcoin, or a temporary credit or debit card, all I need is my face when I buy it, and all I need is my face when I claim it, right?
Note the implication here is that now nothing is tied to the ticket except my face, not my name, address, real credit card, ID, or anything. This would actually be acceptable, unfortunately I'm guessing this is not the case...
TM doesn't control the database. BI does, and guess what... they have a relationship with Homeland Security.
All to aggregate everyone's behaviour.
Go to concerts at bars and small venues where entry is cash at the door and there's no security theater bullshit.
Have gnu, will travel.
Pity the fool who goes in KISS makeup and confuses the system
Personally, this will guarantee I never go to another concert. Facial recognition is one step too far
Pity the fool who goes in KISS makeup and confuses the system
Personally, this will guarantee I never go to another concert. Facial recognition is one step too far
Or an entire Insane Clown Posse audience/crowd in Juggalo face paint.
That's why a few law needs to be passed, e.g.: limiting the price of such re-sell to the exact price at which the ticket was bought.
(France has such laws).
Other wise you can bet that the "TicketMaster-approved second-hand market" will reimburse the original owner the price of *original* ticket (minus a fee) and will bill the new user the *current price* of the ticket (plus another fee), and the second hand marker owners (and their shareholders... Ticket master) will pocket the price difference and twice the fee. It's not going to be as such high profit as ticket scalpers who try to resell desirable rare tickets for 10x the price, but it will be a guaranteed revenue stream (tons of people can have a last minute change of plans).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You do know that there are smaller venues/artists that aren't affiliated with Ticketmaster, right?
Never going to another concert is like never eating another apple because red delicious apples suck.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The problem is that Ticketmaster has what amounts to a monopoly on many of the larger venues in the US. Back in 1994 Pearl Jam, which at the time was one of the biggest bands in the world, tried to book a tour without using Ticketmaster and they found that they simply couldn't do it. And as the linked article indicates, Ticketmaster has only gotten bigger and more powerful since then.
Ticketmaster is a monopoly where I live and the problem becomes the venues. Do you think they'll turn the system off at other times or do you think they'll collect as much data as they can and sell it?
The GSK was caught by a harmless, private company collecting biometric data in a very positive way on the surface. "Send us your data and we'll tell you about your ancestry!" One of the GSK's distant relatives bought the service, and that eventually turned into the government's tool to turn a quiet, seventy-somthing retiree into a soon-to-be convict.
In that case, privately collected data was used for "good", but it won't always be government entities (see China). As for the private sector, they're probably worse. If Facebook has done anything (besides connect past friends and future adulterers), it has shown us that private corporations like Ticket Master don't give a damn about us beyond manipulation and eventual monetization.
Better headline: Ticketmaster seeks to squeeze more money out by collecting biometric data on adults and children. George Orwell was unable to be reached for comment.
This solution attempts to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
First off, as many have pointed out, it's the security checks that tend to really slow down admittance to an event.
Second: Slow admittance is a safety feature. You don't want tens of thousands of people rushing into the corridors of an arena all at once. Slow admittance spreads out the crowd.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Then don't see Pearl Jam. There are plenty of other artists in the world. In any little city over about 20k people I can almost guarantee that on a given weekend a bunch of people are playing music that you can go see.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Ticketmaster isn't a monopoly anywhere. You're telling me that every bar, dancehall, lounge, and club where you live uses Ticketmaster? Bullshit. Most of them are probably collecting $10 in cash at the door and stamping people's hands when they enter.
Does Ticketmaster try to monopolize large venues and very popular bands? Sure. But that's a fraction of the music in the world, and a tiny fraction of the venues.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The live music scene where I live is on life support outside of major venues. It's a sad state of affairs.
At least I know Apple isn't selling our faces unlike Apple's competitors.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Well, sure I can do that, and personally this issue doesn't affect me a whole lot anyway, because when I go to see music it's usually at a club rather than a big theater or stadium. But I think it's outrageous that I don't even have the *option*. For example: I would have liked to see Leonard Cohen's final tour, and that would have almost certainly required dealing with Ticketmaster. They're a horrible company that I don't want to give any money to, and that was true even before they began asking me to hand over facial recognition data.
a sad state of affairs
Now that's a great band name!
Ezekiel 23:20