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Cheap facial recognition software enables mass surveillance

bolverk

By bolverk
in Daily Texan

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bolverk

bolverk 29822

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Creepy experiment conducted by the NYTime's fantastic Upshot team. Be sure to click the link for an in-depth story and lots of interactives.

Text from the intro:

Quote

 

On the east side of Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan,
three cameras on the roof of a restaurant film the lunch
crowds, tourists and commuters — everything that goes
on each day. The feeds are streamed publicly online.

We were able to turn those cameras into a facial
recognition-powered tracking system for less than $100 —
using a service available to anyone with an internet
connection and a credit card. The process was completely legal.

How easy would it be to figure out who was in the park?
We built a database using public photos of people who
work in the area and matched this college professor
on his way to lunch. All it took was a few days’ work.

The cameras are just three among thousands across New York
City. And if you’re an adult in America, there’s more than a 50
percent chance that you’re already in a law enforcement facial
recognition database, according to researchers at Georgetown.

 

We Built a (Legal) Facial Recognition Machine for $60
By Sahil Chinoy
APRIL 16, 2019

Most people pass through some type of public space in their daily routine — sidewalks, roads, train stations. Thousands walk through Bryant Park every day. But we generally think that a detailed log of our location, and a list of the people we’re with, is private. Facial recognition, applied to the web of cameras that already exists in most cities, is a threat to that privacy.

To demonstrate how easy it is to track people without their knowledge, we collected public images of people who worked near Bryant Park (available on their employers’ websites, for the most part) and ran one day of footage through Amazon’s commercial facial recognition service. Our system detected 2,750 faces from a nine-hour period (not necessarily unique people, since a person could be captured in multiple frames). It returned several possible identifications, including one frame matched to a head shot of Richard Madonna, a professor at the SUNY College of Optometry, with an 89 percent similarity score. The total cost: about $60.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/16/opinion/facial-recognition-new-york-city.html

 

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Parliament

Parliament 14377

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39 minutes ago, spit said:

you have to draw the line somewhere.  and yes, there's plenty to worry about if you did nothing wrong.  data and information is power.

think of Facebook, but worse - you can't opt out of this.

And I was being sarcastic.  This is a bad thing.

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Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey 47313

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3 hours ago, Parliament said:

If you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

Can I put a camera in your house and watch you at all times along with everyone on the inernet? I mean you shouldn't have any issue with it if you aren't doing anything wrong, right?

Although that's already going on with all our electronic devices. They are watching and listening. 

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bolverk

bolverk 29822

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9 minutes ago, Vic Mackey said:

Can I put a camera in your house and watch you at all times along with everyone on the inernet? I mean you shouldn't have any issue with it if you aren't doing anything wrong, right?

Although that's already going on with all our electronic devices. They are watching and listening. 

Seems we've all stumbled our way into soon living in the Truman Show or 1984, depending on how dark you want to see things.

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closetojumping

closetojumping 63180

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58 minutes ago, futureman said:

agreed, your sarcasm is a bad thing.  I always take you at your word and now I feel duped. 

It's been a grim run for you today. Probably the most insipid, voluminous stream of shit posts that I can remember seeing from anyone in quite a while. 

Speaking of bots, I have a loose theory I'm working on regarding what kind of experiment immamac has going on this site. I think there's a shot he's testing content delivery through bots with varied settings. Machinator is designed to harvest and post on sports related shit. Hugo Stiglitz is the banal politics bot. futureman is simply the mediocre "humor" bot. Perhaps there are a few others that have been deployed as well. Haven't figured out an end game for the development, but maybe it's just about consistent volume seeding the site? I don't know. I'll say he's done a bang up fucking job on the sports bot. The other two need some serious tweaking if they're ever going to be worth a fuck.

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bolverk

bolverk 29822

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6 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

It's been a grim run for you today. Probably the most insipid, voluminous stream of shit posts that I can remember seeing from anyone in quite a while. 

Speaking of bots, I have a loose theory I'm working on regarding what kind of experiment immamac has going on this site. I think there's a shot he's testing content delivery through bots with varied settings. Machinator is designed to harvest and post on sports related shit. Hugo Stiglitz is the banal politics bot. futureman is simply the mediocre "humor" bot. Perhaps there are a few others that have been deployed as well. Haven't figured out an end game for the development, but maybe it's just about consistent volume seeding the site? I don't know. I'll say he's done a bang up fucking job on the sports bot. The other two need some serious tweaking if they're ever going to be worth a fuck.

Then there's the Vic bot and whatever godforsaken purpose he has...

jk Vic. Love ya, man!

Edited by bolverk
*shudder*
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  • 4 weeks later...
bernorange

bernorange 8375

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Quote

...

What isn’t obvious on Ever’s website or app — except for a brief reference that was added to the privacy policy after NBC News reached out to the company in April — is that the photos people share are used to train the company’s facial recognition system, and that Ever then offers to sell that technology to private companies, law enforcement and the military.

In other words, what began in 2013 as another cloud storage app has pivoted toward a far more lucrative business known as Ever AI — without telling the app’s millions of users.

...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-uploaded-photos-ever-app-then-company-used-them-n1003371

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El Diablo

El Diablo 4232

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On ‎4‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 6:35 PM, closetojumping said:

It's been a grim run for you today. Probably the most insipid, voluminous stream of shit posts that I can remember seeing from anyone in quite a while. 

Speaking of bots, I have a loose theory I'm working on regarding what kind of experiment immamac has going on this site. I think there's a shot he's testing content delivery through bots with varied settings. Machinator is designed to harvest and post on sports related shit. Hugo Stiglitz is the banal politics bot. futureman is simply the mediocre "humor" bot. Perhaps there are a few others that have been deployed as well. Haven't figured out an end game for the development, but maybe it's just about consistent volume seeding the site? I don't know. I'll say he's done a bang up fucking job on the sports bot. The other two need some serious tweaking if they're ever going to be worth a fuck.

Yer mom's site is consistently volume seeded.

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bolverk

bolverk 29822

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The city of San Francisco approved an ordinance on Tuesday barring the police department and other city agencies from using facial recognition technology on residents. It's the first such ban of the technology in the country.

The ordinance, which passed by a vote of 8 to 1, also creates a process for the police department to disclose what surveillance technology they use, such as license plate readers and cell-site simulators that can track residents' movements over time. But it singles out facial recognition as too harmful to residents' civil liberties to even consider using.

https://www.cnet.com/news/san-francisco-becomes-first-city-to-bar-police-from-using-facial-recognition/

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tbone_

tbone_ 14260

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The surprising thing to me is that big brother didn’t force himself on us. We just collectively willingly invited him right into all aspects of our private lives. All in the name of a few convenient whizz bang trinkets.

 

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PilotsError

PilotsError 2338

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Did we?  I don't recall being fully informed about what my cell phone camera and recorder would actually be recording.   I certainly didn't invite that bullshit in.  It was all done behind our backs, regardless of how much people like to claim we all should have known.  

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JimmyHoffa

JimmyHoffa 1188

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31 minutes ago, PilotsError said:

Did we?  I don't recall being fully informed about what my cell phone camera and recorder would actually be recording.   I certainly didn't invite that bullshit in.  It was all done behind our backs, regardless of how much people like to claim we all should have known.  

 

Psst, don't tell anyone but someone working at google knows your entire internet history including your favorite pron sites. 

I am not saying cameras everywhere is a good thing but if you are on the internet, have a smart phone, etc., you certainly did invite that on yourself. 

I love the people that bitch (not you) about privacy but have a blog, instagram account, youtube channel, check in on facebook, etc. where they put pretty much their entire life online for likes, views, and clicks but get pissed about the big bad government watching what they do. 

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tbone_

tbone_ 14260

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Did we?  I don't recall being fully informed about what my cell phone camera and recorder would actually be recording.   I certainly didn't invite that bullshit in.  It was all done behind our backs, regardless of how much people like to claim we all should have known.  

Did you really think that for the first time in the history of ever there really was a free lunch this time?

Did you think Facebook was building its self just for the fun of it so it could give itself to you for free? Google too?

All the free iPhone apps, were they just built for the fun of it too?
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PilotsError

PilotsError 2338

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Man ordered to uncover face in front of police camera and then fined £90

Met cops stopped and fined him £90 for disorderly behaviour after he tried to avoid a facial recognition camera in east London

 

A man has been fined £90 by police after they stopped him from covering his face as he passed facial recognition cameras in east London.

They slapped him with a fine for disorderly conduct after he tried to cover his face with his hat and jacket when he spotted the controversial facial recognition technology in Romford east London.

The tense encounter was captured by BBC Click , which was filming the Metropolitan Police trialling the use of the technology around the capital.

The technology has attracted criticism and accusations of a ' Big Brother ' approach to mass public surveillance.

While Scotland Yard says it will help the force cut crime, its use has provoked fierce push-back in London - already frequently named one of the most surveilied cities in the world due to its vast CCTV camera network.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-ordered-uncover-face-front-16155463

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