Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 3, 2024 8:11 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

“A helpful summary of which US retail stores are using facial recognition, thinking about using it, or currently not planning on using it.”

But there is a question that rarely gets asked and should be,

“Do you alow customers to use facial recognition in your premises?”

It might at first seem an odd question to ask, as we know most stores tried to ban people using private video recording.

But the point is facial recognition is a technology that will become reciprocal. Ordinary people will find it usefull to “find faces in a crowd” and get an “earwig” or “glasses HUD” of people they meet.

We all suffer from limited current memory recall so an old face just appearing can be embarrassing when they clearly remember you.

It’s an almost foregone conclusion that it will happen. Because nearly all the pieces are allready in place. From say Googles perspective knowing who knows who will be worth considerable value.

So the first person to give such a system an easy to use personal assistant front end, could end up making rather more than a fortune.

So on the premise such systems will become common place within a decade to ask the question now might be benificial in various ways.

Remember the way we most easily loose privacy, is when we willingly use systems that can steal our private and personal information. The mobile phone for instance is so usefull that even though it “Data rapes” us continuously, and we know it, we still willingly put it in our pocket every day and it’s often there at our most intimate moments…

Clive Robinson • January 3, 2024 6:38 PM

@ , ALL,

Re : Local and remote

“That seems like the kind of thing that would turn a really useful feature into a dystopian surveillance nightmare.”

But think of the profit for Alphabet, Meta, et al, you can already smell the steam off of their salivation at the idea.

Then think about all those “agencies” not just Government/law enforcment, but those debt collectors etc. You personally might not carry a mobile phone or other “tracking device” but with your friends, family, aquaintances, etc…

You can be sure that prosecutors will push to have the “record” but not the “image” accepted into court. Thus you will be told you were at XXX because someones face recognition tagged you, even though you were at YYY. The fact you can not give a certified image of being at YYY is your problem…

We’ve already seen it argued in court that having a high heart rate was “proof” that you were “moving the body” or some such from those fit-bands. So we know that any argument that a prosecuter thinks they can make will get tried, and you as a defendant will have to carry the burden of proof for your innocence.

Technology is removing “the presumption of innocence” and giving the likes of police etc just fuether ways to “entrap you”.

As I’ve said before, take a carefull look at the UK “Caution” it actually now “rights strips you” of not just your right of silence, but your right to time to establish a defence…