Hacker News Reader

Comment by justboxing | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing. A Pizza shop in Oslo was busted back in May for using Facial recognition software on it's customers:

> A crashed advertisement reveals the code of the facial recognition system used by a pizza shop in Oslo...

Source: https://twitter.com/gamblelee/status/862307447276544000

I think people would be incredibly surprised how common this is. Heck, I've seen random billboards at Chicago bus stops have facial recognition cameras.

I predict this market to basically become more or less pervasive within 5-10 years.

I worked in digital signage advertising (fancy schmancy name for those screens in malls that show ads). Facial recognition was spreading throughout the industry when I was involved a few years ago. The cameras count the number of people in front of the sign, how long they look, and try to guess demographic info (age, gender, race). Everything we hate about online advertising... yeah these people want to make it part of physical life too.

Example of what I'm talking about: https://signbox.tv/digital-signage-products/digital-signage-...

I would be interested to know how to spot cameras on devices such as these (presumably, they aren’t as obvious as a laptop camera). I checked the link, but didn’t go further than the first page.

The one I saw was pretty obvious, more like cell phone camera obvious. Most people just don't look up or closely.

I imagine as awareness increases you'll see things like remote cameras zoomed in/etc.

To be fair the one I saw I only knew had a camera - I assumed it was for facial recognition, but I can't think of any other plausible reason for it.

The worst thing about that is that the billboard that you're talking about is for car insurance. Theres a camera built into the display and the animation tracks where your face is looking.

I talked to a company that was building some kind of hardware to transcribe in real time what conversations people were having at bus stops (the round trip to the server was not fast enough).

They said the buyers used it for targeting ads, after the facial recognition stuff was considered not enough.

why is this illegal?

I don't think it is. I might have missed it but I don't think anyone in the thread or tweet suggested it was.

oh,I read "busted" as something legal.

> Slang Placed under arrest. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/busted

maybe that deosn't apply in this context.

I believe it's also used in a more colloquial sense to mean someone was caught doing something they shouldn't, even non-illegaly

Yeah, by 'busted' I meant 'got exposed' / 'got caught with their pants down' by the public. Nothing to do with legality of stated act.

It might not be, although privacy laws in the EU tend to be stricter than those in the US. "Busted" could simply refer to this practice being outed to customers who might not like it.

Minor correction: Norway is in the EEA, not in the EU.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com