Just so I'm clear, the argument against this is:
- Merchants should be able to hire humans that sit around looking at camera screens all day trying to find shopping patterns, shoplifters, etc.
- Any attempt to automate this tedious task is dystopian and evil
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An example of data that is harmless on its own but harmful at scale is license plate reading. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/we-know-where-yo... a few points tells you that a person is in a city, a few more tells you where they live, a few more tells you where they work, a few more tells you where the shop, a few more tells you who their friends are, who their associates are, if they're seeing someone on the side, if their going to any gatherings, if they tend to frequent red light districts... ect.
In this way, as data is aggregated, the picture of a given person slides from blurry to clear. And a clear picture of someone is an invasive and dangerous picture of someone.
As a result, aggregation of "public" data like this is something privacy advocates generally resist. It's not that there's is some line that's been crossed.
However, I do care if the cameras are feeding into a huge system for analytics and data sharing. What if I cough 2x more than the average person? Does that get tracked, stored, and sold to a health insurance data supplier that ranks me as high risk for respiratory problems?
Does the machine learning algorithm that analyzes footage rank me as a potential thief if the database says I hang out in a lot of poor neighborhoods?
These will turn into class profiling systems that will amplify everything in your life so much that whatever your economic status is when you're born is what it'll be when you die.
Honest question.
Having a card is just as unavoidable as needing to go to the shopping centre to buy groceries, so this isn't even a case where "if you don't like it don't use it" applies
I'd presume if umvi had rejected the groundwork reasons for privacy, they would have made a comment more like:
"What bad thing are we asserting would happen if they created this data set? What demonstrable harm can you show from even an omnibus dataset? Let alone what this mall is creating?"
As just one example, I'd expect the emergence of semi-automated blackmail - you can infer a lot from peoples' public activity.
There is no identification part in what you describe. Generic stats (how many person in the queue, etc.) are okay.
The issue is not facial detection but facial recognition.
They stored model of faces associated with data which mean they could point a camera at anyone in the street anywhere in the world and find back what is the data associated with that person.
Hiring humans would not result in creating and storing models of faces
In scenario 2, if the technology is widespread, police can be searching all stores records country wide within minutes.
Attempting to automate the task of constant observation makes constant observation easier, which isn't necessarily a desirable state.