Glob of epoxy putty over the camera. Simple fix. Everyone's bloviating about how "concerned" they are, but nobody can even think of a simple step to protect themselves? This is a university with smart students in it?
But that's only a very immediate reactive response. A more proactive and impactful response would be to hurt the companies involved (e.g., bad PR, loss of sales, machine recall costs, legal problems), put fear into other companies doing things like that, and hopefully also prompt long-lacking better privacy legislation.
Hence, the noise.
They don't address the real issues though: (1) the use of facial recognition (2) without users consenting to it (3) and the resell of the data.
Putting epoxy on the camera inconveniences the vending machine owner, who has to replace it. They're the assholes who put the camera there in the first place, and when they replace the machine they can easily put in one with no camera.
If you're going to engage in civil disobedience, why not do it right?
The college doesn't care(or even know) about the facial recognition functionality, so presumably they don't care about this sticker either. If the sticker stops the machine from working, then the manufacturer would be called to fix it.
And since screens can now output music (saw some high-tech article about it) it won't be long to also record sound.
You know, just to identify the topics which resonate with better ad viewing.