Aral Balkan

This is a photo of a crashed kiosk advertising the menu and offers at a popular Norwegian pizza restaurant chain. It shows that the kiosk was running facial recognition and basic sentiment analysis on the people looking at it.

Based on the number of people who sent me this on Twitter, it’s clear that people care and are unhappy with corporate surveillance.

The worst bit? Compared to what Google and Facebook do daily and at scale, this is a toy.

https://mastodon.ar.al/media/OFTGkS78V6DEAm2KkZU

May 11, 2017 at 7:54amWeb
Show threadAral BalkanMay 11, 2017

…It just goes to show how important it is that we reveal the unethical cores behind the shiny interfaces of these people farmers. When people see the surveillance-based business model that lies behind Google’s cute doodles, they do care and they are outraged by what they see. One of our challenges is to force these companies—through regulation—to be as transparent as possible.

Source: Photo was shared by Lee Gamble. Link to original tweet: https://twitter.com/GambleLee/status/862307447276544000

Show threadAlex Cendre 🌋May 11, 2017

@aral making things more transparent do not make them less problematic. Everyone knows that Google runs on ads. You want to fix their greed for more private information? Get rid of them, make them illegal, suppress their power.

And you won't get that by regulations, especially not when the people in charge of these regulations are in favor of such companies. No, you have to get rid of capitalism, that's it.

Show threadAral BalkanMay 12, 2017
@alxcndr I agree. Transparency is just a first step and regulation (in an institutionally corrupt system) is a flawed but still better-than-nothing way to achieve at least some transparency and limit the worst of the abuses once we realise we don't like what we now see. Longer term, as you say, we must move away from Surveillance Capitalism: https://ar.al/notes/encouraging-individual-sovereignty-and-a-healthy-commons
Show threadMarcin CieślakMay 11, 2017
@aral I think engineers building this should speak up, too.
Show threadFrankie SaxxMay 11, 2017

@aral
@gcupc I don't know about laws in Norway, but I assume these types of billboards in Sweden operate the same way, with public facing cameras aggregating metrics, which makes me wonder if they fall foul of our camera license laws.

http://www.lansstyrelsen.se/Stockholm/En/manniska-och-samhalle/kameraovervakning/Pages/default.aspx

Show threadLrsMay 11, 2017
@frankiesaxx Not sure about it, but I want to do some digging about it after seeing this. I think it's not allowed without a clear notice about what's recorded, at least, but I'll try to find out.
Show threadFrankie SaxxMay 11, 2017
@lrshdl Yeah, I'm not sure how it would be applied in Sweden, I don't know if it has to save or transmit the images to be covered.
Show threadLrsMay 11, 2017
@frankiesaxx Ok, it's an interesting question, though. The privacy laws in Norway had traditionally been kind of strict in Norway, favoring people and consumers, so that's why I'm a bit curious about this case. I'll toot about it when I find out.
Show threadLrsMay 11, 2017
@frankiesaxx Sorry for the duplicate writing. Just noticed 😣
Show threadFrankie SaxxMay 11, 2017
@lrshdl I'll keep an eye out for it. :)
Show threadLrsMay 12, 2017

@frankiesaxx It's not very allowed in this setting, as I thought. 😊

https://www.datatilsynet.no/Teknologi/Kameraovervaking/Hvilke-omrader-kan-overvakes/?showContentList=true&showDetailedContentList=false&readMode=false

Show threadMotoma :motorcycle:May 11, 2017

@aral This is chilling. It would benefit such useful data to the marketing team, but also so rife for abuse.

There needs to be protections for biometric analysis along the lines of, say PII. In fact I can't think of anything more PII than facial recognition data.

And all of this data is being gathered without any disclosure or agreement from the participants.

Just chilling.

Show threadChristian BorupMay 11, 2017
@aral I'm so torn the tech is cool. But the use of it is just plain evil.
Show threadLrsMay 11, 2017
@aral I don't think this is allowed? I'm not sure, but I'll do some law digging after seeing this. Thanks for sharing it. :)
Show threadNelsonMay 11, 2017
@aral you also forgot to tell that this was a single installation done for a test. It was labelled (badly I grant) and within current Norwegian laws. However this has brought this type of ad to consciousness of many. And at least that is a plus.
Show threadOlivier OosterbaanMay 12, 2017
@aral Also, it doesn't seem to actually work particularly well. Or nobody smiles when they are about to eat pizza. So there is a huge over-promise, trust in "accurate" data from. Both sides of this transaction are duped in different ways.
Show threadRysiekúr (old account)May 12, 2017
@aral but this is visceral, easier to understand. Make an example of it, and it will be easier to let people understand Google's and Facebook's surveillance.
Show threadHigh On DancerMay 12, 2017

@aral

Is this really that big of a deal? It's anonymous information that does not confront any personal right of the consumer (or I fail to see any). Is it evil because a computer is doing the job? How is this different from the owner of a local shop closely watching people reactions to their ads/asking people whether they like or not their products?

Show threadAral BalkanMay 12, 2017

@highondancer It’s a big deal because:

(a) People don’t know that their photo is being taken and that facial recognition is being run, etc. If this was happening in the EU, it would run foul of GDPR.

(b) The owner of a shop does not have the means to take photo of customers and store it indefinitely and link it to other info with just their eyes/biological facilities

(c) The difference to being asked is they were never asked – they didn’t even know it was going on.

Show threadsaplingMay 12, 2017
@aral You've probably already read/seen this, but here's a more in-depth followup article: https://medium.com/@ys/attention-dubliners-we-are-all-being-spied-on-by-a-little-known-company-on-camden-street-5c784558dc4e
Show threadAral BalkanMay 12, 2017
@GLEAM Thanks :)