BORDERS U.K. USES FACE-RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY TO MONITOR CUSTOMERS Borders Books in the U.K. is employing SmartFace technology to compare the "unique digital face-maps" of customers against similar face-maps of known shoplifters. Privacy advocates such as the director of the Scottish Human Rights Centre are outraged by the development: "I can see why they don't want shoplifters in their store, but I would question whether this is proportionate to what they are trying to do. We are talking about having a bank of pictures of everyone going into the shop -- I would consider that a serious breach of privacy. There is no control over what they do with those pictures, or how they are kept -- are they safe? Nor is there much control over whether Borders could sell the information on, or whether people will actually know this is happening." (Sunday Herald 26 Aug 2001) http://www.sundayherald.com/18007
BORDERS U.K. USES FACE-RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY TO MONITOR CUSTOMERS Borders Books in the U.K. is employing SmartFace technology to compare
Slashdot is reporting that they've backed off in response to negative public pressure. So for the moment you don't need to wear a mask to shop there, though they're probably still using cameras, and in many parts of the UK the local government is also videotaping the street. David Brin's book "The Transparent Society" suggests that you might as well get used to it. Technological change driven by the Moore's Law effects in computing power are making video cameras and computer image processing get cheaper rapidly, so the marginal benefit of using them doesn't have to be very high to outweigh the marginal cost. The real issues are still getting data, but the costs of sharing data are low and getting lower, and the government intervention that forces everyone to use picture ID to do almost anything makes it easier. Brin's conclusion is that since we won't be able to stop it, we should work to make sure government activities are open and watchable by the public. Similarly, the cost of correlating non-image data has decreased rapidly - many of the information collection practices used today date from the 1960s and 1970s, when a "mainframe" might have a megabyte of RAM, less than 10 MIPS of CPU, 100MB of fast disk drive, and everything else was tapes and punchcards, and it required a large staff of people to feed it. These days you can get pocket computers with ten times that capacity, and a $5000 desktop Personal Computer can have a gigabyte of RAM and a terabyte of disk drive with the Internet to feed it data; that's enough for the name and address of everybody on Earth, or a few KB on every American, and online queries are much faster than the traditional methods requiring offline data sets. That means that not only can governments and a few big companies decide to correlate pre-planned sets of data about people, but almost anybody can do ad-hoc queries on any data it's convenient for them to get, whether they're individuals or employees of small or large businesses. So if there's any data about you out there, don't expect it to stay private - even data that previously wasn't a risk because correlating it was hard. European-style data privacy laws aren't much help - they're structured for a world in which computers and databases were big things run by big companies, rather than everyday tools used by everyone in their personal lives, and rules requiring making them accessible to the public can be turned around into rules allowing the government to audit your mobile phone and your pocket organizer in case there might be databases on them. American-style data privacy laws are seriously flawed also - not the fluffy attempts at positive protection for privacy that liberal Nader types and occasional paranoid conservatives propose, but the real laws which require increasing collection of data in ways that are easy to correlate, such as the use of a single Taxpayer ID for employers, bank accounts, drivers' licenses, and medical records, "Know Your Customer" laws, national databases of people permitted to work, documentation proving you're not an illegal alien, etc. There's lots more data that would be readily available, but the bureaucrats that collect it restrict access or charge fees that reflect the pre-computer costs of providing the information. If you need a reminder, go buy a house and look at the junk mail you get, or have your neighbor's deadbeat kid register his car with your apartment number instead of his and see what shows up.
On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:
David Brin's book "The Transparent Society" suggests that you might as well get used to it. Technological change driven by the Moore's Law effects in computing power are making video cameras and computer image processing get cheaper rapidly, so the marginal benefit of using them doesn't have to be very high to outweigh the marginal cost. The real issues are still getting data,
On the other hand, the technology of disguise and the public taste for radical body modification and active clothing all suggest that many of us will soon be denying a useful image to the opposition. Then we won't have to worry until genetic sniffers become popular. Genetic sniffers, however can probably be defeated by devices that give off clouds of genetically random human biological material. Offense and defense back and forth forever. DCF ---- Marshal de Vaubin -- No stronghold be ever invested stood. No position he ever defended fell.
On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 02:10:14PM -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote:
Genetic sniffers, however can probably be defeated by devices that give off clouds of genetically random human biological material.
Offense and defense back and forth forever.
Maybe, but it seems like offense just got a boost. Passive biodefenses don't work against an active offense. If sniffers start landing on your skin and taking a microscopic sample, then they won't be trivial to defend against. -Declan
On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Maybe, but it seems like offense just got a boost. Passive biodefenses don't work against an active offense.
Ablative, camouflage, and contact poison ones do. Nature is full of 'passive' defenses that are effective. Evolutionary Wars: A 3 Billion Year Arms Race The battle of species on land, at sea, and in the air C.K. Levy ISBN 0-7167-3775-2
If sniffers start landing on your skin and taking a microscopic sample, then they won't be trivial to defend against.
Then you build nano-hunters. If the thing is mobile enough and smart enough then the technology is suitable to build a hunter-killer. Since you built it, and programmed it the security is quite high. Since the security is high the safety factor is high 'for you with respect to your technology'. This is another reason that 'reputation' is not as important as one would believe. Because of the requisite safety/security requirement of technology vetting nobody is going to believe a word that is said. The reason people will exist in transactions/relationships is as exchange brokers or personal interest. The ONLY(!!!) defence against a technological attack is a technological defence; passive/active, pro/re-active, etc. are digressions into minutea. They don't effect the fundamental balance of the situation. Attack/Defend. This is exactly why 'economics' and 'government' as we know it will cease to exist over the next couple of hundred years (maybe quicker). You will get your population of nano-bots when you're born from your parents. You'll inherit as a matter of course both a nano- and bio-technology when you become an adult. It will be keyed to you via a variety of mechanisms. They will get it from others in their 'chreche' (my 'zaibatsu') related by blood and long term personal relationships (note that this is not a driving force for inter-creche transfers). People will not have 'jobs' as we know them. Automation, bio-engineering, and intelligence technology will make that pointless. Exchages between chreche will be people and technology. People will have duties, obligations, responsibilities with respect to the business of the creche and inter-creche relations. Those relations will consist of almost nothing but technology/research/information transfers. As the technology increases the need for heirarchy with respect to survival and social behaviour limitations becomes less. Because of the (apparent) nature of technology growth two things will happen. The first is that individuals will be able to better fend for themselves. Consider an aggregate technology (psycho/digital/nano/bio-technology) that will allow a person to walk out into a field; filled with trees, grass, bushes, birds.... Program their nano-bots to create a steak. And within a couple of hours the field and its raw minerals and bio-mass are consumed, transformed, and delivered at your feet. A steaming steak sitting on a fine china plate; accompanied by a heap of gray goo piled next to it. Awaiting their next orders from your PDA...all in a silent, barren, stripped field. Weapons of mass destruction? You ain't seen nothing yet... What will keep some nutcase from killing everyone? Everyone will be providing both individual and community service with respect to building pro-active defences. You won't die from some Mujahadin bio-bug or nano-hunter-kill because it's against the law (and just exactly whos law might that be?), you'll do it because you've deployed(!) an active pre-emptive counter-measure technology. Probably both bio- and nano-. The thesis has been made that a critical point will be reached when countries become, as a matter of course, armed to such a point they can take on other countries 1-1. Now consider the sorts of societies that will be needed when that is person to person. Consider what it means when, as a result of this technology we must finally come to grips with the fact that the depravities of mankind are one of psychology and that the bad will always be with us. Consider what it means for things like 'trust', 'reputation', 'nation', 'independent', 'individual'. It is also a strong argument why freedom of speech with respect to taboo subjects like bombs is the wrong way to go. If everyone knows how to do it then nobody can hide their actions since they must collect and arrange resources. It also means that the number of potential observants goes way up. This increases the chances of early detection. The rational thing to do is teach people how to make bombs so they can recognize when some nutcase decides they want to make a bomb. The FBI should be teaching public classes. Jefferson said something about when a nation is threatened by the ignorance of the people, you don't change the law. You educate the people. -- ____________________________________________________________________ natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks Matsuo Basho The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Maybe, but it seems like offense just got a boost. Passive biodefenses don't work against an active offense. If sniffers start landing on your skin and taking a microscopic sample, then they won't be trivial to defend against.
Biology can't help leaking bits, it's riddled with multiple fingerprints. The only way to make sure is to rent a random telepresence box, the control flow being routed through realtime traffic remixers. By the time you have litte gadgets buzzing around who're after your DNA or volatile MHC fragments we'll surely have these. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3
On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Maybe, but it seems like offense just got a boost. Passive biodefenses don't work against an active offense. If sniffers start landing on your skin and taking a microscopic sample, then they won't be trivial to defend against.
How about a tailored virus that modifies your DNA on a rotating basis in non significant fashion so that you're constantly "new". I wonder if that would be theoretically possible? Fun times. DCF ---- I suffer from a recognized social affective disorder that prevents me from obeying government rules. I'm thus handicapped and protected by the ADA. It's in the DSM-IV. You could look it up.
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Duncan Frissell wrote:
How about a tailored virus that modifies your DNA on a rotating basis in non significant fashion so that you're constantly "new". I wonder
Unless you go for full sequencing, you would have to jumble restriction sites.
if that would be theoretically possible? Fun times.
Theoretically, yes. It would kill you in no time, though. Also, quantitative transfection in an adult is a lot to ask for. Killer vector indeed. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Duncan Frissell wrote:
How about a tailored virus that modifies your DNA on a rotating basis in non significant fashion so that you're constantly "new". I wonder if that would be theoretically possible? Fun times.
You would have to do it to the 'junk' and 'long term unused' portions (ie introns), I doubt it would work with exons. There's also the issue of timing. Using a virus it would be hard to hit all the cells at one time. -- ____________________________________________________________________ natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks Matsuo Basho The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 02:59 PM 08/30/2001 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote:
How about a tailored virus that modifies your DNA on a rotating basis in non significant fashion so that you're constantly "new". I wonder if that would be theoretically possible? Fun times.
So that _who's_ constantly new? Somebody, but would it still be you?
participants (7)
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Allan Hunt-Badiner -
Bill Stewart -
Declan McCullagh -
Duncan Frissell -
Eugene Leitl -
Jim Choate -
Ken Brown