Mall real estate company collected 5M images of shoppers

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cadillac-fairview-5-million-images-1.5781735?cmp=rss

by voisin • 6 years ago

264 161 6 years ago

The company also argued shoppers were made aware of the activity through decals it had placed on shopping mall entry doors that referred to Cadillac Fairview's privacy policy.

Do what now? Physical spaces have privacy policies? We're really sleepwalking into a dystopia. If you don't like the privacy policy of your shopping mall, you're free to shop... online, where they get even more behavioral data on you. Yikes.

voisin4• 6 years ago

It’s crazy that their lawyers think that merely referring to a privacy policy via a decal on the door is adequate acceptance of this kind of intrusion. I thought the laws required explicit acceptance online, via a check box on sign up, along with emailed updates when the policy changes. Merely walking through a door cannot possibly be construed to be explicit acceptance.

gnrlbzik• 6 years ago

indeed, I almost fell off my chair : ) If we do not read it in comfort of our home, why would one do so walking into the mall.... and there is not even a precedent to do so....

gruez5• 6 years ago

Not sure about the privacy laws in Canada, but are there any laws against video recording and/or facial recognition? AFAIK by default they're fair game because there's no expectation of privacy while in public.

gravitas• 6 years ago

It’s crazy that their lawyers think that merely referring to a privacy policy via a decal on the door is adequate acceptance of this kind of intrusion

Very abstractly, legal precedent exists for the general implementation. Texas has what's called "the 30.07 sign" codified in the penal code (30.06 concealed, 30.07 open carry)[1] which prohibits firearm carry on that property with nothing more than a proper/legal sign. The responsibility lies on the entrant to notice and comply with the sign prior to entering the establishment, no explicit acknowledgement is required by that place of business for it to be enforced.

(not saying I agree with what's going on here, only that I can see lawyers using laws like this to support the action in the face of no laws saying it can't be done like this - a judge may throw the argument out, but it could be made as a good faith argument? My mind is thinking about how in the 90s "shrink wrap acceptance" was just a given - you opened he box so you accepted the license, but in 2020 many new laws have been developed to curtail that design and now require explicit acceptance by the end-user.)

[1] https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/PE/htm/PE.30.htm

scotty79• 6 years ago

I don't see it any more crazy than that you can legally agree to something by clicking.

OzzyB• 6 years ago

Hey, if you don't like what your local shopping mall is doing, build your own!

dave5104• 6 years ago

Or even better, stop patronizing it and contribute to its crumbling real estate value.

vel0city2• 6 years ago

In Canada, do you even really have a right to privacy when in public spaces like a shopping mall? Is there even a legal expectation that there aren't cameras doing this kind of thing all the time? In most places in the US I know there isn't a right to privacy within a public space. If I as a shop owner put up security cameras in this same fashion in most of the US this wouldn't be against the law. There's no law preventing me from putting up cameras all along my home looking out into the street doing the same.

8note• 6 years ago

A lack of a law preventing it doesn't make it good though. We can add new laws and regulations

dblohm7• 6 years ago

In Canada, do you even really have a right to privacy when in public spaces like a shopping mall?

Yes, you do, because while a shopping mall might be considered a "public space," it is private property owned by a private organization. In Canada the PIPEDA [1] covers this federally, though the law is written such that it is a backstop, and provinces are free to enact their own "substantially similar" (or stricter) laws if they choose. For example, in Alberta the PIPA [2] covers these issues.

And as the article states, both federal and provincial privacy commissioners found CF in violation of those laws.

[1] https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-laws-in-can...

[2] https://www.alberta.ca/personal-information-protection-act-o...

mynegation3• 6 years ago

It is one thing to have cameras for security and store records for a limited amount of time for police investigation and what not. But applying facial recognition, biometric analysis, and storing it indefinitely is whole another ballgame.

lhorie2• 6 years ago

shoppers were made aware of the activity through decals

Indeed there's a huge glaring problem here: many of these malls have branded entrances (Shoppers Drug Mart, Best Buy, etc) through which a large portion of consumers walk into the mall, and these alleged decals are not present in those entrances. Here's an example [1]. Frankly I don't see said decals even in the non-branded entrances[2]

They're going to have a very hard time convincing the commissioner that people were in fact aware of these decals AND any "privay policy" therein. A simple survey would easily show that people are completely clueless about it (anecdote: I used to frequent CF malls quite a bit when I was in Toronto and never saw anything of the sort, even despite being the type of person that might actually read random stuff posted at entrances).

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7788812,-79.3447734,3a,75y,1...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@43.7789409,-79.3444783,3a,75y,1...

gruez5• 6 years ago

The streetview images are dated may 2019, but the article says

CF suspended its use of cameras back in 2018 [...]

zapdrive• 6 years ago

The decals might be installed on the inside doors that lead from shoppers drug Mart to the the mall.

black_puppydog2• 6 years ago

Sorry but if you're taking their argument at face value that decals might be the way to go here and everything would be fine if only they were there, then they've basically won.

Don't get side tracked.

amelius• 6 years ago

Even if there were large signs, people would just not care.

qppo• 6 years ago

When I was in college Fortinet pitched a capstone project for an automated doorman that tracked passersby, delivery people, residents, etc using cameras posted at doors.

We asked why they couldn't use other biometrics which were much more established at the time (eg fingerprint scanners at the doorway), they said because other biometrics required consent. They wanted to track people without their knowing or agreement.

When asked about the ethics they said something along the lines of "this is what our customers are asking for."

Point being you don't need a privacy policy when you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the first place. They can take pictures of you, store them in a database, sell them if they want. You don't have a right to be forgotten. And there are people that don't see anything wrong with that.

donmcronald4• 6 years ago

The tech capabilities have changed so much that I'd say it's closer to being surveilled than observed in a public place. Compare it to security cameras where you're recorded almost everywhere, but the video is relatively transient and often only reviewed / saved if a crime or disturbance occurs.

That's a lot different than companies tracking me via facial recognition, storing the data in databases that never get deleted, and combining it with behavioral data. It's going to lead to all kind of abuse. We'll end up with many variants of redlining, but digital.

What happens when that type of data is collected for today's youth and 20 years from now employers start using it to screen job applicants? What if the machine learning algorithms can't distinguish between correlation and causality? Does the "profile" of a successful person become someone from a rich neighborhood as a result of naive correlation?

I'm sure it'll be amazing for wealthy people and terrible for poor people. If I'm rich and walk into a mall, I get treated like a VIP. If I'm poor, maybe the doors don't even open.

rz2k• 6 years ago

About five years ago there was a decal on the glass beside the entrance to the Stanford Shopping Center Neiman Marcus notifying customers that they were tracked by their phones.

I wonder if they stopped in response to complaints, or decided the notification was unnecessary. At the time, I figured their system judged me for browsing $800 jeans and not making a purchase.

reaperducer2• 6 years ago

Physical spaces have privacy policies?

I've seen TOSes on mall doors before. They've been white letters on clear glass at just about foot level written in letters about 1cm tall. They were usually about violence and guns and shoplifting being grounds to ejection and banning.

The only people who ever see them is the decal printing company, the guy who installs them, and mice.

WWLink• 6 years ago

A lot of malls I've been in have a "terms of conduct" sign near the entrance when you walk in. Similarly bizarre are the signs at the parking lot entrance that act similarly.

I'll take that one further! Every street that enters the city I live in, has a sign with text that you'll only be able to read if you park your car, get out, and walk up to it. I've lived here 5 years and I still don't know what the heck those signs say lol. My guess is it's something about parking enforcement? Sigh. It's completely absurd lol.

sellyme• 6 years ago

The ones here all say "No Roller-blading", which should be a good indicator as to how relevant they are.

xwdv• 6 years ago

I have a privacy policy for people entering my dwelling or using my guest wifi.

a_imho2• 6 years ago

We're really sleepwalking into a dystopia.

Maybe some, but most people are aware. They have very little to zero power to fight back the abuse.

beervirus• 6 years ago

One more reason to like wearing masks all the time.

Ninjinka• 6 years ago

If only that was a surefire solution: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-facial...

r-s• 6 years ago

If this system did not error out and display the error messages to the mall shoppers, it would still be unknown.

coding1232• 6 years ago

I'm wondering if just setting up a webcam in a public spot for a few years is enough these days to make a million bucks. I mean, don't you think that someone would buy a billion images of people walking about. It would be excellent for ML teams. LOL

gruez5• 6 years ago

Why would they pay someone $1 million for images that they can capture in a few weeks by parking a van with cameras in a crowded place?

coding1232• 6 years ago

It's amazing what people pay for in the correct circles.

dylan6045• 6 years ago

If you need the content right now, vs rigging up a van and spending the required few weeks in it, and then the hassle of managing the RAW content.

You've basically just asked why stock photo/video companies exist.

bdamm2• 6 years ago

No. There are many public webcams up already you can google and see right now, that content is free and not going away. What's missing is high def up-close cameras, which gets dicey w.r.t. privacy if you're making a profit off the content.

donmcronald4• 6 years ago

I was actually wondering about the same thing. I don't think you could make $1 million, but if you live on the end of a feeder street I bet there's a chance you could eventually get paid to point a couple cameras at the street.

With the way most modern neighborhoods are designed it would take very few cameras on private property to capture everyone going in/out.

umvi2• 6 years ago

If this is all privately held data that can't be accessed without a warrant... why not?

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

KittenInABox• 6 years ago

Yes, because humans looking at camera screens will a) cost the company money, and also b) creates an incentive to the company to limit its observation to only the most necessary viewpoints.

Attempting to automate the task of constant observation makes constant observation easier, which isn't necessarily a desirable state.

oehpr3• 6 years ago

A piece of data on its own is usually pretty harmless, a gigantic database that is organized, categorized, and distributed, is potentially very harmful. And it's a smooth gradient between them.

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.

donmcronald4• 6 years ago

Exactly. It's the industrial scale collection, storage, analysis, and sharing of data that becomes a problem. I don't care of Joe Smith the security guard sees me pick my nose or scratch my ass when they're watching security cameras because it's not noteworthy to them and they're not going to recognize me or remember it.

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.

stickfigure• 6 years ago

Do you use a credit card? Why are you so upset about this dataset but not that dataset?

Honest question.

kapuasuite4• 6 years ago

You haven’t actually articulated any harm here - the “dangerous” actions that could potentially happen with the aid of aggregated data, like blackmail or stalking, are already illegal.

_jal• 6 years ago

The end equilibrium is everyone running cameras constantly in public spaces, and all public activities scrutinized by... well, who knows? For what ever purposes they choose.

As just one example, I'd expect the emergence of semi-automated blackmail - you can infer a lot from peoples' public activity.

blato4• 6 years ago

"Merchants should be able to hire humans that sit around looking at camera screens all day trying to find shopping patterns, shoplifters, etc."

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

umvi2• 6 years ago

You're telling me humans can't recognize faces? Consider a security guard who sits at the entrance to a store and watches people come in. What are the chances he would facially recognize a repeat shoplifting offender?

austhrow743• 6 years ago

In scenario 1, getting a warrant doesn't do a whole lot of good.

In scenario 2, if the technology is widespread, police can be searching all stores records country wide within minutes.

ab_testing• 6 years ago

I think the courts have ruled that it is perfectly legal to record somebody outside of their home as that is considered public spaces. Many cities are now moving to embed cameras in street lights to deter and record crimes.

I think that it is safe to assume that if you are outside, you are being recorded, either by a check point camera , a store’s security camera , streetlight camera or even your neighbor’s ring device.

You should not have any expectation of privacy once you are outside the confines of your house.

colechristensen2• 6 years ago

This has to stop.

eznzt• 6 years ago

Crime? True.

ada19812• 6 years ago

I don't know why this is downvoted. I thought the same thing.

"Shoppers had no reason to expect their image was being collected by an inconspicuous camera, or that it would be used, with facial recognition technology, for analysis," said federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien in a statement.

My default is the opposite, I expect I'm being tracked all the time and that my image, cell signal, and whatever else is being used to try and sell me stuff I don't need.

voisin4• 6 years ago

You should not have any expectation of privacy once you are outside the confines of your house.

My first reaction was “what a sad dystopian position.” But then I thought further and while I agree in general, I think “privacy” needs a bit more nuance to it. If you are outside should it be against the law to have a camera that films you for security? No I don’t think so. There is a reasonable expectation that business and home owners will have security cameras to protect their property. But in the case of filming you in order to monetize your likeness and shopping habits, I think this goes a step too far, and becomes broadly unacceptable as too intrusive. Should I only be able to retain my information (likeness, shopping habits) by hiding in my home? That’s the dystopian part.

m463• 6 years ago

There are laws that paparazzi have to abide by. Maybe they should be applied here?

thatcat2• 6 years ago

Paparazzi actually operate under a more leinient set of rules because their subject has chosen to make themselves a public figure.

dylan6045• 6 years ago

There are public spaces, and then there are private spaces open to the public. I fight this one all the time with a local park. It is a park that is not city owned public, but privately operated and open to the public. They have a very strict photography policy, and their "employees" will interfere with you if you do not have "permission".

I believe shopping malls are private spaces open to the public. The point is that I would not be shocked to see that there are different rules regarding public spaces vs private spaces open to the public.

spinach• 6 years ago

What about bathrooms, changing rooms, hotel rooms, etc? No expectation for privacy since you aren't at home?

sida• 6 years ago

OP's argument would be that bathrooms, changing rooms, hotel rooms are examples of places with expectation of privacy.

And if you are walking in the middle of a mall with lots of people around you, that would be an example where there is no expectation of privacy.

-- OP argument put more simply, if you are in a bathroom, everyone expects that that is private. In fact bathrooms have doors and urinals have privacy screens. If you are taking your clothes off, a reasonable person expects to be private

Whereas, in the middle of the mall where there are tons of people, there are surveillance cameras, and other people taking pictures of each other. That would be somewhere with no expectation of privacy

blato4• 6 years ago

This "_you should not have any expectations of privacy in public_" argument dates back when there was no facial recognition.

The idea was people can see you in the street, maybe exceptionally a wierdo would take a photo of you but nobody could find your identity back from that photo. In case of a crime in the street the police could exceptionally access surveillance cameras to investigate. That's it.

This is what "no privacy in public" meant in 2000/2010, and I was totally fine with that. I was totally pro video surveillance at that time .

Now we're in 2020 and facial recognition is happening. Everything changes.

Today, taking the picture of someone = taking biometric data like fingerprint or DNA. This allows you to have a total control over that person. Law were made at a time when a cameras were not such devastating weapons.

Everywhere you go, everything you eat, each item in the store you look at, each person you look at, heartbeat & stress level, which house you're at, who are you talking to, what did you bought, when, with who, what ads did you watch in the street, which part if the ads, with which emotion, we can find your identity, social posts, private data, health data, intimate message, browsing history, emotions, stress level, etc just by pointing a camera at you because of facial recognition. All this is anaylzed, sold and stored forever.

We're getting in a dystopia the worst case-scenario dystopic sci-fi movie couldn't even imagine and people are like "nah we shouldn't expect privacy anyway ya know"...

imgabe7• 6 years ago

Today, taking the picture of someone = taking biometric data like fingerprint or DNA. This allows you to have a total control over that person.

How does a picture grant total control? Let's say I have a picture of you right now. How do I use that picture to either force you to do something against your will, or prevent you from doing something?

qes• 6 years ago

taking the picture of someone... allows you to have a total control over that person

Please, explain?

This sounds like nothing more than hyperbolic nonsense.

brummm• 6 years ago

I have talked to somebody working for this exact company before that was telling me about some of their project that they were working on. In addition to video images they also track people through their phones across stores to analyze shopping behaviour and fingerprint customers.

arminiusreturns2• 6 years ago

I never turn on wifi or bluetooth away from home, my question is, are they doing LTE data collection too?

gruez5• 6 years ago

are they doing LTE data collection too?

Don't cell carriers already sell your "anonymized" location data to marketers?

staplers• 6 years ago

It's plausible. The mall could have a stingray device monitoring everyone's data.

fraserharris• 6 years ago

Cadillac Fairview said the images taken by camera were briefly analyzed then deleted — but investigators found that the sensitive biometric information generated from the images was being stored in a centralized database by a third party.

The images are not being persisted, just the metadata about the individual. Who is being harmed by this? If a person with a clipboard collecting this information without telling anyone, is there any outrage?

dylan6045• 6 years ago

I'm outraged every single time I am accosted by someone with a clip board. Not once, ever, have I been remotely concerned with their concerns.

blato4• 6 years ago

The pictures are not what matter, what matters is the "face features <-> data" association.

The harm ? With that data, any camera in the world pointed at you can find what you did in that store.

DLA2• 6 years ago

There is no expectation of privacy in public places in the US. Not sure of Canada has the same norm. Now that said just because you can collect data does not mean should should--there's a wide range for good and evil here.

HarryHirsch• 6 years ago

We are forgetting that until very recently storage was so expensive that there was an expectation of forgetting. This should be talked about more because it changes the picture dramatically.

DLA2• 6 years ago

That's a fantastic point you raise. It's dirt cheap to collect (IoT devices, drones, Digital Globe and the like) and very inexpensive to store data in volumes that were once the only viable for governments or well-funded and motivated private entities (e.g. hedge funds). That opens the door to a radically different set of possibilities.

a_imho2• 6 years ago

I recall a youtuber Surveillance Camera Man, when he filmed people in public they seemed to get angry about his actions. To me this says people de facto expect privacy in public spaces.

https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Surveillance_Camera_Man

avalys• 6 years ago

I don’t see the actual harm here. Malls have operated security cameras for decades. These people added a facial recognition system to generate population statistics (age, gender) and track anonymous individuals as they move around the mall. So what? Who was harmed? Who could be harmed?

criddell3• 6 years ago

Now what if they decide to link that data up with driver license photos or social media data to de-anonymize as many people as they can. Would you still say there's no actual harm here?

voisin4• 6 years ago

I would argue that if the data is stored, it is only a matter of time before it becomes monetized in the manner you are mentioning. There has to be a firewall to prevent that step being taken. Mindlessly filming for future review in the event of a security issue is one thing. Intelligently analyzing the frames for identification purposes is where the feeling of “my privacy has been invaded, or could easily be in the future via storage of my likeness” comes from.

I don’t see this as a victimless act - just that the victimization is uncertain at present but almost 100% certain to occur the more this behaviour occurs.

kapuasuite4• 6 years ago

To do what with, though? Use it to blackmail you? Use it to track you down and murder you? That’s harm - collecting and analyzing data is not.

ada19812• 6 years ago

I imagine they used this to also serve up suggestions on the kiosk. Mens vs Womens, Bongs vs. Bath linens, etc.

the NYC subway system has big human sized iphone like map displays complete with a facetime camera, presumably capturing the same stuff.

pletsch• 6 years ago

The release also says it was stored in a 3rd party DB and that they apparently didn't know that

bdamm2• 6 years ago

The system is apparently tracking age and gender of people visiting the information kiosk. This hardly seems like invasive tracking. Even tracking an individual's movement through the mall with the purpose of providing security and marketing analysis seems like a ho-hum no big deal to me.

If they were then taking the data and finding those people through Ring or youtube videos, sharing the pictures of people with companies to learn the earning power or tax history of a person, or using pictures of people and the store they visit to sell to Amazon or Facebook, then it would seem a step too far.

catsncomputers• 6 years ago

its very similar to what a company called Locarise do in Japan. It's not identifying anyone, merely seeing buyer hotspots, queues, recording visitor numbers, etc. All very valuable to a mall and imo quite harmless to the user if they are not identified

reaperducer2• 6 years ago

There's no such thing as anonymous data.

The ad-tech industry wouldn't exist if there was.

thatcat2• 6 years ago

They could later choose to sell this data and the buyer could deanonymize it by merging it with other purchased databases.

donmcronald4• 6 years ago

This hardly seems like invasive tracking.

For now. Give it a while and they'll be looking up your credit score as you walk through the door.

brailsafe• 6 years ago

"By walking into this mall, you agree to relinquish your identity"

randylahey• 6 years ago

I could not be happier that wearing a mask is more or less societally acceptable now.

randycupertino2• 6 years ago

I was curious if the value of the facial recognition startups is at risk with masks becoming more prevalent. Wouldn't be surprised if they are lobbying against mask mandates and mask enforcement as their entire business model must be at risk.

dylan6045• 6 years ago

Good. Fuck 'em. I tried find "better" language, but it's just such a perfect way to express it. No level of "nice words" will convey the mood/tone/loathing I feel towards facial recognition as succinctly.

Animats• 6 years ago

Newer facial recognition systems work fine with people wearing masks.[1][2]

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190501114602.h...

[2] https://youtu.be/7mP_cdK-ktI

bsenftner4• 6 years ago

Any enterprise class FR was already doing face masks before the pandemic. I know the FR I work on worked fine before with masks, and now with enhancements much better.

shoemakersteve2• 6 years ago

I've read that gait recognition is even easier to implement and more accurate than facial recognition. People will find more and more innovative ways to invade our privacy.

ObsoleteNerd• 6 years ago

As someone who is seriously immune-compromised and also gets social anxiety, masks are the best thing to happen to me in a long time. I get none of the claustrophobia or breathing restrictions some people talk about and find masks perfectly comfortable, and it actually lets me go to the shops or walk through town without freaking out.

More importantly though it sets a precedent for the future. We now know how easy it is for an airborne virus to decimate us, so even when this virus is over it'll be acceptable for people with immune issues to keep wearing masks "just in case" (similar to Japan/etc, although I know some of that is about stopping other people from getting sick).

dylan6045• 6 years ago

Even after a vaccine comes out that makes COVID an annual thing to deal with like the flu, I'm still going to wear a mask in public. Not that I'm concerned about catching anything, but just because of the public facial recog bullshit that is much too prevalent. Plus, there's just something satisfying about walking into my bank wearing a bandana when accessing my account. They make it so damn difficult to use my money they make me feel like I'm trying to rob them. So now I'm just dressing the part.

littledude• 6 years ago

there is camera software that records an individuals gait/way they walk as a unique fingerprint/identifier

randycupertino2• 6 years ago

They should use that software to identify the Missy Beavers killer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9b1dIi9E2M Personally I still think it is the father in law even though he allegedly has an alibi.

Think of what a PR coup it would be for the camera company if they resolved a notorious cold case using their tech.

elchief• 6 years ago

AFAIK it's zero-party consent for video in Canada. So, I'm not seeing the issue (in terms of legality anyways)

canada_dry• 6 years ago

What the article doesn't address is that these same organizations fingerprint visitors phones [i] too.

From a retailer's point-of-view I totally get the rational and value behind collecting these metrics... from a privacy point-of-view it is a bit disconcerting.

[i] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/cadillac-fairview-mal...

itronitron• 6 years ago

I was standing in a shopping mall last year waiting for a family member when I noticed a person walking towards/past me in dark muted colors wearing a backpack in the same colors across their chest carrying a laptop and a large phone/tablet.

They were clearly working and doing some kind of scan of the mall. Unfortunately I didn't notice soon enough to take their picture or chat with them. Would have been nice to know what they were doing.

davidbrennerjr• 6 years ago

I was wondering whether the numerical representations of individual faces were PCA numerical series. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is the most common method for image-based recognition, image preprocessing, lossless compression, signal-noise analysis, and high resolution spectrum analysis.

PCA can transform an image into a set of unique components, where each component has a numerical degree of distance and relatedness from an agreed on centered component. The first component has the largest possible variance (it accounts for most of the variability in the group). Each succeeding component has the highest variance that is orthogonal to the preceding components. The transformation of the group proceeds linearly from a group with a high degree of dimensionality to a group with a low degree of dimensionality of which the components of the group with a low degree of dimensionality are uncorrelated.

PCA reduces the dimensionality of a complex group of possibly unrelated activities into a smaller group of principal components that accurately represent the entire group with minimum information loss and no loss of essential intrinsic information. PCA also reveals the internal structure of a group of possibly unrelated activities, it can be used to discover meaningful relationships based on commonalities the internal structure of the group shares with other activities that happened in the past. PCA is well known for forcasting with time-series analysis and regression analysis. In most cases the predictability of specific activities can be calculated with high percentages of certainity, by focusing the reconstruction of projected outcomes on the optimization/maximization of the variances of specific activities.

In addition by categorizing the images into age groups and gender groups that information would be very valuable beyond marketing in longer list of industries world-wide.

purpleidea• 6 years ago

"We as privacy regulators don't have any authority to levy fines on companies that violate peoples' personal information and that should really change."

The privacy commission has no teeth, so nothing stops future abuse :/

holidayacct2• 6 years ago

I don't have a problem with this. Most ppl don't know this but there are ppl who make a living harassing other ppl in malls or abusing associative learning to give ppl positive or negative feelings about where they are shopping. They use actual "models" if you want to call it that to influence your decision making everywhere you go. It's actually highly targeted and dangerously accurate.

TeMPOraL• 6 years ago

And I have the problem with both. Wish the jobs you described were highly illegal, because they're highly immoral.

aga98mtl• 6 years ago

Do you have more details about this? Honestly it sounds like paranoid delusions. However, I could see using good-looking models playing fake customer for influencing high net worth individual to spend more. It might make financial sense in a high price, high margin business like a jewelry store. I also heard anecdotal reports of paying homeless people to hang out in front of a competitor's business to scare away customers.

holidayacct2• 6 years ago

No, most of these businesses are illegal in many states. They typically operate as "secret shoppers", advertising, modeling or acting troops. They make up reasons to be at certain places, there is nothjng pranoid about it. This has been around since I was a child we just have more accurate information now (my parents did this for a living). Most of the people involved in this sort of business dont even know what they are there for.

pacamara619• 6 years ago

So now we have something like shrink wrap EULAs but for malls? Yikes

Is it legal in Canada to deny someome a service offered to the public because they didn't agree to this absurd policy?

dade_• 6 years ago

https://www.cadillacfairview.com/en_CA/news/CF-opc-investiga...

It was a beta test run 2 years ago. Someone ran fast and broke things and were probably fired. Take off your tinfoil hat and relax.

CF doesn't care who the individuals are or their identities, though general demographics would probably be interesting. They certainly have signs up at every entrance clearly indicating that you are on camera, but I think they are actually surprised about the biometrics data being stored offsite. I suspect they didn't understand this when they setup the AVA trial.

They use analytics on the WiFi based on MAC as well as Internet use.

This data is used to determine the number of unique users that pass by different parts of the mall to identify high traffic and 'dead zones'. They use different marketing programs to increase traffic to dead zones and can justify higher rent in high traffic zones.

stanfordkid• 6 years ago

Haha take your tinfoil hat off? No one is stating this is some sort of CIA operation. But the idea that all this stuff just sits collecting dust overlooked in a datacenter forever is naïve. Data is gold, and it's traded and monetized at an incredibly high frequency. Your statement that the data is only used in a static fashion for low impact implementation related functions belies the fact that in 2-3 years when the implementing company loses funding and becomes an asset heap some smart PE investor will connect the dots, get the right team together and extract value from the data and sell off the assets. You're either naïve or willfully ignorant if you think this is totally "okay".

darawk• 6 years ago

What's interesting to me about this is how people focus on the 'collection' aspect. But the collection of digital video of people in public spaces with minor (at best) notification (e.g. "smile you're on camera" stickers) has been going on for decades. There's nothing new there at all. So purely from the perspective of collecting data, it seems to me to be well within the purview of established commercial behavior, what they were doing.

The novelty here is not the collection, it's the analysis. And that makes for a kind of interesting legal distinction that hasn't been made in any other domain, as far as I know. A distinction whereby the collection is legal, the retention is legal, but certain types of analysis may not be.

kkiptum• 6 years ago

Hi,

It is possible, though not well documented, that in China they actually do analyze[0] the image data from video cameras. That said this would be a case study in what that means from a free and open society.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-a...

bsenftner4• 6 years ago

Other than those in the industry, like me, you're the only person in these comments astute enough to realize this.

achow• 6 years ago

The commissioners said it did not meet the standard for meaningful consent.

"An individual would not, while using a mall directory, reasonably expect their image to be captured and used to create a biometric representation of their face, which is sensitive personal information, or for that biometric information to be used to guess their approximate age and gender," they wrote.

Genuine question - if mall had deployed people whose job was to look at people to guess their gender, age and then jot it down in a notebook, then would it have been a problem?

If not, then why this is a problem? Assuming that the 'biometric representation' is discarded by the system after guessing the age and gender.

askmike• 6 years ago

Assuming that the 'biometric representation' is discarded by the system after guessing the age and gender.

It wasn't, it was stored in a third party database.

Genuine question - if mall had deployed people whose job was to look at people to guess their gender, age and then jot it down in a notebook, then would it have been a problem?

I don't think these notes would ever come close to "a biometric representation of their face" which can tell you with certainty someone was there or not (when, what time, who they were with).

kleiba• 6 years ago

I wonder what makes anyone in charge think that such a practice could possibly be welcomed by the affected shoppers?

matthewfelgate• 6 years ago

Who cares?

pierreogi• 6 years ago

Yay, more big brother type stuff, I'm telling you it will come and most of us won't even notice.

bsenftner4• 6 years ago

I work in FR, and this is everywhere. Malls and retail establishments of any and all kinds are contacting us and requesting FR for analysis of their shoppers. Police and campus security too. They want to create a tracking system very similar to cookies on the web, but for physical spaces.

Mall real estate company collected 5M images of shoppers

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