
30k unsuspecting Rose Bowl attendees scooped up in a facial recognition test - TakakiTohno
https://onezero.medium.com/90-000-unsuspecting-rose-bowl-attendees-were-scooped-up-in-a-facial-recognition-test-18c843909858
======
kyle_morris_
I was at the Rose Bowl this year and something I noticed was how much of the
game was spent staring at the jumbotron rather than watching the game live.

Sitting in the stands no longer feels like you're watching an incredible game.
Instead it feels like you're watching the game live on ESPN(given the level of
advertisements) but sitting in the stands.

I'm certainly not the first to point out how commercialized sports have
become, but it's disconcerting seeing stadiums try to hook you into staring at
an ad for four hours instead of enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Another example was the flyover: A B2 flew over just before kickoff[0] and I,
along with almost everyone else, had never seen one before. An announcement
over the loudspeakers asked that everyone hold up a small sign so that the
stadium looked like the American flag from above. This was great for viewers
at home and horrible for anyone in the stands because all you could see was
the back of the sign you and everyone else were holding up.

We seem to have gotten so far away from what sports are about(two teams
competing to see who's best) that we've landed on milking as much money out of
the fans as they possibly can.

Facial recognition, in this context, seems to be doing the same. Rather than
giving fans a fantastic experience, the folks running these games are trying
to monetize them instead.

[0] - [https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2020/01/check-out-this-
aeri...](https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/2020/01/check-out-this-aerial-photo-
of-the-b-2-bomber-flyover-at-the-2020-rose-bowl.html)

~~~
etrabroline
>that we've landed on milking as much money out of

I take issues with your use of the word "we". If you asked them, 95% of people
would say this should stop. In the past, economic and political leaders were
drawn from the nation as a whole, and had a sense of loyalty and social
obligation to their fellow countrymen, even if it meant leaving a few dollars
on the table. Globalization and the increasing cultural and ethnic divide
between the upper and lower classes in western countries has ended that
fealty. May it soon return.

~~~
js2
99% of people also hate how airlines treat them and think appliances should
last more than a few years, but then when faced with a purchase decision,
choose whatever is cheapest. Unfortunately, money talks and bullshit walks.
:-(

~~~
vorpalhex
I've had to purchase a new fridge lately, the old one finally is giving up the
ghost after far too short of a lifespan. I decided I was fine investing in a
good, solid fridge...

Quite frankly, none exist. Every fridge on the market in a regular kitchen
size (smaller than industrial) is an entirely plastic piece of crap with a
life expectency of 5-10 years.

It wasn't an issue of money, of searching, or willingness to wait. There just
wasn't any alternative.

~~~
thewebcount
Add to this the way they try to require you to have subscriptions for your
appliances now. My fridge has a water filter. They want me to subscribe to
filter replacements. They have a light that tells me when to replace the
filter. I suspect it's based on time rather than volume of water filtered.
Sometimes the water continues to taste fine, so I don't replace it
immediately. They do have an attachment you can use to not filter the water,
but the filter does actually seem to do something I like. I just wish it
didn't feel like such a ripoff. And this is after replacing the fridge our
house came with and which couldn't have been 5 years old when we moved in. We
went with a different brand but I'm not sure it will make any difference.

------
jb775
Facial recognition tech should really have more regulations in place. What if
this was done at the recent protests and there's now a database full of facial
data that associates those people with likely political affiliations, etc.

Imagine in hitler had access to this tech and simply purchased a database of
"Likely Jewish" facial data?

~~~
gdhbcc
That and more has been done at the recent protests.

Do you genuinely believe those drones flying over every major city taking high
resolution photos of everyone within 30 miles are there for fun?

~~~
csteubs
This is a PR issue I'm dealing with right now. I'm the founder of a nascent
startup that uses commercial flights to crowdsource aerial imagery on a
massive scale. I was anticipating skepticism around the feasibility of our
approach, but I ended up entertaining many more concerns about surveillance
and governmental access. Because we leverage commercial flights, we're able to
update our map hundreds of thousands of times/day. The majority of people
immediately start thinking of all the uses cases made possible by that kind of
temporal resolution, but there's a very vocal, skeptical few. As much as I'd
like to brush them off, skepticism is critical and I'm forcing myself to
listen and take notes in order to address those concerns in our marketing and
content moving forward. It's a fine line.

~~~
thephyber
I don't envy your position.

Your stakeholders have all been burned before either personally or by other
vendors and you will have to somehow built trust against those mental
barriers.

I personally treat any company who can access my information as if they are
willing to undermine their previous statements, have non-public contracts
which sell/trade my information with disreputable companies, can pivot in a
moment of desperation to do everything they previously promised not to do, may
be M&Aed in such a way that all previous contracts are significantly modified,
could have terrible security controls of their data, or may not actually
_delete_ all copies of data when they say they do.

~~~
csteubs
That's certainly a good rule of thumb.

The mental barrier is difficult to overcome, and you can't win them all.
Distill the message too much with "We make money by selling data" and you'll
never see a customer, but the opposite is true as well; "The startup doth
protest too much, methinks"

------
watertom
Sports attendance is way down, I don't care what the sports themselves say.

During the NFL Playoffs they couldn't show crowd shots because there were
enough empty seats that it was noticeable. I saw empty seats at the super
bowl.

I saw highlight on ESPN of an NBA game before the lock down, and it looked
like a high School basketball game because of the number of empty seats.

Considering every player in the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL are all part of the 1%
I'm done contributing to the rich.

I'll go see minor league baseball games, they are much more fun anyway.

~~~
what_ever
> During the NFL Playoffs they couldn't show crowd shots because there were
> enough empty seats that it was noticeable. I saw empty seats at the super
> bowl.

I am pretty sure the Superbowl was sold out. People just didn't show up or
were stuck in traffic. I believe this will be true for any NFL playoff games.

> Sports attendance is way down

Citations needed. Other than baseball, I highly doubt this is true for any
sports in the US. Unless it's a team like Phoenix Suns.

------
rst
Not the first such tests -- there was a trial in Boston in 2013, at a music
festival on municipal property (City Hall plaza).
[https://digboston.com/boston-used-face-recognition-before-
de...](https://digboston.com/boston-used-face-recognition-before-despite-
potential-ban-it-likely-will-again/)

------
cardiffspaceman
This somehow doesn't violate any ethics concerning experimentation on humans?

~~~
jeffbee
Can you make an ethical argument against it? What ethical principle is
violated by photographing people in public? By classifying those photographs?

~~~
appleflaxen
The golden rule is a solid ethical foundation.

"I would not want my photograph being surrepticiously collected and used by an
entity/organization for an indefinite period of time, stored in an
indeterminate number of locations, and with unknown goals that may be related
to mass surveillance; therefore, I will not perform that same action against
others"

And based on others HN comments, even if it's not the majority opinion, it is
not an _exceptional_ opinion.

~~~
jonas21
Are you saying that if the team who did this is okay with having their own
photographs collected, analyzed, and stored by a third party, then they have a
solid ethical foundation to do it?

I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.

------
kevsim
Inevitably when GDPR comes up, there are always HN commenters talking
disparagingly about the "nanny state" in Europe. However, I'll take some
annoying cookie banners over an ad tech company scanning my face any day of
the week. If this was in Europe, they would've gotten hit with a fine of 4% of
their revenue.

~~~
nwsm
"4% of their revenue" sounds like a "cost of doing business" fee.

~~~
gspr
> "4% of their revenue" sounds like a "cost of doing business" fee.

Really? Are you sure you're not confusing it with profits?

Isn't 10% of revenue considered a decent profit margin? If a fine eats up half
of that, it sounds pretty major (and reasonable) to me!

~~~
scaryclam
"These types of infringements could result in a fine of up to €20 million, or
4% of the firm’s worldwide annual revenue from the preceding financial year,
whichever amount is higher." \-
[https://gdpr.eu/fines/](https://gdpr.eu/fines/)

Definitely revenue. The point of the GDPR is to have some teeth when dealing
with companies that are large enough to shrug off lesser fines.

~~~
gspr
I know. I was replying to a comment that suggested it was toothless, so I
wondered if the author had mixed revenue and profit.

------
dawnerd
I think people might be freaked out if they learned just how many
stores/attractions already have similar tech implemented. Ah who am I kidding,
the average person doesn’t seem to care all that much - quite unfortunate.

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-
te...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-
technologies/are-stores-you-shop-secretly-using-face)

------
cbsmith
It seems a bit weird to say that something hasn't been reported in the
mainstream media, and then link to a Rolling Stone article on it from two
years ago...

------
vincentmarle
Guess what happens with the data in all those apps people download to attend
big festivals (e.g. Coachella). User data is a big business.

------
canyon289
I emailed a CCPA request to their info email. Will report back with what I
hear.

------
arpinum
This can't be stopped. Better to stop resisting tech advancements and instead
learn to adapt. Airports are starting to do this scanning as well, and they
won't go away; travellers don't know they exist and have few rights when in
secure environments.

~~~
umvi
The "right to not be observed" is not a natural right, nor should it be. The
"right to absolute privacy in all places at all times" is also not a natural
right, nor should it be.

People should only be entitled to privacy in their own homes/current dwelling.
That's it (with a few exceptions). People should not be entitled to privacy in
public.

I get that privacy zealots have to take extreme stances in order to counter-
balance anti-privacy trends, but in real life, a world where absolute perfect
privacy is the 24/7 default (public and private), is a world devoid of
meaningful interactions between humans and also a world where criminals
flourish.

~~~
reaperducer
_The "right to not be observed" is not a natural right_

Rights are granted through legislative processes. What is not a right today
may be a right tomorrow.

 _The "right to absolute privacy in all places at all times" is also not a
natural right_

Is anybody asking for that? I haven't seen that anywhere. Can you provide a
link?

~~~
umvi
> Rights are granted through legislative processes. What is not a right today
> may be a right tomorrow.

There's a difference between "natural rights" (rights that are not dependent
on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government) and what you
describe. The type of right you describe is capricious and whimsical.

GP was complaining that airport travelers don't have privacy. So it seems like
people are asking for it.

Can you name some places you believe right to privacy should not apply?

~~~
PeterisP
Privacy (at least some form of it) is generally considered one of the key
"natural rights" that all people have.

Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
([https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-
rights/ind...](https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-
rights/index.html)) and EU Convention of Human Rights
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Conv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_8_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights))
include privacy as one of the unalienable human rights.

------
rootsudo
Why is football such a big deal? It isn't worth it to give up your identity or
privacy to see other people wrestle on the grass for a ball.

~~~
wyldfire
> It isn't worth it to give up your identity or privacy

From the article:

>Three fans who attended the Rose Bowl game and spoke to OneZero said they
didn’t remember seeing any notice that they were being surveilled.

It's unlikely that anyone knew enough to be able to make an informed decision.

Sadly, legally, "privacy" is something you're not generally entitled to when
outside in public (in the US AFAIK).

~~~
DLA
Correct. There is no expectation of privacy in public spaces.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy)

