
Uber rolls out facial recognition in China - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/uber-china-facial-recognition
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educar
For those complaining about surveillance. people in countries like
china/india, don't trust cab drivers as easily as they do in the first world.

If I can get into a cab in China and the app can tell me "yes, this is a
driver that we have verified", this seems very useful and will make me feel
safe(r).

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goodplay
Yes but at what cost? If people are fine with this, companies will start
forcing people to scan faces for all sorts of reasons. Whether it's to enforce
drm or for better targeted advertising ("It seems you're suffering from acne,
here's 3 products that may help"), do you really want to live in a world like
that?

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dogma1138
At the cost of not being mugged, beaten, stabbed, raped, or killed. It's not
uncommon in many parts of the world for cab drivers to supplement their income
by staging robberies or worse, they'll usually take a "short cut" which means
they'll drive trough some alley in which some guy will come and rob both you
and your driver, but in reality only you are being robbed.

I've been to a few places in Asia where the policy was simple - you do not
hail cabs.

Cabs are handled by either the hotel or the office building you are in. You
ask for the cab, they ask you where you are going and order it for you.

When the cab arrives some one from reception will go check it, they check the
driver's ID, and if everything is ok they'll write down the time, the cab
number, and your details and let you board the cab. If you are not in a place
that can hail a cab for you, you usually call the hotel and they'll either
arrange it for you or tell you a safe place near by where you can get a
reliable cab from. And as far as the driver checks go on more than one
occasion the guy from the reception told us to wait for another cab because he
"had a bad feeling" which was usually he either did not know the driver, the
driver that showed up wasn't the one the cab company said would come, or
something just smelled fishy to him.

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alexbock
Am I only the one that thinks the animation on that page of a woman having her
face scanned and turning her head looks like something from a modern retelling
of 1984? I don't like the idea of app developers getting people used to
submitting to facial scans; it seems inevitable that public acceptance of the
concept will eventually be abused when someone decides that it's necessary to
verify your identity before you access the internet in order to prevent
terrorism.

edit: Upon further reflection, I see no reason why my argument above couldn't
be applied to fingerprint sensors on smartphones, which I personally use and
don't have much of a problem with... I guess anything that gets even remotely
close to the territory of mainstream video surveillance using phone cameras
just creeps me out. I'm no longer sure of exactly where I stand on the facial
scan issue.

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autotune
No, and not having this may be a benefit for using other competitors like Lyft
or the public transit system.

~~~
pavel_lishin
The facial-recognition scan is for the drivers, not for the riders.

~~~
autotune
Drivers can still choose to avoid Uber and use other competitors as well as a
result of this feature.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Sure, but if they're driving for one of those companies, that company already
has a high definition photo of their face and lots of other information - I
assume that drivers are subjected to considerably more scrutiny than
passengers.

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devy
One of the car sharing startup Turo (formally RelayRides) has had a step in
the verification process to require you to take a selfie of your ID held at
your face.[1] As a backup alternative, you have to upload the ID scan to them
to manually verify you.

I guess this is one step further.

[1] [https://support.turo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203991090-How-
do-...](https://support.turo.com/hc/en-us/articles/203991090-How-do-I-join-)

~~~
ropiku
This looks like for on going verification rather than the initial one on sign
up. The issue is drivers sharing accounts.

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jarboot
I wonder how much China would pay for a database full of identities and their
respective facial appearance data?

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tajen
They might already have it. The NSA, on the other hand...

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eru
Doesn't basically everyone have a drivers licence with a picture on it in
America?

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tajen
US doesn't have a map/list of the people in China. Think about it. Facebook
basically has a map of all the people in the world except China.

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d33
This is a bit worrying... a blatantly law-ignoring organization (let's skip
ethics for a while) whose actions are largely ignored by governments is
rolling out surveillance-friendly technology. Is it just me...? Also, keep in
mind their recent transparency report.

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josephpmay
This is a common sense safety feature... make sure your employees are who they
say they are. How is this violating anyone's privacy?

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shostack
Exactly. If this is JUST used on drivers, I'm cool with it, and would welcome
it because it means my ride is safer.

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awinter-py
Even if it's used on passengers -- your credit card is basically a form of ID.
I don't use uber but I assume they don't support bitcoin / cash. You were
already not private.

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objclxt
I actually found out a few days ago that in some countries Uber _does_ accept
cash (like Singapore -
[https://www.uber.com/cities/singapore/](https://www.uber.com/cities/singapore/)).
But it's still not anonymous, obviously, because your user profile is still
tied to the ride.

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patrickg_zill
When I was traveling in a different Asian country, I would text someone the
license plate of any cab I got into before driving off. Too many chances in
big anonymous cities for people to get ripped off and for bad people to hide.

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m_antis89
So, can't someone hold up a picture of the assumed driver's face, and continue
duty?

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dpiers
No, the identification process requests a particular motion (ex. open and
close mouth, nod head, etc) in order to confirm 'liveness'.

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andyh2
A new market for jibjab.com!

