
Mastercard investing in technology to identify commuters by gait, heartbeat - kick
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-is-pioneering-new-payment-technology-that-identifies-commuters-by-the-way-they-walk-2020-02-14
======
macawfish
I believe that these kinds of applications are central goals of the 5G
deployment project.

This can already be done with ordinary WiFI hardware. Here is one of multiple
papers about it:

\-
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713643/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713643/)

How much easier will "device free localization and identification" be with
5G's higher frequencies and beamforming antenna arrays?

Consider, why else would people be writing papers like these?

\-
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929065/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929065/)

\-
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337698696_WiFreeze_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337698696_WiFreeze_Multiresolution_Scalograms_for_Freezing_of_Gait_Detection_in_Parkinson%27s_Leveraging_5G_Spectrum_with_Deep_Learning)

\- [https://www.5gitaly.eu/2018/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01/5G-It...](https://www.5gitaly.eu/2018/wp-
content/uploads/2019/01/5G-Italy-White-eBook-5G-Localization.pdf)

\-
[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3324320.3324370](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3324320.3324370)

\-
[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7947692](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7947692)

I don't like the way 5G is pitched to the public. It feels icky. All the
marketing is like "this will change the world and bring internet to rural
areas plus you'll be able to watch netflix on your phone omg can you believe
that!"

But in a few years they'll suddenly be saying "Awe golly shucks whaddya know,
who knew 5G radios can also be used to spy on your aging parents breathing
habits... how convenient! Now we can send an ambulance before you even call!"
etc.

~~~
hdhsisjd
At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community.
Predicting an emergency based on observed biometrics would be incredibly
useful to many of them and these sorts of dismissals are exactly why the
digital privacy movement has increasingly lost steam with regular people.

I'm not contesting that these technologies and services aren't also going to
be used for dubious purposes but the idea that they have no social value is a
meme for privileged people who earn enough to be dismissive of the potential
savings.

~~~
prostheticvamp
> At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community.

A statement that requires qualification to be meaningful. Medicare, Medicare
HMOs, and Medicare/Medicaid dual coverage add up to giving elders better
healthcare coverage than any other demographic in the US.

~~~
ihunter2839
Falling, and the injuries / changes in quality of life that falling brings, is
a serious issue for seniors. [https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for-
reporters/get-the-fa...](https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for-
reporters/get-the-facts/falls-prevention-facts/)

A few years ago, I worked for a small startup looking to use wearable devices
to detect early changes in gait as a means to effectively deliver early
intervention techniques. The science around the topic is solid - there is good
research backing which parameters of gait are most predictive and what
therapies are most effective for any given scenario.

The problem we always encountered was compliance. Customers (senior living
facilities, insurance agencies, etc) want to know that the devices are being
used. Seniors are notoriously slow to adopt tech, and adding another device to
daily life is the last thing most seniors that we spoke to wanted to deal
with.

We got to interview with YC for this idea but were rejected. Skimming the
companies from that batch I later found
[https://www.totemic.com/](https://www.totemic.com/) They use back-skatter
technologies to provide a compliance-free fall monitoring system. After
spending two years in the problem space, I knew a superior solution when I saw
it.

------
_bxg1
I read a (just okay) near-future cyber dystopia novel called "Little Brother"
once. It had this interesting segment where gait recognition was being used to
track people instead of facial recognition because it was more reliable (I'm
not sure whether this is true in reality, but regardless).

Anyway. The main character had an easy way of breaking it: toss some gravel in
one of your shoes. It'll disrupt your natural walking pattern in a randomized
way without you having to even think about it.

~~~
ISO-morphism
I like to imagine a future where all pedestrians move about like they're from
the ministry of silly walks to thwart gait analysis.

~~~
yunruse
It would be humorous at least to know Monty Python was ahead of its time in
more ways than one.

------
Scapeghost
All this is heading towards a small fraction of the human population
controlling and watching everything the rest of us do, with no way for us to
do anything against them, and I cannot help but hate the engineers who are
helping to make that dystopia happen.

Western developers who work for such surveillance tech (and that includes
"mere advertisers" like Google and Facebook) should really go get an honest
taste of life as an ordinary citizen in authoritarian countries like China or
the rich Middle East.

~~~
rvense
I would like to opt out of this, but how? I don't think my life has improved
in the least since my bus pass stopped being a piece of paper I replaced every
month. Physical cash is a good concept, it works and it would continue to do
so until the sun burns out. Even before we get to all the derived socio-
political consequences of all of this, it's just not necessary at all.

~~~
Ntrails
> I don't think my life has improved in the least since my bus pass stopped
> being a piece of paper I replaced every month.

Did you use the bus a lot when they only took cash? Hope you carry small
change because the driver won't take a 20. Hope you like waiting whilst
someone counts out coins. Hope you enjoy watching an argument when someone is
10pence short of fare etc etc etc.

Contactless payments are in general significantly easier and quicker. I reckon
the time for 10 people to get on a bus now is less than half what it used to
be on average.

~~~
labawi
Some places only took paper - prepaid tickets you (possibly) validated in
machines and paper monthly passes. Other places would have a driver and a
conductor for paying/checking tickets. Neither of those involved the bus
waiting for people to pay, and many of these systems are still used today.

------
dustinmoris
For those who wonder why Mastercard would look at biometric options when we
already have things like NFC based payments, here’s a reason:

Most payments require at least two factors, e.g. you must be in possession of
a card AND know the PIN. Or you must be in possession of a phone AND have it
unlocked with your passcode or FaceID, etc. It works well but it’s not
perfect.

Biometrics like unique vein patterns give you two factors in one. You must be
physically present and alive, otherwise your veins would have no blood flowing
and there was nothing to capture and secondly your vein pattern must match the
“fingerprint” which is you. That’s much stronger authentication than many
other schemes and if it was linked to some sort of payment method and
potential even identity service then you could not only pay with your
biometric but you could also pay for age restricted goods such as alcohol
since it would be physically impossible for someone else to use your hand to
buy stuff.

It’s possible for a kid to use your card and pin or phone and passcode though.
So there’s the case for biometrics in the future.

EDIT:

Also something like a vein driven biometric would also solve the problem of
proving that the person was physically at the point of sale and could hugely
reduce disputes and fraud.

There’s loads of value in these new biometrics if they turn out to work well.

~~~
sixhobbits
So passwords are also two factors because you must be physically present _and_
have a text input device?

Most people I know now access their phone with fingerprint and can transfer
fairly significant amounts of money from a banking app on that phone by doing
a second authorisation with the same fingerprint.

I'm honestly surprised that I've yet to read an account of this attack vector
being exploited, but it doesn't seem safe to me.

~~~
dustinmoris
> So passwords are also two factors because you must be physically present and
> have a text input device?

No, password is 1 factor. An input device <> YOUR input device which you had
to specifically configure/authorise to enable for NFC based payments or
banking on your app. You cannot log in with your FaceID on any iphone which
has your bank’s app installed and then do payments. You must have the app on
your device and initially authenticate with much stronger credentials before
your phone is then permitted to use FaceID subsequently. This is only allowed
on the premise/assumption that you would have never done it on a stranger’s
device and therefore your personal device or to say the possession of it is
seen as an additional factor after initial setup.

------
gruez
This is just so hilariously absurd. Transit ticketing is a solved problem. You
don't need fuzzy gait recognition when a $2 NFC card works 100% of the time.

~~~
muststopmyths
Data Science applications expand to fill the available labor pool, I guess.

~~~
kohtatsu
Can we have ethics yet?

~~~
inetknght
Who needs ethics when we've got big business?

------
cestith
Gait detection for payment is some ableist bullshit.

Sprain an ankle? Walk on it, because you can't use the subway. Tear some
ligament in your knee? No bus for you. Pull a muscle in your lower back?
Sorry, Quasimodo, you're out of luck. Sciatica? Stop trying to steal services,
you fraud!

At the least, these systems have to be backed by some other system that would
need to be kept in place. So maybe just use that for everyone.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
This tech won't be used for payment processing. It will be used for
governments to get a decent idea where people are going while being able to
track them if they switch to a new card.

------
orf
This is a fluff piece about some project MasterCard has thrown a bit of time
and money into. The whole interview could be set up to validate the projects
very existence. I remember one a while ago about Microsoft researching if it
was possible to measure someone’s level of frustration though their mouse and
offer custom help/support wording based in that.

Of course gait recognition/biometrics isn’t going to replace ubiquitous NFC
payments for transit, just as windows isn’t ever going to tailor its help
messages depending on how hard you are gripping the mouse.

But sure, invest a bit of time into it, you never know. I believe the term is
throw enough shit against a wall and see what sticks?

------
mindfulgeek
I have no visual memory. I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about how I
remember people and how they move is a big part of it. I know a man who is
very still. Like abnormally still. He was married to a dear friend who passed
away and use to regularly visit a place I use to work. I never remembered him.
I knew I was supposed to know him but got it wrong every time, until u
realized he was really still and when I saw someone who was still, I knew it
was him. Not just walk, but breath. I thought it was pretty neat the first
time I read about identifying people by their gait.

------
ficklepickle
What a bunch of nonsense. If they cared about fraud, they would have ditched
magstripes in the US a long time ago.

Good luck using gait recognition on crowds of thousands of people per hour,
many being partially occluded, in a reliable manner. I can't see it comparing
to RFID cards anytime soon. Best I can tell, current state of the art is still
limited to a single individual, in the centre of the frame, in a perfect
profile shot.

This comes off as a puff piece devoid of any critical thinking.

~~~
0xff00ffee
Perhaps they just mean to use it at point-of-sale instances. Instead of
entering your PIN, you now have to prance around in front of a camera for 10
seconds.

Deploy countermeasures: administer the silly walk!

------
a-wu
I use an electric wheelchair. I'd like to see them try to identify me by gait.
(yes, I'm likely more identifiable by other means)

------
SilasX
Future Supreme Court ruling: "You have no expectation of privacy in your gait
or heartbeat while walking in public."

~~~
quotemstr
> "You have no expectation of privacy in your gait or heartbeat while walking
> in public."

Well, yeah. What would gait privacy even mean? That the law would prohibit you
from using your eyes to notice that someone is walking a particular way?
That's absurd.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
The way you use data is taken in to consideration by the law. If I take a
photo outside and you happen to be in it then thats legal. If I follow you
around every day with a camera pointed at you then its not legal anymore even
though its the same data.

~~~
whoopdedo
> If I take a photo outside and you happen to be in it then thats legal.

In the U.S. Other countries, however, have decided that private individuals
should not be subjected to having their face stored in a permanent record
without their consent. Thus the photographer is required to take the extra
step of anonymizing the photo (e.g. by blurring faces) before publishing.

------
tclancy
Hey, I bet this shit will be done exclusively for the good of us their
customers!

------
netsharc
I was thinking in the context of SARS-CoV-2, in a world where data collectors
were trustworthy, it would be useful to be able to track the movements of
people. We already carry homing beacons, and technologically there's nothing
restricting our phones to record their locations.

So a scenario where if someone is sick, everyone who was near them in the last
3-4 days could be notified. Or this traceback could also find the person who
infected them and where they did it. Just to make it more accurate, the phones
could also be able to scan (e.g. with Bluetooth) which devices are nearby, at
any time.

It would be technologically awesome, but obviously it's not something I want
in the hands of the authorities of today's world.

China uses CCTV instead: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-
surveillance...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-surveillance-
idUSKBN2011HO)

~~~
Barrin92
>It would be technologically awesome, but obviously it's not something I want
in the hands of the authorities of today's world

not only do I not want it in the hands of authorities, I would want it even
less in the hands of citizens who will go into paranoid neighbourhood watch
mode. The ring doorbell is already the prelude to this. Ubiquitous
surveillance by suburban soccermoms is an even more dystopian scenario than
the Chinese Communist party

------
quotemstr
Measures like this make me think that a lot of modern privacy advocacy is
misguided. Each of us is unique in a huge variety of ways. We have unique
fingerprints, unique iris patterns, unique genomes, unique gaits, unique
writing styles, unique speech patterns, unique hair, unique teeth, unique
sweat composition, and even unique _coding_ styles that survive compilation
and optimization [1]. What are you going to do --- use a combination of social
pressure and regulation to prevent people analyzing _any_ of these things?
We're moving toward a world in which you can be identified if you go out of
public. Instead of trying to plug an increasingly leaky dike, we should just
learn to accept this new future and take advantage of the upsides.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.08546](https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.08546)

~~~
harimau777
Personally, I can see several significant downsides (being manipulated by
targeted propaganda, punished for socially unpopular behavior, taken advantage
of, etc.) and virtually no meaningful upsides.

~~~
Nasrudith
Personally I think the main issue sociologically is that the implementations
are "half-mirror" society instead of fully transparent. The half mirror is
inherently abusable.

Imagine a sci-fi world where anyone can view anywhere in the past at any time
and any depth. It would be disconcerting but it would put people on equal
footings and prevent many forms of deception and abuse as well as making
criminal trials binary but fair. Corruption would be harder to get away with
when every backroom meeting could be audited and verified by everyone. It
would force some very uncomfortable questions about social norms and laws as a
society in withdrawl from expected hypocrisy.

Compare that to one with it just in the hands of authorities to abuse.

Obviously not the same but the analogy should be clear how even if both are
disliked they are quite different and one is worse.

------
lowdose
Mastercard had an API from which you could get the full postcode of people
likely to purchase a luxury item of more than $500 in the next month with 80%
certainty. Never got out of alpha and required a deposit of $5000 to use.

There needs to be boundaries for companies pursuing profit with immoral
activities.

------
Zenst
Was somewhat curious as to why a credit agency would want to track peoples
commutes, though I can see the perspective as to why, it does feel like a
solution that fits around privacy upto the point that it works and then
becomes part of the privacy debate itself.

Though my main train of thought would be - if you sprain an ankle, hand, get a
new larger phone etc - this would just compound your bad experiences in life.
Though they do say trouble comes in threes, it's not something we should be
enforcing by creating issues that would compound such common `edge cases`.

------
bitwize
Identify -> track. Which means things are going to get very Monty Python when
some enterprising Hackernews implements a federated, cloud-based Registry of
Silly Walks to help people thwart this system.

------
haecceity
I was looking into using gait for authenticating users. The false positive and
false negative rates were extremely high compared to using fingerprints.
Wasn't really viable.

------
thescriptkiddie
It seems like most credit unions issue MasterCard debit cards. Does anyone
know how I can get rid of mine and still be able to use ATMs?

~~~
njarboe
My ATM card from a major bank came with MasterCard/Visa attached, but I asked
for one without it and they sent me one.

------
badrabbit
Simple question: why is this not a crime?

~~~
anigbrowl
Because the crooks are in charge.

~~~
teddyh
If it’s legal, then they aren’t crooks.

~~~
anigbrowl
What do you call people who rig the system to favor their own interests?

------
squarefoot
The headline brought visions of a sillywalking John Cleese telling the camera
"Identify this!":^)

------
LatteLazy
I was really disappointed Google glass was cancelled, I wanted a pair to have
real life ad blocking...

~~~
JosephRedfern
I hope the irony of this isn't lost!

------
ptah
do we need a ministry of funny walks to teach people how to avoid being
tracked irl like they are on the web

