Facial recognition tech booms despite accuracy concerns. Police arrests surge while airports and restaurants trial facial payments and passport-free travel.

A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.

  • MajorHavoc@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    You already have an incredibly invasive system tracking you. It’s the phone in your pocket.

    As a Cybersecurity expert running well configured GrapheneOS, I actually don’t.

    So I, personally, have a lot more privacy to lose from facial recognition technology. Since my only path to reasonable mitigation is a socially ostracizing face paint pattern. (It would play well with my professional colleagues, who understand the risks, I suppose. But I have a feeling it wouldn’t play out so nice at my local grocery store…)

    But I do take your point, that for most folks, it’s not a huge change.

    A key difference is that, while it’s a lot of work, I can, and have, opted out of the phone tracking.

    • CeeBee@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      GrapheneOS isn’t a complete solution, especially if you still use things like Facebook and Whatsapp. Although it is a massive plus to privacy.

      Quick question. I’ve been hesitating with jumping to Graphene for a little while now. The two things that have held me back is losing access to Google Camera and Android Pay (or Google Pay, or Google Wallet, or Android Wallet. Whatever Google’s calling it these days).

      The Google Wallet feature I think has taken care of itself. They pushed an update that requires you to re-authenticate after the initial tap for “security”. Which means half the time the transaction fails and the cashier has to redo the payment process. So I just gave up and have gone back to tapping with my cards directly for the past month.

      So that just leaves the Google Camera. How’s the quality with Graphene?

      • MajorHavoc@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        especially if you still use things like Facebook and Whatsapp.

        Yeah…speaking of my making myself a social outcast by painting my face crazy colors - I figure I am at least 20% of the way there by not using Facebook or Whatsapp.

        I’m joking…mostly. But it really can feel isolating not to have either of those apps.

        The Google Wallet feature I think has taken care of itself.

        My experience matches. I did miss Google Pay for a few months after switching to GrapheneOs, until tap-to-pay reached all my favorite stores. Now I’m just mildly annoyed to carry a card to do something my phone ought to do.

        So that just leaves the Google Camera. How’s the quality with Graphene?

        I was very annoyed with how slow the Google camera app loaded, on my previous phone.

        My Pixel with GraoheneOS is the best camera I have had in about a decade, because the stock camera app opens almost instantly. I had a big problem with the camera taking a couple seconds to open, on my previous two or three Android phones. Somehow it got worse with each generation of phone, while I paid more for stronger CPU and worse battery life.

        I am vaguely aware that I maybe gave up some clever camera features that some of my phone vendors added, but I don’t miss them since I wasn’t using them. One had a 3d photo picture that I used exactly once, if I recall.

        But compared to stock (Pixel) Android, it’s literally apparently the same camera app, except I swear it loads much faster. (I’m wrong, it’s not the same app.) The privacy implications of the load time difference I perceived freak me out a little, honestly. I hope I’m just wrong about that bit. (Thankfully, yes. I’m wrong.)

        I also missed Google Photos for backup, until I bought a Synology Network Attached storage device.