Privacy

32120 readers

887 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

820

'Facial recognition' error message on vending machine sparks concern at University of Waterloo (kitchener.ctvnews.ca)

submitted 9 months ago by Ninjazzon@infosec.pub to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

150 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A set of smart vending machines at the University of Waterloo is expected to be removed from campus after students raised privacy concerns about their software.

The machines have M&M artwork on them and sell chocolate and other candy. They are located throughout campus, including in the Modern Languages building and Hagey Hall.

Earlier this month, a student noticed an error message on one of the machines in the Modern Languages building. It appeared to indicate there was a problem with a facial recognition application.

"We wouldn't have known if it weren't for the application error. There's no warning here," said River Stanley, a fourth-year student, who investigated the machines for an article in the university publication, mathNEWS.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] MajorSauce@sh.itjust.works 95 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My guess is to associate which product is best selling to which demographic to better target them.

So ingenious 🤮

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I feel like it'd be tough to find a chip powerful enough to capture demographic attributes while also cheap enough to ship in vending machines? But admittedly I've little context on embedded systems and their capabilities

[–] MajorSauce@sh.itjust.works 42 points 9 months ago (3 children)

While I have no idea how much a computerized vending machine costs, I found this article about a age/gender classifier that runs on a Raspberry Pi 4.

Looking at the machine's big touchscreen, I think this classifier would fit on the SBC or require a relatively small upgrade.

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

Yikes, smh... Yep that'll do it. I hate this timeline.

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago

Same Raspberry Pi foundation that hired a cop with a background in surveillance tech as their "resident maker"?

[–] Flumpkin 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The error message says ".exe" and looks like a dot net namespace.

[–] uis@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

Mono?

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Would it be significantly more costly than some of the features vending machines already have, such as card readers? I think these things are pretty costly already, but the profit margin on snacks and soft drinks is extremely high, so I'd imagine they'd recoup their cost pretty quickly.

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Well I thought so, but apparently we have good enough software that can run on a rasp pi now, so clearly the hardware requirements are much much lower than I understood.

Geez, I remember needing to use cloud services just for simple OCR not that long ago...

[–] RagnarokOnline@programming.dev 5 points 9 months ago

Doritos are probably plenty powerful enough

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

There's a vending machine in a co-working space I use sometimes that has a full on fridge and oven, and when you order off the touchscreen...something happens inside and sometimes a hot cooked thing comes out. I have no idea how it works and have not used it myself, because it seems possibly kinda gross.