You can find me in da club, database full of faces… but this ain't privacy watchers' jam Five clubs in Bournemouth are now accepting ID in the form of an app that verifies who you are through facial recognition – to the disdain of privacy activists. The town is the first in the UK to accept the digital identity app Yoti, which claims to offer users a safer way to prove they are who they claim to be. Users sign up …
The problem is with the police and licensing authorities requiring tracking of individuals - such rules are a gross invasion of privacy. I would hope that someone challenges this.
The fact that some clever company has developed an app to do is almost irrelevant;
The poor clubs are stuck between the rock of licensing and hard place of privacy laws - no wonder they are jumping on an App that does it all for them.
"... it can't say anymore about those checks in case someone games it ..."
If it can be gamed, it will be gamed.
Having said that, it's probably not worth anyone's effort to game it for these particular clubs. The situation may be different if that application goes nationwide.
"What am I missing?"
The audit trail, and removing the need to produce a ID card with full personal information exposed.
It doesn't look so bad overall. I think the privacy issues are real and must be investigated, but still are maybe somewhat exaggerated: facial recognition happens once here, when registering. It's not even obvious that they need to keep that information once the ID card has been validated (it's not clear whether they do or not from the article).
If they do, that's still better than each and every nightclub having their own crappy system hackable while you wait in the queue. If they don't - well, then, that'd look good, wouldn't it? A more in depth article is needed here.
I dunno... didn't they do a game about Robin Tombs a few years ago? I think it was called "Tomb Robber".
The lead character- "Robin Tombs", I assume- had ridiculously oversized breasts (rendered in crappy 90s CGI in publicity, and made up of unconvincingly angular five polygons on the in-game version) versus a ludicrously narrow waist.
"Robin" might have been a woman if I remember correctly.
The lead character- "Robin Tombs", I assume- had ridiculously oversized breasts (rendered in crappy 90s CGI in publicity, and made up of unconvincingly angular five polygons on the in-game version) versus a ludicrously narrow waist.
Would a CGI Mo Mowlem have been more to your taste? In shorts and a strappy top, of course.
Interesting, no personal data (once verified) needs to be kept if done right. As long as the face matches and the person is 'of age', what are other details needed for? Maybe if someone needs blacklisting then you might need some airgapped data but this could be matched to a hash or something?
"can only be retrieved and put back together using the private keys stored on your device"
So if your phone is lost, stolen, bricked by dunking in a pint or just replaced by an upgrade how do they access the encrypted data in your profile?
Personally I would refuse to enter any club that required this app or recorded my ID in any way. Time to go back to the raves in abandoned warehouses and industrial buildings of my youth.
"So if your phone is lost, stolen, bricked by dunking in a pint or just replaced by an upgrade how do they access the encrypted data in your profile?"
There is no need. Your name, address, and place of birth are not irreplaceable bits of data.
Remember, this is a way to replace an official ID check. Losing access to encrypted data, you lose nothing important. Not knowing the app, I presume that you being the same person with the same ID, you can easily re-register.
Why do I get the impression that these sort of apps will become mandatory nationwide and then there will be a central database and every single use of the app will be tracked... and then maybe the app will become mandatory for all clubs. And then they can start the racial profiling of clubs again* and start targeting the "undesirable**" ones for closure...
* The forms you had to submit to the Met used to ask for the racial grouping of the clientele, I believe.
** I use this word only so I can remind you of Nat King Cole's response when moving into a new house and a white neighbour told him they didn't want any "undesirables" moving in - "if I see any, I'll let you know"
When I was still young enough to be able to go to clubs without being "that creepy old dude", some clubs started scanning IDs as a condition for entry. My response was simple: I didn't go to those clubs.
In my view, this app isn't actually any different or better than that. It's just more complex and only shifts who is getting more information than they need.
What's insidious about this is that they're training a generation of fairly young people, at an age when you honestly don't think about such things, much less the long term implications, to consider this as just a normal part of life. At that age I was just interested in two things: girls and beer, and possibly other substances. I wasn't giving a moments's thought to the wider world.
As with all of the on-line behemoths, the danger isn't so much that one club will have your data on file, it's that over the course of years or decades the data from hundreds of clubs, bars, web sites, libraries, and governments will be assembled to create a picture of you beyond your wildest dreams.
By the time you're at an age when you understand that the trails of data you've left behind might come back to haunt you, it's too late to stop it. Fifty years ago the only thing you really were concerned about was avoiding a criminal record. Now every single part of your life is being collected and analyzed. Us pre-digital oldsters can appreciate the dramatic difference, but if you've never lived outside of the data collection web you won't realize how dangerous that is.
I've stopped going to bars and nightclubs partly because they always take a full copy of my ID and does who knows what with it. I got sick of shadey door man passing comments on me and my mates based on personal information they have no need or right to see.... that and constantly worrying about losing my passport.
anyway, it's pretty easy to back-up keys. Atleast then it'll be in my own control and i won't have to fork out £70 for a new passport. Roll on brum
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