Privacy

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

submitted 8 months ago by Ninjazzon@infosec.pub to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

151 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.

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[–] MajorSauce@sh.itjust.works 94 points 8 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 8 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 8 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 8 months ago

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

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago

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

[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 5 points 8 months ago

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

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 8 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 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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 8 months ago

Doritos are probably plenty powerful enough

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 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.