China Unveils World's First Facial Recognition ATM 129
An anonymous reader links to an article at IB Times according to which: China has unveiled the world's first facial recognition ATM, which will not allow users to withdraw cash unless their face matches their IDs. The machine was created by Tsinghua University and Hangzhou-based technology company Tzekwan. It has a camera installed in it that captures the facial features of the user then compares it with a database of identification photos.
Good luck (Score:1)
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Take a life size image of the cardholders face and place it over your face while making a transaction.
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Funny)
Take a life size image of the cardholders face and place it over your face while making a transaction.
Or take his head...
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Take a life size image of the cardholders face and place it over your face while making a transaction.
Or take his head...
That's silly, just bring his face.
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Many people carry some kind of photo ID in their wallet. Scaled up they work well for unlocking phones with facial recognition.
Having said that, these days you can probably just search Facebook for the person. Narrow it down by geographic area (since you know where you robbed them, and maybe where they live from their ID). Chances are you will get a reasonable photo.
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Some people have friends they'll highly trust. Other people might even go so far as to trust their spouse with money!
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Yeah, it's not like they could copy your card, and then start making withdraws a few months later.
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You do know you can change your PIN afterwards and check the bank transaction log right?
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That's bonkers.
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Being an ugly American, I will say, "I'm pretty sure facial recognition won't work in China."
Re: Good luck (Score:2)
Of course - the face recognition is a second factor.
This would not work on the Moddle East, though. You would just get a bunch of unauthorized withdrawals from the accounts of captives.
loan sharking (Score:1)
Good luck running an errand for a friend
Yep, running an errand on behalf of the loansharks, right?
Tough shit!!
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Good luck running an errand for a friend.
Uh, how often are you lending your debit card and PIN to any friend, or even family member? I mean seriously, can't think of a single time I've done this. Someone needs to run an errand, they get cash, or they have their own ATM card.
Do they not have debit cards and Pin Numbers in China?
Ah, yes, the infamous PIN...why didn't they think of that infallible impossible-to-break bulletproof security model..
Problem right off the bat (Score:5, Funny)
Epic fail: someone always matches (Score:3, Interesting)
This scheme will work for one branch in Lesser Nowhere, Sechwan Province, with a finite and small set of pictures, and a small number of crooks. Once the number of faces increases, the probability of a false positive explodes, roughly as (N 2) (select every two out of N), where N is the size of the pools of pictures + the person being scanned.
The well-known example is the "birthday paradox", in which twenty-three people at a party increases the probability of two of them having the same birthday to fifty
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This is a different problem, where your issue is a non issue. When you insert your credit card, the ATM gets your card number, cross references with your ID card and fetches validation photos from your ID photo database. Then it's just a matter of cross-validating the features of the face in the camera of the ATM against the photos in the database (for the ID associated with the credit card).
Re:Epic fail: someone always matches (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, no. You're not trying to find a needle in a haystack, the ATM is trying to determine if the one person in front of the camera matches the one identity on file. it doesn't matter if there's 300.000 people who look enough like you to pass the check as long as the thief is one of the other 300+ million. You're weeding out the 99.9% who look nothing like you.
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This scheme will work for one branch in Lesser Nowhere, Sechwan Province, with a finite and small set of pictures, and a small number of crooks. Once the number of faces increases, the probability of a false positive explodes,
Not at all. If someone puts Joe Smith's card into the reader, and types in Joe Smith's card PIN, then they only need to compare the face of the person with a picture of Joe Smith, and nobody else. A crook can only get your money if by a huge coincidence that crooks looks the same as you. And that crook cannot get anybody else's money. There are no false positives, there is no reason to compare the face with the photo of anybody else.
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If the Chinese can make it work for THEIR people (who all look alike, after all, right?) .. imagine how easy it'll be for us Western barbarians with our round eyes and facial hair and all.
Unintended consequences (Score:2)
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I suspect that the ATM won't recognize your personally unless you have your mouth open and your eyes closed.
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Sure, that would put that kind of transaction in danger.
On the other hand, maybe that is a good thing.
And to top it all off, sending money to people is even easier these days. I'm in Canada and I've just gotten used to the email money transfers. $1.50 fee, but its worth the convenience to me.
I've heard that Asia is really big on mobile payments and transfers, so I'd imagine its much easier there.
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I don't know if it's a good thing or bad; it all depends, I'd guess, on how often people need to do things like that. I just wanted to point out that there can be times that the facial recognition can cause problems, even without the issue of false negatives.
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Re:Unintended consequences (Score:5, Informative)
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Who will be accountable for withdrawn money? The friend? The owner? The bank? How can any of these be ensured correctness and be protected against allegations and misunderstandings? These things can turn very nasty very quickly and ruin friendships forever.
It's a perfect example of trust that's very bad for so many reasons.
Third, giving out your pin and card is likely a breach of agreement with bank, unless you authorize someone in a supported manner. It's a valid use case, but need some security and proper
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Sure, and delegated authority over an account is a well established process at all banks. It would be technically easy to add your trusted friend to your list of 'authorised users' and have them able to withdraw the money. Or issue your friend with their own card linked to your account.
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Assuming China is more like Europe than the US on this one, you probably transfer the money directly into your friend's account using a computer or smartphone.
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Let's say that I want to loan a trusted friend some money. I give him (or her) my ATM card and PIN. They get the cash they need and bring me back the card and receipt. For some people, that's not at all unusual, if they're right about who to trust. Even so, this facial recognition is going to make this kind of routine transaction impossible.
What you call "routine" the rest of the world pretty much calls "obscure".
In 25+ years of banking, I've never loaned out my PIN or ATM card. Not even to a family member (they have their own card anyway). If someone needs a loan, they get cash or a check. You know, kind of like how everyone else loans money.
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At the credit union I work at we would disable your card and not give you a new one. It's a huge security risk.
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It is not a joke. I come from a European country where East Asians were very rare, so when I started watching asian movies I had a hard time telling the characters apart, unless they had some very obvious defining characteristic. After several movies it became much easier.
But let's go the other way. While in the US I was going to a Chinese place with a friend of mine who comes from the same country and has the same (unusual even for Americans - never mind Asians) first name, but otherwise he is bald, I am n
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But you may have problems recognizing people of your own general race in some situations: when, as a conscript in the Greek armed forces, i was in boot camp, because everyone was "the same" (same uniform, same haircut, same "facial expression of terror"), for the first week or so i had problems facialy
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Hmm. I don't remember having that problem in Greek army boot camp. Maybe because by that time I was well trained after figuring out how to tell Chinese actors apart? ;)
Funny relevant story, while a conscript I was sent as an escort of a Chinese officer party (12 generals, 1 captain) that was doing a tour. Their captain wanted to play a joke on me so while at cape Sounio he showed me a group of Asian tourists and asked me "those tourists, are they like us?". No, I told him, they are Japanese. "How do you kno
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Hmm. I don't remember having that problem in Greek army boot camp. Maybe because by that time I was well trained after figuring out how to tell Chinese actors apart? ;)
If you already could tell Chinese actors apart then you surely did not had that problem! But what i described was not only my problem but everyone else i know also (because of the "A.S.M." thing, i was in "Megalo Peuko" with many old buddies from my home town).
Funny relevant story, while a conscript I was sent as an escort of a Chinese officer party (12 generals, 1 captain) that was doing a tour. Their captain wanted to play a joke on me so while at cape Sounio he showed me a group of Asian tourists and asked me "those tourists, are they like us?". No, I told him, they are Japanese. "How do you know?" he asked me startled. "They speak Japanese." I tell him. More startled he asks "You can tell the difference?". So I ask him back, "what do you mean, does Japanese sound anything at all like Chinese?" to which he says "eeh, no". And I left him there to think it over a bit...
Ha! You made your fellow Greeks proud... we should never let "barbarians" play jokes on us!
That Chinese Captain was even more bewildered as he watched me and another conscript interact with our own Captain and Colonel. He told me that he could not understand our hierarchy, while he could see that we were just privates, we behaved like we were the same or above the Colonel when interacting with him. I had to explain to him that we were not privates in that sense, we were conscripts and we had a different hierarchy which was separate & parallel to the hierarchy of the rest of the army, and your level in the hierarchy was based on how close you were to graduating from the army. I explained that with less than a month left, me and the other attached conscript were at about the level of a Major General in our hierarchy so we could damn well be casual with just a Colonel if we wished... Not sure if he could grasp it...
With less than a month left? I am suprised you did no
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I couldn't understand the parallel hierarchy thing. How come you have different ranks even before graduating from the army (school) ? Or are you referring to some advanced training courses you were taking while already having served in the army for quite some time ?
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I couldn't understand the parallel hierarchy thing. How come you have different ranks even before graduating from the army (school) ? Or are you referring to some advanced training courses you were taking while already having served in the army for quite some time ?
I am not the one you asked, but i am "the other Greek", so let me help with that: it is an "unofficial" hierarchy - when you are a conscript (even just a soldier) that have already served most of the obligatory time, you get some "unofficial privileges"... one of them is some "respect" (among both newer conscripts AND professional officers)... something existing in most (if not all) conscript based armies like the Greek. You may want to also read this [slashdot.org].
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They are not "unofficial privileges", they are "don't give a damn i'm outta here in a week" attitudes. They'll do their jobs, but they sure as hell won't act like scared newcomers in front of anyone. Generals are just humans, after all. In a week they have absolutely no authority over you. The worst that can happen is you spend the week in MPs custody, so why bother.
There are some other "unofficial privileges" (plus responsibilities - very often you end up doing *some* of the officers' duties), but i agree that this "i don't give a damn i'm outta here" also exists - but the worst that can happen is NOT "spend the week in MPs custody"... you can spend some months doing extra service (as some of my buddies did), and/or in case you serving in S.F. (as i did) to get send to regular army (not something good, since everyone in S.F. are volunteers, plus that way you lose some
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Already answered, but let me try to make it clearer. So there are no ranks or training courses (basic training is 40days for all - although I did get an extra 2 weeks of NATO translation school). However, because you are a conscript, i.e. the army needs you and not the other way around, you are different "material" than the permanent army staff. You know it, they know it. So when you start out you are a bit like a fish out of the water (they actually call you a "fish"), but as the time passes and you near g
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Thanks, that finally cleared it up for me.
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I for one.... (Score:1)
ATMs are already riddled with cameras. Small step to add facial recognition really, much smaller than you may have realised. Far from the only thing they're storing. Any time you pay with plastic that gets recorded too, along with date, time, location, possibly with security footage too. And often gets stored for years.
What they're trying to do is cover their own asses: Better to shut you out of your own money --including by shutting out your friend or family running an errand for you, fuck you gramps-- tha
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No, this is big brother technology. They can now map the serial numbers of the currency from the ATM to a person. One step closer to cashless, surveillance society.
Although it could also be used to prevent a thief with stolen debit card and password trying to cash out someone else's money. But then how would a thief get somebody's PIN.
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No, this is big brother technology. They can now map the serial numbers of the currency from the ATM to a person. One step closer to cashless, surveillance society.
They can already map the serial numbers of the currency to the account holder and the person in possession of PIN and card. And there already are cameras, except that currently they don't protect you from misuse of your card by a thief, but can only tell that it was a thief after the fact.
only the first to go public, (Score:2)
coercion is the flaw (Score:1)
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Perfect is the enemy of improvement. The crime of kidnapping/murder is far more serious than pick pocketing or card cloning. A lot fewer people will try the more serious crime.
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Perfect is the enemy of improvement. The crime of kidnapping/murder is far more serious than pick pocketing or card cloning. A lot fewer people will try the more serious crime.
That's always the same on Slashdot. They come up with weird fantasies of kidnapping and so on.
Stealing or duplicating a credit card is relatively easy and no big risk. If you get caught, the punishment isn't too bad even if you stole a thousand cards. Kidnapping on the other hand doesn't give you any more reward, even a single attempt is dangerous for you, unlike normal kidnapping where you hide the victim you must bring the victim to a public place which hugely increases the risk, and if you are caught
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Well not all of it, at least not yet.
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they don't need it to. as long as they can say they did the worlds first of X, they'll do it, even if they don't roll it out even.
you see, that's enough for getting a triple phd in china. even if you just rolled some off the shelf open source software and hacked it into it.
btw all atm's in asia are buggy. there's something buggy about the ui in every single one, like ok button not being ok on the keypad, the languge selection only affecting some screens or some shit like that. that is when they're not crash
Photo (Score:2)
So I guess they'll need a photo of me then, right?
How about some of my DNA, hair and skin samples, and fingerprints too? Store it all on your super secure networks.
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Classic slippery slop argument.
They already have photos, so what's a few more. Don't fight the slide.
Maybe we should be shocked about the fact they take photos of us already.
Re:Photo (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps you might look into what slippery slope [nizkor.org] actually means. A slippery slope fallacy argues that if A happens then B will inevitably happen. In this case your premise that requiring picture will inevitably lead to requiring DNA is the slippery slope fallacy. Pictures do not lead to DNA. By the way, we already require pictures on driver's licenses. The GP was refuting your slippery slope argument not making one.
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Let's not stop there! Do you know they have our names and our social security numbers! Somebody stop the madness I say. What happened to the days when the governement didn't gather such data .. oh wait .. never mind.
Don't get me wrong, I am against governemental abuse at least as much as you, but when you chase boogeymen you take attention away from the real issues and make us all look like idiots.
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How about some of my DNA, hair and skin samples, and fingerprints too? Store it all on your super secure networks.
Classic meaningless slippery slope argument. By that logic we should not give banks our signature because there will eventually ask for DNA.
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I *don't* want them to have my signature.
My signature changes everythime I use it. It's not secure. Maybe if I was signing things more than once a year that would change.
Compared to signing I might as well use a one-digit code.
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You missed the point. Requiring a signature does not inevitably lead to requiring DNA which is similar to your statement. Both ideas are untrue.
By the way, what is your alternative?
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I'd require signature and DNA. I'm pretty much leaving both when I sign for something and put my hand on the receipt/check while doing so.
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A signature is not an alternative to a signature.
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My signature is pretty tough to forge. Apparently nobody I've met knows how to properly write a couple of letters in cursive that happen to be in my name. I also write with my right hand yet everything looks as if it were written by the left. There's also a specific jitter to my signature now due to nerve damage in my wrist. Good luck!
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How about you read the thread before you reply. The poster stated we should not use signatures.
I *don't* want them to have my signature.
I was asking what he thought was an alternative. As I said, a signature is not an alternative to a signature.
How does this deal with makeup? (Score:1)
Is this system capable of dealing with women who wear heavy makeup and decide to change their style? Or what if someone works a side job as a party clown and needs to grab some cash right before a gig? Could you circumvent this system by simply holding up a photo of someone?
Good luck (Score:1)
Good luck getting your cash, muslim women. I doubt this system is very niqab- or burqa-friendly, unless it has a camera that can see through clothing, in which case I want one!
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No, just no. No you do not want one. The next time you are outside (assuming you do go outside) take a look at the people around you. They will, inevitably and maybe invariably, end up in your pictures.
Doesn't work on caucasians. (Score:1)
All Caucasians look alike.
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Nothing is perfect
Customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction (Score:2)
Which will trouble customers more - the false positives or the false negatives?
flame bait... (Score:1)
How does that work? Don't they all look alike?
(I can't tell if my Korean wife is laughing or not... I'll let you know...)
Billboard ... (Score:2)
In related news, Bill Gates no longer richest man in the world.
Pain during the winter (Score:3)
When it's especially cold it would be a pain to undo the bundling just so the ATM can see your face. There's a fine art in layering your clothes (balaclava tucks inside the coat collar, scarf on the outside, etc) to keep the wind out on those -30C days.
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When it's especially cold it would be a pain to undo the bundling just so the ATM can see your face. There's a fine art in layering your clothes (balaclava tucks inside the coat collar, scarf on the outside, etc) to keep the wind out on those -30C days.
No problem, just wrap your head in a scarf when they take the ID picture to start with...
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Makes you wonder how it will cope with women wearing a full face veil.
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Makes you wonder how it will cope with women wearing a full face veil.
You're assuming they're allowed to use ATMs
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When it's especially cold it would be a pain to undo the bundling just so the ATM can see your face. There's a fine art in layering your clothes (balaclava tucks inside the coat collar, scarf on the outside, etc) to keep the wind out on those -30C days.
So, all of your money is stored outside for the winter?
Wow, that's gotta suck. The rest of us are inside snuggled up next to the common sense ATM location...
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This may be a difficult concept for you to grasp but you go outside to travel to your bank, walk inside and use the ATM in there. It's not actually worth taking everything off for the minute or two that you are in there before having to go outside again. We're getting indoor plumbing in a few years too!
Already Exists (Score:1)
At train stations and airports all over China there are luggage storage lockers that work with a combination of pin numbers and face recognition, so this technology has been tested for some years here already. Though adapting the design beyond these very specific environments might present a tricky set of issues.
No one looks like their ID (Score:2)
so thiefs... (Score:1)
.. should not beat you up before getting to the ATM but after....