(Canada) An M&M vending machine error revealed facial recognition was used to illegally snoop on students (boycott Mars if you aren’t already!)

“Only because of that official investigation did Canadians learn that ‘over 5 million nonconsenting Canadians’ were scanned into Cadillac Fairview's database”. Wow.

This Wired article is contradictory. The spokesperson says:

“an individual person cannot be identified using the technology in the machines. The technology acts as a motion sensor that detects faces, so the machine knows when to activate the purchasing interface”

I suppose it’s possible that a sloppy developer would name an executable Invenda.Vending.FacialRecognitionApp.exe which merely senses the presence of a face. But it seems like a baldfaced lie when you consider that:

“Invenda sales brochures that promised ‘the machines are capable of sending estimated ages and genders’ of every person who used the machines—without ever requesting consent.”

Boycott Mars

I already boycott Mars because they are a GMA member and they spent ~$500k lobbying against #GMO labeling -- and they have been blackballed for using child slave labor -- and Mars supports Russia. This is another good reason to #boycottMars.

Update

Apparently a LemmyBug replaced the article URL with a picture URL. The article is here:

https://www.wired.com/story/facial-recognition-vending-machine-error-investigation/

The vending machine pic is here:

https://infosec.pub/pictrs/image/2041d717-7cd7-4393-94f3-96aa87817aa7.jpeg