In Japan, a Billboard That Watches You

An anonymous reader writes "At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel, in part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications. It doesn't seek to identify individuals, but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it. A second camera, which wasn't fitted at the station but will be when tests begin next month, will take care of estimating how many people are in front of the ad, whether they are looking at it or not."

Slippery slope

[Iamthecheese]

Some people will say "slippery slope", and others will declare that the phrase is a fallacy. As a shortcut description of the probably course of events, "slippery slope" is just fine. In this case:

1: Billboards watch people.
2: These billboards are more popular and are put into more common use.
3: Information from a billboard cam is subpoenaed.
4: Some bright young chap in politics notices that (a) There are cameras everywhere that could be used to observe the populace, (b) The information from these cameras isn't in use, and (c) He is up for re-election soon and needs some dirt on his opponent.
5: This politician will make a bill to monitor the billboards. Anyone in opposition will be "soft on crime", "unwilling to monitor dangerous criminals", and "must be hiding something."
6: Sooner or later, Minority Report.

Slow news day

[Lucas.Langa]

The same technology is used even in Poland, which is still seen by the western world as a "developing country". By the way, see this [trumedia.co.il].

Which station in Tokyo?

[adnonsense]

I RTFA (sorry!) and it doesn't say. As I live there I'd be interested in taking a look.

(I know I won't be tracked or even just mess up their trial statistics, what with me being a foreigner and all that: "We gathered together many faces and came up with an average Japanese face, and by using pattern matching the system recognizes faces from the image.")

As seen in...

[riceboy50]

Minority Report [imdb.com]. Serves the double purpose of marketing to individual preferences, and also keeping track of the populace.

Google

[Anonymous Coward]

After checking whoever looks at ad, they compare the picture to facebook, find the victim, check google records for more information and then target the ads directly at the user.

This could make for an awesome prank

[Logic and Reason]

Whenever there's only one person looking at the billboard, have its contents change subtly. For example, a character on the billboard could briefly glance at the viewer. Do it, Japan!

Re:Slippery slope

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"It doesn't seek to identify individuals ..."

Yet.

Re:Have any of you ever BEEN there?

[gfxguy]

Excellent points!

I've been saying this for a long time... we've become so inundated with ads that we just completely ignore them now.

Even on television... many (if not most) people recorded their shows on VCR simply to avoid the commercials... same reason I use Tivo now. Sure, as our busy schedules got even busier, time shifting became more desirable; but even if a show is on while I'm watching TV, I will often pause or start recording it to come back later just to avoid watching the commercials.

I suppose it's like any other good or service... the industry has devalued their product (ads) by over saturating the market.