Facial Recognition is Making Its Way To Cruise Ships (qz.com) 69
On May 14, San Francisco became the first US city to ban police and government agencies from using facial recognition. On May 22, Amazon shareholders will vote on whether to restrict the company's sale of its own facial recognition software. But at cruise operator Royal Caribbean, facial recognition still has plenty of potential. From a report: Like some airlines, Royal Caribbean has started to roll out facial recognition and other technologies to streamline its boarding process. The company's SVP of digital, Jay Schneider, tells Quartz that the typical wait time to board is 10 minutes with a mobile boarding pass; less if the passenger opts into facial recognition by uploading a "security selfie." Before those additions, he says the typical wait time was around 90 minutes. "We wanted it to be a welcoming experience, such that the agent knows who you are when you're getting there," Schneider says, adding that the company wants to turn facial recognition "not into a stop and frisk moment, but into a way to welcome you on vacation, answer any questions, and let me just get you on your way." As people churn through the line faster with mobile boarding passes and facial recognition, the rest of the line benefits as well -- that 90-minute wait will average more like 20 minutes for even those passengers boarding the old-fashioned way. Schneider says Royal Caribbean deletes security selfies at the end of each trip, to avoid storing data any longer than necessary. Royal Caribbean has also rolled out mobile boarding to board its crew members; Schneider says the technology saves the company 50,000 crew hours each year.
Take your pick (Score:5, Insightful)
All that said, I'm not sure that there is any realistic expectation of privacy on a large cruise any more regardless. People are frequently paying for their pictures through the cruise line at various key points anyways. Whether you do this or not, the cruise line knows who you are and what you look like by the time you're done; after all that's how they are able to better predict which drinks or other upcharges will be most effectively sold to you. Opting out of the facial recognition step at boarding isn't going to do much to protect your privacy. The only place you have an expectation of privacy on the ship is in your own room, everything else is fair game.
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Re:Take your pick (Score:5, Funny)
Never saw Silence of the Lambs, have you?
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You forgot Face/Off [flickmetrix.com]. ;)
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While I'm broadly against facial recognition, I can't help but find myself agreeing with you here. In particular, it's worth noting that this isn't new data that they're collecting, so much as it's a new use for existing data that they've been collecting for years.
Having been on three cruises on three different lines (Celebrity, Disney, and Norwegian) in the last decade or so, the checkin process for each cruise has involved having my picture taken. The cruise line uses my picture for a variety of things, I
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Port of call boarding is not the area where they're trying to target the technology. They're talking 90 minutes waits to board the ship. You only see those times at the port of embarkation when they're trying load of the couple thousand people all at once. When the ship is at a port of call, boarding times are much faster as the entire compliment of passengers doesn't debark and they embark over more hours than is typically used to embark passengers at the port of origin.
They want to get people on the ship
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Apparently you have not partaken of any of these marvelous floating cities yourself. There is no gambling until the ship has sailed AND reached international waters.
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Haven't cruises done this for a while now? (Score:2)
The last couple cruises I've been on, they take your picture at embarkation and then compare it, along with scanning your room car, every time you re-embark at each port of call. And I've never really found the check-in/embarkation that tedious. The only time you really have to wait is if you get there early before they start boarding. It's more painful getting on the plane to get to the cruise ship than it is getting on the ship.
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But we have computers doing it, so it is automatically notorious.
Face recognition by humans has been the primary first step in security for nearly forever.
Back in them olden days, you could go into the store, if the store clerk recognized you he will put your purchases onto your account to be be paid at a later date. But then that is when stores were small, and the clerk would know most of the people who entered the store.
In terms of privacy, it was horrible, because everyone knew everyone else, gossip wou
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Being that it is mostly automated, it isn't ever a syndicate, it is just an unfeeling computer saying, hey Ill give you a coupon on an other product because the numbers say you just may try to buy it.
Never get out of the boat! (Score:2)
The last couple cruises I've been on, they take your picture at embarkation and then compare it, along with scanning your room car, every time you re-embark at each port of call.
Well getting out of the boat is your problem right there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Your room *CAR*?
Holy smokes, if you need a car just to get around your room, how big was the frickin' ship?
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Your room *CAR*?
Holy smokes, if you need a car just to get around your room, how big was the frickin' ship?
The big ones now have 4-5k passengers. That doesn't include the crew. And as the ships get bigger, so do the piers to accommodate them. Eventually all the cruise ships are going to end up like the spaceship in Wall-E-everyone riding around in their own little seat/car thingy.
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(whoosh)
Yes, I know how many passengers are on cruise ships these days. I have taken several myself, including most recently on one in the size range you mentioned. I also know how tiny the staterooms are. That wasn't the point.
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You're decades too late to stop this (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have a problem with this, the time to complain was when public became filled with cameras. Nobody did anything about it. If anything, we cheered when another ATM appeared conveniently nearby. Then municipal law enforcement started putting them out there, for some pretty common-sense reasons. (Even if it was a bad idea, it was still common sense.) And I remember seeing ads in kids' magazines in the 1970s for tiny "spy" cameras.
Once you're being photographed all the time, that's that. Don't bitch about people/computers looking at the photographs and trying to remember people. The photographs themselves were where to put the battle line, if you didn't want anything looking at the photos.
Even punching "glassholes" was slightly less stupid than complaining about this, and that was pretty stupid in itself, since obvious gargoyles came way after ubiquitous deployment of unobtrusive cameras.
You can't control information that someone else has, despite whatever European law happens to be. You just can't. If you pass laws, they're guaranteed to be only selectively enforced.
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I agree that it's largely too late, but I disagree that the prevalence of cameras is the reason, primarily because it's a matter of "who has the data". The bank having my photo when I use an ATM isn't the worst thing ever - I mean, they've already got my name, my address, my SSN, my date of birth...and all of my money. Even in the context of an ATM withdrawal, they know who did it, when, and where...so again, there's really nothing they're doing with my photo that they can't do with literally every other pi
Another reason NOT to go on a cruise (Score:2)
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Quite frankly, they would have to pay ME to be in a cruise - and they would have to pay me a lot.
Depending on how well you gamble, that's entirely possible. I've been at the craps table on a cruise next to a guy who walked away with four figures winnings in one night.
Re:Another reason NOT to go on a cruise (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been at the craps table on a cruise next to a guy who walked away with four figures winnings in one night.
. . . and the cruise company walks away with seven figures . . . every night.
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Yeah, but they have to pay out perks from that, like comping drinks, meals, and rooms -- wait a sec, I see what they did there ...
Re:Another reason NOT to go on a cruise (Score:5, Insightful)
While many swear by it, the idea of a cruise makes me shiver. Quite frankly, they would have to pay ME to be in a cruise - and they would have to pay me a lot.
You and me both. When I go on vacation it is to get away from people. Not packing my ass on a floating Petri dish with 6,000 sobs with questionable hygiene, in the middle of the ocean.
A successful vacation to me is being dropped in middle of the forest with nobody around me but trees and sasquatch, for miles.
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A successful vacation to me is being dropped in middle of the forest with nobody around me but trees and sasquatch, for miles.
Is that you Bear Grylls?
Re:Another reason NOT to go on a cruise (Score:5, Funny)
While many swear by it, the idea of a cruise makes me shiver. Quite frankly, they would have to pay ME to be in a cruise - and they would have to pay me a lot.
Oh, come now. Cruises are fun - fun for both the old and the old-at-heart!
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I always found this view funny. Cruises in Australia have mostly been large party boats with a copious overconsumption of boose and young people throwing up overboard everywhere.
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The point of going on a cruise is not to simply travel to wherever the boat is going.
You can do this more cheaply and rapidly by simply taking a plane.
Especially with some of these larger cruise ships, the ship itself is your key destination... and the ports of call along the way are just additional excursion and touring possibilities.
Royal Caribbean deletes security selfies (Score:2)
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While I agree that there are certainly concerns regarding the system described in your link, it does not seem that the system being described in the original post is the same system. The one from the OP is described as one that helps passengers who opted in to board faster, and the one from your link is described as one to help passengers disembark and clear customs faster.
It seems like we're talking about two different systems here - one which is completely internal to RC, and the other which integrates R
There is a link (Score:2)
Per the link article: "The technology verifies passengers' identities by comparing facial scans taken at the beginning of the cruise while boarding the ship with those taken at departure. ".
So if the boarding hardware is different, the pics taken at boarding are still passed on and out of RC's control.
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Also per the article, the scan is 3D. That's a different beast to a 2D passport photo.
The fight against facial recognition... (Score:1)
...was lost many years ago. Instead of fighting the technology, we need to start regulating its use by private companies and finding ways to anonymize ourselves.
I'd prefer a Norovirus detector (Score:2)
Definitely!