Frustration Grows In China As Face Masks Compromise Facial Recognition (qz.com) 81
schwit1 shares a report from Quartz: Face masks are mandatory in at least two provinces in China, including the city of Wuhan. In an effort to contain the coronavirus strain that has caused nearly 500 deaths, the government is insisting that millions of residents wear protective face covering when they go out in public. As millions don masks across the country, the Chinese are discovering an unexpected consequence to covering their faces. It turns out that face masks trip up facial recognition-based functions, a technology necessary for many routine transactions in China. Suddenly, certain mobile phones, condominium doors, and bank accounts won't unlock with a glance.
Complaints are plentiful in the popular Chinese blogging platform Weibo, reports Abacus, the Hong Kong-based technology news outlet. "[I've] been wearing a mask everyday recently and I just want to throw away this phone with face unlock," laments one user. "Fingerprint payment is still better," writes another. "All I want is to pay and quickly run." [...] Biometrics, including facial recognition, are essential to daily life in China, on a scale beyond other nations. It's used to do everything from ordering fast food meals to scheduling medical appointments to boarding a plane in more than 200 airports across the country. Facial recognition is even used in restrooms to prevent an occupant from taking too much toilet paper. And beyond quotidian transactions, the technology is a linchpin in the Chinese government's scheme to police its 1.4 billion citizens. In other facial recognition news, the European parliament said it has no plans to introduce the tech following an outcry in response to a leaked security memo discussing its use.
Complaints are plentiful in the popular Chinese blogging platform Weibo, reports Abacus, the Hong Kong-based technology news outlet. "[I've] been wearing a mask everyday recently and I just want to throw away this phone with face unlock," laments one user. "Fingerprint payment is still better," writes another. "All I want is to pay and quickly run." [...] Biometrics, including facial recognition, are essential to daily life in China, on a scale beyond other nations. It's used to do everything from ordering fast food meals to scheduling medical appointments to boarding a plane in more than 200 airports across the country. Facial recognition is even used in restrooms to prevent an occupant from taking too much toilet paper. And beyond quotidian transactions, the technology is a linchpin in the Chinese government's scheme to police its 1.4 billion citizens. In other facial recognition news, the European parliament said it has no plans to introduce the tech following an outcry in response to a leaked security memo discussing its use.
Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2, Funny)
I don't know if anyone has already thought of this, but when facial recognition is needed for identification or to access a service, perhaps the facemask could be pulled off the nose and mouth for a few seconds until the face is recognized.
I will refrain from patenting this idea and altruistically make it available for all to use as a gift to the world.
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:1)
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:1)
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
The More You Know! (TM)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
I'd just go with clear facemasks made from cellophane.
Will you also make this idea free to all, for the benefit of human civilization?
I will make my contribution free to all. I suggest a plastic bubble encasing the head, like those on space suits and diving suits from TV shows, movies, and cartoons out of the 1960s.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
I'd just go with clear facemasks made from cellophane.
Will you also make this idea free to all, for the benefit of human civilization?
I will make my contribution free to all. I suggest a plastic bubble encasing the head, like those on space suits and diving suits from TV shows, movies, and cartoons out of the 1960s.
I tried patenting tattooing ID numbers on the forehead so as to not be obscured by the mask. But was told there is already prior art...
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something interesting is happening though. Lots of people do not realise it yet but everyone is slowly becoming more accustomed to face masks. There will be quite a few who are happy with this, the making of wearing face masks more publicly accessible. The pseudo celebrity set and politicians, they can put on a face mask and walk the streets free from facial recognition technology. A whole lot of privacy inclined people will start to look on this as an ideal opportunity to push normal social bounds and wear face mask when ever they want to be private out in public.
All of you need to sit back and think, would you wear a face mask to protect you public privacy 'er' your health. Facial recognition is getting much cheaper thanks to a new method and you could have it on your phone, set to recognise public figures to keep a public eye on them 24/7 corruption will become very difficult sans face mask.
How long before face masks as a fashion item?
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
People laugh, but you may have unintentionally hit upon something. I can see fashion models walking the runway wearing masks.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
This is already normal in Korea, whenever they're filming outdoors behind-the-scenes shots. Because of the all the air pollution that blows over from China.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
And 10-packs of face masks at the local supermarket, with runway-model-of-choice's features printed on the mask.
Or anyone's features, really. Just not your own. Forehead and eyes, all yours, then nose down you're {celebrity of choice}. Justin Bieber, anyone? D. Trump? Darth Maul? Mr. Bean?
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:0)
I've seen them a lot more lately, and I don't think it would cause a ton of notice if a non-Asian person did it. I've definitely had a longer reaction time to that, but it didn't strike me as super weird, given the current climate.
Frankly, I think it's a wonderful development.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:4, Insightful)
How long before face masks as a fashion item?
Well, with my strakh, I'd only ever be able to wear the Moon Moth :(.
(Link [wikipedia.org] for the uninitiated. Find it, read it. It's good!).
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:0)
I've often wondered if masks became mainstream, would it become law that people wear masks that are registered to them. It would be trivial to make masks that are uniquely identifiable to scanners. Combine that with augmented reality eye wear and suddenly very few are anonymous.
This strikes me as a much more likely to happen this century then something like telepresence drones/puppets becoming mainstream.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:1)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:0)
I understand where you're coming from and I'm not the one who modded you down, but I am AC because I did mod other posts.
At the recent Richmond, VA gun rally there were thousands of people wearing masks and carrying guns at the same time. Carrying guns was legal, but the masks were a felony. There is no exception for cold weather, which I would agree is ridiculous, but I would also say 30 degrees isn't that cold.
There was only one arrest for wearing a mask and the only details I could find out about that were that it was after 2 warnings and about 90 minutes after everything was over, so maybe she was a troublemaker and maybe she was antifa.
This is the only followup article I found regarding that arrest: Her face was covered near the Richmond gun rally. So were many others. Why was she the only one arrested? [richmond.com]
But it's paywalled, and it's not that I don't want to spend $1 on it, it's just that it's too much of a pain to insure that I do it securely and I don't expect they have much to add anyway.
.
But let's not forget the arrests and the law enforcement that had to come out to keep the peace and the people who were intimidated as well as the RWDS (Right Wing Death Squad) patches people were sporting.
While most of them probably weren't white supremacists, they were noticeable and the pictures of the black people that are used by some to show just how diverse they crowd supposedly was are laughable. 22,000 people? And out of all the pictures I saw trying to prove they weren't all white I saw maybe a dozen (and I'm being very generous there) black people.
Sure, maybe they all didn't pose for the camera. Do you think there were even 100 black people there?
The anti-mask laws were enacted as a tool to use against the Ku Klux Klan and there were white supremacists openly protesting in Richmond and not being arrested or even told to take off their masks.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
We can hope. In countries where masks are worn commonly it's actually very nice to be able to put one on. Aside from anything else it acts as a kind of "leave me alone" sign to ward off overly helpful sales staff and the like.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:1)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
New feelings? No thanks. I can barely cope with the ones I already have.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
As someone with a face only a mother could love, I would welcome this new fashion.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:0)
All of you need to sit back and think, would you wear a face mask to protect you public privacy 'er' your health.
Just want to point out that face masks are not for protecting your health, they are for protecting the health of everyone around you. Which, IMO, offers a much stronger argument to keeping it on when confronted about removing it.
For example, if you walk into a bank and they ask that you remove your mask, which do you think is more likely to elicit a favourable response?
"I do not want to get sick from you."
or
"Ok, but I am wearing this so that you do not get sick from my germs."
True, in either case you might still be required to remove it or leave, but I did not ask which would definitely let you keep it on, I asked which was more likely to result in you keeping it on.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:1)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
Not at all far fatched [youtu.be].
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
making everyone wear gloves would be a lot more effective.
Coronavirus enters the body through mucous membranes in the nose and lungs.Not through the skin. A major path is due to fingers touching a contaminated surface, and then touching the face close to the nose or eyes. Gloves would not make any difference.
Masks reduce contamination of surfaces by asymptomatic infected people, prevent the wearer from touching their face, and reduce the probability of breathing in airborne droplets by a factor three or so. For a disease with estimated R0=3, a factor three reduction in infection risk can make the difference between an epidemic dying out or growing exponentially.
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
Your first point is correct and is the biggest benefit. But your second is not. Facemasks like those worn by the general population & doctors in surgery do not stop the little contaminated droplets. So if someone in your area coughs, yeah you still get plenty to get infected, even if both are wearing the mask. If you aren't actually having to suck air through that mask, it isn't doing enough.
But still, the first benefit is well worth it. Even if you consider that over the day, you are probably creating a nice humid home for various bacteria to reproduce in. And that you are constantly breathing them in giving your immune system a small but constant workout.
Re: Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
Of course, touching a public ATM, your face mask, then ATM, then mask again will fully negate the benefits of the mask for you and everyone using the ATM after you.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:0)
I don't know if anyone has already thought of this, but when facial recognition is needed for identification or to access a service, perhaps the government and/or corporation wanting those biometrics are being too nosy and should be fought against tooth and nail.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
A surgical mask isn't to protect the wearer from what's around them, it's the other way around. Surgical masks are positively lousy at filtering out stuff because they aren't fitted to your face.
They are instead as you say, spittle catchers. Airborne infections aren't airborne as carried through air currents - they ride the fine mist you eject when you cough and sneeze. The finer the mist, the longer it stays before gravity takes hold. The average hang time can vary - from mere minutes to half and hour, to a couple of hours. The surgical mask you see sick people wear help keep most of your cough and sneeze and spittle out of the air. That's why sick people wear them - to avoid spreading it around, not to protect them from everyone else.
It's why you cough into your elbows now - your elbows catch most of it, and you don't want to cough into your hands because then you're just going to touch everything else with your newly infected hands.
So surgical masks are fine to take off as long as they're changed with a fresh one - you're keeping the rest of the world from getting your germs. But respirators are only to be removed when in a clean area to avoid getting contamination in. That's also why they're fitted to the user so they make a good seal, whereas the surgical mask doesn't require a full seal.
Respirators are the opposite - the N95 and others keep the nasty stuff out of you. So as a healthy person, you should wear those. However if you break the seal, then you can get the diseases you were filtering out into the mask thus nullifying the protection.
Funny thing is for me, I can wear a respirator, but not a surgical mask. I was in the hospital and when I was moved they put a mask on me as a precaution and I hated it - the surgical mask doesn't let me exhale out that well so I just got hot and bothered. But I can wear a respirator all day just fine - full face or half face (never did the N95 ones). Sure they can get clammy after a little while but I'm fine with that. Full faces are nice in that you can generally speak easier and be understood and heard better because they have a speaking diaphragm, whereas the half face you have to shout because it muffles your voice significantly. That gets annoying.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:3)
In China people pay for everything with their phone. Many of them are constantly checking their phones for messages too, just like in the west. So having to lift your mask every time quickly gets annoying.
These are cheap masks, they need adjustment every time you lift them. If you wear glasses it's even more annoying because you need to kind of mould the mask around your nose or your breathing fogs them up.
Re:Maybe try lifting the mask? (Score:2)
And thus you transfer the germs the mask kept from spreading to the rest of the population to your hands and then to the buttons on the ATM. I doubt very much that the ATMs have a scrub nurse on standby.
1984 was the Eighties, and today (Score:1)
Adjusting to his clone status
--An Atypical Theist
ID-numbers on the masks (Score:3)
Make it fashionable (and then — mandatory) for the masks to carry personal ID-numbers.
Consumers world-wide are already accustomed to license-plates on their vehicles, and there is no argument in support of those being mandatory, which would not also apply to mandating similar implements on their persons.
The IDs would be government-issued — for some period of time, which a citizen in good standing would have no problem extending, of course.
There isn't any ID device! (Score:2)
That's quite a glaring point. Where's the embedding chips when it works without any personal devices? So much for the chip in your hand predictions.
On the other hand, assuming no masks, can it really be that reliable normally? I suspect there are some that always have trouble with it and do have to regularly use other means.
Re:ID-numbers on the masks (Score:2)
Make it fashionable (and then — mandatory) for the masks to carry personal ID-numbers.
Consumers world-wide are already accustomed to license-plates on their vehicles, and there is no argument in support of those being mandatory, which would not also apply to mandating similar implements on their persons.
The IDs would be government-issued — for some period of time, which a citizen in good standing would have no problem extending, of course.
So everyone's physically appearance dox's themselves then? Somehow I'm guessing no. Maybe a bar code, but not anything that would be PII which is any ID number. Then makes videoing in a public public a dragnet of identity theft. Probably not a good idea.
Re:ID-numbers on the masks (Score:2)
Like the car's appearance has been doing for decades, yes...
Not any worse than the mandatory license plates on the vehicles, is it?
Re:ID-numbers on the masks (Score:2)
A little flip-down QR code on the mask, problem solved. Well Done, Citizen, you earned 5 social credit points!
In related news, they've found a new way to monitor mask hoarding and punish people who exceed their mask quota.
Re:ID-numbers on the masks (Score:0)
Re:ID-numbers on the masks (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be too easy to wear someone else's mask? Then you could pretend to be anyone!
Everything about this is hilarious (Score:2)
What about a stocking over the entire head, it's not as if there is a law against it - yet.
Re:Everything about this is hilarious (Score:2)
it's not as if there is a law against it - yet.
There is. They have that law already.
Re:Everything about this is hilarious (Score:2)
Hmmm, as someone born in the 1970s we learned quickly that when banks get robbed the most important piece of kit is not the gun, nope, it's the woman's stocking over the head! Although make sure that if you use a pair of ladys pantyhose instead that you cut up the middle of the crotch and separate the legs, else two of you will have to stand pretty close together as you rob the bank!
Re:Everything about this is hilarious (Score:2)
Although make sure that if you use a pair of ladys pantyhose instead that you cut up the middle of the crotch and separate the legs, else two of you will have to stand pretty close together as you rob the bank!
I want to walk into shops and just buy stuff dressed like that. A three piece suit and a stocking over my head and I wonder what that would do when I was being facialed?
Did the Chinese [also] steal this tech? (Score:2)
...Biometrics, including facial recognition, are essential to daily life in China, on a scale beyond other nations. It's used to do everything from ordering fast food meals to scheduling medical appointments to boarding a plane in more than 200 airports across the country...
I am waiting to hear folks here scream..."Our IP!"..."Our tech!"
Heck, if the quoted statement is true, then I think the Chinese are more advanced than many western countries. One "super power" I know (in its busiest subway located in one of the world's financial hubs), still runs trains from the late 60s today; a far cry when compared to some of the transportation technology available to the Chinese.
Re:Did the Chinese [also] steal this tech? (Score:2)
Did the Chinese [also] steal this tech?
No, it's well documented that western nations sold them most of their 1984-esque technologies because money.
Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:3)
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:2)
Either that or they will just start merging cellphone technology with facemask technology.
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully this will be the start of the slow, painful death of the Chinese surveillance state.
I don't wish this to be slow or painful. This is a new cold war, very much like the kind that started after World War II with Russia, then the USSR, and then Russia again after the USSR fell.
What tends to end a tyranny is the immense resources required to maintain it, and the lowered economic output that comes from denying people their freedom. The Soviets lost the Cold War because they spent themselves to death trying to wage this economically. The USA won by having a bigger economy to draw from, an economy that got so large from the people not being spied upon and micromanaged by their government.
I believe that China will eventually fall anyway, the coronavirus may simply be what speeds up the process.
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:0)
While not currently as bad as China, there is similarities in the UK and the USA *today*.
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:3)
I believe that China will eventually fall anyway, the coronavirus may simply be what speeds up the process.
Absent international conquest, totalitarian states collapse because they lose the will or the ability to crush their people. East Germany decided not to massacre its people. Gorbachev dismantled the system. Could this happen in China? It's been several decades since Tiananmen Square, but indications are that the will and ability to crush have only increased.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, one of the top Democratic contenders for President is a proponent of communist governments like USSR, Russia, and China.
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:2)
Why would it? Taking off a mask for a second is easier than typing a password.
Greetings from the USA where my company just rolled out a Windows update enabling facial based Windows Hello logins.
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:2)
And the death of facial unlock. Fingerprint sensors are far, far superior.
Re:Score one for Coronavirus... (Score:2)
Lift Face Mask for Government Only (Score:2)
CDC Recommendation (Score:2)
https://www.marketwatch.com/st... [marketwatch.com]
cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:2)
wait, what? what was that part, again?
are you seriously saying that there are devices in the restrooms that take your photo?
if this is true, I think I've just decided never to travel to china, business or otherwise.
Re:cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:2)
Re:cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:2)
I guess he figured out how to have enough money for another buy-in.
Re:cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:3)
Yeah, that's not going to work for the average size of the western backside! The western posterier is slightly larger than the average Asian rear, especially given the obesity problems causing the average Western ass ti increase. If I ever ended up in China I think I need to practice using 2 sheets a day for about 4 years before I went there just to be sure I wouldn't have to carry a newspaper around with me everywhere I went!
Re:cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:0)
numbnuts
Re:cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:3)
In Japan they even have cameras inside the toilet bowl, so the jet washer knows where to spray.
Re:cameras in the bathrooms?? (Score:0)
It's okay - they don't have zoom lenses.
Personally, I'm not worried - they don't have wide-angle lenses yet either ;-)
BUT MUH COMMUNISM. (Score:0)
Oh well. Too bad. Suck it up commies.
To make matters worse (Score:1)
I just had my first brush with this issue today. To make matters worse, my Huawei phone (supplied by my company for testing, not my first choice) doesn't work with touch gloves like all my previous phones did and ended up having to take them off in the bitter cold.
Here's an idea (Score:2)
"[I've] been wearing a mask everyday recently and I just want to throw away this phone with face unlock," laments one user.
Turn face unlock the fuck off and use a PIN. Problem solved w/o getting a new phone. I mean, *seriously*.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:0)
It's China, dickhead.
You don't get to just turn off authoritarianism, that's not how reality works.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:2)
It's winter here and when I need to unlock my phone, I shift my scarf down briefly and my phone unlocks. And even when the phone fails to unlock, I can always use the passcode at any time, not just after it fails.
The other stuff is maybe a pain, but the phone thing seems a bit much to complain about.
Learn to code and sell a new system (Score:1)
Are you listening?
Gait.
There's a great future in selling Communist China gait related software.
Play back all the last stetted and working clips with a good ID.
Learn the gait. Match the gait to people in a mask.
Some good sales/rent for a US team with the software skills..
Hey, wait a minute... (Score:2)
If you need to unlock everything with your face, how did anyone log on to complain about it? Somebody's cheating!
Wrong Link (Score:2)
Your link pointing to "face masks trip up facial recognition-based functions" goes to https://techcrunch.com/2020/02... [techcrunch.com] instead.
That link is from the previous story. Goes to show how many people read TFA that I'm the first to report it...
The USERS are frustrated? (Score:2)
How about the state?
Now you can use as much toilet paper as you like to wipe your ass instead of getting a bad rap in the social evaluation score.
Even if you have to use your thumb to open your phone on the crapper.
What's not to like?
how does this work? (Score:3)
how can this even possibly work securely?
everybody knows all chinese look alike!
Fuck the Chinese government (Score:2)
Custom face masks (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like an opportunity for some entrepreneur to start a company that sells face masks with your lower face printed on it.
1 flu over the cuckoos nest (Score:2)
Facial recognition is even used in restrooms to pr (Score:4, Informative)
Those seeking relief must first stare into a computer attached to the machine for three seconds. It records their image before spitting out a two-foot long sheet of tissue paper.
-
The computer won’t dispense a second round of paper to the same person for nine — potentially excruciating — minutes.
And then the past of pooping in China....
As Peter S. Goodman wrote for The Post in 2005 of China’s public bathrooms:
In a public toilet — be it at the park, on a main thoroughfare, at the airport or in a train station — the air is often so foul that you limit your breathing. The smell wafts out into the surrounding neighborhood. You keep your eyes turned upward, to avoid fixing on the squalid floor. Most toilets have no toilet paper. Many lack running water. Everywhere, flushing seems optional. People with major business to attend to must typically execute it in full view of everyone else over a big gulley without privacy walls. Sit-down toilets? Rare.
Followed by the great future!
That’s why the country announced a “toilet revolution” in 2015, a plan to bring both its facilities and the general etiquette of their patrons up to “the standards of the international traveler.”
More than 12.5 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) was expected to be spent constructing tens of thousands of new public toilets and renovating older ones to include not just “Western-style toilets and deodorization technology” but also potentially big screen televisions, ATMs, WiFi and sofas.
-
authorities planned to dole out punishments — such as blacklisting locals from certain facilities — for poor lavatory decorum.
Awww! My heart breaks! Really! (Score:2)
I hope the Chinese make it through this.
But I could cheerfully drop their government, screaming, into a volcano.