palm print – Bredemarket

This is a follow-up to something I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I concluded that earlier post by noting that when you say that something needs to be replaced because it is bad, you need to evaluate the replacement to see if it is any better…or worse.

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17499683

First, the recap

Before moving forward, let me briefly recap my points from the earlier post. If you like, you can read the entire post here.

Amazon is incentivizing customers ($10) to sign up for its Amazon One palm print program.
Amazon is not the first company to use biometrics to speed retail purchases. Pay By Touch, the University of Maryland Dining Hall have already done this, as well as every single store that lets you use Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay.
Amazon One is not only being connected in the public eye to unrelated services such as Amazon Rekognition, and to unrelated studies such as Gender Shades (which dealt with classification, not recognition), but has been accused of “asking people to sell their bodies.” Yet companies that offer similar services are not being demonized in the same way.
If you don’t use Amazon One to pay for your purchases, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are protected from surveillance. I’ll dive into that in this post.

From https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/02/amazon-credit-palm-biometrics/.

Now that we’re caught up, let’s look at the latest player to enter the Amazon One controversy.

Yes, U.S. Senators can be bipartisan

If you listen to the “opinion” news services, you get the feeling that the United States Senate has devolved into two warring factions that can’t get anything done. But Senators have always worked together (see Edward Kennedy and Dan Quayle), and they continue to work together today.

Specifically, three Senators are working together to ask Amazon a few questions: Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

And naturally they issued a press release about it.

Now arguments can be made about whether Congressional press releases and hearings merely constitute grandstanding, or whether they are serious attempts to better the nation. Of course, anything that I oppose is obviously grandstanding, and anything I support is obviously a serious effort.

But for the moment let’s assume that the Senators have serious concerns about the privacy of American consumers, and that the nation demands answers to these questions from Amazon.

Here are the Senators’ questions, from the press release:

Does Amazon have plans to expand Amazon One to additional Whole Foods, Amazon Go, and other Amazon store locations, and if so, on what timetable?
How many third-party customers has Amazon sold (or licensed) Amazon One to? What privacy protections are in place for those third parties and their customers?
How many users have signed up for Amazon One?
Please describe all the ways you use data collected through Amazon One, including from third-party customers. Do you plan to use data collected through Amazon One devices to personalize advertisements, offers, or product recommendations to users?
Is Amazon One user data, including the Amazon One ID, ever paired with biometric data from facial recognition systems?
What information do you provide to consumers about how their data is being used? How will you ensure users understand and consent to Amazon One’s data collection, storage, and use practices when they link their Amazon One and Amazon account information?
What actions have you taken to ensure the security of user data collected through Amazon One?

So when will we investigate other privacy-threatening technologies?

In a sense, the work of these three Senators should be commended, because if Amazon One is not implemented properly, serious privacy breaches could happen which could adversely impact American citizens. And this is the reason why many states and municipalities have moved to restrict the use of biometrics by private businesses.

And we know that Amazon is evil, because Slate said so back in January 2020.

The online bookseller has evolved into a giant of retail, resale, meal delivery, video streaming, cloud computing, fancy produce, original entertainment, cheap human labor, smart home tech, surveillance tech, and surveillance tech for smart homes….The company’s “last mile” shipping operation has led to burnout, injuries, and deaths, all connected to a warehouse operation that, while paying a decent minimum wage, is so efficient in part because it treats its human workers like robots who sometimes get bathroom breaks.…

But why stop with Amazon? After all, Slate’s list included 29 other companies (while Amazon tops the list, other “top”-ranked companies include Facebook, Alphabet, Palantir Technologies, and Uber), to say nothing of entire industries that are capable of massive privacy violations.

Privacy breaches are not just tied to biometric systems, but can be tied to any system that stores private data. Restricting or banning biometric systems won’t solve anything, since all of these abuses could potentially occur on other systems.

When will the Senators ask these same questions to Apple, Google (part of the aforementioned Alphabet), and Samsung to find out when these companies will expand their “Pay” services? They won’t even have to ask all seven questions, because we already know the answer to question 5.
Oh, and while we’re at it, what about Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, and similar credit card services that are often tied to information from our bank accounts? How do these firms personalize their offerings? Who can buy all that data?
And while we’re looking at credit cards, what about the debit cards issued by the banks, which are even more vulnerable to abuse. Let’s have the banks publicly reveal all the ways in which they protect user data.
You know, you have to watch out for those money orders also. How often do money order issuers ask consumers to show their government ID? What happens to that data?
Oh, and what about those gift cards that stores issue? What happens to the location and purchase data that is collected for those gift cards?
When people use cash to pay for goods, what is the resolution of the surveillance cameras that are trained on the cash registers? Can those surveillance cameras read the serial numbers on the bills that are exchanged? What assurances can the stores give that they are not tracking those serial numbers as they flow through the economy?

If you think that it’s silly to shut down every single payment system that could result in a privacy violation…you’re right.

Obviously if Amazon is breaking federal law, it should be prosecuted accordingly.

And if Amazon is breaking state law (such as Illinois BIPA law), then…well, that’s not the Senators’ business, that’s the business of class action lawyers.

But now the ball is in Amazon’s court, and Amazon will either provide thousands of pages of documents, a few short answers, a response indicating that the Senators are asking for confidential information on future product plans, or (unlikely with Amazon, but possible with other companies) a reply stating that the Senators can go pound sand.

Either way, the “Amazon is evil” campaign will continue.

I can’t recall who recorded it, but there’s a radio commercial heard in Southern California (and probably nationwide) that intentionally ridicules people who willingly give up their own personally identifiable information (PII) for short-term gain. In the commercial, both the husband and the wife willingly give away all sorts of PII, including I believe their birth certificates.

While voluntary surrender of PII happens all the time (when was the last time you put your business card in a drawing bowl at a restaurant?), people REALLY freak out when the information that is provided is biometric in nature. But are the non-biometric alternatives any better?

TechCrunch, Amazon One, and Ten Dollars

TechCrunch recently posted “Amazon will pay you $10 in credit for your palm print biometrics.“

If you think that the article details an insanely great way to make some easy money from Amazon, then you haven’t been paying attention to the media these last few years.

The article begins with a question:

How much is your palm print worth?

The article then describes how Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores in several states have incorporated a new palm print scanner technology called “Amazon One.” This technology, which reads both friction ridge and vein information from a shopper’s palms. This then is then associated with a pre-filed credit card and allows the shopper to simply wave a palm to buy the items in the shopping cart.

There is nothing new under the sun

Amazon One is the latest take on processes that have been implemented several times before. I’ll cite three examples.

Pay By Touch. The first one that comes to my mind is Pay By Touch. While the management of the company was extremely sketchy, the technology (provided by Cogent, now part of Thales) was not. In many ways the business idea was ahead of its time, and it had to deal with challenging environmental conditions: the fingerprint readers used for purchases were positioned near the entrances/exits to grocery stores, which could get really cold in the winter. Couple this with the elderly population that used the devices, and it was sometimes difficult to read the fingers themselves. Yet, this relatively ancient implementation is somewhat similar to what Amazon is doing today.

University of Maryland Dining Hall. The second example occurred to me because it came from my former employer (MorphoTrak, then part of Safran and now part of IDEMIA), and was featured at a company user conference for which I coordinated speakers. There’s a video of this solution, but sadly it is not public. I did find an article describing the solution:

With the new system students will no longer need a UMD ID card to access their own meals…

Instead of pulling out a card, the students just wave their hand through a MorphoWave device. And this allows the students to pay for their meals QUICKLY. Good thing when you’re hungry.

This Pay and That Pay. But the most common example that everyone uses is Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, or whatever “pay” system is supported on your smartphone. Again, you don’t have to pull out a credit card or ID card. You just have to look at your phone or swipe your finger on the phone, and payment happens.

Amazon One is the downfall of civilization

I don’t know if TechCrunch editorialized against Pay By Touch or [insert phone vendor here] Pay, and it probably never heard of the MorphoWave implementation at the University of Maryland. But Amazon clearly makes TechCrunch queasy.

While the idea of contactlessly scanning your palm print to pay for goods during a pandemic might seem like a novel idea, it’s one to be met with caution and skepticism given Amazon’s past efforts in developing biometric technology. Amazon’s controversial facial recognition technology, which it historically sold to police and law enforcement, was the subject of lawsuits that allege the company violated state laws that bar the use of personal biometric data without permission.

Oh well, at least TechCrunch didn’t say that Amazon was racist. (If you haven’t already read it, please read the Security Industry Association’s “What Science Really Says About Facial Recognition Accuracy and Bias Concerns.” Unless you don’t like science.)

OK, back to Amazon and Amazon One. TechCrunch also quotes Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

*People Leaving the Cities*, photo art by Zbigniew Libera, imagines a dystopian future in which people have to leave dying metropolises. By Zbigniew Libera – https://artmuseum.pl/pl/kolekcja/praca/libera-zbigniew-wyjscie-ludzi-z-miast, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66055122.

“The dystopian future of science fiction is now. It’s horrifying that Amazon is asking people to sell their bodies, but it’s even worse that people are doing it for such a low price.”

“Sell their bodies.” Isn’t it even MORE dystopian when people “give their bodies away for free” when they sign up for Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay? While the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (acronym STOP) expresses concern about digital wallets, there is a significant lack of horror in its description of them.

Digital wallets and contactless payment systems like smart chips have been around for years. The introduction of Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, and Google Pay have all contributed to the e-commerce movement, as have fast payment tools like Venmo and online budgeting applications. In response to COVID-19, the public is increasingly looking for ways to reduce or eliminate physical contact. With so many options already available, contactless payments will inevitably gain momentum….
Without strong federal laws regulating the use of our data, we’re left to rely on private companies that have consistently failed to protect our information. To prevent long-term surveillance, we need to limit the data collected and shared with the government to only what is needed. Any sort of monitoring must be secure, transparent, proportionate, temporary, and must allow for a consumer to find out about or be alerted to implications for their data. If we address these challenges now, at a time when we will be generating more and more electronic payment records, we can ensure our privacy is safeguarded.

So STOP isn’t calling for the complete elimination of Amazon Pay. But apparently it wants to eliminate Amazon One.

Is a world without Amazon One a world with less surveillance?

Whenever you propose to eliminate something, you need to look at the replacement and see if it is any better.

In 1998, Fox fired Bill Russell as the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had a win-loss percentage of .538. His replacement, Glenn Hoffman, lasted less than a season and had a percentage of .534. Hoffman’s replacement, true baseball man Davey Johnson, compiled a percentage of .503 over the next two seasons before he was fired. Should have stuck with Russell.

Anyone who decides (despite the science) that facial recognition is racist is going to have to rely on other methods to identify criminals, such as witness identification. Witness identification has documented inaccuracies.

And if you think that elimination of Amazon One from Amazon’s brick-and-mortar stores will lead to a privacy nirvana, think again. If you don’t use your palm to pay for things, you’re going to have to use a credit card, and that data will certainly be scanned by the FBI and the CIA and the BBC, B. B. King, and Doris Day. (And Matt Busby, of course.) And even if you use cash, the only way that you’ll preserve any semblance of your privacy is to pay anonymously and NOT tie the transaction to your Amazon account.

And if you’re going to do that, you might as well skip Whole Foods and go straight to Dollar General. Or maybe not, since Dollar General has its own app. And no one calls Dollar General dystopian. Wait, they do: “They tend to cluster, like scavengers feasting on the carcasses of the dead.”

I seemed to have strayed from the original point of this post.

But let me sum up. It appears that biometrics is evil, Amazon is evil, and Amazon biometrics are Double Secret Evil.

Tag Archives: palm print

A second “biometrics is evil” post (Amazon One)