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Mickey Mouse is watching you: Disneyland deploys facial recognition

85 points by Cider9986

by tintor

0 subcomment

Next: Netflix deploys facial recognition, to prevent account sharing fraud.

by monksy

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It's super creepy how this garbage gets rolled out. The value proposition of going to these parks is "have fun and enjoy this." But if you bought a pass and then you found out you'd have to go through this.. what do you do? The annoyed and condescending employee will grief you into complying.
There are many ways to solve this problem, but this approach is the most friendly to the owners.
This is a hard no for me to consider giving that mouse money.

by ktallett

4 subcomments

Ugh! How much fraud occurs at Disneyland? I would be shocked if there isn't a third reason they are not making clear. We desperately need to put up a fight early on with this technology as it's unreliable and just not needed, and it will only cause negatives long term. For anyone who says but it won't be an issue for many; well that's the exact status quo we have now, so it's really only to get worse overall.

by retrochameleon

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Big casinos have been doing the same thing for a long time. At the end of the day, the casino world and the tightly controlled and manicured Disney theme park world don't seem all that different.

by petterroea

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It always starts with optional opt-out

by trunkiedozer

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There’s a big wall around the park too.

by dangus

3 subcomments

This seems reasonable. They seem to be implementing this technology with hashes [1] and they are deleting the data within 30 days.
Some more things to consider:
- Walt Disney World has already been using fingerprints to verify access card and person match so you don’t share entrance passes for many years.
- You are already on private property in a setting with no expectation of privacy.
- Disney has been recording guests on security cameras since before the digital era. Your ride vehicle is always in sight of active video surveillance for ride safety purposes. You have been tracked in various ways inside the property for years and that’s not that crazy, again, considering you’re on private property.
- Universal Studios also uses entry photography likely for the exact same purpose
This is all not to say that these things being normalized doesn’t make them right but, still, I think it’s very not new stuff here. This in my opinion seems like the exact kind of environment where this kind of thing is reasonable.
They’ve basically been doing all of this already and the only difference now is that it’s used specifically for entrance gate purposes.
[1] from Disney’s statement linked within the article:
> These entrance lanes: (1) use images of your face taken by a camera at the entrance and the image of your face that was saved when you first used the ticket or pass; (2) employ biometric technology to convert those images into unique numerical values; (3) compare the numerical values to find a match; and (4) except in cases where data must be maintained for legal or fraud-prevention purposes, delete all numerical values within 30 days of creation. Participation is optional. Entrance lanes that do not employ facial recognition technology are also available.

by onetokeoverthe

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[dead]