Terms of Service (TOS) Under Scrutiny - Part X - Biometric Data Collection While You Shop for Groceries
IN THE last part and the one before that or one part before it (today is the fourth in this group or cluster) we focused more on pharmacies and surveillance, with a reddish devil somewhere in the details (or TOS). When dealing with medicine there are stricter laws, so one can consider some practices (or Terms of Service) outright illegal, albeit that practically matters only if properly challenged by courts, regulators etc.
Later this week we'll take a deeper dive and start considering the TOS aspect more closely, using concrete examples that people never read, they just hastily click "OK" on.
How many people check before they enter a shop if CCTV (or worse) is in operation and, if so, decide to leave, not to enter, or to ask staff about the necessity/legality of it? Probably as many as people who decline to accept some TOS, especially when a TOS changes and acceptance is demanded from someone who previously accepted a different TOS.
Here's a little story about Shop Rite:
Got a warrant? Don't get groceries at Shop Rite.
I can send you this if interested.
I heard the local Shop Rite grocery was testing out facial recognition and reporting to law enforcement. So, now the grocery store is the police.
As a quick test, I wanted to see if I could bypass it.
I'll never know for sure if I did or not, but it was interesting and in the future I may use more sophisticated ways to bypass face recognition.
That being said, the notice regarding biometric data collection was far in the right corner of the entranceway.
I have some pics too.
Also, after reading the terms and service, if I recall, once I pass that threshold, I agree to the terms.
The article posted by CT insider on July 19, 2023 stated:
A sign in a ShopRite store in Vernon store alerting customers to the monitoring was prominently displayed on exterior entry doors to the supermarket earlier this week. By Wednesday, it was moved to a less prominent location.When I arrived August 12, 2023, Exactly one year from today - The sign was not prominent at ALL!
Here in the UK it's often hard to find the notices anywhere at all. Those 'disclaimers' are done minimally, if at all.
Anyway, that's about all regarding CCTV and/or facial recognition for now. "There are a few more Terms of Service to discuss than this and the breaches," our source for this said. "Hope this is useful. I lost focus on the actual TOS bit by bit after that Zoom beast. More to share coming - about: Data collection; Data selling/sharing; Using data collected to train AI; Data breaches; Protect your privacy..."
Generally speaking, privacy isn't for the paranoid but for people who have a good sense of what goes on around them. In my experience, people who value privacy are very well informed and educated people. So don't ridicule them, listen to them. Don't listen to Clown Computing clowns, no matter how many people out there believe and sometimes even repeat their lies.
An uninformed society is a society that's a lot easier to oppress and exploit. While it's commonplace a knowledge and perfectly reasonable to recognise that nowadays in 2024 more people worry about where to find the next meal or try to prevent war (Poles worry about a Russian invasion more than EPO corruption), privacy and corruption ought not be relegated to "yuppie" (or "first-world") problems because they're a big part of the overall problem. █