Vending machines had eyes all over this Ontario campus - until the students wised up
An Ontario university is pulling dozens of vending machines that were track‐ ing the age and gender of customers in the latest ex‐ ample of pushback against technology that tests the boundaries of privacy rules.
The move comes amid op‐ position from University of Waterloo students, who be‐ came aware of the tech‐ nology after a Reddit user spotted an on-screen error message on one of the ma‐ chines earlier this month, about an apparent problem with its facial recognition pro‐ gram.
"The natural question that follows there is, 'Why does it have a facial recognition app? How can this error even ex‐ ist?'" said River Stanley, a fourth-year computer sci‐ ence and business student who broke the story in the campus journal mathNEWS.
The university says it has asked that all 29 machines, from the Switzerland-based company Invenda, be re‐ moved "as soon as possible," and that the software be dis‐ abled in the meantime.
"We thank our students for bringing this matter to our attention," said university spokesperson Rebecca Elming.
She did not respond to a followup question from CBC News about whether the uni‐ versity was planning to change its procurement pro‐ cess if machines with facial analysis technology were showing up unbeknownst to administrators.
WATCH | Stanley says it's a problem students discov‐ ered the error by coinci‐ dence:
Invenda says the ma‐ chines use facial analysis, not facial recognition, software, and that it isn't storing data or photos.
The company says its technology is mainly used to tell when a person is stand‐ ing in front of a vending ma‐ chine, and to change the screen from "standby" mode, which shows ads, to "sales" mode, which shows different products.
Critics say that explana‐ tion isn't good enough, and that customers should know whether they're being watched and be given the choice to opt in.
"There was no [camera] marking on these vending machines at all," said Stanley.
Stanley investigated fur‐
ther, contacted the vending machine operator and Inven‐ da, and published a story that was later picked up by CTV Kitchener.
Approximately 100 Inven‐ da vending machines have been shipped to Canada, the company said, although it's not clear if all of them have been installed.
No one from Invenda was available for an interview Monday, a spokesperson said, but in an email the com‐ pany emphasized that its software is used for people detection and facial analysis, not facial recognition (though the company's CEO has pre‐ viously referred to it as "facial recognition" in a 2020 pro‐ motional video).
"People detection solely identifies the presence of in‐ dividuals whereas, facial recognition goes further to discern and specify individual persons," the statement said.
The machines can "only determine if an anonymous individual faces the device, for what duration, and ap‐ proximates basic de‐ mographic attributes uniden‐ tifiably."
The company said those "basic demographic attribut‐ es" include age and gender information that one privacy advocate says would help re‐ tailers decide which products are most likely to sell.
"No point putting produc‐ ts in the vending machine that aren't going to sell, take up space and just cost mon‐ ey to throw out when they're stale," said Sharon Polsky, president of the Privacy and
Access Council of Canada, who is based in Calgary.
"From a business perspec‐ tive, it absolutely makes sense."
The technology is not cur‐ rently common in Canada, the Canadian Automatic Manufacturing Association said in a statement.
As retailers become hun‐ grier for consumer insights and technology becomes bet‐ ter able to deliver those in‐ sights, retail analyst Doug Stephens says it's unlikely that even a significant con‐ sumer backlash will stop oth‐ er companies from trying similar tactics.
WATCH | Privacy viola‐ tions at the mall:
"The genie is kind of out of the bottle here," said Stephens, founder of the Re‐ tail Prophet. "I don't see this [technology] as being some‐ thing that's simply going to go away."
Stanley, the student, likened the situation to the real estate company Cadillac Fairview's use of similar tech‐ nology in directory displays in some of its malls.
That company advanced a similar argument in its de‐ fence - that it used the tech‐ nology to monitor foot traffic patterns and predict de‐ mographic information about mall visitors.
A joint investigation by the federal, Alberta and B.C. pri‐ vacy commissioners found in 2020 that while Cadillac Fairview collected "numerical representations" of faces suitable for facial recognition, there was no evidence it used these representations to identify specific people.
But investigators took is‐ sue with how the images were stored, and said the company did not obtain meaningful consent from customers ahead of collect‐ ing their images. Cadillac Fairview said it stopped using the technology.
Polsky, for her part, wants to see a similar investigation into the Invenda machines and stricter privacy legisla‐ tion overall. She also ap‐ plauded the University of Wa‐ terloo students for figuring out the software embedded in their vending machines.
"It's terrific that people are noticing these affronts to our privacy … and not just shrugging [their] shoulders and saying 'Not a big deal,'" she said.