Not GP but I've worked in a similar industry.

For me I knew how our data was anonymized. So while our system would be able to say "I have seen person 1234 at locations 4,7,9,11 on dates x,y,x" we had absolutely no way of knowing who 1234 was or anything about them, even the unique identifier was just a hash.

Obviously it depends on how much data you collect/store, personally I don't think the things shown in OP are all that onerous (sex, age group, gender, rage, time spent looking at ad).

> So while our system would be able to say "I have seen person 1234 at locations 4,7,9,11 on dates x,y,x" we had absolutely no way of knowing who 1234 was or anything about them...

Minor nitpick, but giving someone a nickname isn't the same as anonymization.

"Hey Bob, thanks for logging on. Did you know we've been calling you 1234 these past five years!"

When a passive recognition system _uniquely_ tracks & identifies a person, it just takes time before that gets cross-referenced.

(different story if the data gets aggregated, or you scrub the uid completely after some window)

A friendly reminder that there's no such thing as "anonymized data", there's only "anonymized until combined with other data sets".

By definition anonymization is supposed to be irreversible. What you're describing is de-identification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-identification#Anonymizatio...).

Under this strong definition, anonymization doesn't exist in practice at all. Strong anonymization requires serious destruction of information (e.g. reducing all samples to a single average number). It's not what people in ad industry do.

I work on digital signage, our product isn't using facial expression recognition yet, but it has been asked and will eventually be a part of the system.

What's the difference between this and an anonymised dataset? No PII is tracked, it's just looking at you and calculating what emotion you're likely feeling to show more targeted advertising.

I mean, I'm personally against it but we've got to prove a higher and higher ROI to justify the cost of digital signage, this leads to just that.

If you were actually against it you would not take part of making this happen.

Inadvertently spill the name of the company making this and those wanting to use it to the public so they can receive their well deserved backlash.

You going to offer me another job that has comparative pay and work-time flexibility? I'll take if one's going, but right now this is my gig.

If you want to start a war, have a quick Google for the big players, they'll have this tech in and will be proudly advertising it on their site.

The thing is: People don't care. Not your HN reader (evidently), but your Joe Bloggs. Hell, Snowdon told them the Five Eyes are reading their email and they barely gave a damn.

> You going to offer me another job that has comparative pay and work-time flexibility? I'll take if one's going, but right now this is my gig.

That's exactly what bigbugbag meant. You don't really care and are in for the job. That's okay but just be honest here.

I could sell useless products to old people and make some money on the side. But I don't because I'm against that.

You can care and be opposed to something and still not stake your job to stop it. I'm against a whole lot of things that I do not spend all my time fighting because I have things to do, or it would be inconvenient as hell.

And some I sacrifice things for. A person can't die on every single hill they happen to fancy :)

it should just be regulated, i.e. banned, to save you the hassle of implementing it