will it also tell the future - i mean with access to you payment and buying and viewing history and with a bit of AI thrown on top they can do it very well :) Those behemoth "total awareness" companies would soon be able not only predict your future, they would be able to actually implement whatever future they decide for you.
You can change your credit card. Change your bank. Change your name. And for the sheep who are so inclined, even change your underwear.
But you can't change your biometric data.
Now suppose some bad guy cuts off your hand at the wrist. They can then produce that bloody item at the POS terminal and use it to pay for goods. At this point you have just become the victim of a serious crime because you are now responsible for payment.
Changing your name does not change your credit history. Losing an illusory value you have never owned by adopting a new technology, that's not a real problem.
> what if a bad guy figures out the ability to copy your palm print
Then you would dispute the charge and have your own geolocation data or the store's video footage to substantiate your claim. This is a grocery store, not a diamond merchant.
The problem isn't this one transaction. Of course you could dispute it, but you're in for a life of disputing charges as you can't tell the merchant to not accept your hand print and use a newly issued one like a card number when it is compromised
The article says that you have to register the palm print vs a credit card. A common-sense approach would suggest that if you cancel the credit card, then registration also lapses.
If you happen to have attracted the attention of this master counterfeiter who has duplicated your palm you would simply have the option of not registering your new card with the system.
If this happens on a large scale, yes, the whole project is doomed.
If you find that someone has (somehow) managed to duplicate your palm print then you probably do not want to enroll with that option for payments in the future.
That's great advice for me - a person who's not going to register his palm anyway - but what would be your advice to Amazon for how to deal with this? Or what would be your advice to someone who wants to use their palm with a different credit card once their palmprint has been lifted and used to commit fraud?
Again, it's not that this specific issue can't be dealt with by canceling your palm print or convenient checkout. You're just left with not being able to safely register your palm print with any company if your biometric data gets stolen. I can envision a world where it doesn't take a master counterfeiter to 3d printer a palm print that gets through the scanner and a database of stolen palm print data people can buy and trade like they currently do with stolen credit card numbers.
The issue is once your biometric data is compromised you have no recourse to regenerate it. Your solution is you just don't get to participate in these features anymore.
You're back in the same place you are already. If this putative palm print duplication technology becomes widely available then people will stop building technology that depends on palm prints.
As has been repeatedly pointed out, the risk lies with the merchants and the issuing banks (at least in the U.S.) for credit card payments.
EDIT: and, at least in the U.S. again, no-one is going to be able to force you to use this technology; there will always have to be an alternative mechanism because there are people with no hands, and a system that required them would be a massive ADA liability.
Or create a palm reading fortune app that sells for 1.99, and sell the data to amazon to train their AI. Unless that database has been purged of PID, there would be the potential for abuse if it was sold or stolen for getting some free groceries.
Do you think they're only using this for groceries and that it will never be expanded to other retail? In the article it says they are already in talks with other vendors. This means your hand does more than just buy groceries, it will work anywhere there is a palm scanning terminal. It will work at WalMart or Best Buy to buy thousands of dollars of electronics, or maybe even one day to buy a car. Maybe your phone will even be able to read palm prints, and you can buy and sell private goods, or illegal goods using it. That's a lot more than a bunch of groceries.
If people are willing to go to these extents then the biometrics aspect is just a red herring.
They kidnap your spouse/child/parent and threaten to murder them unless you go through with the transaction. They hold a gun to your head while you transfer the contents of your bitcoin wallet to them. They beat you with a rubber hose until you give them your safe combination.
Maybe you're right. This may make people safer, because they no longer need to threaten your life to get your PIN. They just knock you out and cut off your hand. At least you are still alive that way.
You wouldn't be responsible for the payment just like you aren't responsible for the payment with a stolen credit card. I also wouldn't be surprised if these terminals had a pulse detector that would stop a severed hand from working at all.
You'd probably even have an easier time proving your hand was stolen it since your hand is missing.
It's still a problem that if someone compromises your biometric data they'll have full access forever. In practice that isn't a huge problem because it's still really hard to do.
>They can then produce that bloody item at the POS terminal
given the general attitudes towards privacy and biometric data here on HN, i honestly can't tell if people trying to pay for groceries with bloody severed limbs is a concern you legitimately have or if this is satire.
The cutting off a hand thing might be satire, but the threat of biometric data being replicated and used if its the only measure of authentication isn't. If we have the ability to read and scan palm prints, than the technology to replicate those prints into maybe a faux glove and trick this system isnt that far off i'd assume, right?
Comparing this system to, for instance a chip card reader, the palm print is significantly less secure because it uses a single factor (something you are) versus a chip which requires the customer to both have the card with the chip present for payment, and to know the PIN in order to authenticate. Or your phone for example, if someone steals your fingerprint (or even models your face), they still need to have your physical phone to unlock it. With this palm scanning tech, all you need is the palm and you can pay for anything anywhere because there's no secondary confirmation
There are numerous reports of people being locked out of their biometric accounts after an injury. If you burn yourself cooking and have a blister on your hand you may not be able to go buy first aid supplies at Whole Foods afterward. Alternatives are required.
Biometrics are immutable! I don't think anybody's going to cut your arm off to steal a television with. However, extremely secure environments certainly avoid biometrics as a "single factor" for this reason.
Disney already required fingerprints for their check-in terminals (and that only stopped with the pandemic; in Disney World, they’re covered up for now). People seem to think accessing Disney is worth it, but I’m not as certain they will for Whole Foods.
The Disney World fingerprint thing (assuming they reinstate they reinstate it) is also a bit different in that they only store a given fingerprint scan for the lifetime of that specific ticket, then discard it.
And, interestingly enough, it doesn't actually record the print, but the shape of the fingertip. If you know someone with a close enough fingertip shape, they can use your ticket.
This is a terrible idea. I do not believe this, but I was raised around a lot of people who sincerely, devoutly, believe that in the "end times" of the world, a literally Satanic commerce system will require people to buy and sell goods with imprints on their the foreheads or the palms of their hands.[0]
If you think we've faced some goofy religion-driven complaints about stuff in the past, wait until that crowd finds out Jeff Bezos wants them to buy his stuff with the Mark of the Beast (which is how they'll describe it). People will lose their minds about this. I am completely serious.
Even if the idea of the payment system itself has merit, I predict a terribly chilly cultural reception to the idea.
> a lot of people who sincerely, devoutly, believe that in the "end times" of the world, a literally Satanic commerce system will require people to buy and sell goods with imprints on their the foreheads or the palms of their hands
I imagine the overlap between Whole Foods customers and this lot is sparse.
If anything, it sounds like a great opportunity for free marketing.
Well, if this fully launches, I'd expect them to become completely disjoint sets.
But don't for a second believe that the "Satan is coming for us any moment now" crowd doesn't have an awful lot of money and power. I'm not describing a tiny pocket of people who eschew physical possessions, but a rather large portion of the US.
I'm generalizing here, but what I've described is a very common belief among evangelicals. The first source I found on Google[0] puts that at a very large percentage of the population in the US midwest and south.
Its confusing to me at least because it’s not like Whole Foods has direct competition for high end food stuffs in most markets I’ve seen.
I know a handful of these types people and they are more likely than average to only buy the best foods, with Whole Foods being their major retailer of choice.
There are a not-small number of people who follow Joel Osteen and other "prosperity gospel" preachers who think God would want them to have the very best, and if that means organic/hippy/overpriced, then so be it.
Huh, they might not think of it as hippy/overpriced and more like organic/better. Consider that on this board Dr. Bronner's get routine praise, despite its overtly religious appearances.
Do you have a source for it being a very common belief? My wife grew up in the south, I lived there for years, and neither of us have ever heard anyone mention this. It sounds like something you'd read on a "10 crazy things Christians actually believe" article, even though it's not "very common" as you claim it is.
Personal source: I was raised in the Midwest and attended Southern Baptist (i.e. mainstream evangelical) churches during my upbringing. I was taught that these things are literally true many, many times over the years. I'm not trying to make fun of Christians, Midwesterners, or Southerners, or anything remotely like that. But I am saying that I have personally been told that the Biblical book of Revelations is a set of literally true predictions about the near future.
Walk into any Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God church, find the preacher, and ask them if Revelations is a story of true things that are going to happen, and they're very likely to say that yes, it is. Tell them you heard some guy on the Internet say that the Mark of the Beast is a real thing. They're likely to nod and confirm that yeah, that's what the Bible says.
I'm not saying that everyone in those and other evangelical denominations believe this. I absolutely 100% contend that a whole awful lot of people sincerely do.
Red Letter Media featured an Asian Christianity tape from long ago that had a bit about how products can't have barcodes on them because it's the number of the beast or some craziness.
Right? It seems like their product team either has zero evangelical Christians on staff, or they ignored the people who were probably shouting "this is not going to go over well" in meetings.
Things like this are why it's so critical to have people with diverse backgrounds around you. Otherwise you tend not to know about significant cultural differences until it's too late.
I mean yes, but those people have believed just about everything from drivers licenses to social security numbers to RFID to the COVID vaccine was the Mark of the Beast. Every new paradigm in communication, every form of government-issued identification, the serial numbers on dollar bills.
It's fun to laugh at their constant stupidity, but also perfectly safe to ignore them from a political and economic standpoint.
maybe some people believe those things, but simply not true to grossly overgeneralize as those people because the bible is pretty clear about the mark of the beast being on the hand or the forehead.
It is the same people taking a vague and cryptic text which was probably originally about Nero Caesar and applying the same flawed pins-and-string conspiracy theory reasoning to a few cherry-picked details in order to express their constant fear of the future. The bible says a lot of things about the mark of the beast that conveniently get ignored whenever evangelicals think they've spotted it, and they think they spot it all the time. They've never been right, and they're never going to be right.
Yeah, the lack of a consistent interpretive hermeneutic for biblical texts is a big cause of this kind of confusion.
Incidentally, there is a lot of scholarly support for the hypothesis that, in context, the forward-looking statements in the book of Revelation (and other New Testament texts) are largely or completely about first-century events (see topics such as preterism, covenant eschatology, full preterism, etc.).
Understanding documents that were written thousands of years ago, in a cultural and linguistic milieu far different than that of western civilization, is difficult for modern westerners. People ought to study more before jumping to outlandish conclusions about the meaning of such texts.
I agree with you; A decision that has nothing to do with them is likely to suffer massive backlash. Because if the world doesn't fit their narrative, they will make it so.
I look forward to it. Not saying it's the best strategic move by Amazon, but day by day i grow more tired of the fallout of christians.
Yea, maybe it's just fringe christians.. but if there are reasonable people in their ranks, they're happily silent. They happily co-exist with extremists, and the affect that's having on society is frustrating to me.
If they just lived their life and didn't try to bully everyone else into alignment with their beliefs i'd be more sympathetic. But the less they get special treatment these days the more "Anti christian" they claim everyone is. As if the secular population is out there attacking them. Equality seems persecution to them.
A lot of it seems to come down to a business decision: how large of a market demographic are we willing to piss off, and how badly? On one hand, if you name a new product after a Roman god, there are likely to be at least some people who are offended that you're using their deities name, but that's probably going to be a teensy amount of people. On another, if you name your new product "Pope Is A Dope", a pretty large chunk of your customer base is likely to take their business elsewhere.
So just purely from a business point of view, Amazon needs to evaluate how much they're willing to annoy evangelicals. It's very possible they've run the numbers and decided they're OK with this for all the reasons you state and more. I think it's also at least a little possible that it simply hadn't occurred to them that some people might not like the idea for religious reasons. If they launched their new "Zeus the Deuce" product and suddenly a few people people rose up and started writing op-eds and organizing boycotts over it, I'd expect someone to be pretty surprised. I think this might be along those lines.
In an alternative universe, the US AG has filed a lawsuit against Amazon and the House has prepared a law to ban collection and use of biometrics by non-gov entities.
A phone which authenticates me based on my face or fingerprint and provides a signed request to the terminal is far superior in privacy and security. I never see the point in moving biometric authentication beyond the user device.
Even in the event that the signing keys are compromised and are used without the biometric check you can have a chance to rotate those keys and etc.
Devices with known problems with their biometric verification could be prevented from registering a new key.
Never should a company like amazon have access to the biometric data itself.
Can they first just integrate payment through the Amazon app with Whole Foods in store purchasing. If I'm scanning a barcode in the app to get Prime discounts anyways it sure would be nice to have that also process my payment. It would also allow the use of Amazon gift cards for Whole Foods in store purchases. If I order Whole Foods same day grocery delivery or pickup through the Amazon app I can already do this so why not in store?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadYou can change your credit card. Change your bank. Change your name. And for the sheep who are so inclined, even change your underwear.
But you can't change your biometric data.
Now suppose some bad guy cuts off your hand at the wrist. They can then produce that bloody item at the POS terminal and use it to pay for goods. At this point you have just become the victim of a serious crime because you are now responsible for payment.
Changing your name does not change your credit history. Losing an illusory value you have never owned by adopting a new technology, that's not a real problem.
Then you would dispute the charge and have your own geolocation data or the store's video footage to substantiate your claim. This is a grocery store, not a diamond merchant.
If you happen to have attracted the attention of this master counterfeiter who has duplicated your palm you would simply have the option of not registering your new card with the system.
If this happens on a large scale, yes, the whole project is doomed.
If you find that someone has (somehow) managed to duplicate your palm print then you probably do not want to enroll with that option for payments in the future.
The issue is once your biometric data is compromised you have no recourse to regenerate it. Your solution is you just don't get to participate in these features anymore.
You're back in the same place you are already. If this putative palm print duplication technology becomes widely available then people will stop building technology that depends on palm prints.
As has been repeatedly pointed out, the risk lies with the merchants and the issuing banks (at least in the U.S.) for credit card payments.
EDIT: and, at least in the U.S. again, no-one is going to be able to force you to use this technology; there will always have to be an alternative mechanism because there are people with no hands, and a system that required them would be a massive ADA liability.
Like, it feels like the worst way to buy groceries.
The cases in Malaysia with the cut off thumbs to start a Mercedes make sense but for groceries the concept is outlandish.
At that point, you're just cutting off my hand for the sake of it.
They kidnap your spouse/child/parent and threaten to murder them unless you go through with the transaction. They hold a gun to your head while you transfer the contents of your bitcoin wallet to them. They beat you with a rubber hose until you give them your safe combination.
You'd probably even have an easier time proving your hand was stolen it since your hand is missing.
It's still a problem that if someone compromises your biometric data they'll have full access forever. In practice that isn't a huge problem because it's still really hard to do.
given the general attitudes towards privacy and biometric data here on HN, i honestly can't tell if people trying to pay for groceries with bloody severed limbs is a concern you legitimately have or if this is satire.
Comparing this system to, for instance a chip card reader, the palm print is significantly less secure because it uses a single factor (something you are) versus a chip which requires the customer to both have the card with the chip present for payment, and to know the PIN in order to authenticate. Or your phone for example, if someone steals your fingerprint (or even models your face), they still need to have your physical phone to unlock it. With this palm scanning tech, all you need is the palm and you can pay for anything anywhere because there's no secondary confirmation
There are numerous reports of people being locked out of their biometric accounts after an injury. If you burn yourself cooking and have a blister on your hand you may not be able to go buy first aid supplies at Whole Foods afterward. Alternatives are required.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/polit...
If you think we've faced some goofy religion-driven complaints about stuff in the past, wait until that crowd finds out Jeff Bezos wants them to buy his stuff with the Mark of the Beast (which is how they'll describe it). People will lose their minds about this. I am completely serious.
Even if the idea of the payment system itself has merit, I predict a terribly chilly cultural reception to the idea.
[0]https://biblehub.com/revelation/13-16.htm
I imagine the overlap between Whole Foods customers and this lot is sparse.
If anything, it sounds like a great opportunity for free marketing.
But don't for a second believe that the "Satan is coming for us any moment now" crowd doesn't have an awful lot of money and power. I'm not describing a tiny pocket of people who eschew physical possessions, but a rather large portion of the US.
Right? I'd shop at Satan's grocery store.
[0] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-by-evangelical...
Its confusing to me at least because it’s not like Whole Foods has direct competition for high end food stuffs in most markets I’ve seen.
I know a handful of these types people and they are more likely than average to only buy the best foods, with Whole Foods being their major retailer of choice.
Regardless, I'd challenge this assumption.
Personal source: I was raised in the Midwest and attended Southern Baptist (i.e. mainstream evangelical) churches during my upbringing. I was taught that these things are literally true many, many times over the years. I'm not trying to make fun of Christians, Midwesterners, or Southerners, or anything remotely like that. But I am saying that I have personally been told that the Biblical book of Revelations is a set of literally true predictions about the near future.
Walk into any Southern Baptist or Assemblies of God church, find the preacher, and ask them if Revelations is a story of true things that are going to happen, and they're very likely to say that yes, it is. Tell them you heard some guy on the Internet say that the Mark of the Beast is a real thing. They're likely to nod and confirm that yeah, that's what the Bible says.
I'm not saying that everyone in those and other evangelical denominations believe this. I absolutely 100% contend that a whole awful lot of people sincerely do.
https://youtu.be/ceUSZBMeREY?t=2017
And again, let me be explicitly clear: I do not believe any of this. However, a lot of people genuinely do, right now, today.
Cashier security: "Sure.... Sorry Mr. Null (NULL), you will have to work this out with amazon."
Things like this are why it's so critical to have people with diverse backgrounds around you. Otherwise you tend not to know about significant cultural differences until it's too late.
It's fun to laugh at their constant stupidity, but also perfectly safe to ignore them from a political and economic standpoint.
Incidentally, there is a lot of scholarly support for the hypothesis that, in context, the forward-looking statements in the book of Revelation (and other New Testament texts) are largely or completely about first-century events (see topics such as preterism, covenant eschatology, full preterism, etc.).
Understanding documents that were written thousands of years ago, in a cultural and linguistic milieu far different than that of western civilization, is difficult for modern westerners. People ought to study more before jumping to outlandish conclusions about the meaning of such texts.
I look forward to it. Not saying it's the best strategic move by Amazon, but day by day i grow more tired of the fallout of christians.
Yea, maybe it's just fringe christians.. but if there are reasonable people in their ranks, they're happily silent. They happily co-exist with extremists, and the affect that's having on society is frustrating to me.
If they just lived their life and didn't try to bully everyone else into alignment with their beliefs i'd be more sympathetic. But the less they get special treatment these days the more "Anti christian" they claim everyone is. As if the secular population is out there attacking them. Equality seems persecution to them.
So just purely from a business point of view, Amazon needs to evaluate how much they're willing to annoy evangelicals. It's very possible they've run the numbers and decided they're OK with this for all the reasons you state and more. I think it's also at least a little possible that it simply hadn't occurred to them that some people might not like the idea for religious reasons. If they launched their new "Zeus the Deuce" product and suddenly a few people people rose up and started writing op-eds and organizing boycotts over it, I'd expect someone to be pretty surprised. I think this might be along those lines.
Edit: There's a patent from AMZN: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...
A phone which authenticates me based on my face or fingerprint and provides a signed request to the terminal is far superior in privacy and security. I never see the point in moving biometric authentication beyond the user device.
Even in the event that the signing keys are compromised and are used without the biometric check you can have a chance to rotate those keys and etc.
Devices with known problems with their biometric verification could be prevented from registering a new key.
Never should a company like amazon have access to the biometric data itself.
Perhaps that's exactly the purpose.