Harley Lorenzo Geiger is an employee advisor to the Center for Democracy and Technology.
In the 2002 film Minority Report, a video billboard scans the avatar of a passing consumer and advertises them in their name.
That was science fiction at the time, but today's marketers are creating digital logos to display targeted ads based on the information they extract from checking a single face profile.
From Times Square to St in New York, these smart signs have sprung up in commercial and public places.
Shopping centers in the Louis area.
They are a powerful innovation in the advertising space, but they have caused compelling privacy issues --
Before the digital signal that monitors our behavior becomes the new normal, the problem that should be solved now.
The most common name for this type of media is digital signage.
Most digital signage is flat.
Screen TV that plays ads continuously at airports, gas stations and other places that marketers think can attract your attention.
However, it is difficult for marketers to determine exactly who sees the display unit, which makes it more difficult to measure ratings and target ads on a specific audience.
Industry Solutions?
Hidden face recognition camera.
The micro-camera can estimate the age, race and gender of the person passing by and can track the time a given person is watching the display.
The digital logo can then play ads specifically for anyone who happens to be watching.
Digital signage cameras have attracted tens of millions of people.
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The driver system is the most common, and the industry also uses mobile phones and radio frequency identification (RFID)
For similar purposes
For example, some companies have embedded RFID chips in customer loyalty cards.
The digital kiosk located in the store can read the information on the card from a distance, and then display ads or print coupons based on the cardholder's shopping history.
Facial recognition, RFID and mobile phone tracking are powerful tools to protect the privacy of consumers and should be matched with business practices.
All of these technologies have the ability to identify individuals and collect personal data about them, although it is unclear to what extent the digital signage industry has used this capability.
That is the problem, in fact.
It is commendable that some companies using these tools have issued privacy policies saying they do not retain consumer information.
However, other big companies that use these tools are completely silent about how they process the information they collect by tracking consumers.
Similarly, although the digital signage industry association promotes the potential of tracking technology to increase profits in the industry, no Association currently recommends any privacy protection measures.
In addition, a representative of the digital signage company declined to identify the location of these smart signs and publicly stated that they did not want people to know which signs were looking at them. Such anti-
For an industry that wants to profit from monitoring, consumer secrecy is a dangerous precedent.
This must change.
The first step is to develop and publish a privacy policy for digital signage, specifying what information they collect, who they collect and what information they use.
Digital signage companies and industry associations should openly adopt comprehensive guidelines that explicitly prohibit the retention of consumer personal information and undertake to provide notification to consumers when the audience measures the operation of the equipment.
However, the company's privacy policy may change at any time.
Ultimately, basic privacy legislation must be put in place so that consumer protection laws can catch up with modern technology.
Such legislation should include a ban on the use of individuals-
Identifiable biological data (
Facial features, etc)
Used for commercial purposes without the informed consent of individual consumers.
Some in the industry may think that it is too early to protect privacy, as most digital signs do not retain the image or identification data of the individual.
However, it is naive to expect this to always be the norm when mining consumer data is so profitable.
The marketing business is thriving by providing detailed audience information for tailored advertising.
In fact, the industry has acknowledged that audience portraits are key to its future success.
Once digital signage becomes more cost-effective, there will be greater efforts to identify individuals.
Now is the time for privacy protection for digital signage, as these audience measurement technologies are still somewhat new.
After companies invest heavily in systems and intrusive marketing and cannot stop, it is now more difficult to establish privacy protection than in the future.
And the increase in espionagefor-
In the era of digital marketing, profits are inevitable. if this novel new advertising media becomes another mass monitoring system with poor data management practice, the digital signage industry will cause serious harm to the public.
Consumers and lawmakers need to speak out now because common standards for digital signage privacy are out of date.
Harley Lorenzo Gert reports to CBSNews.