Image source: Oriental IC
30 seconds fast reading
As long as you enter the shop of Xiaopeng Motors, you will be photographed?
On December 14, a fine of 100,000 yuan proved that "this is true", and the fine issued to Xiaopeng was the Shanghai Xuhui District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, because Xiaopeng purchased a supplier's store passenger flow monitoring project service, and 22 camera devices with face recognition functions were installed in Xiaopeng Automobile's stores to count the number of people entering the store and analyze the proportion of men and women, age, etc.
For this ticket, Xiaopeng Automobile expressed complete obedience and deep reflection. In addition, the face data collected and analyzed by third-party software providers has also been completely deleted.
"When you enter the door, you will be brushed face", Xiaopeng Automobile is not the first, "wearing a helmet to see the house" "The Kohler bathroom store that was named by CCTV 3·15 evening party was equipped with a face recognition camera"...
Can Xiao Peng's punishment stop the sadness of "being brushed on the face"?
01
Only two cents for a photo of a human face?
According to the penalty letter, from January to June this year, Xiaopeng Automobile's face recognition camera equipment collected and uploaded 431623 face photos, and in the 7 stores where face recognition equipment was installed, there was no consent from consumers, nor did it explicitly or inform consumers of the purpose of collection and use.
This punishment can be said to be the first fine issued for the illegal use of face recognition, according to Xiaopeng revealed to the media, the Municipal Supervision Bureau punished a large number of businesses, are customers who use third-party software.
After the Xiaopeng Automobile was punished, it quickly appeared on the hot search, and many netizens shouted to the law enforcement department that "you can go to check the sales office and shopping mall", and some netizens believe that the punishment is too light, "430,000 face photos, fined 100,000 yuan, a photo of two cents." ”
How did 100,000 yuan come about?
The penalty letter shows that it is based on the provisions of article 56, paragraph 1, item (9) of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, and article 32 of the Administrative Punishment Law of the People's Republic of China.
The "IT Times" reporter found that Article 56 of the Consumer Protection Law stipulates that business operators who infringe on consumers' personal dignity, infringe on consumers' personal freedom or infringe on consumers' right to have their personal information protected according to law shall be warned, confiscated illegal gains, and fined not less than one time but not more than ten times the illegal gains according to the circumstances, and if there are no illegal gains, they shall be fined up to 500,000 yuan.
"The amount of punishment is set in accordance with the above provisions, and the purpose of the penalty is mainly to educate and regulate the collection of faces in the market and avoid infringing on citizens' personal information." Xu Yanxuan, a lawyer at Shanghai Jingshi Law Firm, told the IT Times that administrative penalties generally consider illegal circumstances, and the number is only one aspect.
The Personal Information Protection Law, which came into effect on November 1 this year, also contains provisions on such cases. "The Personal Information Protection Law imposes heavier penalties, not only on units, but also on relevant supervisors, up to a maximum of less than 50 million yuan or less than 5 percent of the turnover of the previous year; the directly responsible supervisors and other directly responsible personnel are fined between 100,000 yuan and 1 million yuan, and it may be decided to prohibit them from holding positions such as directors and supervisors of relevant enterprises for a certain period of time." Xu Yanxuan said that the penalty was issued by the Market Supervision Administration this time, and they found problems in the process of market inspection, so they were based on the Consumer Protection Law.
02
Face recognition that was "abandoned"
Although Xiaopeng Automobile's face collection behavior has been punished by law enforcement departments, behind this, it still reflects the game between the company's operational decisions and customer information interests.
At the time of "wanton growth" of face recognition, many technology companies have launched solutions to implant face recognition technology to provide user information for shopping malls and other business places.
After the fermentation of "wearing a helmet to see the house", the IT Times reporter visited some sales offices and shopping malls in Shanghai and found many cameras with face recognition functions, and some shopping malls installed more than 200 face recognition sphere cameras.
At the March 15 evening party this year, CCTV exposed the face recognition system suppliers of Wandian Palm, Yolok, Yaliang Technology and other people, and it was learned when it was followed up by IT Times that the application involving face collection and analysis had been discontinued, and passenger flow statistics could only be carried out through the way of "counting heads".
A camera in a shopping mall, image source: IT Times
"IT Times" reporter learned when visiting some shopping malls in Shanghai that the mall staff have denied whether the camera in the mall will be face recognition, "the camera is mainly for passenger flow statistics and security monitoring, and does not record the face of the user entering the store." The staff of a large shopping mall told the IT Times reporter.
Source: IT Times
"We are now called accurate passenger flow, and the difference between the previous data is that the data of the day is cleared on the same day, not saved in the background, that is, it is impossible to identify the users who have entered the store multiple times, and can only identify the arrival of the store traffic, age range, etc." A staff member of a company in Shanghai that provides smart solutions for the retail industry told the IT Times that face recognition is technically possible, but legally not allowed, "If the user has to carry out face recognition, the agreement will state that all subsequent responsibilities are borne by the user." ”
03
The deterrent of penalties should be strengthened
With the introduction of more and more laws and regulations on the protection of personal biometric information, it means that the protection of personal information is increasingly valued.
A number of security experts have told the "IT Times" reporter that once the face is lost, it cannot be changed at will like a password, and the consequences will be more serious than the leakage of the password.
In fact, face recognition is not only used in marketing scenarios, and now, with the popularity of smart cars, cameras have also become the "standard" of cars. Judging from the attitude of most users, what they care about is not that there is more camera on the car, but that they are afraid that their privacy behavior in the process of using the car will be stolen by this camera.
In August this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Public Security successively issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Access to Intelligent and Connected Vehicle Manufacturers and Products and several provisions on the safety management of automobile data security (trial), of which the "Several Provisions on Automobile Data Security Management (Trial)" clearly stipulates that "without the separate consent of the person being collected, connected vehicles shall not transmit data containing personal information to the outside of the vehicle through networks and physical interfaces, but convert the clarity to less than 1.2 million pixels and erase the face that can identify the individual. Except for video and image data for license plate information, etc. At the same time, connected vehicles shall not transmit audio, video, images and other data collected in the cockpit of the car and the data obtained through their processing to the outside of the car through the network and physical interfaces. ”
Source: Ministry of Public Security
The use of face recognition technology for data collection and utilization, no matter what the scenario, must be based on consent, otherwise there is no legal basis.
Taking the intelligent car on-board camera as an example, when the new car is delivered, the car company must clearly inform the user of the use of the on-board camera, and the user must have the ultimate control of the camera. "Another problem is that the owner knows the purpose of the camera, but what about the person who sits in the car, if the owner uses the car to drive an online car, will the passenger's face information be collected?" Some members of the public raised doubts.
Some lawyers pointed out that at present, most of these acts are corrected through administrative law enforcement, but the determination of punishment is still relatively vague, the punishment is not strong enough, the deterrent power is obviously insufficient, and it is urgent to use multiple prongs through various channels such as administrative law enforcement and civil litigation to achieve results.
Author/IT Times reporter Pan Shaoying
Editor/Pan Shaoying Kicked Sister
Typography/Ji Jiaying
Photo: Ministry of Public Security IT Times Oriental IC Network
Source/IT Times public account vittimes