"Stores sharing biometric face data"

Image and text from The Japan News, 4/6/14.

Automatically recorded images by security cameras of shoppers’ faces have been shared among 115 supermarkets and convenience stores in the Tokyo metropolitan and another area as an antishoplifting measure, without customers’ knowledge, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

Although the images are used mainly to prevent shoplifting, experts and industry bodies say it is necessary to make clear rules because providing people’s facial data to a third party could constitute an invasion of privacy.

The facial data in question was shared by 115 stores of 50 separate operators that have installed a shoplifting prevention system that a Nagoya-based software development company began marketing in October last year. The stores include major convenience stores operated by individuals under franchise contracts.

At these shops, security cameras film all customers’ faces. If a person shoplifts or makes an unreasonable complaint at one of the stores, security camera footage of the person is processed into facial data with the recognition system and classified into categories such as “shoplifter” and “complainer.”

They are then sent to the software firm’s server to be recorded. The facial images themselves cannot be browsed from other stores.

Once registered on the digital blacklist, however, a warning is issued to the staff of other stores—in a way only the staff can notice—when the face recognition system installed at these stores detects the blacklisted person visiting their stores.

At these stores, stickers are placed within the stores to inform customers that “face recognition security cameras are installed.” But customers are not informed that the stores are sharing the facial data.

Facial recognition—done through computer analysis of a person’s face—is a type of biometric recognition system used to confirm identity, age or sex, along with other specifics of individuals. Unlike fingerprints or iris recognition systems, it can collect information on individuals’ facial data when the subjects pass by security cameras. Facial recognition systems are known to identify a specific person with an accuracy rate of at least 99.9% and are used to identify terrorists at such places as airports.

Under the Personal Information Protection Law, facial images filmed by security cameras are considered personal information. The law allows such images to be filmed when they are used for crime prevention, but sharing the facial data could be a violation of the law that bans providing personal information to third party without the person’s consent.

Face data sharing could be a privacy invasion if the data is used for personal identification by relating it to his or her criminal records or buying history, for example.

Commenting on the facial data sharing, lawyer Yoichiro Itakura, an expert of personal information protection, said the data could be used in a way disadvantageous to customers as “stores can arbitrarily register specific shoppers as suspicious people, and they may then suffer unjust treatment at stores they have never visited before.”

Itakura also pointed out, “Even when someone is erroneously registered [as a suspicious person], he or she won’t be given an opportunity to complain about the mistake.”

An official of the Nagoya software development firm said: “The system has no problems. We just responded to the needs of the stores, which is their need to prevent shoplifting.”

Source: http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001187654

Facial Recognition Technology and Privacy Issues

Two articles from The Yomiuri Shimbun Online (November 29, 2012):

Face-recognition cameras pose privacy problem / High-tech 'peepers' operating at dozens of Tokyo locations silently glean age and gender of passersby

Twenty-nine cameras with face-recognition functions have been snapping photos of unwitting passersby at commercial facilities and high-rise condominiums in the Tokyo metropolitan area without notifying the public, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

The small cameras, which are mounted on advertisement displays, automatically take pictures of potential customers and determine their age and sex.

Companies that set the cameras up say the technology poses no problem because individuals remain anonymous, but legal experts say rules are needed to clarify use of the technology.

The face-recognition function identifies the sex and age of individuals who enter a camera's line of sight. Computers connected to the cameras automatically perform the identification.

The technology is used for such purposes as recording the arrival of departure of company employees and identifying personal computer users.

According to NEC Corp., which began developing such cameras in the 1980s, they had an initial accurate rate of 20 percent, but today the rate is about 99.7 percent.

One such camera is in operation in Lalaport Toyosu, a large commercial complex in Koto Ward, Tokyo. The unassuming "eye" is mounted on a two-meter-high display showing information about stores in the facility.

Though the camera is barely noticeable from its external appearance, it quietly snapped pictures of customers, its data being fed into software that determines what demographics are looking at what types of ads.

According to the Mitsui Fudosan group, which manages LaLaport facilities, 10 such cameras were introduced to the shopping complex in November 2009, and eight have been in operation in LaLaport Shin Misato in Saitama Prefecture since March 2010.

However, none of these displays notified people that cameras were in operation or stated the purpose.

According to a company that developed the camera-rigged displays, the software determines people's ages and gender based on the images and categorizes them into 10 groups, such as "boy under 10" and "teenage girl."

Though the cameras do not store the images, the valuable marketing data gleaned from them is sent to operators of LaLaport facilities and advertisers every month.

The cameras at Lalaport Toyosu generate data for 10,000 to 20,000 people a week.

The system development company operates displays with the same type of cameras at 10 computer shops in Tokyo's Akihabara district, as well as a high-rise condominium in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, but said customers and residents are not informed that the cameras are in operation.

Supermarket chain operator Seiyu GK had used six such displays at two of its stores in Kita Ward, Tokyo, and Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, since June last year but stopped using them the following August.

A guideline under the Protection of Personal Information Law stipulates that camera images identifying individuals constitute personal information.

The law stipulates that operators who use such a camera to obtain such information without announcing the purpose, and disobey a correction order from the authorities, could face up to six months in prison or a maximum 300,000 yen fine.

The system development company concerned and Mitsui Fudosan said that as the cameras do not save the pictures themselves, but rather convert them into gender and age data, privacy is not being violated.

A Seiyu official said, "The data does not constitute personal information, so there's no problem."

Hisamichi Okamura, a lawyer who is familiar with the law agreed, saying, "If the data remained anonymous, they could not be considered personal information."

However, he added, "If [the cameras] are used for crime prevention that's one thing. But many people wouldn't agree with their commercial use. Customers and passersby should be clearly told their pictures are being taken."

Masao Horibe, professor emeritus of Hitotsubashi University and a privacy issues expert, said it isn't the first time privacy issues have been raised over face-recognition technology in the country, but that rules had yet to be compiled because no ministry or agency has taken charge of privacy matters.

"A third-party organization specializing in privacy issues should be established and rules should be made quickly," Horibe said.

Link: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T121128004400.htm


Functions useful for marketing, but laws lag behind

Though face-recognition functions have been used widely in various fields, rules on use of the technology have yet to be established.

East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) has been operating automatic vending machines with it since August 2010. Currently there are about 440 such machines, which determine the age and gender of people who stand in front of them and display recommended products.

For example, if a customer is recognized as a man in his 30s, the machine will recommend a nutritious drink. If a customer is recognized as a woman in her 20s, the machine will suggest jasmine tea.

Data generated by the machines are stored and analyzed for deciding product lineups.

Initially, a firm affiliated with JR East that operates the vending machines displayed a notice that the machines were using face-recognition technology. However, the notices were removed in November last year as the company judged the fact to be widely known.

In other countries, there have been moves toward establishing rules on the use of the technology.

In the United States, for instance, the Federal Trade Commission announced late last month a guideline that stipulated if cameras are used to collect age and gender data in shopping complexes and supermarkets, the purpose of collecting the information and details about the type of information should be clearly explained to customers.

Link: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T121128004567.htm

"Shooting Culture" Project - Ethics of Visual Anthropology in Japan

It's been a while since I have posted on the ethics project, but rest assured it is ongoing. I have received many positive comments about previous posts and I hope to get more feedback when I present this project at the upcoming Anthropology of Japan in Japan Spring Workshop on April 25-26. For the purposes of this presentation I have named this named this project "Shooting Culture."

Presentation title and abstract:

Shooting Culture: Proposed Guidelines for Students of the Visual Anthropology of Japan

As part of the Visual Anthropology of Japan course I teach, I send my students out to photograph "Japanese culture." Students are to take their own original photographs to illustrate a weekly theme and post photos along with text on an internet blog. While there has never been a problem with the assignment, students have expressed concern about taking photographs in public. Aren't all shots taken in public fair game? Do we need to ask permission? Do we need a written consent form? Can we snipe photos from afar with our telephoto lens? Can we blur out the faces of individuals we shoot to protect their privacy? In this paper I propose a set of guidelines for students of visual anthropology engaged in photographing Japan, not as a prime directive but rather as a starting point for dialogue and development. Issues of concern brought up in this project include privacy and portrait rights; academic codes of ethics and conduct and photo posting guidelines; regulations pertaining to terms of service of internet blogging and photo/video posting services; information about Fair Use and Creative Commons; and laws in Japan pertaining to photographing in public, privacy and defamation. In this AJJ presentation I wish to solicit the advice and comments of anthropologists who have experience with visual projects in Japan. For more information on this project, see http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/.


In addition there have been some interesting developments relating to this project in both legal and research areas. First the good news:

"Japan may adopt so-called 'fair use' in secondary use of copyrighted work"

Story from Breitbart.com, 3/24/09.

The Cultural Affairs Agency on Wednesday asked its advisory body to study a proposal for Japan to adopt the so-called "fair use" principle, which allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring the right holder's permission for the promotion of secondary use of such material, agency officials said.

The Cultural Council, an advisory body to the agency director general, plans to work out views on the proposal by the end of fiscal 2009, which the agency wants to lead to the revision of the copyright law, the officials said.

The government is also expected to propose an early introduction of the principle in an intellectual property strategy it plans to formulate around June.

At present, the copyright law bans in principle the reproduction of copyrighted material without the right owner's permission. This means that even posting a picture of an anime character taken at an amusement park on an Internet blog, for example, is technically prohibited.

The latest move is in response to a call from the government's intellectual property strategy headquarters for relaxing such regulations in line with the spread of the Internet.

The "fair use" principle, which originated in the United States, would allow reproduction of copyrighted material such as photos and writing work without seeking the author's permission as long as the secondary use does not harm the author's interests.

Under the principle, people can judge on their own whether a secondary use of certain copyrighted material is illegal or not based on a set of standards being introduced to measure possible negative effects of such use on the right-holder's market.

Among these standards will be whether secondary use is for commercial purposes and whether such use will lead to the spread of pirated versions of the original work, the officials said.


For every one step forward there is at least one step backward.

"TBS ordered to pay Y1.2 million for invading man's privacy"

Story from Japan Today, 4/15/09.

The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday ordered Tokyo Broadcasting System to pay a man 1.2 million yen in compensation for invading his privacy by airing images of him during live TV coverage of a homicide scene in Tokyo two years ago. The court ruled that broadcasting images of the plaintiff, who drives a garbage collection truck, without his permission constituted an invasion of privacy and violated his portrait rights.

Presiding Judge Noriaki Sudo said in holding TBS liable for compensation, ‘‘The production staff who gave orders to the camera crew and edited the footage were negligent.’’ The court said that children teased the plaintiff’s son at school, saying his father had carried the victim’s body, and the boy was forced to change schools.

According to the ruling, in January 2007 TBS broadcast the face of the plaintiff who was collecting garbage at the murder site in Shibuya Ward where a man was murdered and dismembered by his wife, as well as the plaintiff’s exchange with a reporter, in its morning program hosted by popular MC Monta Mino.

The plaintiff had sought a total of 11 million yen in compensation from the TV station, Mino and other concerned parties. But the court ruled Mino was not responsible because he had no authority over the news gathering activities at the scene.


As if anticipating the ruling above in the current culture of extreme paranoid privacy, the Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (Japan Newspapers Publishers and Editors Association) recently met with government officials to encourage changes in the current Personal Information Protection Law.

"NSK Seeks Prompt Revision of Personal Information Protection Law"

Story from NSK News Bulletin Online, Number 90, April 2009.

The NSK Editorial Affairs Committee, in a hearing held by the Cabinet Office on March 27, demanded that the Personal Information Protection Law be promptly revised to eliminate abuse of the law and the deliberate concealment of information under the cloak of its terms.

The controversial law took effect in April 2005, setting rules on the use of personal information possessed by private businesses. In fear of excessive secrecy due to the law and the deliberate concealment of information by public institutions, NSK has publicly called several times for the law to be changed.

On March 27, Toyokazu Kondo, of the NSK Editorial Affairs Committee study group on human rights and personal information, attended a hearing held by the personal information protection committee of the Cabinet Office’s Social Policy Council. The committee is in the process of studying the implementation of the law.

In a verbal presentation and written submission made at the hearing, Kondo warned that there is now a conspicuous tendency at all levels of society toward refusing to release information on the pretext of the personal information protection law. Specifically, he referred to (1) a tendency of public institutions to use the law to justify concealing information; (2) growing refusals to grant media access to information on the grounds of personal information protection; and (3) a steadily declining awareness of the importance of the common sharing of personal information by society.

Kondo submitted to the hearing a brief report on a fact-finding survey conducted by the NSK Editorial Affairs Committee. The report said a survey of 58 NSK member media companies looked into adverse repercussions from the law’s application. The report cited numerous cases in which hospitals refused to release the identities and/or profiles of persons harmed as a result of criminal offenses or accidents, as well as cases in which university authorities refused to respond to media inquiries regarding the educational backgrounds of candidates running for public offices. Kondo told the hearing that these are typical cases of the law’s negative effects in which information that should be shared by society is not being made available.

Kondo emphasized NSK’s stand that a full-fledged review of the existing law is needed to implement fundamental solutions to the problems. “We should specifically limit the sphere of the law’s application and incorporate into the law specific calls to respect the social usefulness of personal information, in particular, to respect the use of personal information for the public good of serving the people’s right to know,” he stated.

Specifically, he proposed that a clause be added to Article 1 (the purpose of the law) and to Article 3 (the law’s basic objectives) calling for particular consideration to be made with respect to the usefulness of personal information in activities such as news reporting, which serves the public good and public interest. In addition, he proposed that the transfer to media organizations of personal information by businesses possessing such information be established as an approved exception to regulations under the law’s Article 16 (regulations on the provision of personal data to a third party) and Article 23 (exceptions).

Kondo also called for the inclusion of such a clause in a related law covering the protection of personal information by administrative organizations. He said that the Information Disclosure Law, enacted in 2001 to regulate public disclosure of information held by administrative organizations, and local government rules on information disclosure should be reviewed to take into account NSK’s insistence on these issues as well. He ended his presentation with a call for the committee to open full-scale deliberations toward a prompt and fundamental revision of Japan’s entire system for personal information protection.


In the midst of all this confusion regarding privacy and portrait rights, the North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) Image Use Protocol Task Force has published an extremely valuable web page.

IMAGE USE PROTOCOL GUIDE. Using Images from Japan for your publication. You can find out what to do here.

Link: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ncc/imageuse/index.html

From their Introduction:

This web site is designed to give basic guidance to North American Japanese studies scholars who seek permissions for the use of Japanese images particularly in scholarly publications. By clicking the links below, you will access information that may smooth the process of obtaining the necessary permission to use images from those who hold image rights. We have included links to Japanese and American web sites that provide guidelines to American copyright practices governing the use of Japanese images in a range of circumstances from publications to presentations. Sometimes figuring out exactly which person or organization holds the rights to an image is tricky. We have provided suggestions for who might be the likely rights holder in a range of image types and uses. We also offer templates of request letters and permission applications modeled after those used by a number of Japanese institutions. They are bilingual (Japanese and English) in order to meet the needs of North American publishers and Japanese right holders. You may freely adapt these to your own needs when requesting permission for image use. We also offer a few suggestions about how you might speed the movement of your permission request through a Japanese organization.

The Right's Holders section discusses copyright holders, owners of objects, image owners and subjects in photographs. For the latter they state:

If a person is in the photograph, it is necessary for you to obtain the permission of the photographed person, or the successor or assignee of such rights, to avoid an infringement of the right of likeness or privacy under the privacy laws and/or right of likeness.

The Permission Request Templates (in English and Japanese) are especially valuable.

There are lots of useful links; of special interest for this project is the link to Japanese Copyright Laws (in English).

Link to Copyright Law of Japan:
http://www.cric.or.jp/cric_e/clj/index.html

NCC is mostly interested in publishing images in books and journals; I am not sure if they are considering internet blog projects like this one. I will be checking out NCC and the Japanese copyright laws in greater detail before my presentation. Stay tuned for more updates.