Churchix: The Face Recognition Event Attendance Desktop Application You've Been Praying For?

from the forgive-me,-for-I-have-scanned dept

Churchix may sound like yet another niche GNU/Linux distro aimed, perhaps, at those who want to free their software as well as their souls, but it turns out to be both godly and down-to-earth (found via @latentexistence):

Churchix is a face recognition event attendance desktop application. Churchix identifies event attending members in videos and photos. All you need to do is enrol high quality photos of your members into the software data base, then connect a live video USB camera or upload recorded videos or photos -- and Churchix will identify your members!

Nothing remotely creepy about your church attendance being recorded automatically, of course, since presumably notes are being kept in more ethereal spheres anyway. But if you're not convinced, the makers of Churchix, Skakash, have more secular locations where you could deploy its facial recognition system. As well as obvious ones like airports and border areas, other possible uses include in casinos, where Skakash suggests there are three classes of people you might want to track: blacklisted individuals, employees and VIPs.

That's a rather telling categorization, because it basically says it doesn't matter whether you are an unwelcome or welcome visitor, or simply there as an employee, the system is designed to keep an eye on you, all the time. That's a hint of where things might be going: a world where everyone is tracked using facial recognition in commercial and public spaces, not just the criminals. The recent walkout by privacy organizations from multi-stakeholder talks because of a failure by companies using face recognition to agree to any privacy-protective code of conduct shows that it will probably take a miracle to avoid that fate.

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Filed Under: church, face recognition
Companies: churchix

Church Site Blocked By Mobile Networks, Classified Under 'Alcohol'

from the demon-drink dept

Against a background of the UK government teetering on the brink of imposing an opt-out Web filter "for the children", here's yet another example of how automatic categorization of sites for blacklists gets it wrong, as recounted by the UK's Open Rights Group (ORG):

someone used blocked.org.uk to tell us about another church (St. Mark's in Southampton) that is blocked -- this time on [the mobile operator] Vodafone. We have confirmed that it is also blocked by Orange. The site is blocked on O2's highest blocking setting, but not on their 'default safety' service.

Using O2's very handy 'URL checker', we have established that they classify the site as 'alcohol'. It is likely that this is the category that has led to its blocking on other networks, but this is not confirmed.

So why might a church be classed alongside sinful purveyors of alcoholic beverages? ORG has a suspicion:

It is likely that the reason for this categorisation is the use of the word 'wine' on the church's website. The church is part of the 'New Wine Network of Churches'. Their website explains that this means they "have the aim of 'Equipping Churches to see Jesus' Kingdom Grow'". Their use of the word 'wine' is not related to selling or the use of alcohol.

Although it seems that the site has now been unblocked, that's only because it was "manually reviewed". As ORG points out:

It's yet another example of how internet filters make simple and costly mistakes which often result in 'over-blocking.' Our report from May this year collected more examples of this. Since then we have seen political parties, technology news websites, and more recently a number of maternity health sites all blocked by mobile networks. It can be tricky and slow to get sites removed from block lists (although mobile networks say this is improving).

That last point is important. No system is perfect, and errors will always be made. But what matters is how quickly the mistakes are corrected. Unfortunately, the evidence so far is that not only are such automated filters unreliable when it comes to evaluating sites, but the correction mechanisms are pretty awful too -- a worrying combination.

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Filed Under: church, filtering, free speech, uk
Companies: o2

Want To Play Halo 3? See You At Church!

from the master-chief-loves-you dept

Long heralded as the savior for lagging Xbox 360 sales, Halo 3 has done much to live up to the hype, reaching nearly $300 million in sales in its first week out. Some churches may have contributed to that figure since they are throwing Halo parties to encourage teens to join their ranks of parishioners. This practice is drawing the concern of many; opponents to the idea question if allying the church with a violent video game is in the church's best interests. Church organizers argue that they need to stay relevant in order to attract new churchgoers, especially young teenage boys. Perhaps the critics would be quieted if the church groups played the religious themed video games made by Left Behind Games. But, considering the awful reviews for the religious games, it is likely that nobody would show up. Bingo, anyone?

Filed Under: church, halo 3