Author: Lisa Zane

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You look a little familiar

There is a scene in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report where Tom Cruise’s character, John Anderton, walks into the Gap and is met by interactive personalized video advertisements that talk to him. Thanks to Facebook, this scene might become a common occurrence in the near future.

Regular Facebook users are familiar with the “tag suggestions” feature, which enables automatic picture tagging based on facial recognition to save you the hassle of tagging each picture individually. With the numerous changes Facebook has introduced in a short period of time, including the controversial Timeline and updated photo features, you may not have even realized that this feature has disappeared.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, Facebook removed the feature a few months ago to make the tagging tool more efficient, and the company is unsure of when it will be back up and running. What is certain, however, is that Facebook will no longer be using facial recognition software in Europe after a ruling to ban it unless regulators approve it.

I have to admit, the first time I saw Facebook’s ads match the things I was talking to my friends about online, I was freaked out. But giving companies access to your “face” seems to strike an even more personal note.

The issue at hand deals with a fine line that the social media giant has walked before: its use of personal data. A concern is that the vast amounts of facial information collected in Facebook’s colossal database could be made available to the corporate world.

Last week, Facebook announced it has hit one billion monthly active users. There are over 300 million photos uploaded each day. You can now upload up to 1,000 photos in one album.

Many people get wrapped up in the cool factor and don’t spend time reading the fine print and terms of service. Facebook’s evolution has meant that students who were users in the beginning were only connected to other students in a private network, and have since become openly connected to the rest of the world.

Although you don’t have to pay to be a user, as of last week, a limited number of U.S. residents can now pay for promoted posts. For $7, users can ensure that a post’s visibility is bumped, appearing higher on friends’ news feeds.

Last year, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt spoke about the future of the Internet and privacy at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

“There are many challenges we’re still grappling to address,” he said. “For instance, how do we make the world more open while still respecting privacy?”

It is noted in the Times’ article that Redpepper, an Atlanta-based marketing firm, is currently developing software to identify Facebook users in public, but only after their consent.

This is how the company’s website explains how it works:

“Facial recognition cameras are installed at local businesses. These cameras recognize your face when you pass by, then check you in at the location. Simultaneously, your smartphone notifies you of a customized deal based on your Like history.”

It might just take trial and error to figure out the implications of this technology in our society. What will it mean for police forces, immigration officials and advertisers? What will it mean for identity theft and fraud? Will there be regulatory bodies that “own” your face?

“The main problem with all these technologies is the fact that our Canadian law is based on the supposedly free consent of the people,” said Pierre Trudel, a law professor at the Université de Montréal who studies social media. “Since we rely on consent, it’s very hard to enforce or put limits on the use of facial recognition technologies, or any other devices that might be used in order to collect information between people and their preferences and their buying decisions.”

Trudel suggests that privacy commissioners should focus on regulating the settings within networks like Facebook.

It might be more efficient in order to make sure that these technologies are effectively used only in very limited circumstances,” he said.

Right now, the circumstances appear to be unlimited. Popular Mechanics recently published an article on weird ways people are using facial recognition software. Among them are findyourfacemate.com, an online matchmaking service that uses the software to “identify partners more likely to ignite real passion and compatibility” based on facial features, and Doggelanger, which uses “human to canine comparing software” to match rescued dogs with potential owners that look like them. What impact do you think this technology will have in the future?

Graphic by Jennifer Kwan.

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Public transetiquette

As a person who is vertically challenged, I often find myself in the armpit of society. I mean this literally, not figuratively.

Due to global warming, traffic, economy, and a variety of other reasons, more and more people have been opting to get from point A to point B using Montreal’s public transit system, currently in its 151st year of existence. Although it has been around for a long time, the number of people riding trains and buses in Montreal is greater than ever, according to the Société du Transport de Montréal. Last year, the ridership hit 404.8 million, a 4.2 per cent increase from the year prior.

In the past few months we’ve seen a lot of media attention given to the city’s public transit workers and their customer relations – but what about our own civility? It seems almost every regular public transit user has a story about etiquette.

“One time when I was standing on the bus, there was a guy next to me who was also standing,” said Chana Myschkowski, a third-year therapeutic recreation student at Concordia University. “A lady was getting off the bus, and as she got off, she dropped something on the ground. As she bent down to pick it up, the guy grabbed her butt and then just got off the bus. It was really weird.”

Alexandra Huard Nicholls, who just began her first year of human relations studies at the university, was recently riding a crowded bus when a woman boarded with a stroller. Naturally, she presumed that there was a child inside. Instead, she had to do a double take. “It was a little dog in the stroller. She was blocking the whole aisle of the bus, and everyone was looking at her like, ‘Are you serious? You really bring your dog around in a stroller?’ It was ridiculous.”

Although these specific incidences are isolated events, other riders have shared feelings about the lack of etiquette on public transit.

Not long ago, CBC News posted the results of a poll listing the top 10 public transit etiquette rules where the number one rule was “When a parent with a small child, a pregnant woman, and elderly person, or someone with a physical disability is boarding, give up your seat!” Other notable behaviours that made the list include covering your mouth when you cough or sneeze, minimizing conversational obscenities, and not sitting beside someone else if a free seat is available.

The STM has taken notice, too.

“We use public awareness campaigns to remind people that they have to be polite,” said Marianne Rouette, an STM spokesperson.  There are postings in the metro and on buses that remind people of things they can do to make transport a better experience for everyone, such as carrying a backpack in your hands, rather than on your back, which can be dangerous for other passengers, especially when metro cars and buses are full of people.

“We analyze the situation, and then we prioritize,” said Rouette. “We like to keep our awareness campaigns positive.”

This summer I was riding at the back of the 162 bus going down Monkland Avenue when an elderly woman with a walker boarded the bus. She walked halfway through the bus before a boy of no more than eight-years-old got up to offer her his seat. Maybe we should all learn from this kid and have a little bit more awareness when it comes to “public transetiquette.”

Graphic by Jennifer Kwan.

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Things that affected us this summer

I did not see the shooter. I did not see a bullet. I did not see any blood. I did not know the loud sounds I heard were gunshots. I saw the chaos. I was alone. I did not know what was happening. I was scared.

I had just finished eating chicken pot pie with my parents at the Canadian Pie Company and looking for a monster costume for my cousin’s fifth birthday present. They dropped me off at the Eaton Centre so I could pick up a pair of shoes I had tried on earlier that day. They went to look at apartments and agreed to pick me up as soon as I was finished. Just before 6 p.m., I called and told them I was done. My mom asked if I wouldn’t mind hanging around the mall a little while longer—they had one more apartment they wanted to see.

Shortly after this conversation, I found myself on the second floor, immediately above the Urban Eatery. I walked south towards Queen Street and made my way down the escalator directly in the middle of the mall, on route to Shoppers Drug Mart to kill some time. On my descent, I heard popping noises, and remember thinking that they sounded like balloons bursting.

The next few moments were chaos. I saw a crowd of people whip around from the backside of the escalator I was riding and start to run up as quickly as they could. I remember the faces. The panic I felt prompted me not to think about why they wore those expressions, but only to run. I sprinted up the “down” escalator as quickly as I could, and ran into the closest store— Guess Accessories.

In hindsight, this was not the best decision, since a child playing hide and go seek would know not to choose to hide in an open-concept white store, surrounded only by glass.

A group of about ten of us were ushered by a woman who worked at the store into the employee room at the back. The woman came in, and told us we were on lockdown— the store had received a message that there was a shooter in the mall. Those were the only details we received. I hid behind a couch, beside a mother and her daughter.

I don’t know how long we were in the back room. It was a precarious situation to be in. I was unsure of how the situation would unfold. I sent a brief text message to my mom at 6:33 p.m. Someone is shooting in the mall…I’m safe and in the back of a store.

The store was notified to open its doors and we were told that we could leave. While we were huddled in the room, a woman who worked at the store told me that that was the second time they were notified to go on lockdown. Something had happened a few moments earlier and they had been notified to close the store, but she told me they had received a message telling them everything was fine and to reopen. After hearing this, I chose not to leave the store immediately. I did not want to go back into the mall if it wasn’t safe. It was a bizarre feeling—I knew I had to go back if I wanted to get out.

When I left the employee room, a woman stood at the front of the store and yelled at me to run as fast as I could towards the nearest exit. It was only then that I realized how disoriented I had been running up the escalator. I could have hung a right instead of going into the store and been safe and out on Yonge Street in a few seconds.

I ran out as fast as I could before the building was locked down. I still had no idea what had just happened but what I did know was that I wanted to get the hell away. I ran down Yonge Street until I was away from the mall. I called my parents, who had not heard from me since the text message—it had been about half-an- hour. They came to pick me up, and on the drive home told me that they wanted to call me right after the text message was sent, but decided not to in case my phone rang and the shooter found me where I was hiding.

It is one month later and I don’t know how to explain what I am feeling except rattled. It seems so ludicrous to me that so many of us, right at the epicenter of the shooting, only found out what happened inside the mall days after the fact and are continuing to be filled in on the details weeks later.

There are thousands of perspectives and so many details that people will carry with them forever. It did not feel real until I read and saw news reports about what had happened. I left Toronto the next day, and started my first day of journalism school here at Concordia the day after that. It felt both unsettling and liberating for me to leave the city immediately after the shooting.

Two men were killed as a result of the shooting and six were injured in the gunfire. Of the fatally wounded, one was killed instantly and one remained in critical condition until June 11, when he died as a result of his injuries. One of the surviving victims, a 13-year-old boy, was shot in the head while in the food court with his mother and older sister. He was released from hospital a week later, wearing a custom helmet to protect the part of his skull that was removed to reduce brain swelling.

The motive behind the shooting was believed to have been a personal dispute between the shooter and the two men who died—all members of the same gang. The alleged shooter currently faces two first-degree murder charges and six counts of attempted murder.

I did not know the young boy who was shot in the head, the two men who died, or any of the other victims, but feel connected in some eerie way to the people who just happened to be inside the mall on that Saturday afternoon.

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