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posted by janrinok on Friday June 05 2015, @11:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-you-see-it dept.

Moscow's Don Giulio Salumeria promises "small islands of warm and sunny Italy," offering authentic Italian prosciutto, ricotta, mozzarella and tiramisu for sale in the cold lands of Russia.

Fat lot of good any of it will do Muscovites, given that Russia has banned food imports from the European Union and the US. It's not that Don Giulio can't figure out how to import it, but the shop sure can't advertise those delicious imported foods.

So what's a well-stocked salumeria to do? Pay an ad company to rig billboards with facial recognition that's been tweaked to spot the official symbols and logos on the uniforms worn by Russian police, that's what.

As Adweek reports, an ad agency called The 23 created an outdoor ad that could apparently spot police uniforms. As police approached the ad, as you can see in this YouTube video, the billboard would switch from advertising a nice, fat wedge of Don Giulio Salumeria's imported cheese, rolling over instead to an ad for a nice, completely non-contraband Matryoshka doll shop.

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/06/01/russian-billboard-advertising-contraband-hides-when-it-recognises-cops/

[Also Covered By]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/06/smart_billboard.html


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  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Friday June 05 2015, @11:44PM

    by looorg (578) on Friday June 05 2015, @11:44PM (#192719)

    Perhaps they could tweak this for DEFCON if they still play spot the fed. That is if it's not a stunt or fake of some kind.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:31AM

    by edIII (791) on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:31AM (#192725)

    Possibly not faked. I remember some dude's AI squirrel-shooting turret. All he did was program it recognize some shapes, which would seem to be no different than recognizing shapes associated with law enforcement. The turret was able to differentiate between birds and squirrels too against the background of the forest, which implies to me it could recognize the shapes of badges fairly easily. False positives would be rare since impersonating a police officer is pretty much illegal everywhere, and would negligibly affect to the total effective audience anyways.

    Truthfully, it's probably more than likely possible, just unlikely to have the range and processing power to make it economically viable.

    THAT, and this is definitely a one-trick pony anyways. The cops will just have an unmarked vehicle patrol the streets and take pictures, or mandate inspection of the billboards. I know in the US at least, WRT more than one business model, have ruled that the ultimate beneficiary (the company or product being advertised) is held accountable during marketing. This was to close the loop hole of having foreign companies doing the marketing (Philippine call centers) to remain out of jurisdiction and beyond the rules, thus eliminating those risks for US businesses ultimately selling the product. I can easily see Putin saying that the business that did the advertisement must provide an executive to go out hunting with him. As the hunted ;)

    So even if not faked, it's just a stunt ultimately....

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:58AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:58AM (#192731)

      impersonating a police officer is pretty much illegal everywhere

      Are sexy cop strippers denied work in your jurisdiction?

      • (Score: 2) by DECbot on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:13AM

        by DECbot (832) on Saturday June 06 2015, @02:13AM (#192758) Journal

        Only in public.

        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
    • (Score: 2) by soylentsandor on Saturday June 06 2015, @07:06AM

      by soylentsandor (309) on Saturday June 06 2015, @07:06AM (#192814)

      Not necessarily indeed.

      Saw this a couple years ago: a cat door [hackaday.com] that uses what they describe as facial recognition to decide whether or not to unlock. This way, the cat can't bring dead animals in.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @11:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2015, @11:38AM (#192852)

      I know in the US at least, WRT more than one business model, have ruled that the ultimate beneficiary (the company or product being advertised) is held accountable during marketing. This was to close the loop hole of having foreign companies doing the marketing (Philippine call centers) to remain out of jurisdiction and beyond the rules, thus eliminating those risks for US businesses ultimately selling the product.

      Ah, so you could set up some robo-spamming thing overseas to make your competitor look bad?