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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: 3, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:24AM

    by gallondr00nk (392) on Saturday June 06 2015, @12:24AM (#192724)

    Then, feeling pleased with himself, does an interview for the news, which then gets plastered it over the entire Internet.

    Good job, Don Giulio Salumeria. The CIA would be proud of that kind of subterfuge.

    More likely, the whole thing has been done for publicity.

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