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Comment by mynameisvlad | Hacker News Reader

> Folks are pretty willing to give up their fingerprint for access to Disney parks.

Wow, I hadn't heard about this and was genuinely surprised it's actually a thing. Fortunately, apparently it's opt-out:

> Are all guests required to use Ticket Tag?

> If you don't want to use Ticket Tag, you can simply carry and show a photo ID that matches the name identified with your ticket.

From their Privacy Policy: https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/en_CA/faq/my-disney-experi...

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They also quite explicitly state it does not store the actual fingerprint, which might be (is? logic follows) notable. It 'converts to a numerical value' instead. That can't just be hashing (how do you check that when validating later? images won't be exact) but instead would be some form of parsing to a subset of data which is 'unique enough' for their purposes. Their purpose is something like identification across current visitors with statistical significance, preventing ticket sharing. I'd expect that that has the side effect of the data NOT being unique enough for other purposes where the ticket isn't present.

I suspect this was inevitable given Disney's obsession with removing friction. It seems like they at least take the implications fairly seriously, which is nice to see.

> I suspect this was inevitable given Disney's obsession with removing friction.

Yeah, I would say it's this 100%. Disney wants people to leave their wallets at their hotel. The RFID band they give you can be used for everything from entering your hotel room to getting into the park and your rides (including Fastpass) to even paying for things if you link a credit card.

Obviously, it's easy to take the band off and give it to someone else, so they needed some other way to check if you're the person who originally used the ticket. Hashes based on fingerprints are unique enough to be the replacement to traditional IDs.

Which is about as reassuring as saying "we don't store your criminal record, just the bytes that make it up".

What you want to do with fingerprints is compare them to fingerprints found. Hashes let you do that. THAT's what we want to prevent from happening in order to have privacy.

Disney is one of the few companies I'd sorta-kinda trust with this sort of thing, given their extraordinary attention to detail and laser focus on long-term customer happiness with everything park-related and the attention to data security that would also imply.

But that's not who you're trusting. The issue now is that any "business record" is available to be requested by law enforcement without a warrant. The case law around third party doctrine is a huge friction point in establishing corporate trust.

It's useful to remember the words of the prescient Privacy Protection Study Commission, from 1977: "The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate recordkeeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable."

They require a photo ID to visit their parks? This immediately would drop them from the places I wish to visit.

Not if you give them your fingerprint instead! :)

It's basically to stop reselling/re-using multi-day, annual passes, etc.

I was surprised to learn Disney is doing this, too. It almost seems like a "Get their biometrics while they're young" type of indoctrination program.

I also don't think 3 years will pass until their whole fingerprint database will be hacked (in a way we'd find out about, it may have already been hacked).

It just seems like both a terrible as well as a completely unnecessary idea.

Please spend the time to read the link before spreading FUD.

“In order to use Ticket Tag, you simply place your finger on a reader. The system, which utilizes the technology of biometrics, takes an image of your finger, converts the image into a unique numerical value and immediately discards the image. The numerical value is recalled when you use Ticket Tag with the same ticket to re-enter or visit another Park. Ticket Tag does not store fingerprints.”

Unless it fails. Then the teenager operating it needs to call over a manager, who looks up your previous park entrances on an iPad to make sure it is the same person. So, they've got your fingerprint and video of your face.

(Personal experience)

So they store it in a way that they can compare any fingerprint they find/take an image of to your fingerprint ...

That's SO reassuring.

So nothing prevents them from taking the packages of their fries stand, get fingerprint images from them, figure out who it is, and send you an offer for 50% off the weight loss holiday package ?

What exactly does privacy for fingerprints imply, except that people are not able to do exactly that ? And I don't mean that they won't. Privacy means they CAN'T. Not even if the next Disney CEO is Vladimir Putin.

> So nothing prevents them from taking the packages of their fries stand, get fingerprint images from them, figure out who it is, and send you an offer for 50% off the weight loss holiday package ?

This is what gets me about most arguments around privacy maximal-ism the end result especially for a company like Disney is ridiculously circuitous and could be easily achieved with much lower costs. Why in the world would they go through all that trouble when everyone is either on camera or paying with credit card/the Disney wristband.

You could commit any number of criminal acts in a more efficient manner, it does not make them any less criminal.

But it does mean that the less efficient manner will never be done, which was the parent comment's entire point.

Sure, it may be hypothetically possible. But is it realistically going to happen? Of course not.

   BigInt picToNumber(pic){
     BigInt x = 0;
     for (int r=0;r<pic.w;r++)
       for (int c=0;c<pic.h;c++)
         x = (x*265)+pic.pixel(r,c);

     return x;
   }

Yup...converts to number.. Unless they specify HOW, that means nothing. Anything is a number to a computer.

Yeah, one terabyte is simply an absolutely gigantic octal value, with a trillion place settings.

Perfect for storing a quantity of high resolution “unique numbers” which you might need to recall at some point, when you want to match them up with other oddly similar (but not precisely equal) high resolution unique numbers.

I hear that you can convert images to “unique numbers” using a technique known as “lossless compression” but that stuff’s all way above my pay grade.

So it's okay to have a fingerprint reader as long as you claim to do something to the effect of hashing the fingerprint?

That makes an outstanding difference, thank you for emphasizing that.

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