(Headline article below) On a lot of websites you’re required to go through the bot check, which looks like it’s going to be the way they restrict you from accessing much of the internet, to later be combined with digital ID. For example, looking up an article for this post I have to enable and go through a Cloudflare bot check. And the box with red and green is uMatrix that allows you to control what elements and sites are loaded in relation to the site you’re trying to visit.
But interestingly Google just talks about the video not being saved or connected to your identification, but nothing about the handpoints or digital fingerprint so to speak. And I found this paper below from 2013 about how hand videos could be used for identification and as a password using low quality video cameras. My guess is they’re looking to tie together everything biometric, face, iris, gate, hand gestures, fingerprints… And why so many ID and age verification schemes want a facial video including the federal login my state utilizes. And Mexico is forcing iris and facial scans on cellular users, so we’re looking to see an amalgamation of biometric information becoming the basis for your digital ID. And this is being coordinated around the world, a sign of the coming mark of the beast system. I’m guessing at some point in the tribulation destruction, things progress to actual marks (QR codes or some derivation?) on the skin from biometric digital IDs. The fingerprint reader on my phone is handy, and they’re not very good as I have to redo them every so often, so that hash isn’t really a problem, and for weapon permit and security license in the past, I’ve been fingerprinted and in the national database anyway… But it’s a no to me ever jumping through this hoop for Google, and any site that does this isn’t one I want to visit anyway. I see a day when a lot of information worth looking up goes to the darknet.
https://reclaimthenet.org/googles-new-recaptcha-wants-your-camera-access-and-21-points-of-your-hand
The same company that monetizes everything you do online would like to switch on your camera.
By Ken Macon
Google wants a look at your hands before it lets you through. The company’s newest reCAPTCHA check, rolling out now as a test, asks you to switch on your camera and wave at it so an algorithm can decide whether you’re a human or a bot.
That wave is less casual than it looks. The system records a short video of your hand and pulls 21 hand-landmark coordinates from it, mapping your finger joints, your palm geometry, and the way you move in real time.
Google describes the purpose as liveness detection, a way for websites to fend off automated account creation, credential-stuffing, and other fraud. But this is still a biometric scan, collected so you can prove you’re a person and still involves turning on your cameras for Google.
Google has lined up the promises you would expect. The company says the footage is deleted once verification finishes, no audio is recorded, and the video is never tied to your identity. Its documentation adds that nothing goes to third parties and the data serves security alone, then points to the Google Privacy Policy for how everything is used and stored, a policy elastic enough to cover almost anything.
For now the feature seems optional. People who cannot perform the gestures still get the older puzzles, with Google saying reCAPTCHA “continues to provide visual and audio challenges” while it develops alternatives.
However, we all know that optional today is rarely optional forever and the older challenges survive partly because the gesture check is still being tested.
The reassurances rest on trust and Google has spent years giving people reasons to hold it back. This is a company whose business runs on gathering and monetizing personal data, now asking to switch on your camera and read your hand.