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Where's the line that separates generic image recognition from facial recognition? Forget corporations for a moment and think about your own rights as a progra

Where's the line that separates generic image recognition from facial recognition? Forget corporations for a moment and think about your own rights as a programmer. I want to tinker with image-similarity scores by downloading random images from the internet and comparing with a photo I just took in a public place. Oops, my photo just so happened to have a stranger's face that matches a photo in my database and that filename contains the person's name. Should that be illegal? Consider the effects of a legal requirement to have an "opt-in" for facial recognition software. That was what the "consumer advocates" thought should be a minimum standard. Large corporations with trusted brands might be able to run such an effort, but any startup certainly could not. Regulating what software I can write is a slippery slope. Compare facial recognition with encryption. If there's regulation for recognition software, then regulation for encryption will be coming right after. The worst-case scenario in my mind is if the federal government has a monopoly on any kind of software. Our best defense against a government/corporate monopoly on surveillance is not to ban it, but to democratize it.

PostOnce 11y ago
What you can do in your own time is one thing, what you can do commercially is another. Encryption is something you do by yourself or with another consenting party, facial recognition is something you do to someone else without their permission and possibly use for nefarious purposes. There's nothing wrong with outlawing certain activities from the commercial sphere, or any sphere. It's not an assault on your freedom, its protection of my privacy? It's illegal to stalk and harass people in person or over the phone. It's illegal to serve people undercooked food or raw milk or whatever. It's illegal to breach HIPAA. Are you next going to say its terrible that you can't access my medical records for your startup? How about security cameras and genitalia recognition in the bathrooms at restaurants, is that cool too?
- msellout 11y ago
  It's illegal to stalk and harass, it's not illegal to make phone calls. The issue is not facial recognition, it's the misuse. I'm all for gun control, not gun ban. Cameras in the bathroom? Fine. Whatever. If that's the new normal, then I guess I'll get over it. Are you saying that will now be legalized? I'm pretty sure we don't need any new laws to prevent cameras in changing rooms. The "scary" scenarios that have been described in the other threads are already illegal for other reasons -- harassment, redlining (racial profiling), spam, etc.
  - PostOnce 11y ago
    You'll get over cameras in the bathroom? You should be able to collect any data you want, and use it however you want? Why not start a business face-recognizing people who show up at battered women's shelters and selling access online for $50? Or how about completely legally standing a public street and making notes of the schedules of when people are and are not home, and selling access to that to probable burglars, should that also be legal? The use of information can and should be regulated. Everything from insider trading to medical privacy.
    - msellout 11y ago
      People's opinions are remarkably malleable. Read some accounts of how soldiers change during and after fighting. Watch how the audience acts at a rock show. Check out the people on a nude beach vs the sidewalk just off the beach. Normal and acceptable is entirely situational. Walking in the street was normal. After the ad campaigns of the auto industry, we call it jaywalking. I'm all for regulating (mis)use of information, but not the collection of information.
Silhouette 11y ago
You're conflating regulating what software you can write with regulating what data you (or anyone else) can collect, use, and share. It is perfectly possible to restrict, say, the systematic collection of facial images or the commercial or government use of facial images or the transfer of facial images to another party, without impeding casual, incidental use such as taking your own personal photos that sometimes happen to catch someone in the background.
- msellout 11y ago
  Au contraire, much of machine learning (learned?) software is simply the data used to train it. I think we can all agree that generic image recognition is benign and should be permitted. How about a database of publicity photos from famous movie actors and actresses? Would it be OK to use that database to identify which celebrity I saw getting out of a limousine? And if that's permitted, then the regulators are tasked with determining how famous someone must be or how much the purpose of the image must have been for publicity. These kinds of questions are best suited for a case-by-case interpretation in the courts using current and slowly evolving privacy standards, not some broad new catch-all. Asserting that good laws are "perfectly possible" is a little tragic given our long history of poorly designed laws. Not to mention mismanaged and corrupt regulatory agencies.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    It's certainly true that we have problems both with our legislators not understanding technology and with their apparent willingness to help special interest groups more than their electorate at times. However, those are orthogonal issues to the ethical principles and the technical aspects here. The same level of technology that can now be used to compromise privacy could also be used to help protect it, and we can surely do a reasonable job of distinguishing between the kind of inadvertent background imagery that comes from living in a world with other people and the kind of systematic, targeted collection and use of data that leads to some of the more serious privacy risks with the new technologies today.

PostOnce 11y ago

What you can do in your own time is one thing, what you can do commercially is another. Encryption is something you do by yourself or with another consenting party, facial recognition is something you do to someone else without their permission and possibly use for nefarious purposes. There's nothing wrong with outlawing certain activities from the commercial sphere, or any sphere. It's not an assault on your freedom, its protection of my privacy? It's illegal to stalk and harass people in person or over the phone. It's illegal to serve people undercooked food or raw milk or whatever. It's illegal to breach HIPAA. Are you next going to say its terrible that you can't access my medical records for your startup? How about security cameras and genitalia recognition in the bathrooms at restaurants, is that cool too?

msellout 11y ago
It's illegal to stalk and harass, it's not illegal to make phone calls. The issue is not facial recognition, it's the misuse. I'm all for gun control, not gun ban. Cameras in the bathroom? Fine. Whatever. If that's the new normal, then I guess I'll get over it. Are you saying that will now be legalized? I'm pretty sure we don't need any new laws to prevent cameras in changing rooms. The "scary" scenarios that have been described in the other threads are already illegal for other reasons -- harassment, redlining (racial profiling), spam, etc.
- PostOnce 11y ago
  You'll get over cameras in the bathroom? You should be able to collect any data you want, and use it however you want? Why not start a business face-recognizing people who show up at battered women's shelters and selling access online for $50? Or how about completely legally standing a public street and making notes of the schedules of when people are and are not home, and selling access to that to probable burglars, should that also be legal? The use of information can and should be regulated. Everything from insider trading to medical privacy.
  - msellout 11y ago
    People's opinions are remarkably malleable. Read some accounts of how soldiers change during and after fighting. Watch how the audience acts at a rock show. Check out the people on a nude beach vs the sidewalk just off the beach. Normal and acceptable is entirely situational. Walking in the street was normal. After the ad campaigns of the auto industry, we call it jaywalking. I'm all for regulating (mis)use of information, but not the collection of information.

Silhouette 11y ago

You're conflating regulating what software you can write with regulating what data you (or anyone else) can collect, use, and share. It is perfectly possible to restrict, say, the systematic collection of facial images or the commercial or government use of facial images or the transfer of facial images to another party, without impeding casual, incidental use such as taking your own personal photos that sometimes happen to catch someone in the background.

msellout 11y ago
Au contraire, much of machine learning (learned?) software is simply the data used to train it. I think we can all agree that generic image recognition is benign and should be permitted. How about a database of publicity photos from famous movie actors and actresses? Would it be OK to use that database to identify which celebrity I saw getting out of a limousine? And if that's permitted, then the regulators are tasked with determining how famous someone must be or how much the purpose of the image must have been for publicity. These kinds of questions are best suited for a case-by-case interpretation in the courts using current and slowly evolving privacy standards, not some broad new catch-all. Asserting that good laws are "perfectly possible" is a little tragic given our long history of poorly designed laws. Not to mention mismanaged and corrupt regulatory agencies.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  It's certainly true that we have problems both with our legislators not understanding technology and with their apparent willingness to help special interest groups more than their electorate at times. However, those are orthogonal issues to the ethical principles and the technical aspects here. The same level of technology that can now be used to compromise privacy could also be used to help protect it, and we can surely do a reasonable job of distinguishing between the kind of inadvertent background imagery that comes from living in a world with other people and the kind of systematic, targeted collection and use of data that leads to some of the more serious privacy risks with the new technologies today.