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Facial Recognition’s Threat to Privacy Is Worse Than Anyone Thought
- zk00006 10y agoSo what is the message? Honestly, I didn't get any information form the article.
- mcguire 10y ago"We knew the threat was looming. But a brand new report[1] from the Georgetown Law Center for Privacy and Technology indicates the problem is far worse than we could’ve imagined. "In response to the report, EFF has joined a large coalition of privacy advocates[2] to demand the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division take two major steps to keep facial recognition in check: "1. Expand ongoing investigations of police practices and include in future investigations an examination of whether the use of surveillance technologies, including face recognition technology, has had a disparate impact on communities of color; and "2. Consult with and advise the FBI to examine whether the use of face recognition has had a disparate impact on communities of color." [1] https://www.perpetuallineup.org/ https://www.perpetuallineup.org/ [2] https://www.aclu.org/letter/coalition-letter-department-justice-civil-rights-division-calling-investigation-disparate https://www.aclu.org/letter/coalition-letter-department-just...
- notliketherest 10y agoI haven't had a Facebook for years, yet I'm absolutely convinced that Facebook has maintained my social graph through pictures my friends and others have posted with me in them. This is the real unprecedented threat: crowdsourced surveillance by a private company. We need strong laws and leaders to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place. And should the government be allowed to "tap in" to this graph to monitor people with a warrant? Scary times.
- mrmrcoleman 10y ago+1
- sctb 10y agoPlease stop doing this.
- CapitalistCartr 10y agoRight now, the police don't even need a warrant, merely the coöperation of the corporation.
- luizlopes 10y ago> government uses corporations to do what government cannot do, and corporations use government to do what corporations cannot do. I can't remember where I read, or heard this. However, it made sense to me.
- paavokoya 10y agoThe CIA is an arm of US corporate interests that carries out missions to benefit US corporate interests abroad.
- aisofteng 10y agoThat's a ridiculous claim. Do you have any evidence of that?
- dredmorbius 10y agoGuatemala (1952-54) and Iran (1953) both come to mind. United Fruit and Anglo-Iranian Oil -- the latter a British firm, but with distinct US interests. Cuba (Bay of Pigs) and US sugar, alcohol, and tobacco interests. Almost certainly Sukarno (Indonesia), though that nominally had Communist concerns as well. Indonesia was a source of oil, natural gas, tin, copper, gold, natural rubber, and tropical hardwoods. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Guatemala#/search https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Guatemala#... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion Noam Chomsky should be a good source for more such information.
- dimino 10y agoWell that's simply not true...
- benevol 10y ago> We need strong laws and leaders to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the first place. The government has been benefiting for a long time from surveillance brought to you by Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Co. Our leaders won't prevent anything. And the People have been electing these leaders for a long time and continue to do so.
- TearsInTheRain 10y agoThis has already happened. See Geofeedia: http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/geofeedia-surveillance-software-high-school-chicago-social-media-monitoring/ http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/geofeedia-surveillance-softwa...
- pdkl95 10y agoFor a look at a disturbingly plausible future, see Tom Scott's ~2min sci-fi short "Oversight". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIuf1V1FhpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIuf1V1FhpY
- j_s 10y agoHow prescient pre-Snowden (2013).
- Mathnerd314 10y agoIt's plausible only in spirit. An actual listing of terrorists does not have 3 terrorists within a 1-mile radius, and does not need volunteers; the FBI already has such a database. But as recent terrorism has shown, the databases are not be sufficient to prove or disprove terrorism. It's just more security theater. If the FBI started extending its database to more trivial crimes, like say speeding tickets, then it might start being useful. A law that isn't enforced evenly isn't really a law; it's an excuse for the police to harm people they don't like. Computerized enforcement seems like a good goal to aim for.
- lalos 10y agoI believe this is widely known as 'dark profiles' can't seem to find that many articles but here is one: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2165543/Facebooks-Dark-Profiles-twisted-genius-Mark-Zuckerbergs-quest-total-domination.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2165543/Faceb... Also they keep track of that info easily when somebody migrates their phone address book on to the Messenger or Facebook app, on first install it prompts you to push all that data. They have your name, number and the connection between that user and you.
- npsimons 10y ago> I haven't had a Facebook for years, yet I'm absolutely convinced that Facebook has maintained my social graph through pictures my friends and others have posted with me in them. Considering that Facebook is known to construct shadow profiles of people who don't even use the service "yet", this shouldn't come as a surprise.
- Theodores 10y agoI wonder if we will dispense with the need for ID. Imagine borders where no passport is needed or ATM machines that just take a quick iris scan instead of a physical card. Or other emergency services such as hospitals able to check if you can pay the bills or have the required citizenship. I don't think that the crowd that have store loyalty cards would complain if CCTV rather than the card applied the perks. In such a brave new world identity theft would be a thing of the past and everyone would have less theft to worry about. So there could be upsides for law abiding consumers and not just fascist government police forces.
- notliketherest 10y agoThat's a good point, there are many positive benefits to such a system. Unfortunately, men are not angels and governments tend to abuse such power (this is partly the reason I don't complain too much about oudated government inefficiency - I don't necessarily mind if the government is slow and clogged.)
- imgabe 10y ago> Or other emergency services such as hospitals able to check if you can pay the bills Hospitals are required to provide emergency services regardless of whether you can pay the bills. Pausing for even a second to check a patient's ability to pay when their life is on the line would be heinous in my opinion.
- ams6110 10y agoHave you been to a hospital ER? Unless you are literally dying, you will be sat in a chair and handed a clipboard of papers to fill out before anyone with medical training looks at you. And one of those forms will be a financial agreement.
- initram 10y agoAnd? You'll fill it out, possibly lying, possibly not, and hand it back to them. They will not read it, they will serve you, and then they will attempt to get payment from you at some point in the future.
- vorotato 10y agoWorse than anyone thought? I doubt it.
- WalterBright 10y agoYou'd be right. I thought it was obvious. I wonder if wearing things that partially obscure the face will become popular.
- joshuaheard 10y agoThe loss of privacy should be balanced against the aid it provides to law enforcement to catch criminals. So, even though the loss of privacy is more extensive, the capability of the cops to catch the bad guys is also better.
- AlexandrB 10y ago[citation needed] Crime was on the decline for decades before this kind of surveillance was available.
- joshuaheard 10y agoBecause they are using face recognition techniques? That's like the argument some politician made a while back: why do we have record prison populations when the crime rate is lower than ever?
- pixl97 10y ago> why do we have record prison populations when the crime rate is lower than ever? Because it is very profitable for people in the prison industry (and I'm talking about both public and private prisons, along with third party vendors). If you don't talk 'tough on crime', you're not getting 1) funding in your campaign run 2) votes.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoWe're in the safest era in human history. How many more rights would you like to give up for more security?
- joshuaheard 10y agoAFAIK you don't have a right to privacy while in a public space.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
- oceanswave 10y agoSeems like a lot of folks get 'privacy' and 'anonymity' confused. Should I have a right to keep information I create about me private? Sure. Should I be able to keep private or at least know the data that others collect about who they think is me? Muddier. Yes, perhaps when that information is used to make a tangible decision about me - think credit scores. However, if I poop on a casino's lawn and it's truly me, and they bar me from their premises, and the casino uses some sort of digital, always on mechanism to ensure that I don't return, do I have a right to that data about me?
- joe_the_user 10y agoI'm not sure what logic you are using here. Is it "if someone does something bad, they no longer have the right to data about themselves"? Privacy is something like the inability of one's neighbor to get any information about you. That would come if each person could anonymously some portion of the time or if there wasn't a way to aggregate the trails people leave or if the aggregations were somehow protected from all but "good people". Good luck on the later two parts - so anonymity seems like the main thing that's going to secure privacy. But some efforts to stop aggregation are good even if they are going to be something of a fig leaf. Especially, it would be good if an ethos where bad actors were punished proportionately rather than in the "you something wrong so you no reason to complain your entire life is ruined and you'll have to sleep under bridge forever - unless you go to prison" manner.
- pdkl95 10y ago> get 'privacy' and 'anonymity' confused When it isn't possible to avoid being observed, privacy depends upon the anonymity gained from misrepresentation. Dan Geer's recommended[1] definition for 'privacy' in the age of ubiquitous surveillance: > Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe or that which can be observed but not identified. No more -- what is today observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative? If you are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control. If you are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition: the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself. [1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
- aluminussoma 10y agoI updated my Google Photos app and was amazed to see that it could search all of my photos by clicking on an icon of a person's face. It even found faces of people in multiple photos whom I don't know. I couldn't find any mis-labeled photos. When I showed this to a family member, they were not amazed but creeped out. If there were a way to hook this up with my Nest Cam, I would be speechless. The article focuses on its impact to people of color. Will this specific issue go away if accuracy becomes near perfect? We'll still have to deal with its impact on everyone - and that could invite broader regulation.
- paavokoya 10y agomy Nest Cam People buying literal spyware to spy on themselves is definitely part of the problem. http://www.computerworld.com/article/2476599/cybercrime-hacking/black-hat-nest-thermostat-turned-into-a-smart-spy-in-15-seconds.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2476599/cybercrime-hack... EDIT: I knew this would get downvotes from a crowd that simultaneously abhors surveillance yet trumpets spyware like Nest as innovative. Cognitive dissonance is strong here.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- npsimons 10y ago> I knew this would get downvotes from a crowd that simultaneously abhors surveillance yet trumpets spyware like Nest as innovative. Cognitive dissonance is strong here. Shouldn't be a big surprise from the same crowd that thinks "gut bacteria" trumps CICO, never mind that gut biome being different in overweight/obese versus healthy weight is probably more an effect than a cause.
- paavokoya 10y agoThat's a whole nother topic. CICO isn't as important as where you get those calories from. If a majority are from sugar, you are getting way too much insulin which then creates fat in the body. If you get fibrous and fatty calories, it takes more energy to break them down and store them thus leading to healthier fat/muscle.
- kalys 10y agoJust wondering if piercings or earrings with infrared LED can prevent facial recognition.
- leesalminen 10y agoI would also like to know the answer to this question.
- AndrewKemendo 10y agoNo
- wickedlogic 10y agoThe problem with mass surveillance, is mostly that masses aren't using it to benefit/protect themselves.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoOne way to counter facial recognition is by applying makeup in a certain pattern that resembles David Bowie or 80's style cyberpunks. [1] That 80's vision of the future really is here. 1. http://cvdazzle.com http://cvdazzle.com
- BurningFrog 10y agohttps://xkcd.com/1105/ https://xkcd.com/1105/
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoHence the whole David Bowie/Lady Gaga look of it. We'd just need to make glam rock/punk popular again!
- tpeo 10y agoJust (adverb): 1. Exactly. 2. (ironic, oblivious) Used to imply that an otherwise impossible task is just the opposite. Time travelling is possible. We just need to get our hands on some of that negative energy.
- mjevans 10y agoYeah, if you're going to go that far you'd get hassled in places -anyway-... so may as well make it a nice Guy Fawkes mask.
- hisabness 10y agocould also wear a burka...
- Animats 10y agoThat just generates hard edges for tracking, allowing the building of a 3D model. Requires motion tracking type software rather than regular facial recognition, but is quite do-able.
- orblivion 10y ago
- GoToRO 10y agoAs technology gets better, the world gets smaller. In the end Earth will be as big as a small village: everybody will know everybody.
- prodigal_erik 10y agoThis is a disaster, because the brutal conformism of villages is the reason they lag behind cities where freaks are allowed to exist in anonymity.
- GoToRO 10y agoWell... 1. At least it is a disaster that we experienced before. 2. At some point conformism will mean "you have to be like everybody else: unique".
- pixl97 10y agoOh, you want to challenge the status quo. Burn him at the stake. Just because we did something in the past, doesn't mean we should start doing it again in the future.
- GoToRO 10y agoI don't propose to do it again in the future. I think it will come anyway no matter what.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoYou are all individuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbzSif78qQ
- dredmorbius 10y agoA village isn't a matter simply of distance, but of scale. A small town with a few thousand people who might interact or incidentally observe one another on any given day is worlds apart from an entire planet of billions of people any one of whom might, without the target being aware of it, stalk any one, or billions, of other people. Or worse: sift through zottabytes of data at some unspecified future date, to generate some convenient narrative. Or worse yet: completely fabricate, do a level of perfection beyond any detection, evidence to fit any desired narrative.
- Animats 10y agoA facial recognition database of politicians would be easy to construct. There are plenty of pictures of them. We could have tracking sites for elected officials. Surveillance cameras around Washington could report their locations, and who is meeting with whom. That might provoke something like the Bork Video Privacy Protection Act.
- krapp 10y agoAs long as this technology exists, and will eventually become ubiquitous, I see no reason why we shouldn't be doing exactly that. And for police as well. I should have an app that tells me the name, badge number and location of every officer on duty within ten miles of me, updated in real time, with constant video and audio surveillance. If a cop so much as sneezes it should be posted on the internet before they wipe their nose. That would put the "civil" back into "civil servant" real quick.
- matthewowen 10y agoDo you think the same thing should apply to other civil servants, or just to elected officials and the police?
- krapp 10y agoElected officials and the police. But my assumption is everyone is going to be tracked anyway, to some degree. Basically, I think the cost of using facial recognition against the populace should be having it used against you. If the state is watching us, why can't we watch them back? This is an extension, and possible inversion, of Heinlein's axiom that "an armed society is a polite society." I would rather that society arm itself with information than with bullets.
- tormeh 10y ago>If the state is watching us, why can't we watch them back? Because they're going to wear riot helmets.
- BurningFrog 10y agoLike it or not, this is an inevitable consequence of advancing technology. Since it can't be stopped, the thing to think about is how to adapt to it.
- carapace 10y agoI don't think we are going to be able to NOT have ubiquitous surveillance. The tech won't go away and only gets better. The question is not how to prevent it, because we can't (my premise.) The question is, who gets to use it and for what? We're going to have to learn to live without hypocrisy.
- dredmorbius 10y agoThat is why laws constrain the technically attainable. We don't pass laws against things which cannot be done (at least not as a normal course of action).
- carapace 10y agoLet's say we make laws that proscribe that no one shall use the tech "the wrong way", how do we ensure that everyone is adhering to those laws without using the tech "the wrong way"? My point is that we can't constrain the technology by passing a law, because you have to enforce it, and to do that we have to use the technology. In the limit we're going to have either hypocrisy and have a system like North Korea, or we're going to sort our shit out and have a system like Star Trek. (I'm hopeful, despite being well aware of which of my examples is fictional.)
- dredmorbius 10y agoI'll give you a specific example. David Simon of The Wire talked about the longshoreman's union in Baltimore in a UC Berkeley lecture titled "The Audacity of Despair", available on YouTube. It's long but excellent. At 36m30s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw In it, Simon mentions that the union was so corrupt that every day it had to forward a copy of documents -- possibly every document produced or received -- mail, memos, publications, P.O.s and receipts -- to either the DoJ or the state's AG office, under a consent decree. Basically, because of a long history of abuse of power the union had to run open books to law enforcement. The financial world operates similarly: companies are subject to audits (by private companies, not even government agencies, though those companies are themselves audited) for compliance with accounting practices and such. That is, again, you open your books. Regulation of other organisations operates on similar grounds. Pharmaceutical companies are regulated as to their drugs produced, food processors to their own practices, especially in beef, dairy, pork, and poultry. Some industries gain exceptions to anti-trust regulations in return for more regulation and oversight of other elements: major league sports, insurance (underwriting boards), telecoms, and transportation (rail, truck, air, sea). An item which popped up following Trump's request for followers to patrol polling places was a specific injunction on the GOP for doing just that dating to the early 1980s (and set to expire Real Soon Now, though Trump may just have fouled that up). Southern states in the US have operated under injunctions dating to the Voting Rights Act for violations of its provisions (some of which may have expired or been reduced by recent SCOTUS rulings, I've not kept close track). Google itself is already operating under a consent decree running for 20 years until 2031 as a result of "deceptive privacy practices" (that's the FTC's language, not mine) in rolling out its Buzz social network: "FTC Charges Deceptive Privacy Practices in Googles Rollout of Its Buzz Social Network" The mechanism for enforcement: The settlement requires the company to obtain users’ consent before sharing their information with third parties if Google changes its products or services in a way that results in information sharing that is contrary to any privacy promises made when the user’s information was collected. The settlement further requires Google to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program, and it requires that for the next 20 years, the company have audits conducted by independent third parties every two years to assess its privacy and data protection practices. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/03/ftc-charges-deceptive-privacy-practices-googles-rollout-its-buzz https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2011/03/ftc-c... It turns out that people have faced the questions of trust, verification, audit, and compliance for a long time. Trust, third parties, bounties, and similar mechanisms are typical modes for ensuring compliance. There are ways of determining if personal or private information has leaked (look up "fictitious entries" or "honeytraps" -- I've made a recent HN submission on the topic though it didn't go far). And yes, there are times that the auditors themselves are corrupt: Arthur Anderson and Enron, Ernst & Young HK and the Mozilla v. WoSign and StartCom CA backdating scandal. Mozilla will refuse to accept further audits from E&YHK, meaning that E&Y effectively mined its own credibility to generate present business at a cost of any future trust (I'd really like to see what the future fall-out of this is). Yes, passing effective laws is PRECISELY how you constrain technology.
- pmyjavec 10y agoWhere losing control of our technology and privacy, when people start saying things like we'll get the government to fix surveillance, we are introuble.
- notduncansmith 10y agoI'm all for privacy tools for now, but the privacy-surveillance arms race feels like a hack compared to actually fixing the culture that creates a need for privacy. Is anyone discussing what it would take to solve the problem from that level?
- astrobe_ 10y agoPrivacy is a lie by omission. Lies are a necessary feature for societies (even non-human animals can lie). Therefore, privacy is a necessary feature for societies.
- notduncansmith 10y ago> Lies are a necessary feature for societies Could you defend this assertion, please?
- kazagistar 10y agoFacial recognition + augmented reality = read reviews by exes at bars.
- ageitgey 10y agoIf you are curious how these facial recognition systems actually work, check out https://medium.com/@ageitgey/machine-learning-is-fun-part-4-modern-face-recognition-with-deep-learning-c3cffc121d78 https://medium.com/@ageitgey/machine-learning-is-fun-part-4-...
- LargeCompanies 10y agoWhat's the best facial recognition app (native or web) out there now for consumer use? Does one exist yet that's works as reliably or almost as reliably as what the cops at using?