7 ms·

Facial recognition system risks 'chilling effect' on freedoms, rights groups say

106 points by ricardoreis 8y ago

marchenko 8y ago
Imagine this capability existed in the US before miscegenation, or same-sex intercourse, or cannabis use, or concealed carry, were legal/broadly accepted. It could be used to harass non-criminal supporters of these measures(caught a SSM proponent jaywalking!) and prosecute those engaged in the target criminalized activity, preventing movements to legalize these activities from ever gaining momentum. Social mores would become ossified. Perfect prosecution is not desirable in an imperfect world.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > It could be used to harass non-criminal supporters of these measures(caught a SSM proponent jaywalking!) and prosecute those engaged in the target criminalized activity, preventing movements to legalize these activities from ever gaining momentum That's why cannabis was criminalized in the first place: target hippies and PoC, get their leaders silenced.
  - TheAnig 8y ago
    It was actually pushed by big-pharma to keep the more lucrative opioid based patented medicines going versus the CBT, THC based equivalents. Look at the new products introduced by Canadian pharma for more details.
- informatimago 8y ago
  In the meantime, pens and phones are used to harass non-criminal supporters of all kinds of measures and people, (including some USA president). I propose we forbid pens and phones!
amelius 8y ago
A face is like a cookie, so if there are laws against cookies, there should be laws against facial recognition.
- dredds 8y ago
  Instead they will make laws against facial obfuscation.
  - scaryclam 8y ago
    In case anyone wonders how likely that sort of law is, France actually have a law against covering your face in public areas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering
    - NLips 8y ago
      While I dislike the ban on e.g. religious garments, it can still be coherent to ban face covering and ban face recording.
newscracker 8y ago
> There are also fears about the level of access given to private corporations and the legislation’s loose wording, which could allow it to be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. Truth is, it will be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. It’s alarming how democratic countries are invading the privacy of their own citizens, creating mass surveillance machinery that could become uncontrollably detrimental to the very institutions and structures that they claim to value and protect. Among the FIVE EYES countries, Australia seems to be doing a lot more (comparatively) on mass surveillance and having the legislative backing for it. > The database will be accessible to federal, state and territory governments through a central hub connecting the various photographic identity databases. This is how it starts, with vague claims of safeguards that belie the actual access and how they can (and will be) misused. It seems like future generations will have to give up freedom to get some sense of safety (as painted by those in power).
- module0000 8y ago
  >>Truth is, it will be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. It’s alarming how democratic countries are invading the privacy of their own citizens, creating mass surveillance machinery that could become uncontrollably detrimental to the very institutions and structures that they claim to value and protect. Among the FIVE EYES countries, Australia seems to be doing a lot more (comparatively) on mass surveillance and having the legislative backing for it. It's easy to show an example scenario that almost always causes a system to like this to abuse privacy. Take the system, FR in this case, and insert the use case "Politician XYZ's 3-year old daughter has been abducted, and the FR system we promised not to use for this purpose could identify their captor!". Works every time. Once you do it that first time, the seal is broken for future abuse.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    That's true. It doesn't even have to be a politician's child. "What about the children?" [1] works quite well to rile people up to surrender their own freedoms and of the future generations. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
Theodores 8y ago
If you want to experience the 'chilling effect' of facial recognition first hand, go to a meaningful political protest in the UK. These are different to the circus-and-bread protests, e.g. complaining about Trump in some collective Pinch and Judy show. With the more useful protest events numbers are smaller and those that attend aren't there just to post selfies of themselves looking good protesting at the bogeyman-du-jour on Instagram. Protesting against the arms trade or fracking will be getting yourself proper attention from the authorities. The police have the one tactic called 'the kettle' where they form a police line around all the protesters, then letting them out, one by one, getting everyone's photo. From then on you know that you will be in some special rogue's gallery, to be denied being able to work for the three letter agencies and other places in the civil service due to being a known troublemaker. They don't need to take your postcode or DNA, just that waltz past the camera will do. As you can imagine this has a 'chilling effect' and curbs one' enthusiasm for wanting to participate in the direct democracy that is so encouraged by our governments just so long as it is part of the 'Arab Spring' or other such nonsense. Facial recognition for cows on the farm, that is a thing and also has applications for other areas, e.g. nature conservation, so there is nothing wrong with it for other species, putting them under mass surveillance and not needing the physical tags.
- dredds 8y ago
  > "just that waltz past the camera will do" Indeed. Mission Impossible: “Gait recognition can’t be fooled by simply limping, walking with splayed feet or hunching over, because we’re analyzing all the features of an entire body” ...so in practice, even with our faces hidden. https://www.apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a https://www.apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a
- codedokode 8y ago
  > The police have the one tactic called 'the kettle' where they form a police line around all the protesters, then letting them out, one by one, getting everyone's photo Why don't they just ask for an ID? At least that's what police does in Russia. If you don't have an ID - they can detain you for several hours, if you have an ID - they can detain you for something else ("we need to check your documents, please go with us").
captainbland 8y ago
I think this is probably only the tip of the iceberg as well - facial recognition is one thing, although it can be difficult if your face is obscured somehow. The real fun will begin when they can start doing things like gait recognition + other features for person re-id in real-time across CCTV networks. Fortunately I think we're some way off doing that reliably and with a reasonable cost.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Or tracing dna evidence instantly (those skin tags we leave on every surface or wafting in the air as we pass).
netcan 8y ago
This stuff is a ratchet. You can win a battle here and there, maybe slowing the progress, but the long term trend is one directional. The way privacy norms and abstract rules about limiting power come about is *not" through gradualism. It's through hurdled events. The american revolution. The 1989 revolutions. Particular points in time where you can say "Stazi bad. Never again." The reality is that these chouces involve compromising security. Slightly freer, and slightly less safe is not a winning political argument. Imagine a system where detectives can plug it back a name or a face and retrieve location information from that person's phone, city-wide CCTV video, etc. Creeoy, but more crimes will be solved. Gradualism favours security over freedom in the long term. There are 19 rapists walking free in our city today, because limits on police power.... There's only one way this argument goes.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  > Slightly freer, and slightly less safe is not a winning political argument. It should be when the reality, despite the publicity of occasional terrorist incidents (9/11 included), is "slightly freer and slightly less safe against an event so vanishingly unlikely you should simply forget about it. You're hundreds of times more likely to die in a car accident or falling off a ladder. We should not let the terrorists win by ruining our way of life and associated freedoms". Surely that's not that hard a message to sell when it has been a winning message for many years in the past? No, it's the current fashion. I expect more of politicians. Of course in today's world I am regularly disappointed.
  - Ntrails 8y ago
    You can argue it's not worth paying the price to catch more murderers, to protect more children from pedophiles, to stop more rapes. But that's a subjective value judgement and society doesn't have to agree with you. Be disappointed all you want, but try actually taking their position seriously first.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      > but try actually taking their position seriously first. That's a mighty big presumption. Upon what grounds do you say I am not?
JoeAltmaier 8y ago
In the medieval days of villages, everybody knew everyone's face. There was little in the way of privacy. Today we expect a certain level of anonymity, but mostly just because we've grown up with it. It's not been normal through history. It may not even be healthy (to live in a society alone and unknown). I don't think its the end of the world. It won't even be the end of privacy. Social privacy is mostly pretending in public not to know what you shouldn't know. Nobody 'hears' what goes on behind the bathroom door in their home, because its the height of rudeness to mention it. We'll have to come up with social norms to not know what everybody is doing every place in public. Not knowing who went to what private clubs, or who visited whom's house after dark when their spouse wasn't home and so on. Unless we saw it in person of course!
- motohagiography 8y ago
  Those villages were within each persons Dunbar number and had a unified notion of shared interest and tribal identity. I think the argument that we never had privacy or that it is unnatural needs to be put to rest. Automated facial recognition is explicitly for one interest group to monitor an "other." In most cases, it is a state and its party interests monitoring subjects, or one class monitoring another. It's a weapon and there is nothing benevolent or benign about it.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Confused; that argument seems to be endorsing the idea that there was little privacy, then denying it? And agreed no doubt misused facial recognition will be an issue. Just not a personal-relationship one; it'll be a government one.
    - esotericn 8y ago
      In case A, a village member knows a private fact about you. In case B, an arbitrary person or collection of people across the globe know private facts about you. The hypothetical individual in case A has _drastically_ different incentives regarding disclosure or use of that information. I wouldn't even call it superficially similar. The modern example would be that your roommate knows fact X, vs. some larger group, or the entire world, knows fact X. The former can, but not necessarily will, lead to the latter.
module0000 8y ago
Sounds great! And us, the public, will have access to this as well.....right? Can we watch a live-map of police and other state-employed persons with a positive facial match as they move about? No? Why not? Well that's how we feel too.
- malux85 8y ago
  especially politicians.
xfitm3 8y ago
Further evidence which suggests privacy will soon be a luxury reserved only for distinguished individuals.

106 points by ricardoreis 8y ago

Imagine this capability existed in the US before miscegenation, or same-sex intercourse, or cannabis use, or concealed carry, were legal/broadly accepted. It could be used to harass non-criminal supporters of these measures(caught a SSM proponent jaywalking!) and prosecute those engaged in the target criminalized activity, preventing movements to legalize these activities from ever gaining momentum. Social mores would become ossified. Perfect prosecution is not desirable in an imperfect world.

mschuster91 8y ago
> It could be used to harass non-criminal supporters of these measures(caught a SSM proponent jaywalking!) and prosecute those engaged in the target criminalized activity, preventing movements to legalize these activities from ever gaining momentum That's why cannabis was criminalized in the first place: target hippies and PoC, get their leaders silenced.
- TheAnig 8y ago
  It was actually pushed by big-pharma to keep the more lucrative opioid based patented medicines going versus the CBT, THC based equivalents. Look at the new products introduced by Canadian pharma for more details.
informatimago 8y ago
In the meantime, pens and phones are used to harass non-criminal supporters of all kinds of measures and people, (including some USA president). I propose we forbid pens and phones!

amelius 8y ago

A face is like a cookie, so if there are laws against cookies, there should be laws against facial recognition.

dredds 8y ago
Instead they will make laws against facial obfuscation.
- scaryclam 8y ago
  In case anyone wonders how likely that sort of law is, France actually have a law against covering your face in public areas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering
  - NLips 8y ago
    While I dislike the ban on e.g. religious garments, it can still be coherent to ban face covering and ban face recording.

newscracker 8y ago

> There are also fears about the level of access given to private corporations and the legislation’s loose wording, which could allow it to be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. Truth is, it will be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. It’s alarming how democratic countries are invading the privacy of their own citizens, creating mass surveillance machinery that could become uncontrollably detrimental to the very institutions and structures that they claim to value and protect. Among the FIVE EYES countries, Australia seems to be doing a lot more (comparatively) on mass surveillance and having the legislative backing for it. > The database will be accessible to federal, state and territory governments through a central hub connecting the various photographic identity databases. This is how it starts, with vague claims of safeguards that belie the actual access and how they can (and will be) misused. It seems like future generations will have to give up freedom to get some sense of safety (as painted by those in power).

module0000 8y ago
>>Truth is, it will be used for purposes other than related to terrorism or serious crime. It’s alarming how democratic countries are invading the privacy of their own citizens, creating mass surveillance machinery that could become uncontrollably detrimental to the very institutions and structures that they claim to value and protect. Among the FIVE EYES countries, Australia seems to be doing a lot more (comparatively) on mass surveillance and having the legislative backing for it. It's easy to show an example scenario that almost always causes a system to like this to abuse privacy. Take the system, FR in this case, and insert the use case "Politician XYZ's 3-year old daughter has been abducted, and the FR system we promised not to use for this purpose could identify their captor!". Works every time. Once you do it that first time, the seal is broken for future abuse.
- newscracker 8y ago
  That's true. It doesn't even have to be a politician's child. "What about the children?" [1] works quite well to rile people up to surrender their own freedoms and of the future generations. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

Theodores 8y ago

If you want to experience the 'chilling effect' of facial recognition first hand, go to a meaningful political protest in the UK. These are different to the circus-and-bread protests, e.g. complaining about Trump in some collective Pinch and Judy show. With the more useful protest events numbers are smaller and those that attend aren't there just to post selfies of themselves looking good protesting at the bogeyman-du-jour on Instagram. Protesting against the arms trade or fracking will be getting yourself proper attention from the authorities. The police have the one tactic called 'the kettle' where they form a police line around all the protesters, then letting them out, one by one, getting everyone's photo. From then on you know that you will be in some special rogue's gallery, to be denied being able to work for the three letter agencies and other places in the civil service due to being a known troublemaker. They don't need to take your postcode or DNA, just that waltz past the camera will do. As you can imagine this has a 'chilling effect' and curbs one' enthusiasm for wanting to participate in the direct democracy that is so encouraged by our governments just so long as it is part of the 'Arab Spring' or other such nonsense. Facial recognition for cows on the farm, that is a thing and also has applications for other areas, e.g. nature conservation, so there is nothing wrong with it for other species, putting them under mass surveillance and not needing the physical tags.

dredds 8y ago
> "just that waltz past the camera will do" Indeed. Mission Impossible: “Gait recognition can’t be fooled by simply limping, walking with splayed feet or hunching over, because we’re analyzing all the features of an entire body” ...so in practice, even with our faces hidden. https://www.apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a https://www.apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a
codedokode 8y ago
> The police have the one tactic called 'the kettle' where they form a police line around all the protesters, then letting them out, one by one, getting everyone's photo Why don't they just ask for an ID? At least that's what police does in Russia. If you don't have an ID - they can detain you for several hours, if you have an ID - they can detain you for something else ("we need to check your documents, please go with us").

captainbland 8y ago

I think this is probably only the tip of the iceberg as well - facial recognition is one thing, although it can be difficult if your face is obscured somehow. The real fun will begin when they can start doing things like gait recognition + other features for person re-id in real-time across CCTV networks. Fortunately I think we're some way off doing that reliably and with a reasonable cost.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Or tracing dna evidence instantly (those skin tags we leave on every surface or wafting in the air as we pass).

netcan 8y ago

This stuff is a ratchet. You can win a battle here and there, maybe slowing the progress, but the long term trend is one directional. The way privacy norms and abstract rules about limiting power come about is *not" through gradualism. It's through hurdled events. The american revolution. The 1989 revolutions. Particular points in time where you can say "Stazi bad. Never again." The reality is that these chouces involve compromising security. Slightly freer, and slightly less safe is not a winning political argument. Imagine a system where detectives can plug it back a name or a face and retrieve location information from that person's phone, city-wide CCTV video, etc. Creeoy, but more crimes will be solved. Gradualism favours security over freedom in the long term. There are 19 rapists walking free in our city today, because limits on police power.... There's only one way this argument goes.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
> Slightly freer, and slightly less safe is not a winning political argument. It should be when the reality, despite the publicity of occasional terrorist incidents (9/11 included), is "slightly freer and slightly less safe against an event so vanishingly unlikely you should simply forget about it. You're hundreds of times more likely to die in a car accident or falling off a ladder. We should not let the terrorists win by ruining our way of life and associated freedoms". Surely that's not that hard a message to sell when it has been a winning message for many years in the past? No, it's the current fashion. I expect more of politicians. Of course in today's world I am regularly disappointed.
- Ntrails 8y ago
  You can argue it's not worth paying the price to catch more murderers, to protect more children from pedophiles, to stop more rapes. But that's a subjective value judgement and society doesn't have to agree with you. Be disappointed all you want, but try actually taking their position seriously first.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    > but try actually taking their position seriously first. That's a mighty big presumption. Upon what grounds do you say I am not?

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

In the medieval days of villages, everybody knew everyone's face. There was little in the way of privacy. Today we expect a certain level of anonymity, but mostly just because we've grown up with it. It's not been normal through history. It may not even be healthy (to live in a society alone and unknown). I don't think its the end of the world. It won't even be the end of privacy. Social privacy is mostly pretending in public not to know what you shouldn't know. Nobody 'hears' what goes on behind the bathroom door in their home, because its the height of rudeness to mention it. We'll have to come up with social norms to not know what everybody is doing every place in public. Not knowing who went to what private clubs, or who visited whom's house after dark when their spouse wasn't home and so on. Unless we saw it in person of course!

motohagiography 8y ago
Those villages were within each persons Dunbar number and had a unified notion of shared interest and tribal identity. I think the argument that we never had privacy or that it is unnatural needs to be put to rest. Automated facial recognition is explicitly for one interest group to monitor an "other." In most cases, it is a state and its party interests monitoring subjects, or one class monitoring another. It's a weapon and there is nothing benevolent or benign about it.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Confused; that argument seems to be endorsing the idea that there was little privacy, then denying it? And agreed no doubt misused facial recognition will be an issue. Just not a personal-relationship one; it'll be a government one.
  - esotericn 8y ago
    In case A, a village member knows a private fact about you. In case B, an arbitrary person or collection of people across the globe know private facts about you. The hypothetical individual in case A has _drastically_ different incentives regarding disclosure or use of that information. I wouldn't even call it superficially similar. The modern example would be that your roommate knows fact X, vs. some larger group, or the entire world, knows fact X. The former can, but not necessarily will, lead to the latter.

module0000 8y ago

Sounds great! And us, the public, will have access to this as well.....right? Can we watch a live-map of police and other state-employed persons with a positive facial match as they move about? No? Why not? Well that's how we feel too.

malux85 8y ago
especially politicians.

xfitm3 8y ago

Further evidence which suggests privacy will soon be a luxury reserved only for distinguished individuals.