7 ms·

>"...Afros, braids, twists and other hairstyles popular among black women." They literally say so in the subtitle. The discrimination exists before people ente

>"...Afros, braids, twists and other hairstyles popular among black women." They literally say so in the subtitle. The discrimination exists before people enter the airport, and it comes in the form of what hairstyle to choose. This is partly done on a cultural basis, and partly because of a different hair composition. But the important thing is, the machine does not differentiate on the basis of race, it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband. I am a white man with long dense hair, and my hair triggers the machine almost every time. Not because I look like a hippy, and Nixon is still running the show, but because I could hide things in my hair. The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine.

matt4077 8y ago
Yeah, how dare they call it racism when it’s built into the system, and conveniently uses highly correlated features instead of race itself! We also don’t discriminate against men, only people called “John”, “David”, or “Jack”.
- penagwin 8y ago
  Counterpoint, If there's a known terrorist named "James Williams" and you flag everyone with that name going through the airport, yes you are going to be HIGHLY correlated with males, but the feature wasn't chosen by gender it was selected because of the increased risk of danger associated with that feature.
  - pwinnski 8y ago
    Maybe I missed attempted terrorism by malicious actors hiding explosives in their weaves? Has the TSA taken a break from not detecting 95% of weapons and explosives[0] to detect weapons hidden in hair? The context to keep in mind is that the TSA has repeatedly demonstrated incompetence at their stated goal. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-tsa-doesnt-work-and-maybe-it-doesnt-matter/394673/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-tsa...
  - actsof 8y ago
    Let's say the TSA used names more aggressively, for example checking everyone with the same name as anyone with a criminal record. Now let's also assume African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated, and therefore names associated with the ethnic group will be disproportionately represented in criminal records. I'm sure we can agree on that the system would then be biased towards a race. The problem is that there isn't a single terrorist that caused this, in fact there's no good reason to believe that the hairstyles mentioned in the article are used to hide contraband.
penagwin 8y ago
If the situation is as described, then I would agree with the idea that this shouldn't be treated as an "issue". Discrimination's common definition has the negative connotation, but in this case, it seems to legitimately be "discriminating" based on ability to hide contraband, however in this case "discriminating" is synonymous with "differentiate".
- TFortunato 8y ago
  The reason it is an issue is because the TSA is disproportionately singling out people for more invasive searches under the guise of, "we have this shitty technology that can't tell the difference between explosives and black hair or a 'turban', and that's what the procedure tells us to do." Just because it isn't designed to explicitly 'single out black people', that was the outcome of using this combination of technology and procedure. To top it all off, we are all paying millions of dollars for this, via taxes for some fancy security theater to tell us, whether there is the "ability to hide contraband", which seems utterly insane.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jerf 8y ago
"The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine." That is not a politically-acceptable argument.
masklinn 8y ago
> The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine. Ah yes, the good ol' > You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” If you build discrimination into the system you don't have to explicitly discriminate, it's just "the machine". Even better if that's a convenient side-effect of having only ever tested the machine with and for populations you had no desire to discriminate against rather than having had to explicitly build-in the discrimination. > it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband. The article is about the TSA, not Border Patrol. Looking for contraband is not the TSA's job.
- ac29 8y ago
  >Looking for contraband is not the TSA's job. Its certainly part of their job. In states with legal Marijuana sales, there are frequently TSA drug sniffing dogs at checkpoints.
- Kalium 8y ago
  > The article is about the TSA, not Border Patrol. Looking for contraband is not the TSA's job. You're absolutely right! Do you have a better word to describe the collection of types of items the TSA is empowered to and charged with searching for?
  - js2 8y ago
    "Prohibited items." Not sure why this was downvoted. It is literally how the TSA refers to them on its site and answers the parent's question: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/civil-enforcement https://www.tsa.gov/travel/civil-enforcement Save your downvotes for the TSA.
  - coldtea 8y ago
TFortunato 8y ago
Just because the technology isn't explicitly designed as a 'single out black people' machine, doesn't mean that it isn't disproportionately affecting them due to how it is being used. Just because this imaging technology can't tell the difference between dense hair and explosives does not make someone's thick hair, or hair covering "an area of suspect density" that should automatically be flagged for more invasive searchs. It's definitely trying to split some really fine hairs to be saying 'actually, it isn't discriminating against black people, it's discriminating against hair types that are highly correlated with being a black person, and it's totally acceptable that people with those hair types should be considered suspect / subject to further scrutiny', as if that is some sort of edge case that couldn't have possibly be thought about beforehand. I absolutely don't think we should be defending a tech / procedure that only seems to be negatively affecting people, costs millions, and doesn't seem to have any positives effects,
briffle 8y ago
It could also be the diversity of testing as well. If the machine is tested to work with such dense hair from the beginning the algorithms can be adjusted. Kind of like the Amazon facial recognition, [0] that really didn't work well on minorities, likely due to the training models used [0] https://medium.com/@bu64dcjrytwitb8/on-recent-research-auditing-commercial-facial-analysis-technology-19148bda1832 https://medium.com/@bu64dcjrytwitb8/on-recent-research-audit...
mikestew 8y ago
it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband. And literacy tests for voters simply ensures that our electorate is properly educated. Any side effects are a convenient freebie.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> the machine does not differentiate on the basis of race I’m guessing it was predominantly white men who built this machine and white men who tested it. Reminds me of certain facial-recognition programs being (initially) unable to identify black faces. It may not be racism, but it is discrimination.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Who is it racist against? Surely it's white people primarily who suffer as they're more likely to be caught by the facial recognition? Following the simplest case, because lighter skin gives greater contrast is _not_ racism. It's not 'unnecessary discrimination' either, as it arises out of the facts of how light works. It's like saying that products with a weight limit that arises out of the materials used are "fattist".
  - helloayo 8y ago
    I don't think you understand how light works.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      You better explain it to me then. I'm not great on QFT, so keep it graduate level physics so I can follow along.
danso 8y ago
People are free to choose their hair and hairstyles. The burden of not discriminating is on the government agency, which is funded and mandated (including, according to TFA, $100M for deploying the scanners) to not be discriminatory, including on characteristics related to race. As u/tj-teej pointed out [0], the utilizers of this tech have the agency and means to improve or mitigate the tech, including prioritizing the training of algorithms to handle black hair styles instead of shunting it off to an edge case, conveniently burdening a demographic who has been historically limited in power and influence. To think of it another way: in many parts of the U.S., Asians are very much a minority. Asians more commonly have narrower eyes which can interfere with face detection/recognition [1]. In the near and possible future, when face-detection becomes a "feature" in security tech as a means to expedite processing -- e.g. if your face is scanned and not found in a "Real ID" database, you're automatically put in a line for more invasive searching -- would Asian-Americans not have a legitimate case that the U.S. gov't has failed to improve their tech to the detriment of Asian-American citizens? Especially when it seems Asian countries have successfully mitigated the issue? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684290 [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error/new-zealand-passport-robot-tells-applicant-of-asian-descent-to-open-eyes-idUSKBN13W0RL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error...
- DuskStar 8y ago
  I think the major difference here is immutable vs mutable characteristics. You can choose your hairstyle, but not what your face looks like.
  - danso 8y ago
    Eyes are mutable. Double-eyelid surgery is cheap and common enough in South Korea for it to be a graduation present, and as many as 1/3 of young women have undergone cosmetic surgery [0]. But the overriding point is that Asian countries have developed face detection and recognition for their populations, because the utility and value of the software would be dubious without it. For the U.S. to not seek to invest in its own software would be open for a legal challenge. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/05/581765974/in-seoul-a-plastic-surgery-capital-residents-frown-on-ads-for-cosmetic-procedure https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/05/581765974/...
NathanKP 8y ago
Yep same here. As a white dude with dense longish hair who travels a lot for work I've noticed that if I have my hair in a ponytail about 1 in 3 times that I go through the body scanner they are going to pat down the back of my head to check my ponytail. I don't agree with your last point though. The discriminating factor is that the machine screening is designed based on the average white male and female appearance. And that means that anyone outside that built in assumption, whether its a white dude with a thick ponytail, or a black woman with a Afro gets extra screening. What the article is trying to highlight is that when we design such systems we shouldn't just be designing them against the average because that causes the system to discriminate against anyone outside that average.
- ralusek 8y ago
  The onus is on you if you make that declaration. You don't know that the reason the machine triggers more frequently in "black hair" is because of improper testing, you're just asserting that. There are such things as objective differences that have objective implications.
- Fjolsvith 8y ago
  I am reminded of the issues the Air Force had due to cockpits being designed for the average pilot size. They did a study and found that the majority of pilots were not near the average size and had difficulty reaching for switches and pedals and such. [1] 1. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
coldtea 8y ago
>The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine. Most of the people who ordered, designed, built and tested the machine are white. They don't have to explicitly discriminate against blacks. They can just go their business as usual, designing stuff based on their own norms and cultural habits, and it will come out as naturally discriminating. If all those whites doing the machine's design had those "certain hairstyles" in the same ratio as blacks, and were flagged as much when they've tested it, they'd have considered this facet of the machine as useless and removed it...
- CompanionCuuube 8y ago
  So which detection facets regarding areas likely able to conceal hidden contraband were removed due to being part of the white people testing group?

matt4077 8y ago

Yeah, how dare they call it racism when it’s built into the system, and conveniently uses highly correlated features instead of race itself! We also don’t discriminate against men, only people called “John”, “David”, or “Jack”.

penagwin 8y ago
Counterpoint, If there's a known terrorist named "James Williams" and you flag everyone with that name going through the airport, yes you are going to be HIGHLY correlated with males, but the feature wasn't chosen by gender it was selected because of the increased risk of danger associated with that feature.
- pwinnski 8y ago
  Maybe I missed attempted terrorism by malicious actors hiding explosives in their weaves? Has the TSA taken a break from not detecting 95% of weapons and explosives[0] to detect weapons hidden in hair? The context to keep in mind is that the TSA has repeatedly demonstrated incompetence at their stated goal. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-tsa-doesnt-work-and-maybe-it-doesnt-matter/394673/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-tsa...
- actsof 8y ago
  Let's say the TSA used names more aggressively, for example checking everyone with the same name as anyone with a criminal record. Now let's also assume African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated, and therefore names associated with the ethnic group will be disproportionately represented in criminal records. I'm sure we can agree on that the system would then be biased towards a race. The problem is that there isn't a single terrorist that caused this, in fact there's no good reason to believe that the hairstyles mentioned in the article are used to hide contraband.

penagwin 8y ago

If the situation is as described, then I would agree with the idea that this shouldn't be treated as an "issue". Discrimination's common definition has the negative connotation, but in this case, it seems to legitimately be "discriminating" based on ability to hide contraband, however in this case "discriminating" is synonymous with "differentiate".

TFortunato 8y ago
The reason it is an issue is because the TSA is disproportionately singling out people for more invasive searches under the guise of, "we have this shitty technology that can't tell the difference between explosives and black hair or a 'turban', and that's what the procedure tells us to do." Just because it isn't designed to explicitly 'single out black people', that was the outcome of using this combination of technology and procedure. To top it all off, we are all paying millions of dollars for this, via taxes for some fancy security theater to tell us, whether there is the "ability to hide contraband", which seems utterly insane.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jerf 8y ago

"The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine." That is not a politically-acceptable argument.

masklinn 8y ago

> The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine. Ah yes, the good ol' > You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” If you build discrimination into the system you don't have to explicitly discriminate, it's just "the machine". Even better if that's a convenient side-effect of having only ever tested the machine with and for populations you had no desire to discriminate against rather than having had to explicitly build-in the discrimination. > it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband. The article is about the TSA, not Border Patrol. Looking for contraband is not the TSA's job.

ac29 8y ago
>Looking for contraband is not the TSA's job. Its certainly part of their job. In states with legal Marijuana sales, there are frequently TSA drug sniffing dogs at checkpoints.
Kalium 8y ago
> The article is about the TSA, not Border Patrol. Looking for contraband is not the TSA's job. You're absolutely right! Do you have a better word to describe the collection of types of items the TSA is empowered to and charged with searching for?
- js2 8y ago
  "Prohibited items." Not sure why this was downvoted. It is literally how the TSA refers to them on its site and answers the parent's question: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/civil-enforcement https://www.tsa.gov/travel/civil-enforcement Save your downvotes for the TSA.
- coldtea 8y ago

TFortunato 8y ago

Just because the technology isn't explicitly designed as a 'single out black people' machine, doesn't mean that it isn't disproportionately affecting them due to how it is being used. Just because this imaging technology can't tell the difference between dense hair and explosives does not make someone's thick hair, or hair covering "an area of suspect density" that should automatically be flagged for more invasive searchs. It's definitely trying to split some really fine hairs to be saying 'actually, it isn't discriminating against black people, it's discriminating against hair types that are highly correlated with being a black person, and it's totally acceptable that people with those hair types should be considered suspect / subject to further scrutiny', as if that is some sort of edge case that couldn't have possibly be thought about beforehand. I absolutely don't think we should be defending a tech / procedure that only seems to be negatively affecting people, costs millions, and doesn't seem to have any positives effects,

briffle 8y ago

It could also be the diversity of testing as well. If the machine is tested to work with such dense hair from the beginning the algorithms can be adjusted. Kind of like the Amazon facial recognition, [0] that really didn't work well on minorities, likely due to the training models used [0] https://medium.com/@bu64dcjrytwitb8/on-recent-research-auditing-commercial-facial-analysis-technology-19148bda1832 https://medium.com/@bu64dcjrytwitb8/on-recent-research-audit...

mikestew 8y ago

it's a machine that detects areas of suspect density that could presumably be hiding contraband. And literacy tests for voters simply ensures that our electorate is properly educated. Any side effects are a convenient freebie.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> the machine does not differentiate on the basis of race I’m guessing it was predominantly white men who built this machine and white men who tested it. Reminds me of certain facial-recognition programs being (initially) unable to identify black faces. It may not be racism, but it is discrimination.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Who is it racist against? Surely it's white people primarily who suffer as they're more likely to be caught by the facial recognition? Following the simplest case, because lighter skin gives greater contrast is _not_ racism. It's not 'unnecessary discrimination' either, as it arises out of the facts of how light works. It's like saying that products with a weight limit that arises out of the materials used are "fattist".
- helloayo 8y ago
  I don't think you understand how light works.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    You better explain it to me then. I'm not great on QFT, so keep it graduate level physics so I can follow along.

danso 8y ago

People are free to choose their hair and hairstyles. The burden of not discriminating is on the government agency, which is funded and mandated (including, according to TFA, $100M for deploying the scanners) to not be discriminatory, including on characteristics related to race. As u/tj-teej pointed out [0], the utilizers of this tech have the agency and means to improve or mitigate the tech, including prioritizing the training of algorithms to handle black hair styles instead of shunting it off to an edge case, conveniently burdening a demographic who has been historically limited in power and influence. To think of it another way: in many parts of the U.S., Asians are very much a minority. Asians more commonly have narrower eyes which can interfere with face detection/recognition [1]. In the near and possible future, when face-detection becomes a "feature" in security tech as a means to expedite processing -- e.g. if your face is scanned and not found in a "Real ID" database, you're automatically put in a line for more invasive searching -- would Asian-Americans not have a legitimate case that the U.S. gov't has failed to improve their tech to the detriment of Asian-American citizens? Especially when it seems Asian countries have successfully mitigated the issue? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684290 [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error/new-zealand-passport-robot-tells-applicant-of-asian-descent-to-open-eyes-idUSKBN13W0RL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-passport-error...

DuskStar 8y ago
I think the major difference here is immutable vs mutable characteristics. You can choose your hairstyle, but not what your face looks like.
- danso 8y ago
  Eyes are mutable. Double-eyelid surgery is cheap and common enough in South Korea for it to be a graduation present, and as many as 1/3 of young women have undergone cosmetic surgery [0]. But the overriding point is that Asian countries have developed face detection and recognition for their populations, because the utility and value of the software would be dubious without it. For the U.S. to not seek to invest in its own software would be open for a legal challenge. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/05/581765974/in-seoul-a-plastic-surgery-capital-residents-frown-on-ads-for-cosmetic-procedure https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/05/581765974/...

NathanKP 8y ago

Yep same here. As a white dude with dense longish hair who travels a lot for work I've noticed that if I have my hair in a ponytail about 1 in 3 times that I go through the body scanner they are going to pat down the back of my head to check my ponytail. I don't agree with your last point though. The discriminating factor is that the machine screening is designed based on the average white male and female appearance. And that means that anyone outside that built in assumption, whether its a white dude with a thick ponytail, or a black woman with a Afro gets extra screening. What the article is trying to highlight is that when we design such systems we shouldn't just be designing them against the average because that causes the system to discriminate against anyone outside that average.

ralusek 8y ago
The onus is on you if you make that declaration. You don't know that the reason the machine triggers more frequently in "black hair" is because of improper testing, you're just asserting that. There are such things as objective differences that have objective implications.
Fjolsvith 8y ago
I am reminded of the issues the Air Force had due to cockpits being designed for the average pilot size. They did a study and found that the majority of pilots were not near the average size and had difficulty reaching for switches and pedals and such. [1] 1. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

coldtea 8y ago

>The fact that certain hairstyles are more popular within a racial group IS the discriminating factor, not the machine. Most of the people who ordered, designed, built and tested the machine are white. They don't have to explicitly discriminate against blacks. They can just go their business as usual, designing stuff based on their own norms and cultural habits, and it will come out as naturally discriminating. If all those whites doing the machine's design had those "certain hairstyles" in the same ratio as blacks, and were flagged as much when they've tested it, they'd have considered this facet of the machine as useless and removed it...

CompanionCuuube 8y ago
So which detection facets regarding areas likely able to conceal hidden contraband were removed due to being part of the white people testing group?