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We should be very concerned, because this is obviously testing the waters before rolling out ubiquitous facial recognition. I honestly and earnestly believe tha

We should be very concerned, because this is obviously testing the waters before rolling out ubiquitous facial recognition. I honestly and earnestly believe that use of facial recognition technology should be banned in all its forms. The applications are limited and the downsides are massive.

cocochanel 8y ago
Could you please elaborate on the downsides? Gov't has your data since you were born, complete with your photos, IDs, you name it. What makes you think it's any different now?
- Xylakant 8y ago
  Your government has your data, but this scheme would require that it gets mine, too.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ehnto 8y ago
  The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent. To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and instead required you to submit your daily movement report at the end of each day. An agent walks from door to door and you hand him your written report of exactly what you did today and that gets entered into the Government Saftey and Oversight Commission Database. What are they going to use all that data for? There are only a handful of good reasons, but a disproportionate list of bad reasons that explicitly limit freedom. Second to that. Would you be as comfortable going to a strip club or a fringe political gathering or a conference for a controversial topic if you knew you had to put it in your report? It has a chilling effect on freedom of movement and pushes fringe activities that are perfectly safe and legal into the darkness.
  - duckface 8y ago
    you people are pretty stupid. ATMs have tracking, point of point of sale has tracking, your phone, internet it's all tracked and linked back to you.
    - ehnto 8y ago
      No one said they didn't track anything already. But they don't have the full picture yet. Many people pay cash for things. Currently no tracking if you just visit somewhere and don't pay for anything. Not everyone has GPS enabled on their phone. Ubiquitous facial recognition fills in all of this missing data well enough, and without you doing anything but walking out your front door.
    - justwalt 8y ago
      I think you’re right. Maybe we should skip the facial recognition and install RFID tags behind our eyes, after all, they basically know all of that info already anyways.
Scea91 8y ago
In this particular case, the application of facial recognition improves airport security (against forged passports, sloppy security personnel, ...) while not probably requiring any additional information than what would already be provided by passports with biometric data. In my opinion, this is one of the few applications where it actually makes sense.
- kelnos 8y ago
  You need to first ask if you're protecting against a threat that actually exists and is material. Is that the case? Do we see rampant use of forged ID to get onto planes? Do we see sloppy security personnel letting people through who shouldn't be allowed? I just don't see the evidence that this isn't a solution searching for a problem.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Do we know the instance count of forged passports vs the chances of spotting a fake when done by humans vs the computer? Sloppy security personnel is not something you address with tech, you address that with training and incentives.

cocochanel 8y ago

Could you please elaborate on the downsides? Gov't has your data since you were born, complete with your photos, IDs, you name it. What makes you think it's any different now?

Xylakant 8y ago
Your government has your data, but this scheme would require that it gets mine, too.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ehnto 8y ago
The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent. To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and instead required you to submit your daily movement report at the end of each day. An agent walks from door to door and you hand him your written report of exactly what you did today and that gets entered into the Government Saftey and Oversight Commission Database. What are they going to use all that data for? There are only a handful of good reasons, but a disproportionate list of bad reasons that explicitly limit freedom. Second to that. Would you be as comfortable going to a strip club or a fringe political gathering or a conference for a controversial topic if you knew you had to put it in your report? It has a chilling effect on freedom of movement and pushes fringe activities that are perfectly safe and legal into the darkness.
- duckface 8y ago
  you people are pretty stupid. ATMs have tracking, point of point of sale has tracking, your phone, internet it's all tracked and linked back to you.
  - ehnto 8y ago
    No one said they didn't track anything already. But they don't have the full picture yet. Many people pay cash for things. Currently no tracking if you just visit somewhere and don't pay for anything. Not everyone has GPS enabled on their phone. Ubiquitous facial recognition fills in all of this missing data well enough, and without you doing anything but walking out your front door.
  - justwalt 8y ago
    I think you’re right. Maybe we should skip the facial recognition and install RFID tags behind our eyes, after all, they basically know all of that info already anyways.

Scea91 8y ago

In this particular case, the application of facial recognition improves airport security (against forged passports, sloppy security personnel, ...) while not probably requiring any additional information than what would already be provided by passports with biometric data. In my opinion, this is one of the few applications where it actually makes sense.

kelnos 8y ago
You need to first ask if you're protecting against a threat that actually exists and is material. Is that the case? Do we see rampant use of forged ID to get onto planes? Do we see sloppy security personnel letting people through who shouldn't be allowed? I just don't see the evidence that this isn't a solution searching for a problem.
jacquesm 8y ago
Do we know the instance count of forged passports vs the chances of spotting a fake when done by humans vs the computer? Sloppy security personnel is not something you address with tech, you address that with training and incentives.