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Making bombs in your backyards is much less popular and much more consequential than recognizing images. And image recognition happens completely in silicon. T

Making bombs in your backyards is much less popular and much more consequential than recognizing images. And image recognition happens completely in silicon. There is no way to know from the outside if a device is recognizing patterns in image data, much less differentiate between recognizing faces or dog breeds.

skohan 8y ago
I'm not following your argument. There's also no way of knowing from the outside if a device is storing identifying information to be shared with advertisers or foreign governments. What's special about classifiers which makes them unregulatable?
- bayesian_horse 8y ago
  I think you are arguing, to try an analogy, that prohibiting any kind of face recognition would be as worthwhile as prohibiting bomb building, while being about equally difficult. I'm rejecting that premise. And of course, storage and utilization of personal data is a lot easier to regulate in a way that can be enforced. That's the main premise of the GDPR legislation, by the way. Of course, criminal and negligent businesses can totally abuse your personal data, often without consequences. But they can't do so legitimately and they don't have access to the legal and open economy. Even Facebook and Google are feeling the pain already. They do violate some laws some of the time and they have a hard time hiding that, because hiding it requires criminal intent itself, and it's really hard for hundreds of people to keep such secrets, regardless how profitable.
  - skohan 8y ago
    1. No, you have asserted multiple times in this discussion that it's impossible to regulate facial recognition technology. e.g: > The former is a technological reality. It's impossible to legislate away devices who can do that[facial recognition]. Please explain that statement, as it seems like total nonsense to me. My point about explosives is that just because something is "a technological reality", or that there's no way to physically prevent people from implementing something, that in no way makes it immune from legislation. We can legislate whatever we want. Here's a law which would make it impossible for JetBlue to implement this system: "No organization shall be permitted to use an automated system to identify individuals using an image of their face." 2. I think you're missing the point with your larger argument. It seems as if you are saying: we should not be concerned about JetBlue's use of this technology because this use-case in particular does not constitute the dystopian Orwellian potential of facial recognition technology. The point is not that this is the use-case which crosses that line, the point is that it is a big step in that direction, and has happened without a public discussion of where exactly the line should be. 3. You say w.r.t. GDPR: > Of course, criminal and negligent businesses can totally abuse your personal data, often without consequences. But they can't do so legitimately and they don't have access to the legal and open economy. That's an argument in favor of regulating facial recognition technology itself isn't it? We can allow the technology to be normalized, and just hope everyone is following regulations about not abusing access to our personal data. But given what has been revealed about PRISM and other government spying programs, it's hard to imagine that such data would not be abused if it existed. On the other hand, we could agree not to make facial recognition a part of our daily lives, or to put very careful boundaries around its use, and make it that much harder for it to be abused.

skohan 8y ago

I'm not following your argument. There's also no way of knowing from the outside if a device is storing identifying information to be shared with advertisers or foreign governments. What's special about classifiers which makes them unregulatable?

bayesian_horse 8y ago
I think you are arguing, to try an analogy, that prohibiting any kind of face recognition would be as worthwhile as prohibiting bomb building, while being about equally difficult. I'm rejecting that premise. And of course, storage and utilization of personal data is a lot easier to regulate in a way that can be enforced. That's the main premise of the GDPR legislation, by the way. Of course, criminal and negligent businesses can totally abuse your personal data, often without consequences. But they can't do so legitimately and they don't have access to the legal and open economy. Even Facebook and Google are feeling the pain already. They do violate some laws some of the time and they have a hard time hiding that, because hiding it requires criminal intent itself, and it's really hard for hundreds of people to keep such secrets, regardless how profitable.
- skohan 8y ago
  1. No, you have asserted multiple times in this discussion that it's impossible to regulate facial recognition technology. e.g: > The former is a technological reality. It's impossible to legislate away devices who can do that[facial recognition]. Please explain that statement, as it seems like total nonsense to me. My point about explosives is that just because something is "a technological reality", or that there's no way to physically prevent people from implementing something, that in no way makes it immune from legislation. We can legislate whatever we want. Here's a law which would make it impossible for JetBlue to implement this system: "No organization shall be permitted to use an automated system to identify individuals using an image of their face." 2. I think you're missing the point with your larger argument. It seems as if you are saying: we should not be concerned about JetBlue's use of this technology because this use-case in particular does not constitute the dystopian Orwellian potential of facial recognition technology. The point is not that this is the use-case which crosses that line, the point is that it is a big step in that direction, and has happened without a public discussion of where exactly the line should be. 3. You say w.r.t. GDPR: > Of course, criminal and negligent businesses can totally abuse your personal data, often without consequences. But they can't do so legitimately and they don't have access to the legal and open economy. That's an argument in favor of regulating facial recognition technology itself isn't it? We can allow the technology to be normalized, and just hope everyone is following regulations about not abusing access to our personal data. But given what has been revealed about PRISM and other government spying programs, it's hard to imagine that such data would not be abused if it existed. On the other hand, we could agree not to make facial recognition a part of our daily lives, or to put very careful boundaries around its use, and make it that much harder for it to be abused.