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It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looki

• em3rgent0rdr 7y ago
  Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.
  • ethbro 7y ago
    Where there is a way and profit, someone will have the will.
  • dmix 7y ago
    I've never fully agreed that when you're in public all data collection on you is fair game. These are governments that we are setting up to benefit ourselves, this seems far more in the interest of gov interests than citizens. If they were strictly limited to criminal investigations and required a warrant to scan the images that might be a different story.
    • edejong 7y ago
      IMHO, publicly gathered information should automatically be made publicly available. That should give people something to think about.
  • zaroth 7y ago
    Technology itself is always amoral. Even splitting the atom can be used to achieve wonderful and horrific outcomes. So of course “facial recognition” per say is not the problem. But in this particular example, we see how facial recognition combined with a couple hundred million surveillance cameras funneled into a massive government data processing pipeline can be extremely effectively used for persistent tracking and nearly instant geolocation of “suspects”. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen how this movie ends. There’s a reason we don’t implant GPS trackers into babies at birth just because they might get lost one day. Maybe China will use this technology to build a veritable Eden free from crime and lost puppies. Or maybe they are closing the grip on a dystopian nightmare. I think you have to be pretty naive to think it’s not looking startlingly like the latter.
    • roenxi 7y ago
      > There’s a reason we don’t implant GPS trackers into babies at birth just because they might get lost one day. What reason are you thinking? I wouldn't support it myself, but I don't usually represent public opinion. GPS didn't really burst into the public imagination before 2007 and the iPhone; in a sense the technology is only about a decade old or so in the public sphere. Prior to 2000 the US government's official position was something like "this is a military technology". As the cost of sensors and radio chips goes down, we might reach the point where we do put a GPS sensor on everybody. Law enforcement would love it and on the small scale it would probably save lives and reduce crime.
      • genera1 7y ago
        >As the cost of sensors and radio chips goes down, we might reach the point where we do put a GPS sensor on everybody. Law enforcement would love it and on the small scale it would probably save lives and reduce crime. GPS chips are already cheap enough (single digit dollars), that it's an issue of policy\public perception, not cost
      • Wellshit 7y ago
        > we might reach the point where we do put a GPS sensor on everybody We're way past that point. We call'em smartphones.
      • mensetmanusman 7y ago
        Unless you can make gps readers that are non-metallic and don’t require battery changes, probably not going to happen...
    • pacala 7y ago
      The situation in China is dire. USA is not far behind. Does your neighbor have a Ring camera? Well, that watches the whole street and it is connected to a massive corporate data processing pipeline that is used for persistent tracking of advertisement subjects. Only need to tweak it a little bit for vastly different purposes. Oh, and we work hard to improve our far-field microphones connected to the same pipeline. To offer you a better service [TM]. You make a critical point. Technology itself is always amoral. We are enamored by technology for technology sake, while we drifted away from our moral roots.
  • salawat 7y ago
    Bad laws will always be made or be available for exploitation. That can't be fixed. The facial recognition, in this case, is the right place to intervene. The argument can be made it's a good thing for more people to be arrested for BSfaster to get laws off the books, however, I fear authority will exploit select enforcement to it's fullest extent to ensure they can put a sufficient number of problematic individuals away without stirring up unrest.
  • austhrow743 7y ago
    Bad laws will always exist. The temptation to introduce more bad laws will always exist amongst law makers. It's important that enforcing the law be difficult, expensive, and imperfect.
  • noonespecial 7y ago
    Ah yes, but at this point I'm quite sure it will be used in service of "bad laws" and little else. Its true that thanks to profit motive, someone will build it. Its just not going to be me.
  • AngryData 7y ago
    Maybe im naive but I don't see anything positive coming from facial recognition. Its two main uses are targeted advertising and finding dissidents. It could help find a handful of criminals, but considering the high level of false positives, the inevitable abuse like every other police technology, and the fact that I live in a police state where im unknowingly breaking any number of laws at any given moment, I don't see how it helps more than it hurts. Might as well require people to carry papers at all times and submit to police checkpoints at every street corner.
    • TaylorAlexander 7y ago
      Face recognition as a technology won’t go away. What’s important is preventing governments and private groups from using face recognition in abusive ways. A legal framework for what is and is not okay must be established.
      • AngryData 7y ago
        The simplest and most effective legal framework would be to just outlaw it. Of course the technology doesn't disappear, none of it ever does, but there are still plenty of technologies that are banned because they are a net negative effect upon the world. I still don't see any positives to allowing it.
  • rtpg 7y ago
    It sure helps not to hand the tools directly to the oppressors. Of course stopping all facial recognition doesn't suddenly make a totalitarian regime disappear. But having it makes some things way easier than it used to be. For what? automatic tagging of faces in your photo library?
  • pushpop 7y ago
    You can’t guarantee good people will always be in charge, even in “good” countries. Public opinion changes, new politicians get votes into power, etc. Which is why I’m against tools like this. Sure, it might mean I’m in favour of a few bad people getting away with crimes but privacy laws are about protecting everyone because one day it might be the “good guys” that depend on privacy and we might find it’s already too late.
• golemiprague 7y ago
  This is a stupid idea, the bad guys will still research and will just become stronger, an arm race always kept the balance, wars don't start because a weapon created or not but it definitely gives incentive to try one when you know your enemy is not keeping up with the latest technology
• DuskStar 7y ago
  The University of Tokyo could afford to do that because another nation had taken over responsibility for their defense. Who's going to be that protector for the US?
  • zrobotics 7y ago
    Postulate: how does the US being able to more accurately track people via facial recognition make me meterialy safer as a US citizen? Because for me, that argument has a whiff of 'think of the children'. I don't think the NSA has done anything to make me safer, and I haven't seen any convincing proof to show they have done anything to help my safety. At this point, what is actually accomplished by the US military getting even fancier ways of killing people? From how things are shaping up, even if things come to blows b/w US & China it won't be a shooting war. It's looking like it will be similar to the cold war: neither adversary can dare attack the other, so we end up with a series of proxy wars and nitpicking at the adversary.
    • nscalf 7y ago
      Going to note that I am largely against facial recognition tracking to us citizens before I say this post. Being able to track and find individuals, anywhere in the US where there is a camera, will significantly reduce crime. Cameras would cover a larger swath of territory, and we would be able to find potential terrorists, criminal suspects, missing people, human traffic victims, etc. far more effectively. We would likely be able to identify people acting like they were about to commit a violent crime too, but that’s just an assumption based off my experience. Does large scale surveillance help with making individuals safer? I think the answer is obviously yes. I disagree with it because it has significant side effects, and doesn’t address the underlying problems CAUSING cultural violence and international crime.
      • dwohnitmok 7y ago
        Anecdotally this is a big factor when I talk with Chinese residents and how they feel about safety in everyday life. When I bought a bike in China and asked about locks, the shop owner showed me, but mentioned that he didn't really see a need, he hadn't heard of a bike being stolen in a while, which he specifically attributed to pervasive surveillance. I bought a lock anyways, but was taken aback by how strong his perception was that he actually was weakly trying to dissuade me from buying a lock. And indeed I saw my fair share of unlocked bikes, although I also saw many that were also locked up, enough that I continued to always lock my bike. And it gets to some really in-your-face levels. Some major cities in China have occasional electronic, public billboards posting somewhat redacted photos and partial ID info (first several digits of their ID card and their surname) of jaywalkers flagged by surveillance cameras, essentially naming and shaming in a very public way. And anecdotally I also feel safer in many large cities in China compared to years prior. Drivers are a lot less crazy. In some, but definitely not all, large cities, traffic lights and crosswalks are essentially sacrosanct now with cameras automatically ticketing everywhere. As a pedestrian, cars will often preemptively stop for me at a crosswalk to let me pass. Pickpocketing seems far less of a concern. Most Chinese residents I see actually wear their backpacks on their backs now at tourist locations and on public transportation (as opposed to previously on their chest to prevent people stealing things from the back). It feels like night and day going to a smaller Chinese city where the old craziness of one or two decades ago still reigns (which is somewhat sad for other sentimental reasons). Now this is both anecdotal and only based on perception. Even if there were statistics provided about this, they would probably come from the Chinese government which makes them suspect. Is this scary how much power this concentrates in the government? Very much so. Is the Chinese government using this power to corral dissidents? Definitely. Does it make large sections of the Chinese population feel safer? I think so.
• thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. This is an interesting perspective. Facial recognition is routine among people, and generally not considered nefarious. Rather, it's important to know who people are for a large number of good reasons. The "facial recognition is inherently evil" point of view probably realizes that it's almost always a bad thing for the government to know who you are. But oddly, ID numbers and birth certificates, which are the normal government equivalent of facial recognition, don't seem to draw similar criticism.
  • isostatic 7y ago
    Because those are conciously produced when asked for? Otherwise they are inaccessible. There’s a massive difference. The only way to avoid face recognition would be to wear something like a burka or maybe a hoodie. Two things that have been attacked over the last couple of decades. And it’s not just governemts doing face recognition, at least with thoses there’s some semblance of democratic oversight - private companies with this data are far more insidious.
  • raxxorrax 7y ago
    They don't draw similar criticism, because the scale and possible applications are not comparable. You could say you are comparing a kitchen knife to an AK47.
  • leppr 7y ago
    Giving out an ID piece is consensual and/or a rare occurrence, compared to simply walking down the street which is a daily unavoidable activity for the vast majority of people. It's similar to giving out your IP address to websites you visit vs. being tracked by an omniscient ad network embedded all over the web.
• paxys 7y ago
  I disagree with your assertion that facial recognition can have only nefarious applications. In fact I'd say the overwhelming majority of usage of the technology today is for unlocking phones and tagging friends on social media rather than arresting protestors.
  • deleted 7y ago
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