4 ms·

These things always start with an innocuous purpose. The French national DNA database initially was a sexual assault database, to be able to identify rapists.

by cm2187 7y ago

These things always start with an innocuous purpose. The French national DNA database initially was a sexual assault database, to be able to identify rapists. Now your DNA is collected even if you are arrested in a demonstration and never charged. It is like laws. When a new law is on the table, the question is never about the reasonable use of that law, it is all about how it can be abused in the worst possible case, because that always ends up happening sooner or later.

mytailorisrich 7y ago
This system reads the data from your passport (which the government collected when you applied for one and stored there) and store them on your phone. Software then uses facial recognition to check that the person holding the phone matches the picture from your passport. Hardly 1984...
- cm2187 7y ago
  If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity, it will not take very long for someone asking for it to be used to identify violent criminals. Then terrorists at airport gates. Then demonstrators. etc.
  - seszett 7y ago
    The "system" (an NFC passport) is already used at airport gates, though. Violent criminals and demonstrators are rarely identified through their passports because these events don't make it easy to check people's passports, but ID documents are sometimes used, the photo is just checked by policemen rather than an app on the user's phone.
  - laumars 7y ago
    This app doesn't provide the government any new information (it uses ID the government already issue) nor invent any new technology (face recognition already exists). If French government - or any government for that matter - wished to do what you described then this app wouldn't be the proverbial gateway drug to that point. In fact, the entire point of passports is to identify people at airport gates and other national borders.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      > This app doesn't provide the government any new information > wished to do what you described then this app wouldn't be the proverbial gateway drug to that point. It's not about "gateway drug" - it's about taking small, incremental steps to get from point A to point B such that you don't realize it, and each action is a small change from the previous. This is widely known as Salami Slicing[0], though I like to call it "slow boiling a frog." This is the same tactic I use to slowly bring errant teams and projects up-to-code at work, start off slow with a build server, add in pass-fail rules, add in style rules, add in test requirements, add in code review to ensure these things are up to snuff and before you know it we have a nice compliant project, whereas if I walked in on Day 0 and laid down the law there is guaranteed revolt. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing
      - icebraining 7y ago
        But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way.
        mieseratte 7y ago
        > But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way. Yes, it is a new, small, incremental step! This is introducing a new procedure, a procedure they can change later to move the needle forward. This is the whole point, doing small incremental steps. Each of which appears rather banal and unobjectionable. That you don't care is proof it works!
        icebraining 7y ago
        Anything can change later, even removing a procedure could be a prelude to adding a new, more invasive one. An incremental step requires an increment. Nothing gets incremented here. The French government already had this data, and already used it to biometrically identify people. The only thing this inches toward is to a reduction in the number of public functionaries. This is the automated checkout system for State services, nothing more.
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    > If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity True, but you can't. Facebook can't. That's (one of the reasons) they suggest tagging amongst your friends, not amongst all of FB people. You can identify one person (with a certain degree of certainty) against a certain range of candidates. Or you can search for one person on a small sample of images (100s or 1000s of images). So yes you can have a db of "persons of interest" and that will be searchable when someone appears at an airport. But if the number of people in that DB increases you're going to have more false positives and lower confidence.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      True, but that's not different from fingerprints. Fingerprints have collisions. That doesn't mean that it isn't a highly effective tool.
      - raverbashing 7y ago
        Yes, the analogy is valid. Hence why fingerprints are "good"/"very good" at making sure the person presenting the fingerprint is who they claim they are, but for other purposes, not so much. But they be better than face recognition at "search at a DB" tasks (especially if you have multiple fingers)
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
        The current system is that a human being looks at you then at your passport/ID card, and then concludes that the document is genuine and that you are the same person as in the picture. So the question is: how good at this is a facial recognition system compared to a human being?
  - bb123 7y ago
    I'm okay with identifying terrorists at airport gates. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      Which is fine and dandy until the day you're a target. Power is a sword that cuts both ways.
      - Barrin92 7y ago
        you can always be the target to border or airport controls regardless of how much technology is involved, and policing was no less crude before we introduced facial recognition checks. I've been checked at airports before and I have no problem with airport security either. Terrorism or crime are real threats and police without technology is just as biased if not more so then machine aided ones. The minority report fears every time technology is introduced to policing is an abstract and slightly silly complaint given that most police brutality and abuse of power occurs in impoverished, low tech areas, where if anything police has fewer tools and force available than in public airports and surveilled neighbourhoods.
        lifty 7y ago
        The problem is that these kind of automated system give governments more leverage than policing using people, and it enables them to do systemic oppression. Also, people have a moral compass that can prevent them from doing bad things, while machines don't. But everything is fine as long as the government is ok. I come from one of the eastern EU states which were under communist rule, and I am naturally more skeptical towards these systems. edit: I understand that in this particular example the data is stored only on the phones, so your face is used only used to generate a unique signature, which I don't find that bad. But it's important that this is kept in check and that the system is not extended later to centralise all this data.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago
another-one-off 7y ago
Imagine the mucky world of politics; somebody is advocating or willing to consider almost any crazy idea. So any state of law is usually a balance between forces that want to move regulation in some new direction. If the pro-liberty forces don't have the numbers to quell that sort of law when it is proposed; the question becomes where is the line that it starts to become an issue? Because the pro-safety, pro-conformance factions will keep pushing as far as they can. If they've got the power to start reducing liberty then they are going to keep at it until there is a well supported line that has been crossed. Not a line that an unusually intelligent, educated and thoughtful person would identify a concern but a line where ordinary people start to vote differently. It is very hard to justify liberty to a disinterested observer until the authoritarians actually start taking power; and by then it doesn't really help. It becomes too hard to organise.
JeanMarcS 7y ago
> Now your DNA is collected even if you are arrested in a demonstration and never charged. Do you have any (reliable) source confirming that ?
- cm2187 7y ago
  https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2017/06/22/la-france-epinglee-par-la-cedh-pour-fichage-abusif_5149476_3214.html https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2017/06/22/la-france-e... Le fichier Fnaeg, créé en 1998, conserve les empreintes génétiques des personnes condamnées ou « mises en cause » dans la plupart des crimes et délits relatifs aux atteintes aux biens et aux personnes, du crime contre l’humanité aux simples violences, en passant par le trafic de drogue et le proxénétisme. Translation: The Fnaeg database, created in 1998, stores DNA profiles of people sentenced or questioned, in most of the crimes and offenses related to goods or people, from crime against humanity to a simple violence, including drug trafficking or procuring.
  - mytailorisrich 7y ago
    Neither that article nor the actual law put the threshold as low as 'questioned' for DNA to be stored in that database though DNA may indeed be collected to be matched against it.
    - cm2187 7y ago
      It may be an abuse of the law, but the fact is that it is common practice. First result on google: https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/138965/120313+manifestant+refus+ADN+relaxe.pdf https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/138965/120313+manifestan... Giorgos, militant anarchiste, avait été placé en garde à vue lors d’une manifestation à Montpellier en octobre 2010. Il avait été accusé par les policiers d'avoir, avec d'autres manifestants, renversé des poubelles. Une poursuite classée sans suite pour cause d’« infraction insuffisamment caractérisée ». Mais il avait eu le tort de refuser qu’on lui prélève ses empreintes génétiques et a été condamné en première instance à un mois de prison avec sursis par le tribunal correctionnel de Montpellier. Translation: Giorgos, an anarchist militant, was arrested during a demonstration in Montpellier in Oct 2010. He was accused by the police, along with other demonstrators, to have knocked over bins. The case was dismissed because the offense "was insufficiently characterized". But his fault was to refuse to have his DNA taken and was sentenced for that to a month of suspended jail term by the Montpellier court. I read similar stories in other demonstrations.

by cm2187 7y ago

mytailorisrich 7y ago

This system reads the data from your passport (which the government collected when you applied for one and stored there) and store them on your phone. Software then uses facial recognition to check that the person holding the phone matches the picture from your passport. Hardly 1984...

cm2187 7y ago
If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity, it will not take very long for someone asking for it to be used to identify violent criminals. Then terrorists at airport gates. Then demonstrators. etc.
- seszett 7y ago
  The "system" (an NFC passport) is already used at airport gates, though. Violent criminals and demonstrators are rarely identified through their passports because these events don't make it easy to check people's passports, but ID documents are sometimes used, the photo is just checked by policemen rather than an app on the user's phone.
- laumars 7y ago
  This app doesn't provide the government any new information (it uses ID the government already issue) nor invent any new technology (face recognition already exists). If French government - or any government for that matter - wished to do what you described then this app wouldn't be the proverbial gateway drug to that point. In fact, the entire point of passports is to identify people at airport gates and other national borders.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    > This app doesn't provide the government any new information > wished to do what you described then this app wouldn't be the proverbial gateway drug to that point. It's not about "gateway drug" - it's about taking small, incremental steps to get from point A to point B such that you don't realize it, and each action is a small change from the previous. This is widely known as Salami Slicing[0], though I like to call it "slow boiling a frog." This is the same tactic I use to slowly bring errant teams and projects up-to-code at work, start off slow with a build server, add in pass-fail rules, add in style rules, add in test requirements, add in code review to ensure these things are up to snuff and before you know it we have a nice compliant project, whereas if I walked in on Day 0 and laid down the law there is guaranteed revolt. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing
    - icebraining 7y ago
      But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way.
      - mieseratte 7y ago
        > But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way. Yes, it is a new, small, incremental step! This is introducing a new procedure, a procedure they can change later to move the needle forward. This is the whole point, doing small incremental steps. Each of which appears rather banal and unobjectionable. That you don't care is proof it works!
        icebraining 7y ago
        Anything can change later, even removing a procedure could be a prelude to adding a new, more invasive one. An incremental step requires an increment. Nothing gets incremented here. The French government already had this data, and already used it to biometrically identify people. The only thing this inches toward is to a reduction in the number of public functionaries. This is the automated checkout system for State services, nothing more.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  > If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity True, but you can't. Facebook can't. That's (one of the reasons) they suggest tagging amongst your friends, not amongst all of FB people. You can identify one person (with a certain degree of certainty) against a certain range of candidates. Or you can search for one person on a small sample of images (100s or 1000s of images). So yes you can have a db of "persons of interest" and that will be searchable when someone appears at an airport. But if the number of people in that DB increases you're going to have more false positives and lower confidence.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    True, but that's not different from fingerprints. Fingerprints have collisions. That doesn't mean that it isn't a highly effective tool.
    - raverbashing 7y ago
      Yes, the analogy is valid. Hence why fingerprints are "good"/"very good" at making sure the person presenting the fingerprint is who they claim they are, but for other purposes, not so much. But they be better than face recognition at "search at a DB" tasks (especially if you have multiple fingers)
      - mytailorisrich 7y ago
        The current system is that a human being looks at you then at your passport/ID card, and then concludes that the document is genuine and that you are the same person as in the picture. So the question is: how good at this is a facial recognition system compared to a human being?
- bb123 7y ago
  I'm okay with identifying terrorists at airport gates. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    Which is fine and dandy until the day you're a target. Power is a sword that cuts both ways.
    - Barrin92 7y ago
      you can always be the target to border or airport controls regardless of how much technology is involved, and policing was no less crude before we introduced facial recognition checks. I've been checked at airports before and I have no problem with airport security either. Terrorism or crime are real threats and police without technology is just as biased if not more so then machine aided ones. The minority report fears every time technology is introduced to policing is an abstract and slightly silly complaint given that most police brutality and abuse of power occurs in impoverished, low tech areas, where if anything police has fewer tools and force available than in public airports and surveilled neighbourhoods.
      - lifty 7y ago
        The problem is that these kind of automated system give governments more leverage than policing using people, and it enables them to do systemic oppression. Also, people have a moral compass that can prevent them from doing bad things, while machines don't. But everything is fine as long as the government is ok. I come from one of the eastern EU states which were under communist rule, and I am naturally more skeptical towards these systems. edit: I understand that in this particular example the data is stored only on the phones, so your face is used only used to generate a unique signature, which I don't find that bad. But it's important that this is kept in check and that the system is not extended later to centralise all this data.
        mytailorisrich 7y ago

another-one-off 7y ago

Imagine the mucky world of politics; somebody is advocating or willing to consider almost any crazy idea. So any state of law is usually a balance between forces that want to move regulation in some new direction. If the pro-liberty forces don't have the numbers to quell that sort of law when it is proposed; the question becomes where is the line that it starts to become an issue? Because the pro-safety, pro-conformance factions will keep pushing as far as they can. If they've got the power to start reducing liberty then they are going to keep at it until there is a well supported line that has been crossed. Not a line that an unusually intelligent, educated and thoughtful person would identify a concern but a line where ordinary people start to vote differently. It is very hard to justify liberty to a disinterested observer until the authoritarians actually start taking power; and by then it doesn't really help. It becomes too hard to organise.

JeanMarcS 7y ago

> Now your DNA is collected even if you are arrested in a demonstration and never charged. Do you have any (reliable) source confirming that ?

cm2187 7y ago
https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2017/06/22/la-france-epinglee-par-la-cedh-pour-fichage-abusif_5149476_3214.html https://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2017/06/22/la-france-e... Le fichier Fnaeg, créé en 1998, conserve les empreintes génétiques des personnes condamnées ou « mises en cause » dans la plupart des crimes et délits relatifs aux atteintes aux biens et aux personnes, du crime contre l’humanité aux simples violences, en passant par le trafic de drogue et le proxénétisme. Translation: The Fnaeg database, created in 1998, stores DNA profiles of people sentenced or questioned, in most of the crimes and offenses related to goods or people, from crime against humanity to a simple violence, including drug trafficking or procuring.
- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  Neither that article nor the actual law put the threshold as low as 'questioned' for DNA to be stored in that database though DNA may indeed be collected to be matched against it.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    It may be an abuse of the law, but the fact is that it is common practice. First result on google: https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/138965/120313+manifestant+refus+ADN+relaxe.pdf https://crabgrass.riseup.net/assets/138965/120313+manifestan... Giorgos, militant anarchiste, avait été placé en garde à vue lors d’une manifestation à Montpellier en octobre 2010. Il avait été accusé par les policiers d'avoir, avec d'autres manifestants, renversé des poubelles. Une poursuite classée sans suite pour cause d’« infraction insuffisamment caractérisée ». Mais il avait eu le tort de refuser qu’on lui prélève ses empreintes génétiques et a été condamné en première instance à un mois de prison avec sursis par le tribunal correctionnel de Montpellier. Translation: Giorgos, an anarchist militant, was arrested during a demonstration in Montpellier in Oct 2010. He was accused by the police, along with other demonstrators, to have knocked over bins. The case was dismissed because the offense "was insufficiently characterized". But his fault was to refuse to have his DNA taken and was sentenced for that to a month of suspended jail term by the Montpellier court. I read similar stories in other demonstrations.