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I'm not okay with this - and you shouldn't be either. It's only a matter of time before it gets and misused/abused - to identify protestors, for law enforcement

I'm not okay with this - and you shouldn't be either. It's only a matter of time before it gets and misused/abused - to identify protestors, for law enforcement officers' personal uses, to identify those doing legal things deemed "immoral" (see: China), etc. We really need regulation here. Urgently. The US appears to have been the leader in such regulation in the past. The problem is, they don't do that anymore. They haven't passed any laws related to user rights or privacy in a long time, and are actively trying to make encryption illegal. The same is true for the Australian government, and those of several developing nations. We can hope that the EU does something, but... the impact will be limited. It's especially bad for people living in non-first-world countries like India where the citizens aren't educated on the consequences of law enforcement agencies using tech like this. Laws taking away the right to privacy are being pushed through regularly. Recently they've started using facial recognition to identify protestors: https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using-facial-recognition-to-identify-protestors-in-delhi https://www.fastcompany.com/90448241/indian-police-are-using... I really wish that some leading tech companies would try and push regulation through, but that will never happen since apparently privacy erosion and constant user tracking is critical for revenue for seemingly all of them (except Apple, I suppose). Also, even if somehow regulations were put in place that made it necessary for websites to try and protect user data and made it illegal to scrape PII, there's nothing stopping government agencies from developing tools like these for themselves. Aaaand we go back to the first paragraph of this comment. This is a sad state of affairs.

johanam 7y ago
It seems that the EU is considering temporarily banning facial recognition in public for 5 years: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition-european-union-temporary-ban-privacy-ethics-regulation/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition... But surprisingly a Pew Research [1] study recently found that more than half of Americans trust law enforcement with facial recognition tech. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition-police-law-enforcement-surveillance-privacy-pew-research-survey/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition...
- close04 7y ago
  What’s worse in this case vs. the already known issues of facial recognition by law enforcement is that this private company has the ability to monitor law enforcement on who they investigate. But still does this in a secretive fashion. So it’s not even about trusting LEO with this, it’s trusting yet another completely unregulated party. This opens up a whole new can of worms with issues like selling this info back to the victim.
rubidium 7y ago
Agreed. And asking the question “what can I do locally/ in my state”? It seems the EFF has some play in this area: https://www.eff.org/pages/face-recognition https://www.eff.org/pages/face-recognition But it’s hard to identify what efforts I could support with my time where I am. The right to repair movement has done a good job of communicating state by state proposed laws that can be advocated for. Is there anyone doing the same thing for privacy?
- jordank 7y ago
  Yes, and in contrast with OP’s assertion some states are actively regulating privacy (i.e. California) and there are plenty of statehouses that would likely be amenable to regulating this issue. It’s a mistake to think about US regulations as purely federal.
- hakfoo 7y ago
  I wonder if an effective legal strategy is to intentionally create a patchwork of complex and conflicting state-level regulations. That raises the barrier to entry and compliance so high that it strangles a lot of entrants.
imgabe 7y ago
There should be regulations, yes. We should be dramatically limiting the power of the government as it was in the past in the US. If it is a problem that the government identifies you as a protestor, at that point it doesn't matter that there was a regulation telling them not to. The government needs to be controlled to the point that it doesn't matter whether they can identify a protestor or not, because peacefully protesting should not be a crime that warrants government intervention. It should be hard for the government to imprison you or otherwise impinge your freedom, for only serious offenses, with a high burden of proof, in a public trial.
- arcticbull 7y ago
  > We should be dramatically limiting the power of the government as it was in the past in the US. > The government needs to be controlled to the point that it doesn't matter whether they can identify a protestor or not, because peacefully protesting should not be a crime that warrants government intervention. Right, but that was never the case, and it probably won't be in the future.
  - imgabe 7y ago
    Well, it's going to have to be if we're going to live in a world where facial recognition technology exists. Because this idea where the government wants to jail peaceful protestors, but surely they'll refrain from using certain technologies to find them if we just ask nicely does not make sense to me.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      I mean I agree but if they wanted to jail peaceful protestors surely they could do that by showing up at the protest and rounding them up? The whole point is to be conspicuous.
itronitron 7y ago
The US Senate has previously knocked down the use of private information on US persons by law enforcement [0]. In the past at least there has been a clear distinction between information suitable for the intelligence community and information suitable for law enforcement. The slope is definitely slippery once again but at least there is some precedent for not crossing the streams. 0. https://ftp.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/ https://ftp.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
quotemstr 7y ago
I'm okay with this. It's a long-standing principle that you have no expectation of privacy in public spaces. On what basis do you get to claim suddenly that it's "not okay" and on that basis slow technological development? Every new tool has benefits and drawbacks, when it comes to integrating computing into our lives, the benefits have always massively outweighed the drawbacks. We don't need regulation here, urgently or not. This whole push towards banning things --- this company, the EU facial recognition thing, and so on --- strikes me as just another moral panic used as an excuse for a few to impose their opinions and power on the many. I've yet to see privacy advocates identify actual undeserved harms that have come to people as a result of the technology that they want to regulate. Loss of "privacy" in public is only a harm if you already accept the premise of the argument, which I don't.
- nyolfen 7y ago
  "i don't care if i don't have privacy" is not as strong an argument as you think. almost nobody wants strangers to be able to stalk them trivially and arbitrarily.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > It's a long-standing principle that you have no expectation of privacy in public spaces. There are limits to what we consider acceptable even in public spaces; for example, upskirt photos aren't ok even you're in a public place. I think it's still reasonable to consider that one day (maybe today, for many people?) it might mean that every single moment of their life outside is being recorded, which was literally not possible until recently. It's a valid thing to discuss.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    What I'm against is this idea that X is okay as long as X is expensive, but the moment X becomes cheap, or democratized, or accessible, all of a sudden it's a problem, and we need a ban. Example: it's already legal to keep tabs on people in public. There are businesses build on this idea, private investigators. A little sleazy? Expensive? Sure. But legal. If you want to be consistent, you should ban them too. If X is what causes harm, X should be disallowed no matter the price.
m3kw9 7y ago
This is super easy to copy, any government can do this without anyone knowing
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  Well, people still might find out if a whistleblower leaked info about the program, but that's becoming less and less likely as mistreatment and persecution of whistleblowers has been normalized under the canard, "Well, you have to face the music when you leak classified info."
  - deogeo 7y ago
    And whistleblowing anonymously is getting more difficult, due to all the surveillance whose downsides are purely theoretical...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
robertk 7y ago
“ One helped design a program that can automatically collect images of people’s faces from across the internet, such as employment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Venmo. Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping, and Twitter said it explicitly banned use of its data for facial recognition.” I am not a lawyer. Is it possible to file a (class action?) lawsuit against Clearview AI and its clients (police agencies, etc.) in light of this breach of TOS? At the least, this should suffice in procuring a subpoena to obtain more information on the exact extent of misappropriation of public data at play here.
notyourday 7y ago
> We really need regulation here. Urgently. > > The US appears to have been the leader in such regulation in the past. The problem is, they don't do that anymore. They haven't passed any laws related to user rights or privacy in a long time, and are actively trying to make encryption illegal. This cat is out of the bag. Findface.ru now actively courts law enforcement and other interested parties. The west does not have the monopoly on this. https://findface.ru/ https://findface.ru/

johanam 7y ago

It seems that the EU is considering temporarily banning facial recognition in public for 5 years: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition-european-union-temporary-ban-privacy-ethics-regulation/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615068/facial-recognition... But surprisingly a Pew Research [1] study recently found that more than half of Americans trust law enforcement with facial recognition tech. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition-police-law-enforcement-surveillance-privacy-pew-research-survey/ https://www.technologyreview.com/f/614267/facial-recognition...

close04 7y ago
What’s worse in this case vs. the already known issues of facial recognition by law enforcement is that this private company has the ability to monitor law enforcement on who they investigate. But still does this in a secretive fashion. So it’s not even about trusting LEO with this, it’s trusting yet another completely unregulated party. This opens up a whole new can of worms with issues like selling this info back to the victim.

rubidium 7y ago

Agreed. And asking the question “what can I do locally/ in my state”? It seems the EFF has some play in this area: https://www.eff.org/pages/face-recognition https://www.eff.org/pages/face-recognition But it’s hard to identify what efforts I could support with my time where I am. The right to repair movement has done a good job of communicating state by state proposed laws that can be advocated for. Is there anyone doing the same thing for privacy?

jordank 7y ago
Yes, and in contrast with OP’s assertion some states are actively regulating privacy (i.e. California) and there are plenty of statehouses that would likely be amenable to regulating this issue. It’s a mistake to think about US regulations as purely federal.
hakfoo 7y ago
I wonder if an effective legal strategy is to intentionally create a patchwork of complex and conflicting state-level regulations. That raises the barrier to entry and compliance so high that it strangles a lot of entrants.

imgabe 7y ago

There should be regulations, yes. We should be dramatically limiting the power of the government as it was in the past in the US. If it is a problem that the government identifies you as a protestor, at that point it doesn't matter that there was a regulation telling them not to. The government needs to be controlled to the point that it doesn't matter whether they can identify a protestor or not, because peacefully protesting should not be a crime that warrants government intervention. It should be hard for the government to imprison you or otherwise impinge your freedom, for only serious offenses, with a high burden of proof, in a public trial.

arcticbull 7y ago
> We should be dramatically limiting the power of the government as it was in the past in the US. > The government needs to be controlled to the point that it doesn't matter whether they can identify a protestor or not, because peacefully protesting should not be a crime that warrants government intervention. Right, but that was never the case, and it probably won't be in the future.
- imgabe 7y ago
  Well, it's going to have to be if we're going to live in a world where facial recognition technology exists. Because this idea where the government wants to jail peaceful protestors, but surely they'll refrain from using certain technologies to find them if we just ask nicely does not make sense to me.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    I mean I agree but if they wanted to jail peaceful protestors surely they could do that by showing up at the protest and rounding them up? The whole point is to be conspicuous.

itronitron 7y ago

The US Senate has previously knocked down the use of private information on US persons by law enforcement [0]. In the past at least there has been a clear distinction between information suitable for the intelligence community and information suitable for law enforcement. The slope is definitely slippery once again but at least there is some precedent for not crossing the streams. 0. https://ftp.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/ https://ftp.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

quotemstr 7y ago

I'm okay with this. It's a long-standing principle that you have no expectation of privacy in public spaces. On what basis do you get to claim suddenly that it's "not okay" and on that basis slow technological development? Every new tool has benefits and drawbacks, when it comes to integrating computing into our lives, the benefits have always massively outweighed the drawbacks. We don't need regulation here, urgently or not. This whole push towards banning things --- this company, the EU facial recognition thing, and so on --- strikes me as just another moral panic used as an excuse for a few to impose their opinions and power on the many. I've yet to see privacy advocates identify actual undeserved harms that have come to people as a result of the technology that they want to regulate. Loss of "privacy" in public is only a harm if you already accept the premise of the argument, which I don't.

nyolfen 7y ago
"i don't care if i don't have privacy" is not as strong an argument as you think. almost nobody wants strangers to be able to stalk them trivially and arbitrarily.
saagarjha 7y ago
> It's a long-standing principle that you have no expectation of privacy in public spaces. There are limits to what we consider acceptable even in public spaces; for example, upskirt photos aren't ok even you're in a public place. I think it's still reasonable to consider that one day (maybe today, for many people?) it might mean that every single moment of their life outside is being recorded, which was literally not possible until recently. It's a valid thing to discuss.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  What I'm against is this idea that X is okay as long as X is expensive, but the moment X becomes cheap, or democratized, or accessible, all of a sudden it's a problem, and we need a ban. Example: it's already legal to keep tabs on people in public. There are businesses build on this idea, private investigators. A little sleazy? Expensive? Sure. But legal. If you want to be consistent, you should ban them too. If X is what causes harm, X should be disallowed no matter the price.

m3kw9 7y ago

This is super easy to copy, any government can do this without anyone knowing

AndrewBissell 7y ago
Well, people still might find out if a whistleblower leaked info about the program, but that's becoming less and less likely as mistreatment and persecution of whistleblowers has been normalized under the canard, "Well, you have to face the music when you leak classified info."
- deogeo 7y ago
  And whistleblowing anonymously is getting more difficult, due to all the surveillance whose downsides are purely theoretical...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

robertk 7y ago

“ One helped design a program that can automatically collect images of people’s faces from across the internet, such as employment sites, news sites, educational sites, and social networks including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and even Venmo. Representatives of those companies said their policies prohibit such scraping, and Twitter said it explicitly banned use of its data for facial recognition.” I am not a lawyer. Is it possible to file a (class action?) lawsuit against Clearview AI and its clients (police agencies, etc.) in light of this breach of TOS? At the least, this should suffice in procuring a subpoena to obtain more information on the exact extent of misappropriation of public data at play here.

notyourday 7y ago

> We really need regulation here. Urgently. > > The US appears to have been the leader in such regulation in the past. The problem is, they don't do that anymore. They haven't passed any laws related to user rights or privacy in a long time, and are actively trying to make encryption illegal. This cat is out of the bag. Findface.ru now actively courts law enforcement and other interested parties. The west does not have the monopoly on this. https://findface.ru/ https://findface.ru/