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European Union Calls for Five Year Strict Ban on Facial Recognition Technology
- belinder 7y ago> with exceptions for research and security projects Isn't the whole point of facial recognition security projects
- netgusto 7y agoWell no, tracking for targeted sales is a big use case I guess.
- bhhaskin 7y agoIt would make more sense to ban tracking for targeted sales no? As this won't stop people using other methods like Bluetooth and wifi fingerprinting.
- denzil_correa 7y agoThat's where EU GDPR comes into the frame with informed consent for tracking.
- Nasrudith 7y agoYeah but the consequences for targetted sales with a as product is poorly aimed marketing. The potential consequences for security are far more severe.
- est31 7y agoThe consequences for targetted sales is that the data is in the hands of companies which make it available for sale by anybody who is interested. Including scammers, stalkers, jealous ex partners, enemies in general who want to find the weakness in someone's life to discredit them, spies, etc. That's pretty bad IMO, regardless of what you think about the use case for law enforcement.
- jimmaswell 7y agoUnfortunate for people over there that technological progress has to be stifled so. At least it might mean more jobs for us outside the EU.
- simongray 7y agoThey're considering banning the usage of facial recognition in public places, not banning it in general. I'm fairly sure what's prompting this is the kind of surveillance state that China has built in e.g. Xinjiang [1], not stuff like face unlock on your iPhone. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveill...
- sstephant 7y agoTechnological progress? Might be. Social regression, Police state, sure 100% Don't count on me to be part of this. I'll give the finger to every company who offers me to be part of this wonderful endeavour.
- throwaway2048 7y agoYes, surely if we cant track everyone's movements everywhere at all times, our civilization will crumble into dust.
- tastroder 7y agoI'm really curious as to what technological progress this argument is supposed to refer to. You could build a great system surveilling the masses using cluster and image processing tech we had 15 years ago, what's changed is mostly throwing more hardware and money at something. Research seems to be specifically excluded. The EU job market wont go under because a few legitimate use cases might have to adapt, while blatant privacy violations can be put on hold until more complex legislation can be worked out.
- jimmaswell 7y agoDetection of who's at your door/doorbell was one good case I'd heard of that people were concerned would be impacted by this.
- prophesi 7y agohttps://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2020/01/were_banning_facial_.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2020/01/were_bannin... These bans have good intentions, but won't solve the actual root of the issues, and does more harm than good.
- Seenso 7y ago> Regulating this system means addressing all three steps of the process. A ban on facial recognition won't make any difference if, in response, surveillance systems switch to identifying people by smartphone MAC addresses. The problem is that we are being identified without our knowledge or consent, and society needs rules about when that is permissible. It sounds like the ban needs to be broader, and extend to ban any technology used to automatically identify individuals without their consent using surveillance sensors.
- OrgNet 7y agoyes, license plate readers, wifi/bluetooth scanners/loggers, TPMS loggers, facial recognition, etc... all fall in the same category.
- prophesi 7y agoYeah. Facial recognition by itself is fine, but let them be in hot water if they use it for identifying others. It's similar to how GDPR and similar laws operate. Collecting the data is fine, but you'll get in trouble if you process & distribute that data without clearly notifying your users.
- bko 7y agoI don't understand how you can ban a machine from doing something that a human can do. Consider the following scenarios: - I can pay for a person to watch archival video and take notes on paper as to who comes in and out of frame. - I can have software that helps a person crop faces of people coming in and the person can tag and catalog the people coming in and out of frame. - I can have software that identifies human looking things and things that look like faces and a person can tag those - I can have software that identifies human looking things and things and recommends a similar face. A human confirms. - I can have software do everything. At which point does it become facial recognition? The end results are the same regardless of which step you ban. So is any ban just meant to make the cost artificially high? I think you could outsource it anyway via Mechanical Turk or something similar if there is a real value to facial recognition. I don't think banning technology is the answer.
- Seenso 7y ago> I don't understand how you can ban a machine from doing something that a human can do. Quantity has a quality all its own. Something that is acceptable at a small scale may have unacceptable consequences when done at much larger scales.
- cmendel 7y agoThe difference is scale. With ML Face recognition we can identify people in real time, without some safeguards we very rapidly reach a point where we can track anyone anywhere. Imagine if every camera in the city of London could identify you, forget metadata we will be able to actively track individuals taking public transit across a city and identify every individual who the interact with.
- bko 7y agoYes I agree, I just think that you can build a system to keep a token person in the loop that will drive the cost down regardless. It's similar to how regulators tried to ban "computerized trading" and traders literally built a machine hand that presses the enter key. Making the cost artificially high by banning a particular type of technology is not addressing the real problem of civil liberties.
- no1youknowz 7y agoHere is what's happening in the UK. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJqJkfTdAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJqJkfTdAg All I can hope for, is that some activist group takes the police to court and the legislative branch reacts to then impose rules for spying on its citizens. Some of the things I can think off the top of my head: 1) Citizens can legally opt out by putting on face masks. Especially when it's cold. 2) Video / Images are stored outside of government bodies and akin to a black box. Must require warrants to review footage. 3) Video / Images / Data are deleted after 1 year. 4) No data of citizens facial features, body structure, gate are transferred into a national database. Honestly though, where the UK is going. I firmly believe in 20 years all citizens physical meta-data will be tracked and stored in a black box somewhere and then later leaked on-line. 1984 isn't just a book. It's a handbook by all accounts.
- zelon88 7y agoHere's an idea... Take down the cameras!
- wott 7y agoThey'll use drones then. Well, they already do, in addition to fixed and mobile ground cameras.
- ixtli 7y agoBy many metrics the UK is and has been the most surveilled country in the world for decades.
- blibble 7y agothe metrics that include the privately owned CCTV cameras used by shopkeepers in the same category as those operated by governments? the UK has issues with creeping authoritarianism in an number of areas, but millions of shops having crappy 2FPS black and white CCTV isn't a particular concern of mine
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- denzil_correa 7y agoI can't read the link as its down but here's an article that does a good job of explaining the leaked EU report [0]. > As for facial recognition, the Commission document highlights provisions from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which give citizens “the right not to be subject of a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling.” It's more nuanced than "a ban on facial recognition". The leaked white paper is also available [1] [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/leak-commission-considers-facial-recognition-ban-in-ai-white-paper/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/leak-commissio... [1] https://www.euractiv.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/AI-white-paper-EURACTIV.pdf https://www.euractiv.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/01/...
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoSo let's say you're the police and you want to keep an eye out for bad guys, and you have a bunch of CCTVs. According to the rule you quoted, it would be sufficient to surface the face match to someone, who would manually check that it is the right person before going ahead and arresting them? That person could even be the police themselves? I bet people think this is banning a lot more behavior than it is.
- denzil_correa 7y agoThe rule I quoted is a summary of the position and not to be taken as legal framework on decision making. The rules are mulled over in the white paper and it would take some time to digest it before making a comment on how the rule could potentially work in the future. The current process is for the white paper to be published and then call for opinions on comments.
- nashashmi 7y agoHow is it legally possible to ban computation over a set of data? Better yet, how do you prevent indie developers from doing the same computation on their personal machines? If you ban the tech, then you prevent research on it as well. If you ban the use, you can not catch violators.
- thepaperone 7y agoEuropeans are so wrapped in beurocracy nothing gets done anyway
- Ajedi32 7y agoAnything's legally possible if you're the one writing the law. As for whether it's enforceable, that's another question entirely. Historically, bans on the creation, use, and/or distribution of software haven't done so well in that department. (See export ciphers, piracy, DRM.)
- Nasrudith 7y agoReally the "public places" part of the definition betrays a fundamental informational illiteracy in that they don't acknowledge the separation of the data from where it is gathered. Just a few silly demonstrative edge cases: - If I run facial recognition software on a public camera feed on a computer in private would it be legal? - If in Europe in public and running facial recognition software on my laptop processing say my own personal family photo album would I violate the law? - Would running it on news footage of a public street be legal? What about if it was an interview where you would get thrown out if you tried to enter.
- tjoff 7y agoDon't see how it does or how the edge cases are elevant. It is there to prevent anyone from thinking public spaces are free game. It's also a very different thing to process an image and permanently mounting a camera in a public space. Something that already requires a license in many/most jurisdictions, and getting one is hardly trivial.
- whyaduck 7y agoMeanwhile in the US: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/reader-center/insider-clearview-ai.html?searchResultPosition=1 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/reader-center/insider-cle...
- ddevault 7y agoI love coming to these threads to watch the crowd who makes their living from invading the public's privacy attempt to rationalize their worldview, find loopholes, etc. If your job is mass surviellance, it has always been unethical and the law is catching up to you. The purpose of these kinds of laws isn't to bring your business in line - it's to put you out of business. We're coming for you.
- ixtli 7y agoThe purpose of a law designed in the interest of individual privacy, yes, but at least in America companies get a huge amount of say on what gets passed because they vote with their profits. The reality is that most of the laws are bad because they're considerate of private profit accumulation when, in reality, that profit directly harms the privacy of individuals. We continue to pretend as a society that these two desires can be reconciled.
- blueadept111 7y agoAhhh "ethics". The elusive, undefined moral compass that's whatever you want it to be -- very practical for finger pointing and self-righteous outrage.
- supercanuck 7y agoActually these ethics, in a democracy are determined by the majority of people via their elected representatives.
- chipperyman573 7y agoBy that logic collecting data in America is ethical, because it's not illegal in America
- oliverx0 7y agoNot necessarily. Not going into political arguments, but just because the majority agrees with something, does not make it ethical. Edit: I do agree with the sentiment of your post though. That is, to counter the idea that “ethics” depends on whatever view of the world an individual has.
- thepaperone 7y agoInstead of being 5 years behind the curve on AI applications the EU will be 10 years behind! Smart move EU!
- AdrianB1 7y agoRomania is part of the EU. Officially there is no facial recognition system in use, but there are a few that are not official and those will not be affected by the ban because "they don't exist". A relative was the lead policeman in a case where a person A accused a person B of a very serious crime. Person B appeared on a camera in the area, police identified him instantly based on the national database of ID cards (it contains photos of every person over the age of 14) and arrested the guy. Luckily for him, he was covered by a different camera for the whole time he was accused for the crime, but that was discovered after he spend a day in arrest. The person that make the false accusations simply walked. There is a database of pictures of people that get an ID card (which is mandatory, not having one with you at all time grants you a fine). Another one for passports, but those are optional. Another one for driver's license (having a driver license with you does not save you from a fine if you don't have also the ID). These are databases everyone knows about and police are using every day, no authorization is required.
- Zenst 7y agoPrudent approach, gives time to define more finely how, when and what it is used for etc. After all, seems a fair few laws are a loophole away from enabling more crime than the law prevents. So a step back like this, does so in balance towards the consumer/people over government/business. But like many things, there will always be exceptions and those that will take exception to them, which is fair as that is how democracy works - equal voice and often it has taught us that whilst today their may be a small child at the back questioning things, there may be more tomorrow and the next day. Showing that all questions need answers, this is a good start in enabling that. Will the public engage and have their say heard, or will the EU pull for pubic say and what balance will play out. We will know over the years and be great to see how far that goes 5 years from now, once the ban has ended, or been extended.
- narrator 7y agoGDPR is great for coverups of official corruption because corrupt officials can reliably destroy the evidence in the cloud if they get tipped off that an investigation is starting. Bans on facial recognition means prosecutors of corrupt officials have to rely more on eyewitness testimony and eyewitnesses can be intimidated and have "accidents".
- skizm 7y agoAs a private citizen, would I be allowed to set up a camera on my front porch, point it at the sidewalk, and store all the data it takes in, including counts of how many times each "unique" person walks by, etc. Maybe even link it to my facebook, or a public directory and link all their public info to a profile and keep all the data on my servers? Does this chance if I am a business?
- vbsteven 7y agoI don’t know about the rest of the EU but in Belgium you cannot point it at the sidewalk. You can only film your own property, not a public space.
- skizm 7y agoHow does this law allow for taking pictures in or of public spaces? Are you just now allowed to use facial recognition tech on personal photos of public places? How does Facebook get around this? Or do they just ignore the law?
- franczesko 7y agoAny disruptive technology should be preemptively locked before public use. Times of "move fast and break things" are gone for good.
- huonpine 7y agoI wonder in the future if we will look back and see intelligence agency's in the same light as religious institutions from history. Both using there "all knowing" information to influence power.
- dang 7y agoThe EU hasn't "called for" anything. A discussion paper was leaked. We ban sites that ridiculously overplay stories like this. Please submit from more reliable sources.