5 ms·

Because the conversation is so lopsided, I feel like somebody has to ask: what opportunities are we giving away when banning face recognition tech? Obvious one

Because the conversation is so lopsided, I feel like somebody has to ask: what opportunities are we giving away when banning face recognition tech? Obvious one would be no more purse snatchers, ever. Almost no rapes, much fewer violent crimes. No lost kids. Lives and wallets saved. What else? This feels like the kind of tech that creates its own broad fields of use where there were none before. It might take time or imagination to see where it goes. And if - just saying - if the benefits are good enough to stop and think for a second, aren't there any better ways of skinning this cat than banning tech? Might be worth a brainstorm. I'm not a big fan of EU's GDPR - I've literally just fired a client last week on an emailing consulting gig because the threat of unpredictable huge fines is too big for me. Plus I freaking hate cookie popups. But I have to admit it's also doing a lot of good - if companies can't store my IP address without my consent, I'm pretty sure they can't store my facial profile and daily movements. Which leaves the choice in the hands of the consumer, where it should be. I have Google Location enabled on my phone - it's creepy accurate, but I like it. Maybe you don't. Let's not chose once for everybody.

whateveracct 7y ago
How would facial recognition stop those crimes exactly? They would still happen..
moksly 7y ago
No street art. No protesting. Social credit. No way to break away from the stigmas assigned you your face. No speeding. No jaywalking. No pissing outside. No way to rebel. I mean, it wouldn’t really stop crime. London has something close to total surveillance, and they have a lot of crime. But if you really want that sort of thing, you can actually have a taste of it in parts of China.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  This comment reinforces the OP's point: opponents of facial recognition seem to approach the world with a particular value system that includes a disagreement with several existing laws. Instead of working to get these laws changed, facial recognition opponents advocate bans on technology that would maken these laws easier to enforce. Why should they succeed? > No street art Good. Graffiti is a blight. > No protesting There's protesting and there's "protesting". Lawful protest will be unaffected. Unlawful protest involving criminal behavior will become much more difficult. Good outcome. > No way to break away from the stigmas assigned you your face In an age of background checks, your face is the least of your worries. Are you opposed to background checks? > No speeding Speed cameras already exist and don't rely on facial recognition to issue tickets > No jaywalking > No pissing outside > No way to rebel Why should people get to break the law?
  - mbel 7y ago
    > Why should people get to break the law? Because laws are made by people and as such can be flawed.
    - quotemstr 7y ago
      Laws can also be unmade by people. What gives random individuals the right to nullify laws made by everyone? Don't like a law? Get it repealed. In the meantime, you have to follow it.
      - avmich 7y ago
        > In the meantime, you have to follow it. You also would like to expect that if the law is unjust, it can't manage to make too much harm while getting repealed. And repeals can take a long time. If people would easy organize for things like repeal a law or a government which suddenly become despotic according to majority opinion, we'd live in a different world. What we're trying to make here, banning face recognition, is to make mistakes in laws less costly - sometimes way less costly.
  - etripe 7y ago
    > Lawful protest will be unaffected. Unlawful protest involving criminal behavior will become much more difficult. Good outcome. What is perfectly legal today might be criminal tomorrow. Criminalising lawful protest is one of the first things a despot would do.
  - moksly 7y ago
    The holocaust was legal. No one ever entered a Gulag without a sentence. The Uyghurs of China are being persecuted within the law. Laws aren’t a model for society, or at least they shouldn’t be. Ideals and morals should, and throughout human history we’ve needed a metric fuckton of law breaking to get to the democracy we have now.
- thu2111 7y ago
  What's street art got to do with it? In the city I live in, there are areas specifically reserved by the government for pro-grade graffiti. It looks great. These areas are where people really are too, it's not like they're shoved miles out of the city centre. No protesting? Why not? Democratic countries all have laws on the book that allow and regulate protests. Social credit? Why does that depend on face recognition? All these are government related. I think there's a huge problem with such anti-face recognition arguments, namely, all of them can be implemented by just interrogating the phone in your pocket. Phones are linked to contracts linked to verified government-issued identities. Phone companies can track their location very precisely, especially now with 5G. So governments have had the ability to track people en-masse for decades, and have done it, Snowden showed us the PowerPoints and ... nobody cared. Only some people in the tech industry but wider society, no. In practice people prefer safety and low crime. That's why I've come to see all the EU's privacy actions as just posing for political reasons. Do any of these laws make NSA-like organisations illegal? No? Do they stop police using ANPR or phone triangulation? No? Then they are just for show. GDPR is an especially pernicious offender as it's so badly drafted, but the cookie law is a clearer example: it makes no difference to anyone's privacy but does make life in the EU worse on a daily basis. Banning face recognition is the kind of micro-managing that governments throughout history have proven very bad at and which are riven with unanticipated side effects (well, unanticipated by the regulators).
raxxorrax 7y ago
There is a pretty strong surveillance in prisons. Does it mean there are no rapes? Surveillance is a control mechanism and every time you are pictured, you have to justify yourself for you behavior in the worst case. To suggest that surveillance eliminates crime is intuitive but wrong.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
> Obvious one would be no more purse snatchers, ever. Almost no rapes, much fewer violent crimes. No lost kids. Lives and wallets saved. That is unrealistically optimistic. At best purse snatchers will move to parts out of view of cameras or wear something. Like all these proposals they are only effective against non-criminals. Also, "car pulls up, kidnaps a kid" or "kid runs away from home and hides" seems entirely unrelated.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  Looking into it more, it seems that reality is even worse than I thought. Surveillance not only fails to decrease crime, but actually lead to an increase (article in German): https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/umland/straftaten-in-brandenburg-nur-in-video-bereichen-gestiegen https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/umland/straftaten-in-branden... Interesting. "Crime in Brandenburg increased ONLY in video-surveiled regions".
  - radu_floricica 7y ago
    That screams "better reporting".
    - diffeomorphism 7y ago
      Sounds plausible, but the police disagrees.
      - radu_floricica 7y ago
        Looks like police are saying there's an unrelated reason. From google translate: "The police explain this with fights among young immigrants who met in 2018 in the camera area. Now the situation has calmed down. There are no numbers."
bsenftner 7y ago
Reasonable post, down voted by the "quick thinkers in the horde". The situation is too emotional to get clear discussions about FR anymore.

whateveracct 7y ago

How would facial recognition stop those crimes exactly? They would still happen..

moksly 7y ago

No street art. No protesting. Social credit. No way to break away from the stigmas assigned you your face. No speeding. No jaywalking. No pissing outside. No way to rebel. I mean, it wouldn’t really stop crime. London has something close to total surveillance, and they have a lot of crime. But if you really want that sort of thing, you can actually have a taste of it in parts of China.

quotemstr 7y ago
This comment reinforces the OP's point: opponents of facial recognition seem to approach the world with a particular value system that includes a disagreement with several existing laws. Instead of working to get these laws changed, facial recognition opponents advocate bans on technology that would maken these laws easier to enforce. Why should they succeed? > No street art Good. Graffiti is a blight. > No protesting There's protesting and there's "protesting". Lawful protest will be unaffected. Unlawful protest involving criminal behavior will become much more difficult. Good outcome. > No way to break away from the stigmas assigned you your face In an age of background checks, your face is the least of your worries. Are you opposed to background checks? > No speeding Speed cameras already exist and don't rely on facial recognition to issue tickets > No jaywalking > No pissing outside > No way to rebel Why should people get to break the law?
- mbel 7y ago
  > Why should people get to break the law? Because laws are made by people and as such can be flawed.
  - quotemstr 7y ago
    Laws can also be unmade by people. What gives random individuals the right to nullify laws made by everyone? Don't like a law? Get it repealed. In the meantime, you have to follow it.
    - avmich 7y ago
      > In the meantime, you have to follow it. You also would like to expect that if the law is unjust, it can't manage to make too much harm while getting repealed. And repeals can take a long time. If people would easy organize for things like repeal a law or a government which suddenly become despotic according to majority opinion, we'd live in a different world. What we're trying to make here, banning face recognition, is to make mistakes in laws less costly - sometimes way less costly.
- etripe 7y ago
  > Lawful protest will be unaffected. Unlawful protest involving criminal behavior will become much more difficult. Good outcome. What is perfectly legal today might be criminal tomorrow. Criminalising lawful protest is one of the first things a despot would do.
- moksly 7y ago
  The holocaust was legal. No one ever entered a Gulag without a sentence. The Uyghurs of China are being persecuted within the law. Laws aren’t a model for society, or at least they shouldn’t be. Ideals and morals should, and throughout human history we’ve needed a metric fuckton of law breaking to get to the democracy we have now.
thu2111 7y ago
What's street art got to do with it? In the city I live in, there are areas specifically reserved by the government for pro-grade graffiti. It looks great. These areas are where people really are too, it's not like they're shoved miles out of the city centre. No protesting? Why not? Democratic countries all have laws on the book that allow and regulate protests. Social credit? Why does that depend on face recognition? All these are government related. I think there's a huge problem with such anti-face recognition arguments, namely, all of them can be implemented by just interrogating the phone in your pocket. Phones are linked to contracts linked to verified government-issued identities. Phone companies can track their location very precisely, especially now with 5G. So governments have had the ability to track people en-masse for decades, and have done it, Snowden showed us the PowerPoints and ... nobody cared. Only some people in the tech industry but wider society, no. In practice people prefer safety and low crime. That's why I've come to see all the EU's privacy actions as just posing for political reasons. Do any of these laws make NSA-like organisations illegal? No? Do they stop police using ANPR or phone triangulation? No? Then they are just for show. GDPR is an especially pernicious offender as it's so badly drafted, but the cookie law is a clearer example: it makes no difference to anyone's privacy but does make life in the EU worse on a daily basis. Banning face recognition is the kind of micro-managing that governments throughout history have proven very bad at and which are riven with unanticipated side effects (well, unanticipated by the regulators).

raxxorrax 7y ago

There is a pretty strong surveillance in prisons. Does it mean there are no rapes? Surveillance is a control mechanism and every time you are pictured, you have to justify yourself for you behavior in the worst case. To suggest that surveillance eliminates crime is intuitive but wrong.

diffeomorphism 7y ago

> Obvious one would be no more purse snatchers, ever. Almost no rapes, much fewer violent crimes. No lost kids. Lives and wallets saved. That is unrealistically optimistic. At best purse snatchers will move to parts out of view of cameras or wear something. Like all these proposals they are only effective against non-criminals. Also, "car pulls up, kidnaps a kid" or "kid runs away from home and hides" seems entirely unrelated.

diffeomorphism 7y ago
Looking into it more, it seems that reality is even worse than I thought. Surveillance not only fails to decrease crime, but actually lead to an increase (article in German): https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/umland/straftaten-in-brandenburg-nur-in-video-bereichen-gestiegen https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/umland/straftaten-in-branden... Interesting. "Crime in Brandenburg increased ONLY in video-surveiled regions".
- radu_floricica 7y ago
  That screams "better reporting".
  - diffeomorphism 7y ago
    Sounds plausible, but the police disagrees.
    - radu_floricica 7y ago
      Looks like police are saying there's an unrelated reason. From google translate: "The police explain this with fights among young immigrants who met in 2018 in the camera area. Now the situation has calmed down. There are no numbers."

bsenftner 7y ago

Reasonable post, down voted by the "quick thinkers in the horde". The situation is too emotional to get clear discussions about FR anymore.