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Campaign “Reclaim Your Face” Calls for a Ban on Biometric Mass Surveillance
- bsenftner 6y agoPandora's Box ain't ever closing. All this "ban" will do is collect tons contact information and sell that to advertisers.
- cblconfederate 6y agoThe biggest promoter of face recognition tech right now is Apple. The created the trend and made the sensors cheap. They should be campaigning to them first.
- drpgq 6y agoApple used 3D based face recognition that only works when your face is right in front of the iPhone. We are a ways away from distance 3D face recognition, and given the advances with deep learning and bigger data sets in 2D, it isn't even necessary.
- bathtub365 6y agoThat is not Apple’s only application of facial recognition: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/photos/phtad9d981ab/mac https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/photos/phtad9d981ab/ma...
- lancepioch 6y agoNot only is Face ID only stored in the one secure Apple chip (and not uploaded to Apple), but I'm fairly certain that the face identification that you linked is also only stored on your device as well. Maybe it's changed, but I think that if you get a new device, it basically has to reindex all the faces iirc. Or maybe it's only stored in your own personal iCloud.
- andreilys 6y agoAh yes, not like the city of London or countless cities in China that have cameras and facial recognition tech scanning your every move.
- cblconfederate 6y agoand everyone hates them. But everybody "loves" face unlock because marketing says so. Corporates can push major behavioral changes
- tnhaoeunthasoe 6y agoI really want to agree, but it's hard to feel secure in certain countries, even I have a complain against an aggressor that have happily evaded the police for the last two years, he keeps on threatening me, my children are also suffering from this man, for the first time, I'm not going to be with EDRI, but I mean I understand that people who aren't under physical security threats would be with EDRI there, but I'm going to side with the victims and the state.
- AlexandrB 6y agoTechnology can't make the police care. Just look at the decline in the murder clearance rate even as DNA and other forensic techniques became more sophisticated[1]. Facial recognition technology might help people like you, but it's much more likely to be used against petty drug offenders, protestors, and political enemies of the state. [1] http://www.murderdata.org/p/blog-page.html?m=1 http://www.murderdata.org/p/blog-page.html?m=1
- EForEndeavour 6y agoFor more background on the decline in homicide clearance rates in the USA, here's a 2015 interview with Thomas Hargrove, the founder of murderdata.org: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/why-are-american-cops-so-bad-at-catching-killers https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/02/why-are-americ... Hargrove claims that the overall decline in homicide clearance is a failure of local leadership: > It is the position of the Murder Accountability Project that declining homicide clearance rates are a failure of leadership by local police and by the politicians over them. When mayors and other elected officials make murder clearance a priority, as did the mayor of Philadelphia a few years ago, the clearance rate will improve significantly. If readers look at the “clearance rate” charts at our website, they will find hundreds of police departments that are doing a stellar job solving murders. > [...] we strongly believe that failure to solve murders are a failure of will by local leaders to make homicide clearance a priority in their communities. > That homicide clearance rates have plummeted despite the forensic revolution is one of the real mysteries in American law enforcement. The backlog of DNA testing has certainly slowed down the process in many cases. Lab testing may have forced a “pause” in murder investigations, which causes delays that can dramatically reduce the odds of a homicide being solved.
- rjzzleep 6y agoI think we've lost that war. So I think what we should be advocating isn't an ideal world that will never come to be but rather a hard push for privacy aware designs. What I mean is that biometrics are going to be used one way or another, what we should make sure that the data can't be leaked original data can never be access again etc. A different example would be healthcare data. In Germany spend so long lobbying that data should not be used until the new health minister just sneaked in a law or two to just give that data to insurances. What we should be doing is design systems in a way that that data is actually accessible by default but also not abusable. I.e. only a subset research necessary PII filtered data should be available. But that way we could potentially have audited systems where we can make sure that the data is shared in a safe fashion and the other side can't do malicious things with it. Because if we don't, once the data becomes available some government contractor will write the law (and the crappy software) with the Health Ministry acting as a defacto lobbyist for the insurance industry.
- inquirerofsorts 6y ago> I think we've lost that war. Years ago my country was arguing over getting the state biometric databases to update the federal database within hours compared to typical weeks, the usual terror nonsense rolled out. No one was debating the morals at all, it was solely about interop and "who is paying for this?". Biometrics has dug in deep and isn't ever going away, at least in the free world.
- Chris2048 6y agoJust make face-masks acceptable to wear.
- ISL 6y agoCovid-19 has done a great job of that.
- the_only_law 6y agoEverytime one of these threads shows up someone mentions gait recognition, which sounds incredibly dystopian. Do I have to be constantly conscious of how I walk now to maintain some form of privacy?
- cdirkx 6y agoBetter wear a thick coat too. "The pentagon has a laser that identifies people by their heartbeat" https://www.engadget.com/2019-06-27-the-pentagon-has-a-laser-that-identifies-people-by-their-heartbe.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-06-27-the-pentagon-has-a-laser...
- 14 6y agoI would also guess those same lasers could be used to analyze a persons breath from afar and distinguish different gas compositions, tone and frequency of breathing from different people distinguishing them.
- dkdk8283 6y agoThis is a new one. A lot of people have had an EKG, the database is already seeded.
- Vecr 6y agoI wonder how well UHMWPE[1] armor plates would work as well. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_po...
- Micheal_McL 6y ago
- dontcarethrow2 6y agoWe should also allow everyone to be able to hide their face/do funny walks forever into the future. Looking at the title, I hope one day we can run a campaign for a ban on ALL(*gasp) mass surveillance, not just biometric :/ We will just have to figure out other ways to stop the terrorists.. (or stop creating them in the first place)
- chmod775 6y ago>We will just have to figure out other ways to stop the terrorists.. (or stop creating them in the first place) Other ways? All this mass surveillance has hardly helped so far. All you get is nice footage after someone blew something up. By the way these surveillance cameras and systems are stupidly expensive. For most installations they're so expensive you could pay for a police officer permanently stationed for years at each of those public spaces and subway stations you were going to surveil. That would actually help making them safer. On top of that there's many other ways to use that money to save lives where it matters. For instance you could use the money you were going to use on surveilling public places to make them physically safer instead: less accident-prone, install public access defibrillators, etc. Statistically you're going to save so many magnitudes more lives that way, it's not even funny. People seem to assume that heart attacks is something that happens to other people, while terrorism of all things is a personal threat to them.
- raxxorrax 6y agoAnd we have a lot of parasitic security companies that induce heavy costs on taxpayers without tangible results. The problem is that "feeling safe" has become a metric because people are bad at math and understanding risks.
- dimitrios1 6y agoI had an idea for a product: A semitransparent material that acts as a face covering when you are in public places like airports that allows you to be seen completely, but when imaged by a sensor like a camera products an unintelligible result.
- chrisweekly 6y agoI recommend Cory Doctorow's recently-published novel "Attack Surface" (3rd installment in the "Little Brother" series). It's entertaining and possibly illuminating, and gets fairly detailed about surveillance tech's application and countermeasures, and ramifications.
- 1970-01-01 6y agoNice goal, but its a "wicked problem". For example, I don't think this will do anything for "face privacy" if you travel out of the EU. If someone snaps and uploads your face to a database like findclone.ru, how will this help finding and deleting that information from an out of scope database? Counter-intuitively, I think we need much better tools that enable us to actively search the entire Internet for our face, and only then can we begin to fix how to reset that data back to null.
- NoSalt 6y agoThere used to be a device you could wear on your head that would "disrupt" any CCTV, and the like, cameras, but I believe the newer cameras have fixed that "hole". I would like something like that now, some device I cold wear on a headband that would prevent my face from being properly recorded.
- carapace 6y agoPrivacy is dead. There are too many signals, too many recorders, too much CPU power. (I want to be clear: I don't like it and I'm not advocating for it, I just don't see a way out/around it.) In return for our privacy, most forms of crime could be made difficult or impossible, so it behooves us to make our laws carefully. - - - - You can't make ubiquitous surveillance illegal because you have to use it to make sure no one is violating the ban on using it. It's one of those logical "This sentence is a lie." loops, eh?
- erentz 6y ago> Privacy is dead This is a choice. It doesn’t have to be this way. Laws regulating collection and use of data are possible and don’t have to be complicated. They do run up against the interests of those that use that data for their business, but again, that is explicitly a choice on our part as to whether we put their interests ahead of our own. You really can’t run get around these laws without being obvious and easily stopped.
- andreilys 6y agoThe collection and use of data by governments far outstrips businesses. You’re asking governments to put restrictions on their power. You can see how the incentives are not exactly aligned.
- carapace 6y agoCrypto AG was a CIA front. That's a real thing that happened. How can we be sure no one is using the tech without using the tech? (And, once someone somewhere is using the tech, why not solve all crime? Why have the illusion of privacy, and permit e.g. kidnapping, rape, murder?)
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoI agree, at least in the long term. However, I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing. The reason we perceive it as bad right now is because it is unequal: you and I do not have access to the systems that make privacy an obsolete concept, and some other people (namely those in positions of power) have the ability to keep themselves out of that system. It seems likely that this will eventually no longer be true and society will adapt to a world where privacy no longer exists for anyone. I would wager that, looking backward, they will probably even wonder what all the fuss was about.
- Mozilz_spoofing 6y agoThe idea behind twelve organizations joining forces is to allow civil society to make its voice heard in a debate largely dominated by the tech industry. Yeah, to be honest, I don't think it's enough.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoEvery place with bulk surveillance is a proving ground. The end game will always be to record as much of our lives, as makes people in power comfortable.
- gyudin 6y agoAs long as we can use this data to provide an alibi in court in case it’s needed, then I don’t mind it. Literally doesn’t change a thing for me as I already carry a smartphone everywhere with SIM card in my name.
- dkdk8283 6y agoBy the time you need it for an alibi it’s too late. You likely incurred legal fees, lost your job at a minimum. This same data can also put you near a crime and lead to false accusations.
- 1996 6y agoI think it's only in the EU that you are asked to give an ID when purchasing a prepaid simcard.
- pnathan 6y agoIt's not wrong, but it's backwards looking. They aren't addressing the root problem, which is "internet cameras everywhere", and the answer is to figure out how to work with that reality, not to turn the clock back to 1975. The solution will involve doing a forward-looking envisioning of a mass-camera society where rights are respected. Not something I'll be able to invent on the fly in a HN comment, sorry. :)
- contravariant 6y agoI get that limiting the things people can do with video footage isn't really an integral solution, as it requires mankind to unilaterally decide to not even develop a particular technology (which so far hasn't really ever worked as far as I can tell). But if we're trying to get to the root problem then surely we should also consider just removing the cameras? Because trying to figure out a way to live under constant surveillance isn't exactly addressing the root problem either.
- pnathan 6y agoThe answer is ... no. Not because it wouldn't solve the problem, but because at some point cameras will be so ubiquitous that there's no point in banning the State from putting up cameras, because every tom, dick, and harry has a camera on their phone and on their glasses, every store has a camera system, some jackets and hats have cameras, etc, etc, etc. Sure. The State doesn't have cameras. It will develop a automated warrant-generator to pull all cloud footage from cameras that were in a specific area at a specific time. They will have agreements with the major cloud camera vendors. All legal, above board, reasonable, protective of rights and process, and exactly identical to if the State had camera towers. Same for biometric ID. Fine. You don't want the State having in-house biometrics? Great. It can set up agreements with Facebook and Google: "Identify this person" - a few flatfeet go run down those leads. Net effect is to have the same result, but now with less accountability (private firm), more expense (private contracts getting profit), and less safety (private firms with the data). That's why we need to assume the existence of these technologies and the followons, then design the world we want to see given the followons.
- seigel 6y agoSeems like reading this, might be relevant on this topic. Specifically the thought of having to obscure your face in the future.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell
- almamater 6y agofolks are signing to ask their national politicians to ban biometric mass surveillance: https://reclaimyourface.eu/the-solution/#Sign https://reclaimyourface.eu/the-solution/#Sign