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Clearview AI being used to identify Capitol rioters
- LeoPanthera 6y agoI'm quietly enjoying the irony that they might have escaped recognition if they'd worn a mask.
- therein 6y agoIt seems everything is going according to the plan, then and you have taken the bait.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rriepe 6y agoLess quiet after you commented
- vladTheInhaler 6y agoedit: someone else posted the same thing as I was typing this. Not necessarily. Belarusian protesters are working on methods to unmask anonymous police officers [1]. [1] https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/10/01/you-have-no-masks https://meduza.io/en/feature/2020/10/01/you-have-no-masks
- rychco 6y agoI realize that this is one of those situations where I'm supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition, but I'm still uncomfortable. Facial recognition seems like an all or nothing deal to me, and even after the capitol has been raided... I still opt for 'nothing'.
- detaro 6y agoI don't think you "should" be supportive, for exactly those reasons.
- rychco 6y agoYou're right, I think a better phrasing would be "supposed to". Edited the original.
- LatteLazy 6y agoIs it that different to wanted posters or publishing cctv of a crime? I get why people don't want facial recognition cameras on every street corner but using it to identify people from pics is a different activity... Edit: I completely agree there is nothing special about this case. No exigent circumstances.
- Barrin92 6y agoI'm more concerned with the data being in the hand of an unaccountable private company than with the facial recognition itself to be honest. I remember that Clearview AI itself was associated with far-right individuals last year, so having them police a far-right insurrection from their personal black box system is more than suspect. If it happens, it should be done by an institution that is under the supervision of congress and staffed by public servants. This emerging, largely unaccountable surveillance industrial complex with ties to extremist political figures worries me more.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoPersonally, I'm not really comfortable with the existence of a database of people from which to compare faces against. However, I think it's perhaps more worrying that one day this evidence will be presented in court and the jury will trust the accuracy of "AI" over their own judgment. To clarify, the situation I'm thinking of is where a grainy CCTV image is shown to the jury. The AI expert comes in and talks about all of the technical details of their algorithm and how it determines that the grainy image is of defendant A with 96% probably.
- colejohnson66 6y agoJuries already have a tendency to believe the police even when presented with massive evidence to the contrary. Throw in some “expert” testimony from an AI company and we’re in for an even worse situation.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> Is it that different to wanted posters or publishing cctv of a crime? I think so. That mechanism is judicially auditable. The AI is not. We should not be arresting people based on the output of an unauditable mechanism.
- trianglem 6y agoYeah facial recognition is just bad. We have pictures and a populace ready and willing to root these terrorists out as we’ve seen so far.
- agora_rising 6y agoUsing the T-word as you have is only going to make things worse. You can be disgusted at what happened. But breaking out that word is an escalation. Language like this will let a genie out of a bottle that cannot be put back in. And you probably aren't the sort of person who would like the outcome.
- trianglem 6y agoThings have to get worse before they get better. What other word besides terrorist are you going to use to describe a group of people that break into the capitol, kill police officers and set pipe bombs? It’s quite literally the definition of a terrorist. Also is that a threat of violence at the end there from a 15 minute old account?
- agora_rising 6y agoNot really a threat. Let's not be silly. Just a prediction of what's going to happen if you believe the official narrative and keep doing what you're doing. I don't want to see things get worse. But if you keep up with this nonsense, they will get worse. No one wants that. Just relax.
- eznzt 6y ago>I realize that this is one of those situations where I'm supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition ???
- jonas21 6y agoOut of curiosity, why do you feel like you're supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition in this case?
- walls 6y agoIdentifying terrorists is a positive outcome.
- remarkEon 6y agoThis statement in the abstract is correct. The context in which it’s applied ... well I’m sure many actually believe Trump supporters are “literally” terrorists. This technology was of course also used to identify those laying siege to various federal buildings over the summer, but I guess it’s okay now. This is to say that the context in which this technology is used obviously matters a lot and is directly related to who holds the reigns of cultural power. Yay.
- klyrs 6y agoI'm not really accustomed to thinking about what others want me to think, but if you're like many who are trying to guess what progressives want you to think; facial recognition bad, clearview extra bad.
- uniqueid 6y agoIs this technology going to identify anyone Twitter won't? I mean, correctly identify because it'll probably belch up a lot of false positives, too.
- jonas21 6y agoIdentifying terrorists and violent criminals is always the argument in favor of using facial recognition for law enforcement.
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- uniqueid 6y agoone of those situations where I'm supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition No, it's not. This is the Hoan Ton-That supposedly protecting us from the crazies... "Founder Hoan Ton-That’s has links to the far-right movement that move right past suspicious into obvious, according to HuffPo. He reportedly attended a 2016 dinner with white supremacist Richard Spencer and organised by alt-right financier Jeff Giesea, an associate of Palantir founder and Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel. (Thiel secretly bankrolled a lawsuit that bankrupted Gizmodo’s former parent company, Gawker Media.) Ton-That was also a member of a Slack channel run by professional troll Chuck Johnson for his now-defunct WeSearchr, a crowdfunding platform primarily used by white supremacists; that channel included people like the webmaster of neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, Andrew Auernheimer, and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich" https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/04/creepy-face-recognition-firm-clearview-ai-sure-has-a-lot-of-ties-to-the-far-right/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/04/creepy-face-recognition-f...
- siruncledrew 6y agoWith Clearview's history in mind, would people rather live in world with or without facial recognition being used in public? What are the bounds for such technology and/or companies like Clearview? Are there quality of life differences in places where facial recognition crime technology is used vs not used?
- tastroder 6y agoStill without honestly. Relative OSINT laypersons on different social media seem to have little problem identifying terrorists without facial recognition. The fact that they publicised their own multi-angle, high resolution video surveillance in real time seems to help.
- newguy1234 6y agoAgree. This is a huge slippery slope.
- idiocrat 6y agoHopefully there will be an AI Judge soon, so we do not need to worry about the ethics.
- throwaway346434 6y agoThis event is highly comparable to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch - Attempted coup - Radicalized and misinformed supporters (majority) with an extremist, armed element (minority) - Extremely dangerous moment for free and fair elections in the west What would the world have looked like if in 1923, the disaffected germans who took part in that were identified en masse; and serious efforts were made to re-integrate them to society while addressing the systemic issues they faced? Instead, we ended up doing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification several years later after a lot of death. I think there is a very good argument for identification and holding people to account. There also needs to be very, very robust adherence to due process - AI identification is not proof, and a suitable alibi should be step 1 in invalidating it.
- zozbot234 6y agoThe sad thing is precisely that no-one cares about "re-integrating" proponents of right-leaning views "to society". Everyone is talking about forcibly deplatforming them all out of society which, even if successful, will only make them far more marginalized and far more open to dangerous, violent extremism. Is this really what we need? We've had enough divisiveness already, so why not try a more constructive approach?
- wpietri 6y agoI don't think anybody has proposed forcibly deplatforming everybody with "right-leaning views", so that sounds like a straw man. If, as you seem to suggest, divisiveness is your primary concern, it would seem to make a lot of sense to deplatform the small number of people very eager to create it through lies, organized violence, and overthrow of the government.
- ianai 6y agoThat is decidedly opposite of how I see the immediate political inertia. It might help to revisit previous times the democrats took over all three legislative branches. They’re not unified ever and dissent is assured. Meaning there are conservative wings which will welcome and work with the far right even after this. If you’re referencing the deplatforming going on from corporate entities that’s a whole another phenomenon and legally forced. Edit-if you’re referencing just how people treat one another 1-1 in culture, well, the forever trumpers just need to learn to treat people like people again. Apologizing helps, but simply being friendly and polite goes a long way.
- ondrek 6y agoIt seems that face recognition could be as dangerous as country laws are. China's social credit system is a strong mirror to its government. The Black Mirror scenario with all those people scared to even talk publicly could (if once real) be strongly country specific, if we get to the point, where life drastically depend on ethics of technology laws.
- mmmBacon 6y agoI think we already have a system in the West where people are afraid to speak openly; it’s referred to as cancel culture but exists elsewhere. The difference is that it’s not a formal government system but more of a mob social justice system.
- fpgaminer 6y agoComparing cancel culture to China's social credit system is ... not a great choice, in my opinion. Regardless, I've had this theory about cancel culture. I don't necessarily agree with cancel culture, for the aforementioned problem of it being mob social justice. But it seems to me like it has arisen out of a failure by the real justice system. Issues like sexism in particular, which affect half of the population, have been ignored and marginalized. It took how long for Bill Cosby's heinous crimes to finally be prosecuted? More over, how likely would it have been for his crimes to yet again have been swept under the rug had cancel culture not fostered an environment where the victims felt comfortable coming forward? The very topic we're discussing, the terrorist attack on our Capitol, is another example of racist failures of our police force. So is it really any surprise that society has collectively taken matters into their owns hands? Again, I don't _agree_ with the idea that society at large should pass their own judgements. I'd rather the courts do that. But they haven't been. And aren't. And we just suffered through one of the worst years on record of blatant police abuse and court inaction. If we want to get rid of cancel culture I think we need to fix our policing and justice system to the extent that society feels they don't need to take up the mantel of justice themselves. In other words, I don't see value in deriding cancel culture. If one feels that cancel culture is wrong, my belief is that one should be calling for action to repair the _cause_ of cancel culture, not the symptoms. And that cause is a prejudiced justice system.
- wilburCamel00 6y agoI have a hard time taking the so-called “right” seriously about free and fair elections after 8 years of obstructing Obama. Effectively marginalizing the other side with their media platforms, and political agents in the form of rich Republicans, only to suddenly screech about the same happening to them? Indeed, as a political party, Republicans have undermined both sides voters. I have yet to see factories growing out of the ground in Ohio after Trumps promises. I’m unaligned politically, only voted for Obama in ‘08 for the racial symbolism (representation matters). They show up in Portland, uninvited, pointing guns. They showed up in Kenosha uninvited shooting people. Why not align with the side that otherwise has largely spray painted buildings and marched for representation? Human biology will react in kind; refuse to compromise, put boots on necks figuratively speaking, do not be surprised and angry when that’s how you are treated in return. There’s a parallel here to the story recently about securities fraud. Investors suing a company means the company burns cash that undermines investors. Politicians undermining and not compromising with the other side is undermining the whole of their own country.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." It's not my place to go around quoting the rules, but I was just hoping to calm the waters a little bit. We could all use a bit of "let's step back and talk this over rather than argue passionately for a position," I think. E.g. the article is about the implication of AI on society at large.
- bra-ket 6y agoNo doubt progressive liberals are ok with this Orwellian sh*t
- wtfiswiththis 6y agoTrump rallied his followers after years of violent rhetoric. Him, his family, his lawyer Giuliani urged things like "trial by combat" for Trump's enemies. He timed his rally to end at 1pm, when the tally started down the road. He then sent his followers to pressure "weak" Republicans within the Capitol building for the purposes of urging the overthrow of certified votes in favor of replacing them with unilateral votes for Trump. They brought zip ties. They called for Pence's hanging. Trump called Pence during the siege trying to pressure him, and the call had to be cut short because the insurgents were already inside the building. This was a legislative and violent coup. Cry more about liberals in reaction to a literal coup attempt. Please, I want to hear more about how this is all antifa/BLM's fault some more. How the liberal agenda is a boot upon your neck while Trump's followers attempt violent and legislative coups against the citizens of this nation.
- agora_rising 6y agoThis was not an attempted coup. This was IRL shitposting. The cops murdered a woman. A couple more people died of natural causes from the excitement during the event. A cop died from a pulmonary condition afterwords. If you engage in this sort of rhetoric, you are fanning the flames. Please stop. It's not helping. You don't want things to get worse because I'm not sure you can conceive of how bad things can actually get. Let's all just let off the gas and tap the brakes.
- Sparkyte 6y agoProblem with this is that facial recognition is not perfect. It's no better than fnger printing which often leads to unjust arrests. There is no replacement for detective work and the government shouldn't be lazy to exclude it. The best it can do is narrow down suspects.
- nerdponx 6y agoIs it no better than finger printing in terms of accuracy?That would be an interesting study. Also, it's much easier to get people's photos than fingerprints.
- srean 6y agoI was under the impression that good quality fingerprints are lot more reliable. Could you point me to some resources that show how unreliable fingerprints are, I would learn something new. EDIT: Nevermind there is an active HN thread on just that
- fpgaminer 6y agoThat's been my feeling. Last I looked I recall public SOTA in facial recognition being something like an error every 1 in 1000 cases. Assuming that a private corporation's efforts are somehow 100x better that still gives you 3,000 suspects in America for any given photo. (And all those people are likely to look very, very similar.) Hell, Apple's FaceID makes a mistake every million faces, and that system is both professional and has an order of magnitude more data to work with from the FaceID scanner. Clearview is just using blurry photographs.
- DangerousPie 6y agoWhy is that a problem? This is just the first step to generate a set of possible matches, there will always be further steps to narrow it down further.
- Youden 6y ago> Problem with this is that facial recognition is not perfect. Why is that a problem? Are there any investigative tools that are perfect or is there a reason why facial recognition should be held to a higher standard? > It's no better than fnger printing which often leads to unjust arrests. You need to be more specific. Why is it no better? Has facial recognition been demonstrated to lead to more unjust arrests than other investigative methods? > There is no replacement for detective work and the government shouldn't be lazy to exclude it. Who's saying that facial recognition is a replacement for detective work? It's just another investigative method, like looking up a license plate or asking people at the crime scene what they saw. > The best it can do is narrow down suspects. It can also help find suspects when you don't have any other leads. Why isn't that good enough?
- Cactus2018 6y ago> He spent 10 days in jail after facial recognition led to arrest of the wrong man (nj.com) >258 points 12 days ago 174 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25562321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25562321 ... > I got my file from Clearview AI (onezero.medium.com) > 811 points 9 months ago 224 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22681207
- neurotech1 6y agoThis seems to be a better link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/facial-recognition-clearview-capitol.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/facial-recogni... or https://archive.is/hRfLr https://archive.is/hRfLr
- jusonchan81 6y agoIsn’t it possible to use cell phone location to identify exactly who went inside the Capitol buildings? It’s something that the police system uses anyways and I guess it must be being used. What happened was a shame, but I truly hope this doesn’t evolve and make it worse than what it is already.
- mike_d 6y agoFirst, law enforcement never talks publicly about this capability because it only works if the bad guys don't think about it. Secondly, all the major carriers deployed temporary cell sites to the area in advance of the inauguration which likely has complicated and delayed the requests.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago> it only works if the bad guys don't think about it I think the horse has left that particular barn. Although, of course, the barrel of badguy-stupidity is bottomless, so I suppose they'll keep catching the dumber and dumber ones pretty much forever...
- octoberfranklin 6y agoI would hope people were putting their phones in airplane mode, and telling those around them to do the same.
- xnx 6y agoSeems like there's a big difference between passive dragnet usage of facial recognition on crowds in non-criminal situations, vs using this tool combined with soliciting tips from the public to identify people from video of them performing crimes.
- username90 6y agoThe most common complaint is that AI identifies unrelated people who look similar as being the perpetrator that would never have been found without AI. Pretty likely this can happen here as well.
- analognoise 6y agoYou don't think that happens with tip lines? If anything, far FEWER mistakes will be made. Not more. It's this weird thing where people hear about this one scary story of a guy misidentified and think "OMG facial recognition is terrible!" but they don't realize that happens to XYZ number people a day via human error. But we're all MORE comfortable with it if it's good old fashioned...human error?
- renewiltord 6y agoFacial Recognition Tech is obviously good if used by competent people: Narrows the number of haystacks to search for needle => Reduced resources required for successful search => More crimes prosecuted. Problem occurs when: * Users of FRT assume all in haystack are needles * Crimes on book must not be universally prosecuted The first part can't be helped. US Police, like most US government jobs, is a rest-and-take-it-easy job. In aggregate, unexceptional people doing an unexceptional job. The second part is because people want other people prosecuted but not themselves. I'm in second category myself. For instance, I am quite capable of using all sorts of drugs and maintaining a productive life. Other people are not. So it's important to prosecute other people and not to prosecute me. Therefore, for these two reasons, I don't want FRT to be used universally. I want to preserve inequitable outcomes in policing because society is stronger with inequitable outcomes - permits good life for high percentile individuals and constrains operations for low percentile individuals. Demarcating crime from uncrime is Sorites paradox.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> I want to preserve inequitable outcomes in policing because society is stronger with inequitable outcomes - permits good life for high percentile individuals and constrains operations for low percentile individuals. Thanks for being clear about your perspective. Do you think there's potential for abuse with different rulesets for different people? > Demarcating crime from uncrime is Sorites paradox. I disagree. The measure of a crime is subjective and objective. Subjectively, the victim notices they have been wronged. Objectively, there is a claim by a plaintiff against a defendant. A claim either exists or it does not, there is no sorites.
- renewiltord 6y ago> Thanks for being clear about your perspective. Do you think there's potential for abuse with different rulesets for different people? Oh, most certainly. The same structure allows for racial discrimination, which I do not believe is a sensible angle of discrimination: i.e. I think Ben Carson should not be discriminated against for being black. Too high value as a top surgeon. On the whole I accept it, though, because I don't want Elon Musk prosecuted by the SEC and the instrument that permits both is blunt. > The measure of a crime is subjective and objective. Subjectively, the victim notices they have been wronged. Objectively, there is a claim by a plaintiff against a defendant. A claim either exists or it does not, there is no sorites. Indeed. When there is a threshold. However, the costs imposed on society by drug users are dispersed. You can't Categorical Imperative them because some people are not capable enough to handle the responsibility. Other times the crime is exposure to increased risk: no actual harm may occur. For instance, if you do burnouts on city roads there is little concrete harm, only increased exposure to risk. It's the same with many things: public drunkenness, drink driving, jaywalking. And society reacts to these by permitting these activities in practice for high-value individuals while proselytizing against them at the same time. I don't drink-drive but I happily do the other two.
- ineedasername 6y agoI don't understand the beard trend. (Pictured in the article) It seems like a huge portion of anti-government and/or ardent President Trump supporters have those big untrimmed beards. Is it regional based on where many such supporters live? I certainly don't see any ideological link to untrimmed beards, so it must be some other co-occuring factor.
- iknowstuff 6y agoHaha good point. Violence, guns, big trucks and beards are their expressions of masculinity. Conservatism is big on clear division of gender roles, patriarchy and the role of a strong man as the head of the family. IANAP, but there's probably a link there.
- newguy1234 6y agoConservative men pride themselves in being distinctly men so they exaggerate the masculine traits like a beard.
- morsch 6y agoAh yes, conservative men, known since time immemorial for their scraggly beards and unkempt attire. Like Eisenhower!
- newguy1234 6y agoWhat exactly do people expect to happen by identifying the capitol rioters? Okay they get arrested, maybe charged with a crime. Others will get doxxed and most will lose their jobs. They'll become social outcasts. Do you really want a bunch of very angry people to effectively be pushed into a corner, demonized by society and so on? This will end up having very big unintended consequences.
- handmodel 6y agoYes. They tried to destroy the Capitol and capture elected officials. If you don't arrest them now then there will just be even more violent MAGA riots in the immediate future.
- newguy1234 6y agoHow long are we going to lock them up? How many people are we going to lock up? My understanding was that there was 100k+ people in attendance at this rally and thousands of people were in the capitol building itself.
- whatsmyusername 6y agoYou’re not going to deter the die hards. You absolutely will deter the “normies” with mortgages and retirement accounts to lose (I’d say their families acceptance, but they don’t seem to care much about that).
- handmodel 6y agoNo one is suggesting you arrest those who stayed outside. You arrest however many you can find who blew past doors/security or took stuff. Probably 500. At the next Trump rally of 100k everyone will know not to break the law. It is pretty simple.
- j8hn 6y agoI think it's reasonable that people who were involved in actual violence or theft should face consequences. When you say it's pretty simple, others are calling for everyone on the Capitol grounds to be arrested. Technically they were breaking the law by trespassing.
- nikolay 6y agoSo, once of a sudden, Clearview are the good guys?!
- viktorcode 6y agoFace recognition is here to stay, like it or not. If it is legal for a human being to watch CCTV feed, the pressure to replace them with a machine won’t subside. I think prohibiting recognition and tracking for commercial reason without explicit consent, plus allowing recognition and tracking only when acting on a court order would be a good start.
- nacho2sweet 6y agoThis is the exact situation in which facial recognition is very bad. Imagine the stasi had it? You can consider your government good and the technology good until it isn't and used against you.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> This is the exact situation in which facial recognition is very bad. No, it's not. > Imagine the stasi had it? Yes, the problem there is the Stasi, not the technology. There is literally no technology that the Stasi having would be a good thing, including pen and paper. Or things so basic we don't tend to think of them as “technology”, like, say, language.
- _Understated_ 6y ago> There is literally no technology that the Stasi having would be a good thing, including pen and paper. Not sure I agree with that analogy... pen and paper doesn't scale! Having the ability to do something at global scale, like facial recognition or real-time tracking and saying "Honest! We won't use it for dodgy things" is not sufficient... It'd be naieve to say I'd rather it didn't exist, however that cat is out of the bag now so there _must_ be incredibly robust and tamper-proof checks and balances round its use and the penalties for subverting that should be incredibly severe.
- wpietri 6y agoPen and paper scaled fine for the Stasi. They operated for 4 decades: https://www.wired.com/2017/05/adrian-fish-the-stasi-archives/ https://www.wired.com/2017/05/adrian-fish-the-stasi-archives...
- JustFinishedBSG 6y agoEverything scale if you are evil enough. Even doing things manually, alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin#Role_in_the_Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Blokhin#Role_in_the_Kat...
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- naruvimama 6y agoThe CCP heartily welcomes the emergence of the USSA in a bloodless war. They had no role to play in this.
- redis_mlc 6y ago- Dominion voting machines appears to be owned by the CCP. It was bought for $400 million just before the Nov. 3 election. - fake ballots were printed in China and made their way into US elections. Shredded ballots with invoices in Chinese were found in one of the contested states. The CCP could track where they were printed if they wanted to. - The wife of McConnell, Elaine Chao, is CCP, and was a US official until recently. She financed his campaigns. China Observer Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgX9pJ_72EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgX9pJ_72EE