6 ms·

I feel the same and it has led me to conclude that this is a situation where things have to get (a lot) worse before they can get better, and only through legis

I feel the same and it has led me to conclude that this is a situation where things have to get (a lot) worse before they can get better, and only through legislation. I've been thinking about how it seems like we're living in the 50s of smoking except this time it's privacy and social media. Perhaps we can learn something from the tobacco control playbook...

indymike 6y ago
Tobacco control has been a big fail, all that has really happened is that government and tobacco became co-dependent. People are still dying from tobacco related disease (I've lost close family members to this), and the product is sold everywhere. I would hope we do not model anything on "tobacco control".
- throwaways885 6y ago
  Idk, the younger generation see it as filthy and don't go near it for the most part. Seems to have finally paid off.
  - bongoman37 6y ago
    The younger generation is rapidly cozying up to smoking marijuana.
    - dathos 6y ago
      Do you have some data for that? And I wonder if and how this affects the big problem we have with alcohol abuse at any age.
      - MonkeyClub 6y ago
        Finding data for this is a walk in the park (ha ha).
- gruez 6y ago
  >Tobacco control has been a big fail Can you elaborate on this? Short of treating tobacco like heroin, what other measures should the government have taken to curb tobacco use?
  - throwaway210222 6y ago
    "what other measures should the government have taken to curb tobacco use? " Make people with traces of nicotine in their blood ineligible for free health care. Including emergency care. Focus their minds.
- altcognito 6y ago
  While I don't think we would disagree that cigarettes are still sold and there are still smokers, the problem is a fraction of what it was. That's not fail at all.
  - indymike 6y ago
    Its taken us 400+ years to get to this point. The science was in on smoking in 1948. It has taken over 70 years to get what progress we have had. That's a lot of lives cut short and a lot of suffering.
Ajedi32 6y ago
Unfortunately I suspect this is somewhat of a Pandora's box situation. There's only so much legislation can do once this technology becomes commonplace. Even in a hypothetical extreme scenario where facial recognition technology were completely banned the software would still exist and there'd still be databases of people's faces floating around the web. All legislation would do is create a situation where it's "illegal" to use software to identify people from a picture of their face even though just about everybody knows how to do so trivially and secretly.
- dimitrios1 6y ago
  Harsh penalty and strict enforcement should do quite well. If you want to be a database of private information, the burden is on you to comply with privacy laws. If I assert you have collected my face and stored it illegally in a database (i.e. without my consent), a regulator should be able to quickly follow up for compliance, and if found to be out of compliance, penalty is imposed. TCPA works really well for call centers, and CAN-SPAM works really well for email marketing platforms. There's no reason a similar piece of legislation for facial recognition could not be passed.
  - Ajedi32 6y ago
    Sure, you can stop legitimate US companies from using your face that way. But what happens when the database isn't hosted in the US, or is distributed anonymously by a peer-to-peer network. TCPA and CAN-SPAM are hardly what I'd call effective. I still get tons of spam calls and emails. I'm not saying legislation is a bad idea; just that it's not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
    - michaelt 6y ago
      Unlike spam (which can trivially be sent across jurisdictional borders) you can't point a new camera at a San Francisco resident without being in California.
      - da_big_ghey 6y ago
rapjr9 6y ago
One thing that might motivate lawmakers is if someone starts tracking THEM (with license plate readers, face trackers, camera based heart+breath monitors, Bluetooth/WiFi/Cellular trackers, etc.) and makes the data public. It's currently legal for anyone to do this in the USA as far as I know. Perhaps some cities have laws limiting their police but I don't think they limit the public or corporations. Do talk to a lawyer before making the data public though. You could do this on a personal level also, use your phones camera and start telling people their heart rate, breathing rate, radio emissions, etc., to raise awareness. Start saying "Hi" to them before they are within site range of you when you detect their phones transmissions. People may start to think you're a creep, but they'll certainly start to recognize that they are at the mercy of creeps. A likely outcome would be a ban on remote sensing during workplace meetings or at the workplace in general which could lead to a nationwide ban eventually. I don't think anyone's boss would like their employees monitoring their heart rate or stress level during meetings or using that to get an advantage over other employees. Or maybe everyone will love it, you could automatically terminate meetings if everyone's stress level gets too high and people may become more forgiving if they find out what raises other peoples stress levels. You can get heart rate from cameras and variability in heart rate is strongly correlated with stress.

indymike 6y ago

Tobacco control has been a big fail, all that has really happened is that government and tobacco became co-dependent. People are still dying from tobacco related disease (I've lost close family members to this), and the product is sold everywhere. I would hope we do not model anything on "tobacco control".

throwaways885 6y ago
Idk, the younger generation see it as filthy and don't go near it for the most part. Seems to have finally paid off.
- bongoman37 6y ago
  The younger generation is rapidly cozying up to smoking marijuana.
  - dathos 6y ago
    Do you have some data for that? And I wonder if and how this affects the big problem we have with alcohol abuse at any age.
    - MonkeyClub 6y ago
      Finding data for this is a walk in the park (ha ha).
gruez 6y ago
>Tobacco control has been a big fail Can you elaborate on this? Short of treating tobacco like heroin, what other measures should the government have taken to curb tobacco use?
- throwaway210222 6y ago
  "what other measures should the government have taken to curb tobacco use? " Make people with traces of nicotine in their blood ineligible for free health care. Including emergency care. Focus their minds.
altcognito 6y ago
While I don't think we would disagree that cigarettes are still sold and there are still smokers, the problem is a fraction of what it was. That's not fail at all.
- indymike 6y ago
  Its taken us 400+ years to get to this point. The science was in on smoking in 1948. It has taken over 70 years to get what progress we have had. That's a lot of lives cut short and a lot of suffering.

Ajedi32 6y ago

Unfortunately I suspect this is somewhat of a Pandora's box situation. There's only so much legislation can do once this technology becomes commonplace. Even in a hypothetical extreme scenario where facial recognition technology were completely banned the software would still exist and there'd still be databases of people's faces floating around the web. All legislation would do is create a situation where it's "illegal" to use software to identify people from a picture of their face even though just about everybody knows how to do so trivially and secretly.

dimitrios1 6y ago
Harsh penalty and strict enforcement should do quite well. If you want to be a database of private information, the burden is on you to comply with privacy laws. If I assert you have collected my face and stored it illegally in a database (i.e. without my consent), a regulator should be able to quickly follow up for compliance, and if found to be out of compliance, penalty is imposed. TCPA works really well for call centers, and CAN-SPAM works really well for email marketing platforms. There's no reason a similar piece of legislation for facial recognition could not be passed.
- Ajedi32 6y ago
  Sure, you can stop legitimate US companies from using your face that way. But what happens when the database isn't hosted in the US, or is distributed anonymously by a peer-to-peer network. TCPA and CAN-SPAM are hardly what I'd call effective. I still get tons of spam calls and emails. I'm not saying legislation is a bad idea; just that it's not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Unlike spam (which can trivially be sent across jurisdictional borders) you can't point a new camera at a San Francisco resident without being in California.
    - da_big_ghey 6y ago

rapjr9 6y ago

One thing that might motivate lawmakers is if someone starts tracking THEM (with license plate readers, face trackers, camera based heart+breath monitors, Bluetooth/WiFi/Cellular trackers, etc.) and makes the data public. It's currently legal for anyone to do this in the USA as far as I know. Perhaps some cities have laws limiting their police but I don't think they limit the public or corporations. Do talk to a lawyer before making the data public though. You could do this on a personal level also, use your phones camera and start telling people their heart rate, breathing rate, radio emissions, etc., to raise awareness. Start saying "Hi" to them before they are within site range of you when you detect their phones transmissions. People may start to think you're a creep, but they'll certainly start to recognize that they are at the mercy of creeps. A likely outcome would be a ban on remote sensing during workplace meetings or at the workplace in general which could lead to a nationwide ban eventually. I don't think anyone's boss would like their employees monitoring their heart rate or stress level during meetings or using that to get an advantage over other employees. Or maybe everyone will love it, you could automatically terminate meetings if everyone's stress level gets too high and people may become more forgiving if they find out what raises other peoples stress levels. You can get heart rate from cameras and variability in heart rate is strongly correlated with stress.