9 ms·

King County, WA bans facial recognition software

288 points by sharkweek 5y ago

Bostonian 5y ago
Suppose looters ransack a store when it is closed and are caught on video. Why wouldn't you want facial recognition software to identify them? Do you have a right to privacy when you break into a building? You can support some uses of facial recognition without wanting it to be used to say ticket people for jaywalking.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- swiley 5y ago
  >Suppose looters come to ransack a store, don't you want to be able to wave them off with a shotgun? The potential for abuse is too high.
- greyface- 5y ago
  This is a ban on use of facial recognition by the government. It does not limit store owners in any way.
- verall 5y ago
  I wouldn't want facial recognition software to identify them because I can't understand its failure cases. If it is allowed in court as evidence, prosecutors will talk up the recognition as "state-of-the-art" and juries will be influenced by its opinions.
  - ggreer 5y ago
    Do you also apply this reasoning to fingerprinting, DNA analysis, tire prints, and ballistics comparisons? Like most people, I don't understand all of the failure modes involved with those technologies, but they do seem to be helpful tools for bringing violent criminals to justice. I also think eyewitness testimony has many failure modes. If anything, it's probably less accurate than current facial recognition tech and biased in ways that are harder to determine. Yet I wouldn't want to ban all use of eyewitness testimony. Banning facial recognition seems like overkill. Instead, it makes more sense to restrict it so that we can get the good parts (catching violent criminals) without the bad parts (oppressive surveillance state). Instead of banning all fingerprinting and DNA analysis, we have rules for how police can use them. Why not have similar rules for facial recognition?
    - verall 5y ago
      Yes, I do. Ballistics comparisons in particular been found to be nearly complete bunk, yet experts continue to use them in court.[0] Tire prints are also pretty bad.[1] We live in an age of unprecedented HD video surveillance. We don't need automated facial recognition to bring violent criminals to justice. [0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/reversing-legacy-junk-science-courtroom https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/reversing-legacy-jun... [1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/09/27/questionable-science-tire-track-shoe-print https://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/09/27/questionable-sci...
- rantwasp 5y ago
  did you read the article? also, if you are part of a minority that is frequently misidentified by this “tech” and you end up being harassed by this pos tech, do you still want it used?
- zardo 5y ago
  > Why wouldn't you want facial recognition software to identify them? Why would I want it?
  - mywittyname 5y ago
    Facial recognition isn't very accurate. Based on some of the research I've seen, it's borderline worthless under many circumstances. I wouldn't want to use it in such a situation because of the likelihood that the person who committed a crime is going to go free while an innocent person might take the fall for it.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I would like it even less if it was 100% accurate. Do you really want every move you make logged? It's an incredibly powerful tool to use for oppression. If someone in the government doesn't like you, all they have to do is watch you for a few days. You'll be sure to commit a crime sooner or later, such as jaywalking, or maybe you looked at someone in a suspicious manner, and then they prosecute you to the max.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Because I don't want to live in an overbearing police state. I find it weird that you would pick the example of looting rather than some sort of very serious (and irreversible/uninsurable) crime like murder. You are surely aware that technological capabilities lead to feature creep, just as you are surely aware that police departments all over the country now operate military-grade armored cars to little apparent public benefit. Edit: just to expand on this, here's a press conference from earlier today (sorry about the poor sound): https://twitter.com/DarwinBondGraha/status/1400171592064241666 https://twitter.com/DarwinBondGraha/status/14001715920642416... Here, Oakland, California's Chief of Police admits that police claims about molotov cocktails and crowd demographics that were used to justify the deployment of tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters a year ago actually had no basis in fact. The Chief explained that he received information to that effect via the radio, and then went out and repeated it to the public (via the media) without making any effort to vet its accuracy. (For clarity, he has only been police chief since February; at the time last year, he was a acting as a spokesperson for the department). It's arguable that the decision to deploy tear gas escalated the protest into a full-fledged riot; even if you don't think so, it certainly misled the public about the behavior and composition of the protesters, inevitably impacting policy debates and so on. I feel this is a good example of why the police cannot be trusted with facial recognition tools; false claims can be used to to designate large numbers of people as criminal suspects, and that suspect status can then be leveraged to intrude upon their rights. Were California's interim prohibition on facial recognition not in place, chances are that it would already have been deployed to identify large numbers of legitimate protesters on the basis of initial false allegations (ie, lies) made by individual police officers. 33 officers have since been disciplined and no doubt civil litigation will delve deeper into this, but at present the police officers who were disciplined do not have to be identified, despite the fact that they were quite happy to lie in order to violate the rights of that same public. https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-police-chief-apologizes-issues-33-disciplinary-actions-for-using-tear-gas-against-protesters https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-police-chief-apologizes-is...
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >You can support some uses of facial recognition without wanting it to be used to say ticket people for jaywalking. Agreed. As xanaxagoras said, this is a political favor to Seattle Antifa. I presume that any prosecution using facial recognition software is also going to have human beings verifying that video actually matches the face of the accused. In other words, facial recognition software is going to be used as an automated first-pass filter.
- function_seven 5y ago
  > You can support some uses of facial recognition without wanting it to be used to say ticket people for jaywalking. That's a huge assumption that many of us (opponents to widespread surveillance tech) just don't agree to. I don't think it's possible to hand government this kind of capability, then limit it to a specific set of uses. It always expands in scope, covering more and more use cases until the folks over at Vision Zero[0] make an impassioned plea, "Suppose you could prevent 10 pedestrian deaths a year by enforcing our jaywalking laws better? Why wouldn't you want facial recognition software to protect them?" Or maybe the bias-free policing people[1] put forward their argument that removing human cops from jaywalking enforcement will increase Equity. It would be a decent proposition! And you end up with every minor thing being automatically caught and ticketed. That would suck. "Slippery slope" may be a fallacy in formal logic, but it's damn useful in resisting the march into a dystopian future. Nip this shit in the bud. Make it require some effort to enforce the law. [0] http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/safety-first/vision-zero http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/... [1] https://council.seattle.gov/2017/07/20/council-president-harrells-statement-on-jaywalking-tickets-disparity/ https://council.seattle.gov/2017/07/20/council-president-har...
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > "Slippery slope" may be a fallacy in formal logic It's not if the slope is, in fact, slippery. At least around here, one fallacy more common than slippery slope is the slippery slope fallacy fallacy - calling out real slippery slopes as fallacious.
- rychco 5y ago
  Yes, everyone has the right to privacy from facial recognition software, including criminals.
- luke2m 5y ago
  Why would I?
- didibus 5y ago
  > Do you have a right to privacy when you break into a building To find the person who appears on video footage filmed in the building, you need to spy on everyone and then match the face from the footage against the face of everyone else walking about. All of those other people did not break into the building, yet for this to work, their privacy is expunged by having their movement and faces filmed, tracked and catalogued so that the FR software can cross-match them. I think there is a privacy argument here. If I didn't commit any crime, maybe it shouldn't be that my face gets recorded in some database alongside my latest location.
anigbrowl 5y ago
It's not the first county int he country; as noted int he article San Francisco (which is both a city and a county) instituted such a ban in 2019. California has a statewide ban in place already. It's good news but needlessly and inaccurately sensationalized.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  The linked source is a Sinclair News outlet. They are probably the worst media conglomerate in America honestly. Their news is constant fear and I view anything by them as poisonous information because it is just as likely meant to mislead as it is to inform. Sure, KOMO publishes some real news. They also publish lies and wildly misleading stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    Did not realize that it's a Sinclair affiliate, worth bearing in mind.
- jjulius 5y ago
  Eh, I feel like that's being too picky. First, California's "ban" is only a three-year moratorium on FRT in police body cameras, whereas King County's is on "the use of [FRT] software by county government agencies and administrative offices." Second, and where things get a bit more "technical" is that SF is both a city and a county, yes, but it's only one city in that county. There are 881,549 people in SF county compared to 2,252,782 people in King County[0]. According to each county's Wikipedia page, SF county is 231.91 square miles to King County's 2,307. King County has 39 cities and towns[1] to SF county's 1. So while yes, you're technically correct, I still think that the headline is accurate as-is. Most of the country's counties are similar to King County (eg, not a city-county), and it's important to distinguish the fact that this ban covers a tremendously wide area and numerous municipalities. [0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashington,newyorkcountymanhattanboroughnewyork,losangelescountycalifornia,sanfranciscocountycalifornia,denvercountycolorado/RHI225219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashi... [1] https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/codes/cities.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/codes/cities.aspx
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- Layke1123 5y ago
  Shut...up. There is no such thing as antifa, and even if there were, being anti fascist IS the correct call.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
What's the point when they can buy the information from private companies?
- gnopgnip 5y ago
  The CA ban includes the police using facial recognition services from private companies as well
  - geephroh 5y ago
    And the same applies to KC governmental authorities as well.
1cvmask 5y ago
Another click bait article. Beware. Facial recognition was banned by SF before in the US. But it’s a technology evolving. And susceptible to manipulation as well. Watch the avantgarde comedy by the creators of South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM
- jjulius 5y ago
  I mentioned it in another response in this thread, but while it's technically correct that SF is both a city and a county, making it the first actual county to ban the tech, it's important identify the fact that this ban covers a much wider area, a population of ~2.2 million compared to ~880,000, and 39 towns/cities compared to 1. With that in mind I don't have much of an issue with the use of the word "county", considering there aren't a whole ton of city-counties relative to the total number of counties in the US.
benatkin 5y ago
This might be a good thing for proponents of surveillance. They can wait until some really bad things happen and people beg for facial recognition.
WalterBright 5y ago
At last, KC did something right. Hooray! There's nowhere near enough unsolved violent crime to justify the surveillance state. And yes, I have been the victim of an unsolved violent robbery. P.S. who cares if KC is first or not. What matters is it got done.
- sharken 5y ago
  It's great to see the US leading the way on this, i hope that Europe takes notice.
  - amelius 5y ago
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/facial-recognition-other-risky-ai-set-for-constraints-in-eu https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/facial-re...
  - vecinu 5y ago
    Specifically on this, yes but keep in mind the US is far behind Europe in terms of civil rights / privacy and other protections for citizens (See GDPR for ex.). I just learned about this "traffic light labelling" going on in the EU and was blown away that this was implemented 4 YEARS ago. [1] I'm hoping the US catches to Europe for everything else, we're far behind. [1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/traffic-light-food-labels-gain-momentum-across-europe/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/traff...
- kyleblarson 5y ago
  There may not be enough unsolved violent crime to justify facial recognition, but one thing there is too much of in Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, NYC is un-prosecuted violent crime.
  - zorpner 5y ago
    If we forced the cops to wear their badge numbers, we'd know who was committing the violence and they could be prosecuted for it.
monocasa 5y ago
How's gait identification doing these days?
- hinkley 5y ago
  You should always worry when they stop fighting you on something. Odds are good they've already switched to something else.
dalbasal 5y ago
Why does this apply only to policing? Is it a matter of authority/jurisdiction?
- jjulius 5y ago
  It does not apply only to policing. From the article: >The legislation bans the use of the software by county government agencies and administrative offices...
jvolkman 5y ago
For those unaware of WA state counties: this includes Seattle and its surrounding metropolitan area.
- geephroh 5y ago
  But unfortunately, the ban only applies to King County agencies, e.g., KC Sheriff's Department. It does not apply to the numerous independent city jurisdictions within KC such as Bellevue, Redmond, Kent, Auburn, Snoqualamie, etc. who may have their own law enforcement entities, including the Seattle Police Department. And while Seattle does have more restrictive oversight of facial recognition tech through the Seattle Surveillance Ordinance[1] passed in 2018, there are several local governments located inside the boundaries of KC that have experimented with or have indicated they may implement the tech. TL;DR, those of us who have been working this issue for several years are gratified with the unanimous(!) vote of the county council, but realize there's still a lot of work to do both at the local and state (and national) levels. [1] https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillance-technologies/about-surveillance- https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillanc...
cactus2093 5y ago
Genuine question - why not ban cameras altogether? Or ban the use of computers in police stations, make them write up all their reports by hand. I truly don't understand why there would be a line at facial recognition, it's just a law against making a process more efficient. It's clear to me that there should be a line to prevent fully convicting someone of a crime without any humans in the loop at all. Don't replace the jury or public defenders with robots. But facial recognition could just be a way to look through a large amount of footage to find relevant clips that would then be reviewed in more detail by humans. Without facial recognition, you just pay cops overtime to look through footage themselves. It doesn't necessarily affect the outcome of the process at all. I think facial recognition just needs some help with its image, it's just a tool that would save tax dollars. Or a means to Defund The Police, if that's your thing.
- microdrum 5y ago
  This is the right take. Can't ban math. Facial rec is here. If you don't like it, win a public policy debate about making it evidentially weak in front of a judge. Banning facial rec is like saying "you can have security cameras and iPhones, but only human eyeballs can look through them, not computers!" Arbitrary, and doomed to fail.
  - diamond_hands 5y ago
    The math is incorrect with Black people's faces more than White people's faces. "Can't ban math", that's like saying "can't ban words". Yes, but you can ban a combination of words in a location, such a "There's a fire!" in a crowded theater. You can ban a combination of math in a police station that leads to people going to jail.
    - bsenftner 5y ago
      The issue here is a complete lack on the behalf of the FR industry from impressing the importance of human oversight, and then validating that human oversight does not suffer racial blindness. It is pointless if the operators of an FR system cannot distinguish between similar age siblings or cousins of the ethnicity they are seeking via FR. This is far too often the case, and those police officers operating an FR system could simply be replaced by same ethnicity operators to receive significantly less bias.
throwaway1959 5y ago
My instinct for self-preservation tells me that this is not a good thing. I understand the need for privacy, but what happens if somebody puts a gun (or a knife) to your face? I think that the need for privacy could be solved through the legislation: we can have very severe restrictions on who could look at this data and why. Also, we can have severe restrictions on the admissibility of such data in court. Unfortunately, I have not seen any credible efforts from politicians, right or left, to introduce privacy protections from the surveillance abuses.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  The article and discussion is not about privacy. The people against facial recognition are against it, at least in this case, because it is racist - or at least, it produces racist outcomes. Removing bias from facial recognition is the problem you would have to solve to appease the concerns right now, not privacy. When innocent minorities are getting locked up because the software running it was trained with poor data, the outcomes of using the software is a racism-entrenched legal and justice system. Which is why people are fighting against it.
  - lawnchair_larry 5y ago
    Someone should let these people know that nobody gets put in jail based on the facial recognition’s decision, so their “concerns” are impossible. Not only that, but if anything, it’s less likely to find darker skin tones at all, so it will favor minorities, not hurt them. It’s a shortcut for manually digging through databases to identify people. Any identification is followed up with investigation, just as it would be if a human matched it. No decision is made by the machine. So, no, it’s not racist at all.
    - loeg 5y ago
      > Someone should let these people know that nobody gets put in jail based on the facial recognition’s decision, so their “concerns” are impossible. Not only that, but if anything, it’s less likely to find darker skin tones at all, so it will favor minorities, not hurt them. The article directly contradicts both of your claims: > "Facial recognition technology is still incredibly biased and absolutely creates harm in the real world," said Jennifer Lee with ACLU Washington. "We now know of three black men who have been wrongfully arrested and jailed due to biased facial recognition technology.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Considering how rampant property crime like car break-ins or catalytic converter thefts or shoplifting are in King County, this seems like a really bad decision. I would definitely like to see criminals identified, located, arrested, and sentenced. Not to mention, we just had a whole year of regular rioting in Seattle, with fiascos like CHAZ and daily illegal blockades of highways. This technology makes it much more likely that the police department can actually enforce the law as it exists on the books by identifying and locating these criminals. It also makes it much more likely that home surveillance footage from law-abiding residents can be put to use. I do not think this technology is intrusive or invasive as the quoted council member claimed. Recording in public spaces is completely legal to begin with. And we can always limit the use of facial recognition by police departments to cases with either a warrant or probable cause, to prevent completely uncontrolled surveillance. The allegations of racial biases are also not meaningful. In practice, false positives in machine vision algorithms are contained by maintaining a human in the loop to verify matches. It is trivial to use this technology in a way that matches human-levels of accuracy with this layer of safety in place. Banning this kind of technology outright feels like a fear-driven decision by luddites. That's a charitable take - a more direct perspective is that the politicians and interest groups supporting this ban are looking to protect their favored groups, which very frankly seems to include criminals.
- akomtu 5y ago
  Police isn't going to chase guys who stole your precious catalytic converter, even if you give PD scans of the bad guys' DLs. The face recognition data, on the other hand, is going to stay forever and ten years down the road, you may get flagged for sitting next to a drug dealer who's been evading police for years. And it will be your responsibility to explain what you did there that day ten years ago.
theknocker 5y ago
Wow what heroes. Hey, quick question: Did they also ban Stratfor's gait tracking technology that they piloted for years?
ericls 5y ago
Nice! Ban recommendation algorithm next!
buildbot 5y ago
This is great! As a data scientist though, we should go farther and ban using ML anywhere in policing or the justice system. It just has no place in a system that's supposed to presume innocence.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
The backstory seems to be that WA state had succumbed to lobbying from Microsoft and had passed a law allowing facial recognition, with limits, in 2020.1,2,3 The OP, OTOH, refers to an new ordinance that only applies to one county. Statewide, it appears the rules are more lax. Note that other states had already limited the use of facial recognition, by law enforcement, before California or Washington, e.g., NH in 2013 and OR in 2017.4,5 1 https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-recognition-just-not-these/ https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-rec... 2 https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-state-oks-facial-recognition-law-seen-as-national-model-11585686897 https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-state-oks-facial-rec... 3 https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/blog/2020/03/12/house-and-senate-reach-agreement-on-facial-recognition-rules/ https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/blog/2020/03/12/house-and-sena... 4 http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/VII/105-D/105-D-2.htm http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/VII/105-D/105-D-2.h... 5 https://law.justia.com/codes/oregon/2017/volume-04/chapter-133/section-133.741/ https://law.justia.com/codes/oregon/2017/volume-04/chapter-1... I would bet Microsoft is lobbying in many states regarding facial recognition and privacy laws to try to get the laws they want. The news will report that they are proponents of passing laws governing these issues, but the point is that they want to shape how the laws are written to benefit Microsoft. I can find citations if anyone doubts this is happening.
stakkur 5y ago
"The legislation bans the use of the software by county government agencies and administrative offices, including by the King County Sheriff’s Office." So anybody else can use it anywhere, including third-party contractors performing work for any of the above parties. Also, strangely, I see no mention of hardware or other non-software facial recognition technology.
avanti 5y ago
There is the conservative and the progressive. The conservative hold their 1984 bible and say the end of world is coming. The progressive just go forward and everything is fine.
tediousdemise 5y ago
How will this facial recognition tech ban be enforced? The most common users of the tech are the ones who will be enforcing the ban. Are we honestly expecting the police department to self-regulate?
TechnoTimeStop 5y ago
The ridiculousness that is King County at this point is borderline a conspiracy. Most of it surrounds, "insert skin color" bad, all others good. Our subreddits are cancer and have been known for a while to be the highest manipulated forums for astroturfing on reddit. Can anyone help? Can we help ourselves?
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  What are you saying?
lewdev 5y ago
Why ban it? It's not the facial recognition that's the problem; the problem is that the justice system believes that it's enough to convict someone of a crime. It's hard to believe that prosecutors can be like, "The computer says it's you, so you're guilty." Especially when there's probably a known margin of error.
- rllearneratwork 5y ago
  exactly. There must be a person in the loop. Facial recognition is just a tool and a very useful one. Banning it is silly virtue signaling. A proper way to address all sorts of possible problems with it is by requiring qualified people in critical decision points within the overall system.
- TheRealPomax 5y ago
  because that's the only option. There is no scenario in which it's allowed in a narrow set of circumstances that isn't going to get abused by law enforcement. Either you ban it, or law enforcement is going to find ways to abuse the right to use it, including appointing people whose job it is to say "this was fine". If this was a reasonable society, with a reasonable police force: absolutely, narrow definitions of permitted use should be reasonably fine. But the US isn't, and the US doesn't, so in the US, it can't be. (but then you look at countries where it might be fine, and it turns out that they don't need facial recognition to have a decent enough catch rate, kind of making the whole thing moot. No police force should use it, for wildly different reasons)
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    Except this is allowed in a narrow set of circumstances - to look for missing children. So they can probably dragnet everyone they see to find the missing children or abductors. Now the residents need a way to prevent the police misusing it by sneakily letting it find rapists and murderers.
    - TheRealPomax 5y ago
      Welcome to the security vs. privacy debate. Glad to have you here, please read the pamphlet and please don't resort to a "won't anyone think of the children" argument. Because the statistics around facial recognition just don't work for that argument. However many children you think are saved with this: it's nowhere near that figure, if not flat out zero.
cltby 5y ago
Sad news, if not unexpected. Yet another municipality prioritizes ginned-up grievance over the actually existing harms of unchecked criminality.
gweinberg 5y ago
I can understand wanting to put heavy restrictions on the use of this technology, for example a rule that someone cannot be arrested based on software alone, and a rule that it can only be used to help identify individuals that are clearly committing a crime. But it seems to me to be batshit insane to ban it completely. If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list before we have human beings looking at mug shots, what is the alleged downside?
- cryptoz 5y ago
  > If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list before we have human beings looking at mug shots, what is the alleged downside? Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed. Your suggestion is, what if we didn't jail them? Just round up the innocently identified minorities and start investigating them? That is....hardly an improvement. In fact it would seem that while it might reduce falsely accused innocent people from going to jail, it could increase the number of racist incidents where police are harassing innocent minorities. And worst of all, it could further entrench racist decision making inside police departments. A much better suggestion in my opinion would be, test the software before deploying it so that it doesn't make racist decisions. Set the bar VERY high for this, so the software has to be really, really, really good. Otherwise don't use it.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    > Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed. Then is it really fair to call it facial recognition if it doesn't work? Or to say "we are banning this until it is more reliable" or something like that?
  - godelski 5y ago
    To be clear, there are a lot more downsides too. Sci-Fi dystopians bring up facial recognition technology a lot and about how the technology can be abused and help a government rule with authoritarian power. I do think it is important to think about these issues since democracy isn't stable (Before we start a flame war: I'm not convinced any system is and I think you'd be hard pressed to argue one is). We should consider the vulnerabilities to our system of governance and this seems to be a common one: tracking citizens. But I think in our society "potential of authoritarian takeover" (sometimes called "turnkey tyranny") is less of a concern for people than racial bias (which is still an important topic, don't get me wrong). I think the difference is that one requires foresight and the other is an effect we can see right now. And of course, historically we've seen minorities become the early victims of authoritarians. We should think long and hard about these technologies and how to use them properly. Historically we haven't thought about ethics much in computer science, but the time isn't post hoc. We (Hacker News readers) are the experts, and we need to be talking about this decades ago, not decades from now. So let's not ignore the conversation.
gentleman11 5y ago
Next, perhaps, they can ban tracking via wireless signals and cameras tracking your license plates. Amazon ring too while we’re at it. I know some students who tracked peoples wireless signals as a school project recently, it was creepy
hellbannedguy 5y ago
Let's go further with facial recognition? Let companies use on our children. Let companies/government scan our kids from birth to death. Put cameras in schools, on every street corner, government buildings, parks, doctor's offices, and of course scan every face that goes through governmental facilities (DMV, Criminal/civil courts). Put cameras in all stores. Put a Ring type camera on every residence. Government could then predict whom will most likely succeed in our complicated, competive society. The good kids will go to the best schools of course. The good adults will get preferential treatment in hiring, loan accusation, housing, etc. Stores will track our every buy. Stores will know I stole an olive from Whole Foods once. STD's will be a thing if the past. We will know who likes to booze it up. We will know what percentage of fast food they consume, and we will definitely know who uses tobacco. We can do away with Credit Scores. We can do away with most tests. We will be able to predict a person's future success with data. Cops can give up patrols, and just use AI programs to catch bad guys, or prostitutes. This is Not the future I want. I cannot believe Americans are even putting up with the surveillance we already have. (The only thing I like about cameras/surveillance is it might make cops a bit more honest?)
- godelski 5y ago
  I'm always amazed at how many people watch movies/TV like Blade Runner, Black Mirror, Terminator, Altered Carbon, Her, Ex Machina, Firefly, Cowbow Bebop, etc and think "Yeah, that looks like a future I want." Dystopian Sci-Fi is a warning, not a blueprint. Even the utopian Sci-Fis often reference a struggled past in transitioning to their societies. And a lot of these problems have to deal with surveillance or an adjacent technology (like Minority Report or the more realistic Psycho-Pass).
  - GrifMD 5y ago
    That's essentially the plot to Tomorrowland (2015). Images of the dystopian future are broadcasted from "Tomorrowland" (sort of a different universe) back to ours as a warning to prevent it. Instead we fetish these images in pop culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrowland_(film)#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrowland_(film)#Plot The movie isn't great, but it's critique of pop culture isn't wrong. We have very little hopeful science fiction these days apart from Star Trek.
jeffbee 5y ago
I hate to exercise my lawyer brain, but this ordinance is tailored in a somewhat weird way that it seems to me it would prohibit the county sheriff and other agencies from posting any kind of photo on Facebook, which has the ability to segment human faces and tag people, or an application like iOS Photos or Google Photos. The ordinance is here if this is a permalink. https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/View.ashx?M=F&ID=9417301&GUID=D01C2F4F-F1B8-438A-B819-067A1A0A7181 https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/View.ashx?M=F&ID=94173...
quantum_state 5y ago
Think they may soon ban voice recognition and voice signature ... body infrared signature ... body electromagnetic spectrum ... and eventually ban the electromagnetic force :-) ...
nemo44x 5y ago
The FBI and CIA don’t have to adhere to these rules so expect local police departments to dump more cases their way.
scotuswroteus 5y ago
NO, King County banned "government use" of facial recognition software. This is such an annoying trend in media coverage of this issue: every city in the world is happy to restrict THEIR USE of facial recognition. That's a symbolic and small victory. It will always be a symbolic and small victory. Every headline leaves the "government use" part out. Every single time. That's because people who write headlines know what everyone knows: that "government use" is a small slice of the overall problem. The key is that anyone who raises this issue with these headlines will hear from some annoying person chiming in to list out why government use of facial recognition is bad (as though that's the basis for my rub here. It's isn't.) But individual localities making internal rules to stop their own use of facial recognition software isn't solving the big problem. This has been going on for years, and cities banning their own use of facial recognition has had zero effect on any other political entities but other cities seeking easy headlines. It's not solving the societal problems that facial recognition poses. It's not earning the click. Cities should stop distracting from that bigger set of problems with this stuff.
- oldgregg 5y ago
  The corporate-government exploitation of the people is staggering. Corporations do all the spying and then give APIs to the government. No constitutional problems over here.
  - Sleepytime 5y ago
    Fascism or public-private partnership... It's the same in-group in power, protecting each other, regardless of which arm of the state (corporate, government, religion, media, universities) is currently doing the most effective social engineering.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Police use of facial recognition software already has bad impacts today, so at least preventing PD use will prevent real harm. > Another Arrest, and Jail Time, Due to a Bad Facial Recognition Match > A New Jersey man was accused of shoplifting and trying to hit an officer with a car. He is the third known Black man to be wrongfully arrested based on face recognition. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recognition-misidentify-jail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recogni...
joshka 5y ago
Legislation link: https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4793336&GUID=260D1D8E-6553-4583-B75B-92FB4C5886C8&Options=Advanced&Search= https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx... Interesting parts: > The Proposed Ordinance would also prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from issuing any permit or entering into any agreement which authorizes a third party to use facial recognition technology or obtain or access facial recognition information on behalf of the county. However, evidence relating to the investigation of a specific crime that may have come from facial recognition technology may be used by a county administrative office or executive department so long as the evidence was not generated by or at the request of the county office or department.
encryptluks2 5y ago
It's not like they can't call the FBI or whatever federal agency and have them do it for them.
ALittleLight 5y ago
"""“Facial recognition technology is still incredibly biased and absolutely creates harm in the real world," said Jennifer Lee with ACLU Washington. "We now know of three black men who have been wrongfully arrested and jailed due to biased facial recognition technology. So, this powerful surveillance tool inevitably exacerbates already racially biased policing""" Seems like a blatant error to reason that, because there are instances of facial recognition being used incorrectly that the technology itself is fundamentally flawed. You could apply the same reasoning to the police themselves - I know of at least three instances where the police arrested the wrong person, so we should ban the police? With the police example it seems obvious we should continue iterating and improving the police to correct errors, but that we don't want to throw out the whole institution because that would be much worse. The police may have caused some harm, but did they do more good? I'd bet that banning facial recognition is net harmful to black and Hispanic people. Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime, so denying effective tools to law enforcement will disproportionately hurt those communities. Of course, it's academic as King County didn't use facial recognition - but I bet it could be a useful tool if used responsibly. I've read news articles before about cases where facial recognition was used irresponsibly. We absolutely need to put a stop to that. I think if we treat it more like an unreliable witness saying "The person I saw reminded me of X" and less like a definitive ID that may be a better position.

288 points by sharkweek 5y ago

Suppose looters ransack a store when it is closed and are caught on video. Why wouldn't you want facial recognition software to identify them? Do you have a right to privacy when you break into a building? You can support some uses of facial recognition without wanting it to be used to say ticket people for jaywalking.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swiley 5y ago
>Suppose looters come to ransack a store, don't you want to be able to wave them off with a shotgun? The potential for abuse is too high.
greyface- 5y ago
This is a ban on use of facial recognition by the government. It does not limit store owners in any way.
verall 5y ago
I wouldn't want facial recognition software to identify them because I can't understand its failure cases. If it is allowed in court as evidence, prosecutors will talk up the recognition as "state-of-the-art" and juries will be influenced by its opinions.
- ggreer 5y ago
  Do you also apply this reasoning to fingerprinting, DNA analysis, tire prints, and ballistics comparisons? Like most people, I don't understand all of the failure modes involved with those technologies, but they do seem to be helpful tools for bringing violent criminals to justice. I also think eyewitness testimony has many failure modes. If anything, it's probably less accurate than current facial recognition tech and biased in ways that are harder to determine. Yet I wouldn't want to ban all use of eyewitness testimony. Banning facial recognition seems like overkill. Instead, it makes more sense to restrict it so that we can get the good parts (catching violent criminals) without the bad parts (oppressive surveillance state). Instead of banning all fingerprinting and DNA analysis, we have rules for how police can use them. Why not have similar rules for facial recognition?
  - verall 5y ago
    Yes, I do. Ballistics comparisons in particular been found to be nearly complete bunk, yet experts continue to use them in court.[0] Tire prints are also pretty bad.[1] We live in an age of unprecedented HD video surveillance. We don't need automated facial recognition to bring violent criminals to justice. [0] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/reversing-legacy-junk-science-courtroom https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/reversing-legacy-jun... [1] https://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/09/27/questionable-science-tire-track-shoe-print https://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/09/27/questionable-sci...
rantwasp 5y ago
did you read the article? also, if you are part of a minority that is frequently misidentified by this “tech” and you end up being harassed by this pos tech, do you still want it used?
zardo 5y ago
> Why wouldn't you want facial recognition software to identify them? Why would I want it?
- mywittyname 5y ago
  Facial recognition isn't very accurate. Based on some of the research I've seen, it's borderline worthless under many circumstances. I wouldn't want to use it in such a situation because of the likelihood that the person who committed a crime is going to go free while an innocent person might take the fall for it.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I would like it even less if it was 100% accurate. Do you really want every move you make logged? It's an incredibly powerful tool to use for oppression. If someone in the government doesn't like you, all they have to do is watch you for a few days. You'll be sure to commit a crime sooner or later, such as jaywalking, or maybe you looked at someone in a suspicious manner, and then they prosecute you to the max.
anigbrowl 5y ago
Because I don't want to live in an overbearing police state. I find it weird that you would pick the example of looting rather than some sort of very serious (and irreversible/uninsurable) crime like murder. You are surely aware that technological capabilities lead to feature creep, just as you are surely aware that police departments all over the country now operate military-grade armored cars to little apparent public benefit. Edit: just to expand on this, here's a press conference from earlier today (sorry about the poor sound): https://twitter.com/DarwinBondGraha/status/1400171592064241666 https://twitter.com/DarwinBondGraha/status/14001715920642416... Here, Oakland, California's Chief of Police admits that police claims about molotov cocktails and crowd demographics that were used to justify the deployment of tear gas and rubber bullets against protesters a year ago actually had no basis in fact. The Chief explained that he received information to that effect via the radio, and then went out and repeated it to the public (via the media) without making any effort to vet its accuracy. (For clarity, he has only been police chief since February; at the time last year, he was a acting as a spokesperson for the department). It's arguable that the decision to deploy tear gas escalated the protest into a full-fledged riot; even if you don't think so, it certainly misled the public about the behavior and composition of the protesters, inevitably impacting policy debates and so on. I feel this is a good example of why the police cannot be trusted with facial recognition tools; false claims can be used to to designate large numbers of people as criminal suspects, and that suspect status can then be leveraged to intrude upon their rights. Were California's interim prohibition on facial recognition not in place, chances are that it would already have been deployed to identify large numbers of legitimate protesters on the basis of initial false allegations (ie, lies) made by individual police officers. 33 officers have since been disciplined and no doubt civil litigation will delve deeper into this, but at present the police officers who were disciplined do not have to be identified, despite the fact that they were quite happy to lie in order to violate the rights of that same public. https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-police-chief-apologizes-issues-33-disciplinary-actions-for-using-tear-gas-against-protesters https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-police-chief-apologizes-is...
TMWNN 5y ago
>You can support some uses of facial recognition without wanting it to be used to say ticket people for jaywalking. Agreed. As xanaxagoras said, this is a political favor to Seattle Antifa. I presume that any prosecution using facial recognition software is also going to have human beings verifying that video actually matches the face of the accused. In other words, facial recognition software is going to be used as an automated first-pass filter.
function_seven 5y ago
> You can support some uses of facial recognition without wanting it to be used to say ticket people for jaywalking. That's a huge assumption that many of us (opponents to widespread surveillance tech) just don't agree to. I don't think it's possible to hand government this kind of capability, then limit it to a specific set of uses. It always expands in scope, covering more and more use cases until the folks over at Vision Zero[0] make an impassioned plea, "Suppose you could prevent 10 pedestrian deaths a year by enforcing our jaywalking laws better? Why wouldn't you want facial recognition software to protect them?" Or maybe the bias-free policing people[1] put forward their argument that removing human cops from jaywalking enforcement will increase Equity. It would be a decent proposition! And you end up with every minor thing being automatically caught and ticketed. That would suck. "Slippery slope" may be a fallacy in formal logic, but it's damn useful in resisting the march into a dystopian future. Nip this shit in the bud. Make it require some effort to enforce the law. [0] http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/safety-first/vision-zero http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs/... [1] https://council.seattle.gov/2017/07/20/council-president-harrells-statement-on-jaywalking-tickets-disparity/ https://council.seattle.gov/2017/07/20/council-president-har...
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > "Slippery slope" may be a fallacy in formal logic It's not if the slope is, in fact, slippery. At least around here, one fallacy more common than slippery slope is the slippery slope fallacy fallacy - calling out real slippery slopes as fallacious.
rychco 5y ago
Yes, everyone has the right to privacy from facial recognition software, including criminals.
luke2m 5y ago
Why would I?
didibus 5y ago
> Do you have a right to privacy when you break into a building To find the person who appears on video footage filmed in the building, you need to spy on everyone and then match the face from the footage against the face of everyone else walking about. All of those other people did not break into the building, yet for this to work, their privacy is expunged by having their movement and faces filmed, tracked and catalogued so that the FR software can cross-match them. I think there is a privacy argument here. If I didn't commit any crime, maybe it shouldn't be that my face gets recorded in some database alongside my latest location.

anigbrowl 5y ago

It's not the first county int he country; as noted int he article San Francisco (which is both a city and a county) instituted such a ban in 2019. California has a statewide ban in place already. It's good news but needlessly and inaccurately sensationalized.

cryptoz 5y ago
The linked source is a Sinclair News outlet. They are probably the worst media conglomerate in America honestly. Their news is constant fear and I view anything by them as poisonous information because it is just as likely meant to mislead as it is to inform. Sure, KOMO publishes some real news. They also publish lies and wildly misleading stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Did not realize that it's a Sinclair affiliate, worth bearing in mind.
jjulius 5y ago
Eh, I feel like that's being too picky. First, California's "ban" is only a three-year moratorium on FRT in police body cameras, whereas King County's is on "the use of [FRT] software by county government agencies and administrative offices." Second, and where things get a bit more "technical" is that SF is both a city and a county, yes, but it's only one city in that county. There are 881,549 people in SF county compared to 2,252,782 people in King County[0]. According to each county's Wikipedia page, SF county is 231.91 square miles to King County's 2,307. King County has 39 cities and towns[1] to SF county's 1. So while yes, you're technically correct, I still think that the headline is accurate as-is. Most of the country's counties are similar to King County (eg, not a city-county), and it's important to distinguish the fact that this ban covers a tremendously wide area and numerous municipalities. [0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashington,newyorkcountymanhattanboroughnewyork,losangelescountycalifornia,sanfranciscocountycalifornia,denvercountycolorado/RHI225219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kingcountywashi... [1] https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/codes/cities.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/codes/cities.aspx

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Layke1123 5y ago
Shut...up. There is no such thing as antifa, and even if there were, being anti fascist IS the correct call.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

What's the point when they can buy the information from private companies?

gnopgnip 5y ago
The CA ban includes the police using facial recognition services from private companies as well
- geephroh 5y ago
  And the same applies to KC governmental authorities as well.

1cvmask 5y ago

Another click bait article. Beware. Facial recognition was banned by SF before in the US. But it’s a technology evolving. And susceptible to manipulation as well. Watch the avantgarde comedy by the creators of South Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM

jjulius 5y ago
I mentioned it in another response in this thread, but while it's technically correct that SF is both a city and a county, making it the first actual county to ban the tech, it's important identify the fact that this ban covers a much wider area, a population of ~2.2 million compared to ~880,000, and 39 towns/cities compared to 1. With that in mind I don't have much of an issue with the use of the word "county", considering there aren't a whole ton of city-counties relative to the total number of counties in the US.

benatkin 5y ago

This might be a good thing for proponents of surveillance. They can wait until some really bad things happen and people beg for facial recognition.

WalterBright 5y ago

At last, KC did something right. Hooray! There's nowhere near enough unsolved violent crime to justify the surveillance state. And yes, I have been the victim of an unsolved violent robbery. P.S. who cares if KC is first or not. What matters is it got done.

sharken 5y ago
It's great to see the US leading the way on this, i hope that Europe takes notice.
- amelius 5y ago
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/facial-recognition-other-risky-ai-set-for-constraints-in-eu https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-21/facial-re...
- vecinu 5y ago
  Specifically on this, yes but keep in mind the US is far behind Europe in terms of civil rights / privacy and other protections for citizens (See GDPR for ex.). I just learned about this "traffic light labelling" going on in the EU and was blown away that this was implemented 4 YEARS ago. [1] I'm hoping the US catches to Europe for everything else, we're far behind. [1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/traffic-light-food-labels-gain-momentum-across-europe/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/traff...
kyleblarson 5y ago
There may not be enough unsolved violent crime to justify facial recognition, but one thing there is too much of in Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, NYC is un-prosecuted violent crime.
- zorpner 5y ago
  If we forced the cops to wear their badge numbers, we'd know who was committing the violence and they could be prosecuted for it.

monocasa 5y ago

How's gait identification doing these days?

hinkley 5y ago
You should always worry when they stop fighting you on something. Odds are good they've already switched to something else.

dalbasal 5y ago

Why does this apply only to policing? Is it a matter of authority/jurisdiction?

jjulius 5y ago
It does not apply only to policing. From the article: >The legislation bans the use of the software by county government agencies and administrative offices...

jvolkman 5y ago

For those unaware of WA state counties: this includes Seattle and its surrounding metropolitan area.

geephroh 5y ago
But unfortunately, the ban only applies to King County agencies, e.g., KC Sheriff's Department. It does not apply to the numerous independent city jurisdictions within KC such as Bellevue, Redmond, Kent, Auburn, Snoqualamie, etc. who may have their own law enforcement entities, including the Seattle Police Department. And while Seattle does have more restrictive oversight of facial recognition tech through the Seattle Surveillance Ordinance[1] passed in 2018, there are several local governments located inside the boundaries of KC that have experimented with or have indicated they may implement the tech. TL;DR, those of us who have been working this issue for several years are gratified with the unanimous(!) vote of the county council, but realize there's still a lot of work to do both at the local and state (and national) levels. [1] https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillance-technologies/about-surveillance- https://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/privacy/surveillanc...

cactus2093 5y ago

Genuine question - why not ban cameras altogether? Or ban the use of computers in police stations, make them write up all their reports by hand. I truly don't understand why there would be a line at facial recognition, it's just a law against making a process more efficient. It's clear to me that there should be a line to prevent fully convicting someone of a crime without any humans in the loop at all. Don't replace the jury or public defenders with robots. But facial recognition could just be a way to look through a large amount of footage to find relevant clips that would then be reviewed in more detail by humans. Without facial recognition, you just pay cops overtime to look through footage themselves. It doesn't necessarily affect the outcome of the process at all. I think facial recognition just needs some help with its image, it's just a tool that would save tax dollars. Or a means to Defund The Police, if that's your thing.

microdrum 5y ago
This is the right take. Can't ban math. Facial rec is here. If you don't like it, win a public policy debate about making it evidentially weak in front of a judge. Banning facial rec is like saying "you can have security cameras and iPhones, but only human eyeballs can look through them, not computers!" Arbitrary, and doomed to fail.
- diamond_hands 5y ago
  The math is incorrect with Black people's faces more than White people's faces. "Can't ban math", that's like saying "can't ban words". Yes, but you can ban a combination of words in a location, such a "There's a fire!" in a crowded theater. You can ban a combination of math in a police station that leads to people going to jail.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    The issue here is a complete lack on the behalf of the FR industry from impressing the importance of human oversight, and then validating that human oversight does not suffer racial blindness. It is pointless if the operators of an FR system cannot distinguish between similar age siblings or cousins of the ethnicity they are seeking via FR. This is far too often the case, and those police officers operating an FR system could simply be replaced by same ethnicity operators to receive significantly less bias.

throwaway1959 5y ago

My instinct for self-preservation tells me that this is not a good thing. I understand the need for privacy, but what happens if somebody puts a gun (or a knife) to your face? I think that the need for privacy could be solved through the legislation: we can have very severe restrictions on who could look at this data and why. Also, we can have severe restrictions on the admissibility of such data in court. Unfortunately, I have not seen any credible efforts from politicians, right or left, to introduce privacy protections from the surveillance abuses.

cryptoz 5y ago
The article and discussion is not about privacy. The people against facial recognition are against it, at least in this case, because it is racist - or at least, it produces racist outcomes. Removing bias from facial recognition is the problem you would have to solve to appease the concerns right now, not privacy. When innocent minorities are getting locked up because the software running it was trained with poor data, the outcomes of using the software is a racism-entrenched legal and justice system. Which is why people are fighting against it.
- lawnchair_larry 5y ago
  Someone should let these people know that nobody gets put in jail based on the facial recognition’s decision, so their “concerns” are impossible. Not only that, but if anything, it’s less likely to find darker skin tones at all, so it will favor minorities, not hurt them. It’s a shortcut for manually digging through databases to identify people. Any identification is followed up with investigation, just as it would be if a human matched it. No decision is made by the machine. So, no, it’s not racist at all.
  - loeg 5y ago
    > Someone should let these people know that nobody gets put in jail based on the facial recognition’s decision, so their “concerns” are impossible. Not only that, but if anything, it’s less likely to find darker skin tones at all, so it will favor minorities, not hurt them. The article directly contradicts both of your claims: > "Facial recognition technology is still incredibly biased and absolutely creates harm in the real world," said Jennifer Lee with ACLU Washington. "We now know of three black men who have been wrongfully arrested and jailed due to biased facial recognition technology.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Considering how rampant property crime like car break-ins or catalytic converter thefts or shoplifting are in King County, this seems like a really bad decision. I would definitely like to see criminals identified, located, arrested, and sentenced. Not to mention, we just had a whole year of regular rioting in Seattle, with fiascos like CHAZ and daily illegal blockades of highways. This technology makes it much more likely that the police department can actually enforce the law as it exists on the books by identifying and locating these criminals. It also makes it much more likely that home surveillance footage from law-abiding residents can be put to use. I do not think this technology is intrusive or invasive as the quoted council member claimed. Recording in public spaces is completely legal to begin with. And we can always limit the use of facial recognition by police departments to cases with either a warrant or probable cause, to prevent completely uncontrolled surveillance. The allegations of racial biases are also not meaningful. In practice, false positives in machine vision algorithms are contained by maintaining a human in the loop to verify matches. It is trivial to use this technology in a way that matches human-levels of accuracy with this layer of safety in place. Banning this kind of technology outright feels like a fear-driven decision by luddites. That's a charitable take - a more direct perspective is that the politicians and interest groups supporting this ban are looking to protect their favored groups, which very frankly seems to include criminals.

akomtu 5y ago
Police isn't going to chase guys who stole your precious catalytic converter, even if you give PD scans of the bad guys' DLs. The face recognition data, on the other hand, is going to stay forever and ten years down the road, you may get flagged for sitting next to a drug dealer who's been evading police for years. And it will be your responsibility to explain what you did there that day ten years ago.

theknocker 5y ago

Wow what heroes. Hey, quick question: Did they also ban Stratfor's gait tracking technology that they piloted for years?

ericls 5y ago

Nice! Ban recommendation algorithm next!

buildbot 5y ago

This is great! As a data scientist though, we should go farther and ban using ML anywhere in policing or the justice system. It just has no place in a system that's supposed to presume innocence.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

The backstory seems to be that WA state had succumbed to lobbying from Microsoft and had passed a law allowing facial recognition, with limits, in 2020.1,2,3 The OP, OTOH, refers to an new ordinance that only applies to one county. Statewide, it appears the rules are more lax. Note that other states had already limited the use of facial recognition, by law enforcement, before California or Washington, e.g., NH in 2013 and OR in 2017.4,5 1 https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-recognition-just-not-these/ https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-rec... 2 https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-state-oks-facial-recognition-law-seen-as-national-model-11585686897 https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-state-oks-facial-rec... 3 https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/blog/2020/03/12/house-and-senate-reach-agreement-on-facial-recognition-rules/ https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/blog/2020/03/12/house-and-sena... 4 http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/VII/105-D/105-D-2.htm http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/VII/105-D/105-D-2.h... 5 https://law.justia.com/codes/oregon/2017/volume-04/chapter-133/section-133.741/ https://law.justia.com/codes/oregon/2017/volume-04/chapter-1... I would bet Microsoft is lobbying in many states regarding facial recognition and privacy laws to try to get the laws they want. The news will report that they are proponents of passing laws governing these issues, but the point is that they want to shape how the laws are written to benefit Microsoft. I can find citations if anyone doubts this is happening.

stakkur 5y ago

"The legislation bans the use of the software by county government agencies and administrative offices, including by the King County Sheriff’s Office." So anybody else can use it anywhere, including third-party contractors performing work for any of the above parties. Also, strangely, I see no mention of hardware or other non-software facial recognition technology.

avanti 5y ago

There is the conservative and the progressive. The conservative hold their 1984 bible and say the end of world is coming. The progressive just go forward and everything is fine.

tediousdemise 5y ago

How will this facial recognition tech ban be enforced? The most common users of the tech are the ones who will be enforcing the ban. Are we honestly expecting the police department to self-regulate?

TechnoTimeStop 5y ago

The ridiculousness that is King County at this point is borderline a conspiracy. Most of it surrounds, "insert skin color" bad, all others good. Our subreddits are cancer and have been known for a while to be the highest manipulated forums for astroturfing on reddit. Can anyone help? Can we help ourselves?

birdyrooster 5y ago
What are you saying?

lewdev 5y ago

Why ban it? It's not the facial recognition that's the problem; the problem is that the justice system believes that it's enough to convict someone of a crime. It's hard to believe that prosecutors can be like, "The computer says it's you, so you're guilty." Especially when there's probably a known margin of error.

rllearneratwork 5y ago
exactly. There must be a person in the loop. Facial recognition is just a tool and a very useful one. Banning it is silly virtue signaling. A proper way to address all sorts of possible problems with it is by requiring qualified people in critical decision points within the overall system.
TheRealPomax 5y ago
because that's the only option. There is no scenario in which it's allowed in a narrow set of circumstances that isn't going to get abused by law enforcement. Either you ban it, or law enforcement is going to find ways to abuse the right to use it, including appointing people whose job it is to say "this was fine". If this was a reasonable society, with a reasonable police force: absolutely, narrow definitions of permitted use should be reasonably fine. But the US isn't, and the US doesn't, so in the US, it can't be. (but then you look at countries where it might be fine, and it turns out that they don't need facial recognition to have a decent enough catch rate, kind of making the whole thing moot. No police force should use it, for wildly different reasons)
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Except this is allowed in a narrow set of circumstances - to look for missing children. So they can probably dragnet everyone they see to find the missing children or abductors. Now the residents need a way to prevent the police misusing it by sneakily letting it find rapists and murderers.
  - TheRealPomax 5y ago
    Welcome to the security vs. privacy debate. Glad to have you here, please read the pamphlet and please don't resort to a "won't anyone think of the children" argument. Because the statistics around facial recognition just don't work for that argument. However many children you think are saved with this: it's nowhere near that figure, if not flat out zero.

cltby 5y ago

Sad news, if not unexpected. Yet another municipality prioritizes ginned-up grievance over the actually existing harms of unchecked criminality.

gweinberg 5y ago

I can understand wanting to put heavy restrictions on the use of this technology, for example a rule that someone cannot be arrested based on software alone, and a rule that it can only be used to help identify individuals that are clearly committing a crime. But it seems to me to be batshit insane to ban it completely. If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list before we have human beings looking at mug shots, what is the alleged downside?

cryptoz 5y ago
> If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list before we have human beings looking at mug shots, what is the alleged downside? Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed. Your suggestion is, what if we didn't jail them? Just round up the innocently identified minorities and start investigating them? That is....hardly an improvement. In fact it would seem that while it might reduce falsely accused innocent people from going to jail, it could increase the number of racist incidents where police are harassing innocent minorities. And worst of all, it could further entrench racist decision making inside police departments. A much better suggestion in my opinion would be, test the software before deploying it so that it doesn't make racist decisions. Set the bar VERY high for this, so the software has to be really, really, really good. Otherwise don't use it.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed. Then is it really fair to call it facial recognition if it doesn't work? Or to say "we are banning this until it is more reliable" or something like that?
- godelski 5y ago
  To be clear, there are a lot more downsides too. Sci-Fi dystopians bring up facial recognition technology a lot and about how the technology can be abused and help a government rule with authoritarian power. I do think it is important to think about these issues since democracy isn't stable (Before we start a flame war: I'm not convinced any system is and I think you'd be hard pressed to argue one is). We should consider the vulnerabilities to our system of governance and this seems to be a common one: tracking citizens. But I think in our society "potential of authoritarian takeover" (sometimes called "turnkey tyranny") is less of a concern for people than racial bias (which is still an important topic, don't get me wrong). I think the difference is that one requires foresight and the other is an effect we can see right now. And of course, historically we've seen minorities become the early victims of authoritarians. We should think long and hard about these technologies and how to use them properly. Historically we haven't thought about ethics much in computer science, but the time isn't post hoc. We (Hacker News readers) are the experts, and we need to be talking about this decades ago, not decades from now. So let's not ignore the conversation.

gentleman11 5y ago

Next, perhaps, they can ban tracking via wireless signals and cameras tracking your license plates. Amazon ring too while we’re at it. I know some students who tracked peoples wireless signals as a school project recently, it was creepy

hellbannedguy 5y ago

Let's go further with facial recognition? Let companies use on our children. Let companies/government scan our kids from birth to death. Put cameras in schools, on every street corner, government buildings, parks, doctor's offices, and of course scan every face that goes through governmental facilities (DMV, Criminal/civil courts). Put cameras in all stores. Put a Ring type camera on every residence. Government could then predict whom will most likely succeed in our complicated, competive society. The good kids will go to the best schools of course. The good adults will get preferential treatment in hiring, loan accusation, housing, etc. Stores will track our every buy. Stores will know I stole an olive from Whole Foods once. STD's will be a thing if the past. We will know who likes to booze it up. We will know what percentage of fast food they consume, and we will definitely know who uses tobacco. We can do away with Credit Scores. We can do away with most tests. We will be able to predict a person's future success with data. Cops can give up patrols, and just use AI programs to catch bad guys, or prostitutes. This is Not the future I want. I cannot believe Americans are even putting up with the surveillance we already have. (The only thing I like about cameras/surveillance is it might make cops a bit more honest?)

godelski 5y ago
I'm always amazed at how many people watch movies/TV like Blade Runner, Black Mirror, Terminator, Altered Carbon, Her, Ex Machina, Firefly, Cowbow Bebop, etc and think "Yeah, that looks like a future I want." Dystopian Sci-Fi is a warning, not a blueprint. Even the utopian Sci-Fis often reference a struggled past in transitioning to their societies. And a lot of these problems have to deal with surveillance or an adjacent technology (like Minority Report or the more realistic Psycho-Pass).
- GrifMD 5y ago
  That's essentially the plot to Tomorrowland (2015). Images of the dystopian future are broadcasted from "Tomorrowland" (sort of a different universe) back to ours as a warning to prevent it. Instead we fetish these images in pop culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrowland_(film)#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomorrowland_(film)#Plot The movie isn't great, but it's critique of pop culture isn't wrong. We have very little hopeful science fiction these days apart from Star Trek.

jeffbee 5y ago

I hate to exercise my lawyer brain, but this ordinance is tailored in a somewhat weird way that it seems to me it would prohibit the county sheriff and other agencies from posting any kind of photo on Facebook, which has the ability to segment human faces and tag people, or an application like iOS Photos or Google Photos. The ordinance is here if this is a permalink. https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/View.ashx?M=F&ID=9417301&GUID=D01C2F4F-F1B8-438A-B819-067A1A0A7181 https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/View.ashx?M=F&ID=94173...

quantum_state 5y ago

Think they may soon ban voice recognition and voice signature ... body infrared signature ... body electromagnetic spectrum ... and eventually ban the electromagnetic force :-) ...

nemo44x 5y ago

The FBI and CIA don’t have to adhere to these rules so expect local police departments to dump more cases their way.

scotuswroteus 5y ago

NO, King County banned "government use" of facial recognition software. This is such an annoying trend in media coverage of this issue: every city in the world is happy to restrict THEIR USE of facial recognition. That's a symbolic and small victory. It will always be a symbolic and small victory. Every headline leaves the "government use" part out. Every single time. That's because people who write headlines know what everyone knows: that "government use" is a small slice of the overall problem. The key is that anyone who raises this issue with these headlines will hear from some annoying person chiming in to list out why government use of facial recognition is bad (as though that's the basis for my rub here. It's isn't.) But individual localities making internal rules to stop their own use of facial recognition software isn't solving the big problem. This has been going on for years, and cities banning their own use of facial recognition has had zero effect on any other political entities but other cities seeking easy headlines. It's not solving the societal problems that facial recognition poses. It's not earning the click. Cities should stop distracting from that bigger set of problems with this stuff.

oldgregg 5y ago
The corporate-government exploitation of the people is staggering. Corporations do all the spying and then give APIs to the government. No constitutional problems over here.
- Sleepytime 5y ago
  Fascism or public-private partnership... It's the same in-group in power, protecting each other, regardless of which arm of the state (corporate, government, religion, media, universities) is currently doing the most effective social engineering.
bobthepanda 5y ago
Police use of facial recognition software already has bad impacts today, so at least preventing PD use will prevent real harm. > Another Arrest, and Jail Time, Due to a Bad Facial Recognition Match > A New Jersey man was accused of shoplifting and trying to hit an officer with a car. He is the third known Black man to be wrongfully arrested based on face recognition. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recognition-misidentify-jail.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/29/technology/facial-recogni...

joshka 5y ago

Legislation link: https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4793336&GUID=260D1D8E-6553-4583-B75B-92FB4C5886C8&Options=Advanced&Search= https://mkcclegisearch.kingcounty.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx... Interesting parts: > The Proposed Ordinance would also prohibit county administrative offices and executive departments from issuing any permit or entering into any agreement which authorizes a third party to use facial recognition technology or obtain or access facial recognition information on behalf of the county. However, evidence relating to the investigation of a specific crime that may have come from facial recognition technology may be used by a county administrative office or executive department so long as the evidence was not generated by or at the request of the county office or department.

encryptluks2 5y ago

It's not like they can't call the FBI or whatever federal agency and have them do it for them.

ALittleLight 5y ago

"""“Facial recognition technology is still incredibly biased and absolutely creates harm in the real world," said Jennifer Lee with ACLU Washington. "We now know of three black men who have been wrongfully arrested and jailed due to biased facial recognition technology. So, this powerful surveillance tool inevitably exacerbates already racially biased policing""" Seems like a blatant error to reason that, because there are instances of facial recognition being used incorrectly that the technology itself is fundamentally flawed. You could apply the same reasoning to the police themselves - I know of at least three instances where the police arrested the wrong person, so we should ban the police? With the police example it seems obvious we should continue iterating and improving the police to correct errors, but that we don't want to throw out the whole institution because that would be much worse. The police may have caused some harm, but did they do more good? I'd bet that banning facial recognition is net harmful to black and Hispanic people. Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime, so denying effective tools to law enforcement will disproportionately hurt those communities. Of course, it's academic as King County didn't use facial recognition - but I bet it could be a useful tool if used responsibly. I've read news articles before about cases where facial recognition was used irresponsibly. We absolutely need to put a stop to that. I think if we treat it more like an unreliable witness saying "The person I saw reminded me of X" and less like a definitive ID that may be a better position.