10 ms·

Manual for a popular facial recognition tool shows how much the software tracks

121 points by type0 5y ago

tyingq 5y ago
Lots of fodder in this article, but this one stood out to me: "The school district originally purchased AnyVision after a mass shooting in 2018, with hopes that the technology would prevent another tragedy." I'm curious how facial recognition would prevent a mass shooting. Is there some database of faceprints of known future mass shooters?
- godelski 5y ago
  You don't. All it does is help track their location, after you have identified them. Unless we want to turn back to using phrenology...
  - cartoonworld 5y ago
    I'll bet an image processor that can recognize guns and gunfire and dead people would be even better. I suspect that people are drawn to "The Bourne Supremacy" look and feel of their command center, just behind the parent-teacher conference whiteboard.
    - godelski 5y ago
      Modern systems have a lot of problems and you get a lot of false positives. But honestly let's think about it more. If you can walk through a crowd with a visible gun, it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to identify one with a camera. So if you only see the guns when they are drawn, well I'm not convinced this is meaningfully different because now the gun is being announced. I have serious reservations about using gait analysis for determining carrying weapons. I do want to draw attention to Destin from Smarter Every Day's gun detection system[0], where he even mentions part of the above situation. Maybe this could accelerate police response and automate it, but this honestly sounds like an over engineered system. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw
      - jaclaz 5y ago
        I would add that even IF the technology allowed to "scan" a crowd and actually detect instantly and reliably a (visible) gun, what "remedies" do you have handy? I mean, it is not like at any school there is (or can be) a sort of SWAT team on alert and capable of an intervention in - say - 5 minutes. And - cannot say on the specific 2018 shooting at that school - from what I understand the typical sequence is: 1) someone enters a school (or church, etc.) with a gun 2) as soon as a suitable target is within firing range, the shooting starts and there is no more than 1, 2 or 3 minutes between #1 and #2 above, if the detection of the gun happens before (let's say outside when the shooter is approaching the building) you can maybe have a couple minutes more time. And - even if you actually had this fast intervention armed team ready - can you only imagine the risks of false alarms/incidents with perfectly innocent people, it cannot possibly work. Besides, there is no real need for facial recognition in this scenario, i.e. anyone, no matter who he/she is, should be detected if carrying a gun.
        34679 5y ago
        I agree there's no need for facial recognition in this scenario and I'm not an advocate for its use, but think of how many times you can point a gun at someone and pull the trigger in 30 seconds. With each shot potentially representing a life, a couple minutes really would matter.
        jaclaz 5y ago
        Sure, but what is "normal" or "average" intervention time from the moment the police is alarmed? I would guess something between 10 and 15 minutes at the very least (not counting the hypothesis of a local presence of policemen or military personnel). If what you want to prevent is that kind of unconditional mass shooting this doen't seem to be effective, by the time the police (early alerted by the automatic system) arrives, the shooter will very likely have fired all the ammunitions and already killed all the people that happened to be at range.
        ALittleLight 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- HelloNurse 5y ago
  It's a convenient excuse. Facial recognition against school shooters is the high school counterpart of email interception against child porn.
- xphx 5y ago
  I believe the questionable rationale there is that it helps to identify suspended students whose presence is assumed to be dangerous. “The mission creep issue is a real concern when you initially build out a system to find that one person who’s been suspended and is incredibly dangerous, and all of a sudden you’ve enrolled all student photos and can track them wherever they go[.]”
  - godelski 5y ago
    You're not going to identify anyone unless you already have them in your system. Which opens up a whole other can of worms.
    - xphx 5y ago
      Yes, the stated original requirement to "find that one person who’s been suspended and is incredibly dangerous" does presuppose that the dangerous person is already in the system and you're just trying to find them. I don't personally find the rationale persuasive, I'm just answering the question how it could possibly be considered useful.
godelski 5y ago
I work in vision and I still have not heard a compelling case for Facial Recognition. There's useful things like iPhone unlock (similarly applied other places) and identification systems. But the potential for abuse is just far too high in my mind. They say don't give powers to Mr. Rodgers that you wouldn't want Hitler to inherit. This is one of those powers. The good is things we can still do easily with other systems. The bad is a 1984 dystopia (also see the recent HN article about Tencent[0]. Why is no one here concerned about cameras scanning children... That's just inappropriate pictures waiting to be leaked). Crime has been going down. Terrorism is extremely rare. Pareto exists. Like the upside here is if Mr. Rogers is in power you can unlock your iPhone and (if everything works perfectly... good luck?) you can get on an airplane ~1 minutes faster. But if Hitler is in power you have modern Phrenology (which we're already seeing). What am I missing here? What is the great use case that warrants this? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27755853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27755853
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  I guess what you’re missing is that in either case there’s a juicy Total Addressable Market. Sad, but there’s enough greedy talent and capital that your calculus doesn’t matter.
  - godelski 5y ago
    While I don't disagree with you, I think we can have better conversations on HN. Honestly I would love to hear from someone with a different opinion than me. I really do want to hear the counter argument. But this is also the technology that made Joseph Redmon[0] (creator of YOLO) leave vision research. We can have ethical discussions. We should have ethical discussions. And different opinions are how we learn. And I do think HN is one of those places to have these ethical conversations. [0] https://pjreddie.com/ https://pjreddie.com/
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      I hope you find a satiating interlocutor, but I think the most obvious explanation is probably the most correct one in this case. I know this theory doesn't exactly satiate one's intellectual curiosity, but sometimes the truth is boring.
everyone 5y ago
"The public records The Markup reviewed included a 2019 user guide for AnyVision’s software called “Better Tomorrow.”" well thats ominous.
nine_k 5y ago
The unpleasant kind of tracking is when a number of cameras keep looking for a particular face, and person's movements are tracked, e.g. across a city. This is not immediately bad, but has a high potential for abuse. Still you should fully expect to be tracked in higher-security areas, like banks or airport security zones. Large expansive stores, likely too. If not by robots, then by human guards. Privacy in a public place is the classical security through obscurity. Expect it to erode; preferably never assume it. If you read the famous cyberpunk novels as fantasy, it's now time to rethink them as a rather sober and real warning.
josh_today 5y ago
Serious question: Does a path exist that doesn’t lead to authoritarian use of this type of technology?
- zo1 5y ago
  Arguably yes, but we need to put in the effort to make it secure instead of outright banning it.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    Why not outright ban it?
    - zo1 5y ago
      Cause it can be incredibly useful in solving a multitude of problems plaguing society, without making it a dystopian hell.
      - nomdep 5y ago
        Like for instance? And please don’t say something related to guns, because that’s is just treating the symptoms and not the real problem.
        zo1 5y ago
        Spousal abuse, child abuse, bullying, shoplifting, restraining orders, any number of things. Automated surveillance and facial recognition have so many potential uses in solving the worlds ills that I am frankly baffled that we aren't trying to figure out how to use it "safely". Instead we're promoting fear propaganda and beating the drum of "privacy" without really thinking about it or justifying it.
        nomdep 5y ago
        1. Is not about privacy just because. Is about avoiding dystopian 1984-like repressive societies. Power corrupts. Give that power to a government and they will 100% use it to keep them in power and justify it with good intentions. 2. Could you please elaborate your first examples? I can’t see how that could work without (1)
simpss 5y ago
Someone linked "little brother" in another thread, which is a fiction novel of a very similar situation. I found it a good read sprinkled with realistic descriptions of the tech & countermeasures. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30142/30142-h/30142-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30142/30142-h/30142-h.htm
mikeiz404 5y ago
I thought this was one of the more important points in the article. > The Santa Fe Independent School District’s neighbor, the Texas City Independent School District, also purchased AnyVision as a protective measure against school shootings. It has since been used in attempts to identify a kid who had been licking a neighborhood surveillance camera, to kick out an expelled student from his sister’s graduation, and to ban a woman from showing up on school grounds after an argument with the district’s head of security, according to WIRED. > “The mission creep issue is a real concern when you initially build out a system to find that one person who’s been suspended and is incredibly dangerous, and all of a sudden you’ve enrolled all student photos and can track them wherever they go,” Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Center on Privacy & Technology, said. “You’ve built a system that’s essentially like putting an ankle monitor on all your kids.” As a society I think we need to be concerned about what happens when this technology becomes more wide spread and normalized. I’m not holding my breath though.
- yosito 5y ago
  When it becomes normalized? It's already teriffyingly normalized.
  - mikeiz404 5y ago
    Do you have some specific examples you can share? No examples, outside of social media and authentication, come to mind for the US. I’m probably out of the loop on this one. Edit: I did find mention of facial recognition being used for 7-Eleven’s in Australia and trialing of the technology at Target and Walmart in the US [0]. > [7-Eleven] confirmed that the data captured by the facial recognition software that is being introduced nationally, will be used to verify customer feedback rather than as a measure to prevent theft – in the US, Target and Walmart among others have experimented with facial recognition to combat shoplifting and fraud. The article also had this at the end. > Facebook also submitted a patent for in-store facial recognition tech that would provide retail staff with customer information drawn from social media profiles in a bid to deliver a more personalized service. Edit: And this ACLU article [2] from 2018 implies many large US retailers are using it in store as well without notifying customers. Edit: Oh and schools as mentioned in this article. On a related but maybe ironic note SF and some surrounding municipalities have suspended since mid 2019 the use of facial recognition by government departments (with the exception of ports) [1]. So at least there is that. However private companies and people can do as they may. > In the Bay Area alone, Berkeley, Oakland, Palo Alto and Santa Clara County (of which Palo Alto is a part) have passed their own surveillance-technology laws. Oakland is also currently considering whether to ban the use of facial-recognition technology. > The ordinance… outlaws the use of facial-recognition technology by police and other government departments > However, the ordinance carves out an exception for federally controlled facilities at San Francisco International Airport and the Port of San Francisco. > The ordinance doesn’t prevent businesses or residents from using facial recognition or surveillance technology in general — such as on their own security cameras 0. https://techwireasia.com/2020/07/why-7-eleven-australia-is-using-facial-recognition-in-stores/ https://techwireasia.com/2020/07/why-7-eleven-australia-is-u... 1. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/tech/san-francisco-facial-recognition-ban/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/tech/san-francisco-facial-rec... 2. https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/are-stores-you-shop-secretly-using-face https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...
avipars 5y ago
Another israeli company
- humbleMouse 5y ago
  You can’t pass any criticism on jews remember? That’s not allowed here in 2021.
  - dang 5y ago
    You certainly can't post anti-Semitic crap to HN. We've banned this account. The whole idea of "criticizing Jews" is bizarre—as if "Jews", or any large group, were a thing.
avipars 5y ago
Here is the 2019 document - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20973931-better-tomorrow-dashboard-user-guide-v1202_redacted1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20973931-better-tomo...
tweetle_beetle 5y ago
What I often wonder when reading things like this is how on earth does this gets approved in budgets. Education districts surely don't have money to burn and why would security be given extra money for something new? Do these providers subsidise costs to normalise the use of their products in a sector, does the bogeyman of school shootings get rolled out for an easy sign off, or a bit of both?
- alkonaut 5y ago
  If I sold this tech, I'd sell it at a loss or give it away for free to a few users, then make some paid astroturfing in neighboring districts with complaints that "security is better at school X that has installed system Y" and after that I'd expect orders from everyone.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  They are using tactics that make it difficult to say no, such as pitching this as something that can prevent school shootings. It's absurd but once you say "this can prevent a school shooting", who can say no to that?
dvh1990 5y ago
Well... Gotta go buy masks to hide from this. It's insane how normalized this is becoming and how dystopian we are becoming. And the trend is only accelerating.
xaedes 5y ago
Why do we need facial recognition everywhere? We don't. Can we just stop building a sci-fi dystopian society?
- arvinsim 5y ago
  A capitalist society can put forth a hundred of justifications for facial recognition.
  - snomad 5y ago
    That is an odd statement. Do you believe non-capitalist societies can't put forth a hundred justifications for facial recognition? If so, how do you explain communist China's extensive surveillance / camera system? How about socialist countries in Europe?
    - ajnin 5y ago
      China is a totalitarian dictatorship, with an otherwise pretty capitalist organization. No European country is socialist in the sense of social ownership of the means of production. How they describe themselves is irrelevant.
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      My point was that it's easy for capitalist society to justify it. I am not arguing that a non-capitalist society can't.
ElViajero 5y ago
> Lawmakers, privacy advocates, and civil rights organizations have also pushed against facial recognition because of error rates that disproportionately hurt people of color. When I was in China, I saw how many cameras there are everywhere. And how Chinese officials pass by high-speed trains with cameras. For Chinese citizens, the state has trained facial recognition on millions of faces. They use it to detect people passing roads in red lights (they show names and faces in big screens) But, I wonder what is the error rates for non-Chinese. Without enough samples I can be identified as any other person similar to me in skin color. Can I mistakenly be identified as some "person of interest" for the Chinese government? That was an scary though. I see the usefulness of this technologies, but "pro-active" policing has high rates of false positives and many innocent people will be harassed or even worse just because a machine failure. All that without taking into account when the machines are right at persecuting opositors in dictatorial regimes.
mateo1 5y ago
I don't understand how parents in those schools don't go mental over this. Unless they don't know about it...
EMM_386 5y ago
> Facial recognition, purportedly AnyVision, is also being used by a supermarket chain in Spain to detect people with prior convictions or restraining orders and prevent them from entering 40 of its stores We are heading into dangerous territory with this, similar to the "social credit score" system in place in other countries. If this gets tied into other databases, such as criminal databases, I can see a scenario where people are ranked in real-time as potentially undesirable. Criminal convictions from years ago can now follow people around, putting security guards and store employees on "high alert" to watch people carefully, or simply deny them entrance.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Actual title: >> This Manual for a Popular Facial Recognition Tool Shows Just How Much the Software Tracks People Ugh. After seeing that I'm really not sure this is an article I want to read. Why do people write titles like that? It just makes it very hard to trust anything written in an article. Thanks type0 for making the title less awful, btw.

121 points by type0 5y ago

Lots of fodder in this article, but this one stood out to me: "The school district originally purchased AnyVision after a mass shooting in 2018, with hopes that the technology would prevent another tragedy." I'm curious how facial recognition would prevent a mass shooting. Is there some database of faceprints of known future mass shooters?

godelski 5y ago
You don't. All it does is help track their location, after you have identified them. Unless we want to turn back to using phrenology...
- cartoonworld 5y ago
  I'll bet an image processor that can recognize guns and gunfire and dead people would be even better. I suspect that people are drawn to "The Bourne Supremacy" look and feel of their command center, just behind the parent-teacher conference whiteboard.
  - godelski 5y ago
    Modern systems have a lot of problems and you get a lot of false positives. But honestly let's think about it more. If you can walk through a crowd with a visible gun, it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to identify one with a camera. So if you only see the guns when they are drawn, well I'm not convinced this is meaningfully different because now the gun is being announced. I have serious reservations about using gait analysis for determining carrying weapons. I do want to draw attention to Destin from Smarter Every Day's gun detection system[0], where he even mentions part of the above situation. Maybe this could accelerate police response and automate it, but this honestly sounds like an over engineered system. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw
    - jaclaz 5y ago
      I would add that even IF the technology allowed to "scan" a crowd and actually detect instantly and reliably a (visible) gun, what "remedies" do you have handy? I mean, it is not like at any school there is (or can be) a sort of SWAT team on alert and capable of an intervention in - say - 5 minutes. And - cannot say on the specific 2018 shooting at that school - from what I understand the typical sequence is: 1) someone enters a school (or church, etc.) with a gun 2) as soon as a suitable target is within firing range, the shooting starts and there is no more than 1, 2 or 3 minutes between #1 and #2 above, if the detection of the gun happens before (let's say outside when the shooter is approaching the building) you can maybe have a couple minutes more time. And - even if you actually had this fast intervention armed team ready - can you only imagine the risks of false alarms/incidents with perfectly innocent people, it cannot possibly work. Besides, there is no real need for facial recognition in this scenario, i.e. anyone, no matter who he/she is, should be detected if carrying a gun.
      - 34679 5y ago
        I agree there's no need for facial recognition in this scenario and I'm not an advocate for its use, but think of how many times you can point a gun at someone and pull the trigger in 30 seconds. With each shot potentially representing a life, a couple minutes really would matter.
        jaclaz 5y ago
        Sure, but what is "normal" or "average" intervention time from the moment the police is alarmed? I would guess something between 10 and 15 minutes at the very least (not counting the hypothesis of a local presence of policemen or military personnel). If what you want to prevent is that kind of unconditional mass shooting this doen't seem to be effective, by the time the police (early alerted by the automatic system) arrives, the shooter will very likely have fired all the ammunitions and already killed all the people that happened to be at range.
        ALittleLight 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
HelloNurse 5y ago
It's a convenient excuse. Facial recognition against school shooters is the high school counterpart of email interception against child porn.
xphx 5y ago
I believe the questionable rationale there is that it helps to identify suspended students whose presence is assumed to be dangerous. “The mission creep issue is a real concern when you initially build out a system to find that one person who’s been suspended and is incredibly dangerous, and all of a sudden you’ve enrolled all student photos and can track them wherever they go[.]”
- godelski 5y ago
  You're not going to identify anyone unless you already have them in your system. Which opens up a whole other can of worms.
  - xphx 5y ago
    Yes, the stated original requirement to "find that one person who’s been suspended and is incredibly dangerous" does presuppose that the dangerous person is already in the system and you're just trying to find them. I don't personally find the rationale persuasive, I'm just answering the question how it could possibly be considered useful.

godelski 5y ago

I work in vision and I still have not heard a compelling case for Facial Recognition. There's useful things like iPhone unlock (similarly applied other places) and identification systems. But the potential for abuse is just far too high in my mind. They say don't give powers to Mr. Rodgers that you wouldn't want Hitler to inherit. This is one of those powers. The good is things we can still do easily with other systems. The bad is a 1984 dystopia (also see the recent HN article about Tencent[0]. Why is no one here concerned about cameras scanning children... That's just inappropriate pictures waiting to be leaked). Crime has been going down. Terrorism is extremely rare. Pareto exists. Like the upside here is if Mr. Rogers is in power you can unlock your iPhone and (if everything works perfectly... good luck?) you can get on an airplane ~1 minutes faster. But if Hitler is in power you have modern Phrenology (which we're already seeing). What am I missing here? What is the great use case that warrants this? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27755853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27755853

throwawaygh 5y ago
I guess what you’re missing is that in either case there’s a juicy Total Addressable Market. Sad, but there’s enough greedy talent and capital that your calculus doesn’t matter.
- godelski 5y ago
  While I don't disagree with you, I think we can have better conversations on HN. Honestly I would love to hear from someone with a different opinion than me. I really do want to hear the counter argument. But this is also the technology that made Joseph Redmon[0] (creator of YOLO) leave vision research. We can have ethical discussions. We should have ethical discussions. And different opinions are how we learn. And I do think HN is one of those places to have these ethical conversations. [0] https://pjreddie.com/ https://pjreddie.com/
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    I hope you find a satiating interlocutor, but I think the most obvious explanation is probably the most correct one in this case. I know this theory doesn't exactly satiate one's intellectual curiosity, but sometimes the truth is boring.

everyone 5y ago

"The public records The Markup reviewed included a 2019 user guide for AnyVision’s software called “Better Tomorrow.”" well thats ominous.

nine_k 5y ago

The unpleasant kind of tracking is when a number of cameras keep looking for a particular face, and person's movements are tracked, e.g. across a city. This is not immediately bad, but has a high potential for abuse. Still you should fully expect to be tracked in higher-security areas, like banks or airport security zones. Large expansive stores, likely too. If not by robots, then by human guards. Privacy in a public place is the classical security through obscurity. Expect it to erode; preferably never assume it. If you read the famous cyberpunk novels as fantasy, it's now time to rethink them as a rather sober and real warning.

josh_today 5y ago

Serious question: Does a path exist that doesn’t lead to authoritarian use of this type of technology?

zo1 5y ago
Arguably yes, but we need to put in the effort to make it secure instead of outright banning it.
- JasonFruit 5y ago
  Why not outright ban it?
  - zo1 5y ago
    Cause it can be incredibly useful in solving a multitude of problems plaguing society, without making it a dystopian hell.
    - nomdep 5y ago
      Like for instance? And please don’t say something related to guns, because that’s is just treating the symptoms and not the real problem.
      - zo1 5y ago
        Spousal abuse, child abuse, bullying, shoplifting, restraining orders, any number of things. Automated surveillance and facial recognition have so many potential uses in solving the worlds ills that I am frankly baffled that we aren't trying to figure out how to use it "safely". Instead we're promoting fear propaganda and beating the drum of "privacy" without really thinking about it or justifying it.
        nomdep 5y ago
        1. Is not about privacy just because. Is about avoiding dystopian 1984-like repressive societies. Power corrupts. Give that power to a government and they will 100% use it to keep them in power and justify it with good intentions. 2. Could you please elaborate your first examples? I can’t see how that could work without (1)

simpss 5y ago

Someone linked "little brother" in another thread, which is a fiction novel of a very similar situation. I found it a good read sprinkled with realistic descriptions of the tech & countermeasures. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30142/30142-h/30142-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30142/30142-h/30142-h.htm

mikeiz404 5y ago

I thought this was one of the more important points in the article. > The Santa Fe Independent School District’s neighbor, the Texas City Independent School District, also purchased AnyVision as a protective measure against school shootings. It has since been used in attempts to identify a kid who had been licking a neighborhood surveillance camera, to kick out an expelled student from his sister’s graduation, and to ban a woman from showing up on school grounds after an argument with the district’s head of security, according to WIRED. > “The mission creep issue is a real concern when you initially build out a system to find that one person who’s been suspended and is incredibly dangerous, and all of a sudden you’ve enrolled all student photos and can track them wherever they go,” Clare Garvie, a senior associate at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Center on Privacy & Technology, said. “You’ve built a system that’s essentially like putting an ankle monitor on all your kids.” As a society I think we need to be concerned about what happens when this technology becomes more wide spread and normalized. I’m not holding my breath though.

yosito 5y ago
When it becomes normalized? It's already teriffyingly normalized.
- mikeiz404 5y ago
  Do you have some specific examples you can share? No examples, outside of social media and authentication, come to mind for the US. I’m probably out of the loop on this one. Edit: I did find mention of facial recognition being used for 7-Eleven’s in Australia and trialing of the technology at Target and Walmart in the US [0]. > [7-Eleven] confirmed that the data captured by the facial recognition software that is being introduced nationally, will be used to verify customer feedback rather than as a measure to prevent theft – in the US, Target and Walmart among others have experimented with facial recognition to combat shoplifting and fraud. The article also had this at the end. > Facebook also submitted a patent for in-store facial recognition tech that would provide retail staff with customer information drawn from social media profiles in a bid to deliver a more personalized service. Edit: And this ACLU article [2] from 2018 implies many large US retailers are using it in store as well without notifying customers. Edit: Oh and schools as mentioned in this article. On a related but maybe ironic note SF and some surrounding municipalities have suspended since mid 2019 the use of facial recognition by government departments (with the exception of ports) [1]. So at least there is that. However private companies and people can do as they may. > In the Bay Area alone, Berkeley, Oakland, Palo Alto and Santa Clara County (of which Palo Alto is a part) have passed their own surveillance-technology laws. Oakland is also currently considering whether to ban the use of facial-recognition technology. > The ordinance… outlaws the use of facial-recognition technology by police and other government departments > However, the ordinance carves out an exception for federally controlled facilities at San Francisco International Airport and the Port of San Francisco. > The ordinance doesn’t prevent businesses or residents from using facial recognition or surveillance technology in general — such as on their own security cameras 0. https://techwireasia.com/2020/07/why-7-eleven-australia-is-using-facial-recognition-in-stores/ https://techwireasia.com/2020/07/why-7-eleven-australia-is-u... 1. https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/tech/san-francisco-facial-recognition-ban/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/tech/san-francisco-facial-rec... 2. https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/are-stores-you-shop-secretly-using-face https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-te...

avipars 5y ago

Another israeli company

humbleMouse 5y ago
You can’t pass any criticism on jews remember? That’s not allowed here in 2021.
- dang 5y ago
  You certainly can't post anti-Semitic crap to HN. We've banned this account. The whole idea of "criticizing Jews" is bizarre—as if "Jews", or any large group, were a thing.

avipars 5y ago

Here is the 2019 document - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20973931-better-tomorrow-dashboard-user-guide-v1202_redacted1 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20973931-better-tomo...

tweetle_beetle 5y ago

What I often wonder when reading things like this is how on earth does this gets approved in budgets. Education districts surely don't have money to burn and why would security be given extra money for something new? Do these providers subsidise costs to normalise the use of their products in a sector, does the bogeyman of school shootings get rolled out for an easy sign off, or a bit of both?

alkonaut 5y ago
If I sold this tech, I'd sell it at a loss or give it away for free to a few users, then make some paid astroturfing in neighboring districts with complaints that "security is better at school X that has installed system Y" and after that I'd expect orders from everyone.
EMM_386 5y ago
They are using tactics that make it difficult to say no, such as pitching this as something that can prevent school shootings. It's absurd but once you say "this can prevent a school shooting", who can say no to that?

dvh1990 5y ago

Well... Gotta go buy masks to hide from this. It's insane how normalized this is becoming and how dystopian we are becoming. And the trend is only accelerating.

xaedes 5y ago

Why do we need facial recognition everywhere? We don't. Can we just stop building a sci-fi dystopian society?

arvinsim 5y ago
A capitalist society can put forth a hundred of justifications for facial recognition.
- snomad 5y ago
  That is an odd statement. Do you believe non-capitalist societies can't put forth a hundred justifications for facial recognition? If so, how do you explain communist China's extensive surveillance / camera system? How about socialist countries in Europe?
  - ajnin 5y ago
    China is a totalitarian dictatorship, with an otherwise pretty capitalist organization. No European country is socialist in the sense of social ownership of the means of production. How they describe themselves is irrelevant.
  - arvinsim 5y ago
    My point was that it's easy for capitalist society to justify it. I am not arguing that a non-capitalist society can't.

ElViajero 5y ago

> Lawmakers, privacy advocates, and civil rights organizations have also pushed against facial recognition because of error rates that disproportionately hurt people of color. When I was in China, I saw how many cameras there are everywhere. And how Chinese officials pass by high-speed trains with cameras. For Chinese citizens, the state has trained facial recognition on millions of faces. They use it to detect people passing roads in red lights (they show names and faces in big screens) But, I wonder what is the error rates for non-Chinese. Without enough samples I can be identified as any other person similar to me in skin color. Can I mistakenly be identified as some "person of interest" for the Chinese government? That was an scary though. I see the usefulness of this technologies, but "pro-active" policing has high rates of false positives and many innocent people will be harassed or even worse just because a machine failure. All that without taking into account when the machines are right at persecuting opositors in dictatorial regimes.

mateo1 5y ago

I don't understand how parents in those schools don't go mental over this. Unless they don't know about it...

EMM_386 5y ago

> Facial recognition, purportedly AnyVision, is also being used by a supermarket chain in Spain to detect people with prior convictions or restraining orders and prevent them from entering 40 of its stores We are heading into dangerous territory with this, similar to the "social credit score" system in place in other countries. If this gets tied into other databases, such as criminal databases, I can see a scenario where people are ranked in real-time as potentially undesirable. Criminal convictions from years ago can now follow people around, putting security guards and store employees on "high alert" to watch people carefully, or simply deny them entrance.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

Actual title: >> This Manual for a Popular Facial Recognition Tool Shows Just How Much the Software Tracks People Ugh. After seeing that I'm really not sure this is an article I want to read. Why do people write titles like that? It just makes it very hard to trust anything written in an article. Thanks type0 for making the title less awful, btw.