5 ms·

This is interesting to me personally because last month while flying back to the US after 2 years, I was detained for an hour because the computer said that my

by yosito 5y ago

This is interesting to me personally because last month while flying back to the US after 2 years, I was detained for an hour because the computer said that my face didn't match my passport. The customs agent, clearly seeing that I am the person on my passport, wasn't sure what to do, so she called over her senior. He said it happens sometimes and just to wave me through, but she wasn't willing to disagree with the computer, so she sent me to the detention room. I waited for an hour in a room full of people who had flagrant visa violations (and who were being treated very rudely, fwiw), and overheard two officers discussing what to do with my case, being a US citizen my whole life with nothing on my record. The senior insisted that I be questioned, "Always ask a few questions, you never know what you might find". Eventually they called me, interrogated me in a way intended to get me to incriminate myself (questions I wouldn't answer to police on the street, but wasn't in a position to deny them), and let me go. I almost missed my connecting flight, and hope that just the fact that I was detained won't cause friction in the future. This is not really a personal complaint. My situation is still quite privileged. But I think it's an example of just how much of a techno dystopia we're living in.

pvaldes 5y ago
> I was detained for an hour because the computer said that my face didn't match my passport The "excuse du jour". Always blame the computer and you will have a free pass to do anything as you want without being blamed for it. I had seen a similar pattern other times in airports.
dkdk8283 5y ago
> This is not really a personal complaint. My situation is still quite privileged. It should be a personal complaint. You had precisely 0 privilege.
- pc86 5y ago
  For some reason everyone who isn't born into crushing poverty, and/or didn't move here without speaking the language or looking and sounding like a natural-born citizen, and/or doesn't come from an underfunded inner city as an obvious racial minority feels the need to acknowledge some ephemeral privilege that made everything easy for them. I don't have a problem with this per se, and at times it's even a good exercise from an intellectual standpoint, but it's at about a 12/10 at the moment.
  - ludamad 5y ago
    2/10 and 12/10 seem to be the dials people get set to after reacting to news/experiences
- andi999 5y ago
  I thought his privilege was beeing an US citizen, if not the option of beeing deported would have a high propability. (technically a US citizen cannot be refused entry AFAIK)
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Technically, a US citizen can get sent to a secret prison via secret court orders and have no recourse. Or just be murdered.
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      How often are people remanded to secret prisons and/or are just murdered because the computer says their passport photo doesn't match their face? Why bring it up? Technically, a previously unknown near-earth object could wipe out most life on earth at lunchtime. Odds are, I'll still have that 2 PM meeting, though.
      - dkdk8283 5y ago
        Atrocities are committed but my sense is a photo mismatch won’t be the catalyst. I’d go further and say it happens less often then you might think. Did you know CBP agents are trained to get you emotional, piss you off, and treat you like shit? It’s an effective and quick way to get someone on edge and maybe reveal something to be investigated. Nervous behavior. CBP officers go through therapy to deal with this. Fight fire with fire. I would make it clear (respectfully) the situation is ridiculous and push for resolution in my favor. I was once asked for a second photo ID at the border and I didn’t have one. The officer found this very suspicious. I did get kind of pissed and asked him what kind of idiot takes every photo id they have abroad. What if it’s lost or stolen? I was waived through.
        ajford 5y ago
        Buddy of mine from college flies with his US passport at all times, even for domestic flights, because he's of Arab decent and constantly gets hassled for it. So one time we're flying domestic as a group to set up some equipment for a research project. He gets pulled aside by a couple of white TSA agents as part of a "random inspection", out of a line of about 20 people, mostly white or light complected. He starts getting questioned about where he's flying, why, etc. Then they ask to see his ID and boarding pass. Hands them his passport, state DL, and boarding pass, and they start going off on him as to why he's got his passport for a domestic flight, how that looks suspicious and such. He responds with "Well, I get stopped for looking Arab every time I fly, so this is a much easier way to prove I'm a US citizen." They stop for a moment and look around at everyone watching, tell him to have a good day and walk away. I'll never forget that encounter.
gverrilla 5y ago
Unrelated to facial recognition: I'm a brazilian, flying from Casablanca, Morocco to Lisbon, Portugal, and I dropped my passport while on the plane. The minute I descend from the plane I realize it and inform the crew and airport security. They tell me to wait. Nobody goes to the plane to try and find my passport. I get detained in the airport prison with mostly illegal migrants. The plane flies away to Madrid. I can't leave without a passport. There's a small 8 square meter room where more than 10 people sleep, including someone with a contagious respiratory disease (this was pre-covid). Couldn't sleep and was up all night reading The Process, Franz Kafka, which was funnily available in prison hall. Had to bribe the police officer with a collector's plastic Clipper lighter for him to allow me to smoke a single cigarette. Was able to get out after 24h, but only because my brother had a friend who worked on the plane operator company, and was able to detect my passport inside the plane at Madrid, and arrange it to be given to a pilot who would be flying to Lisbon the next morning. It was so traumatic that when leaving they asked me if all my belongings were on my backpack (which had been confiscated upon arrestal) and I didn't realize police officers had actually stolen my sunglasses and an iPhone. It's not exactly a techno dystopia. It's a full on dystopia turning to tech.
- effingwewt 5y ago
  Holy shit. Growing up in a super small border town between Texas and Mexico, I've seen, heard, and been part of some crazy and terrifying stuff, but nothing compares to this. I felt terrified just imagining what you went through. Obligatory glad you made it out, but seriously- had any one thing gone wrong, who knows what could have happened in the end. I used to sit and wonder about the future. As in how wonderful it will be and what amazing things we will accomplish. I used to fear dying because I wouldn't get to see any of it, much less the end of the story. Somewhere along the way I began to fear the future, to the point I didn't want to have children, I felt it unethical to knowingly bring an innocent life into that kind of terror. Professor Farnsworth said it best- 'I don't want to live on this planet anymore.' Edited to add- when I was young I caught wanderlust pretty hard and traveled most of the US, some of Mexico and Canada. I dreamt of visiting other countries and continents and was hugely disappointed to not find a way before having a family and obligations. All that went out the window about the time I started watching Locked Up Abroad. Brokedown Palace had nothing on those stories.
venkat223 5y ago
Such an incident occurs in Singapore often and police detain people and later release them as the facial recognition tech is defective not reliable.But such surveillance is done by the scared governments like china also
blooalien 5y ago
> "but she wasn't willing to disagree with the computer" This mentality is far too common among modern humans. I've suffered these people at banks, bill pay stations, travel situations, etc. It's especially annoying when you're facing them with undeniable evidence that the machine contains mistaken data and they still respond with "I'm sorry, sir. There's nothing I can do. It says right here that you owe {$random-money}." Machines can be wrong, and even more commonly, the people who enter data into those machines can be wrong. But then you get these people who can clearly see that something is wrong, but they refuse to refute what the machine tells them? Why? I swear, when the machines finally decide humans are obsolete, we'll happily line up and willingly march into the kill-box…
- h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
  Unfortunately it's turtles all the way down (up?) - should they ignore the computer and make a mistake, they no doubt will face their employer confronting them with 'the computer told you so and you flagrantly ignored it'. The recently uncovered UK post office accounting scandal goes to show that the computer is assumed correct by default!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- FnuGk 5y ago
  It is because no one has to take responsibility for the machine. If you then overwrite the machine, then you have the responsibility of the decision.
- bsenftner 5y ago
  This is my biggest problem with working in the video security / FR industry: the industry completely ignores end-user training and the obvious necessity for the operators of this class of software to be screened for A) computer literacy to the degree they understand this is just software and NOT an authority, and B) operators of video security software need to be screened for Racial Blindness - if a person cannot tell the difference between near age siblings or cousins of an ethnicity other than their own, and specifically the ethnicity they police, they need to be legally regulated as ineligible to operate such software.
snarf21 5y ago
I had a similar situation crossing the US border coming back from Toronto. I got flagged because I pulled past a yellow line during the wait. Incidentally, I just followed the pattern of the person in front of me who flew through. The thing that resonated with me was the approach the officers used. These types of jobs attract people who like the power trip. You are considered guilty unless you can prove innocence. There was no probably cause, no need for a random search. I know people in LE and I can only imagine how these people would react to similar treatment if "flashing their badge" didn't get them a wave through. I think this is the thing that people don't fully get about the surveillance state and encryption back doors in addition to facial recognition. If there is ever a "hit" on any of these things, you are guilty. LE will stand on you to try to get you to crack because the tech can't be wrong. There are going to be so many innocent people in jail in the future dystopia.
helloworld11 5y ago
>interrogated me in a way intended to get me to incriminate myself (questions I wouldn't answer to police on the street, but wasn't in a position to deny them) If you are a U.S citizen, they legally can't deny you entry into your own country. Nor can they force you to answer any questions beyond the most basic ones that establish your citizenship and ID. They can intimidate you and make you feel you should divulge more, but this is just bluster, and you have rights that are well worth exercising. The ACLU confirms this by the way: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encountering-law-enforcement-airports-and-other-ports-entry-us/#:~:text=If%20you%20are%20a%20U.S.,delay%20and%2For%20further%20inspection https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter....

by yosito 5y ago

pvaldes 5y ago

> I was detained for an hour because the computer said that my face didn't match my passport The "excuse du jour". Always blame the computer and you will have a free pass to do anything as you want without being blamed for it. I had seen a similar pattern other times in airports.

dkdk8283 5y ago

> This is not really a personal complaint. My situation is still quite privileged. It should be a personal complaint. You had precisely 0 privilege.

pc86 5y ago
For some reason everyone who isn't born into crushing poverty, and/or didn't move here without speaking the language or looking and sounding like a natural-born citizen, and/or doesn't come from an underfunded inner city as an obvious racial minority feels the need to acknowledge some ephemeral privilege that made everything easy for them. I don't have a problem with this per se, and at times it's even a good exercise from an intellectual standpoint, but it's at about a 12/10 at the moment.
- ludamad 5y ago
  2/10 and 12/10 seem to be the dials people get set to after reacting to news/experiences
andi999 5y ago
I thought his privilege was beeing an US citizen, if not the option of beeing deported would have a high propability. (technically a US citizen cannot be refused entry AFAIK)
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Technically, a US citizen can get sent to a secret prison via secret court orders and have no recourse. Or just be murdered.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    How often are people remanded to secret prisons and/or are just murdered because the computer says their passport photo doesn't match their face? Why bring it up? Technically, a previously unknown near-earth object could wipe out most life on earth at lunchtime. Odds are, I'll still have that 2 PM meeting, though.
    - dkdk8283 5y ago
      Atrocities are committed but my sense is a photo mismatch won’t be the catalyst. I’d go further and say it happens less often then you might think. Did you know CBP agents are trained to get you emotional, piss you off, and treat you like shit? It’s an effective and quick way to get someone on edge and maybe reveal something to be investigated. Nervous behavior. CBP officers go through therapy to deal with this. Fight fire with fire. I would make it clear (respectfully) the situation is ridiculous and push for resolution in my favor. I was once asked for a second photo ID at the border and I didn’t have one. The officer found this very suspicious. I did get kind of pissed and asked him what kind of idiot takes every photo id they have abroad. What if it’s lost or stolen? I was waived through.
      - ajford 5y ago
        Buddy of mine from college flies with his US passport at all times, even for domestic flights, because he's of Arab decent and constantly gets hassled for it. So one time we're flying domestic as a group to set up some equipment for a research project. He gets pulled aside by a couple of white TSA agents as part of a "random inspection", out of a line of about 20 people, mostly white or light complected. He starts getting questioned about where he's flying, why, etc. Then they ask to see his ID and boarding pass. Hands them his passport, state DL, and boarding pass, and they start going off on him as to why he's got his passport for a domestic flight, how that looks suspicious and such. He responds with "Well, I get stopped for looking Arab every time I fly, so this is a much easier way to prove I'm a US citizen." They stop for a moment and look around at everyone watching, tell him to have a good day and walk away. I'll never forget that encounter.

gverrilla 5y ago

Unrelated to facial recognition: I'm a brazilian, flying from Casablanca, Morocco to Lisbon, Portugal, and I dropped my passport while on the plane. The minute I descend from the plane I realize it and inform the crew and airport security. They tell me to wait. Nobody goes to the plane to try and find my passport. I get detained in the airport prison with mostly illegal migrants. The plane flies away to Madrid. I can't leave without a passport. There's a small 8 square meter room where more than 10 people sleep, including someone with a contagious respiratory disease (this was pre-covid). Couldn't sleep and was up all night reading The Process, Franz Kafka, which was funnily available in prison hall. Had to bribe the police officer with a collector's plastic Clipper lighter for him to allow me to smoke a single cigarette. Was able to get out after 24h, but only because my brother had a friend who worked on the plane operator company, and was able to detect my passport inside the plane at Madrid, and arrange it to be given to a pilot who would be flying to Lisbon the next morning. It was so traumatic that when leaving they asked me if all my belongings were on my backpack (which had been confiscated upon arrestal) and I didn't realize police officers had actually stolen my sunglasses and an iPhone. It's not exactly a techno dystopia. It's a full on dystopia turning to tech.

effingwewt 5y ago
Holy shit. Growing up in a super small border town between Texas and Mexico, I've seen, heard, and been part of some crazy and terrifying stuff, but nothing compares to this. I felt terrified just imagining what you went through. Obligatory glad you made it out, but seriously- had any one thing gone wrong, who knows what could have happened in the end. I used to sit and wonder about the future. As in how wonderful it will be and what amazing things we will accomplish. I used to fear dying because I wouldn't get to see any of it, much less the end of the story. Somewhere along the way I began to fear the future, to the point I didn't want to have children, I felt it unethical to knowingly bring an innocent life into that kind of terror. Professor Farnsworth said it best- 'I don't want to live on this planet anymore.' Edited to add- when I was young I caught wanderlust pretty hard and traveled most of the US, some of Mexico and Canada. I dreamt of visiting other countries and continents and was hugely disappointed to not find a way before having a family and obligations. All that went out the window about the time I started watching Locked Up Abroad. Brokedown Palace had nothing on those stories.

venkat223 5y ago

Such an incident occurs in Singapore often and police detain people and later release them as the facial recognition tech is defective not reliable.But such surveillance is done by the scared governments like china also

blooalien 5y ago

> "but she wasn't willing to disagree with the computer" This mentality is far too common among modern humans. I've suffered these people at banks, bill pay stations, travel situations, etc. It's especially annoying when you're facing them with undeniable evidence that the machine contains mistaken data and they still respond with "I'm sorry, sir. There's nothing I can do. It says right here that you owe {$random-money}." Machines can be wrong, and even more commonly, the people who enter data into those machines can be wrong. But then you get these people who can clearly see that something is wrong, but they refuse to refute what the machine tells them? Why? I swear, when the machines finally decide humans are obsolete, we'll happily line up and willingly march into the kill-box…

h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
Unfortunately it's turtles all the way down (up?) - should they ignore the computer and make a mistake, they no doubt will face their employer confronting them with 'the computer told you so and you flagrantly ignored it'. The recently uncovered UK post office accounting scandal goes to show that the computer is assumed correct by default!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
FnuGk 5y ago
It is because no one has to take responsibility for the machine. If you then overwrite the machine, then you have the responsibility of the decision.
bsenftner 5y ago
This is my biggest problem with working in the video security / FR industry: the industry completely ignores end-user training and the obvious necessity for the operators of this class of software to be screened for A) computer literacy to the degree they understand this is just software and NOT an authority, and B) operators of video security software need to be screened for Racial Blindness - if a person cannot tell the difference between near age siblings or cousins of an ethnicity other than their own, and specifically the ethnicity they police, they need to be legally regulated as ineligible to operate such software.

snarf21 5y ago

I had a similar situation crossing the US border coming back from Toronto. I got flagged because I pulled past a yellow line during the wait. Incidentally, I just followed the pattern of the person in front of me who flew through. The thing that resonated with me was the approach the officers used. These types of jobs attract people who like the power trip. You are considered guilty unless you can prove innocence. There was no probably cause, no need for a random search. I know people in LE and I can only imagine how these people would react to similar treatment if "flashing their badge" didn't get them a wave through. I think this is the thing that people don't fully get about the surveillance state and encryption back doors in addition to facial recognition. If there is ever a "hit" on any of these things, you are guilty. LE will stand on you to try to get you to crack because the tech can't be wrong. There are going to be so many innocent people in jail in the future dystopia.

helloworld11 5y ago

>interrogated me in a way intended to get me to incriminate myself (questions I wouldn't answer to police on the street, but wasn't in a position to deny them) If you are a U.S citizen, they legally can't deny you entry into your own country. Nor can they force you to answer any questions beyond the most basic ones that establish your citizenship and ID. They can intimidate you and make you feel you should divulge more, but this is just bluster, and you have rights that are well worth exercising. The ACLU confirms this by the way: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encountering-law-enforcement-airports-and-other-ports-entry-us/#:~:text=If%20you%20are%20a%20U.S.,delay%20and%2For%20further%20inspection https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-when-encounter....