28 ms·

European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

495 points by infodocket 5y ago

b0rsuk 5y ago
I don't see how they could make it work other than banning surveillance cameras in public spaces. I think it's hard to prove someone is using facial recognition - he might send data over a network, into the cloud, and analyze there. Web apps are black boxes, you don't know what's going on in there.
matthewmorgan 5y ago
Actually the European Commission called for it, the parliament (which cannot propose legislation) just rubber stamped it.
sealthedeal 5y ago
"predictive policing, a controversial practice that involves using AI tools in hopes of profiling potential criminals before a crime is even committed." Ummmmmm Minority Report?? WTF!
skywal_l 5y ago
The subtitle is also important: Non-binding resolution also asks for AI-based predictive policing ban. AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  Why are opacity and complexity so often invoked as a reason here? I don’t want to be mass-profiling populations with totally clear and simple technologies, either.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    My guess is that "opacity" is referring to implementations, while "complexity" is referring to the effects. "Totally clear and simple technologies" is referring to just the implementation. We don't want to get involved with AI because of the complex issues it opens, not because the current implementations are complex.
  - lmkg 5y ago
    Opacity (of which complexity is a form) is an impediment to accountability. I agree there are many reasons that I don't want mass surveillance and profiling, but I think a lack of accountability of a system is a very large force-multiplier for the malignant effects its ends up having.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      What do you think about police having to fulfill certain quotas in their policing?
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Opacity because if you are detained by the police they should be able to tell you why. Many, if not all, AI solution based on a training sets will have a hard time telling you exactly why you where flagged. Also even if they can tell you that the AI believe that the combination of your ears and nose makes you look like some wanted person, what are you suppose to do about it?
    - atoav 5y ago
      Maybe we can develop AI that decides who has a criminal look based on the shape of the skull? /s As someone living in Germany all these AI approaches have a distinct fascist flavour to them and remind me of my Nazi grandfather who claimed he "could just tell" our bosnian neighbours have "something criminal" in their blood.
  - vagrantJin 5y ago
    Even if the below commentor is correct about the lack of accountability - which I assume is important in a democracy - and the more insidious danger is the obvious moral and ethical issues.
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Could you be a little clearer on what the “obvious moral and ethical issues” are? Personally I’m not sure what you’re referencing, and I also don’t think the many of the moral and ethical issues are obvious. If they were, then I suspect countries like the UK wouldn’t already be trialing many of these technologies.
      - raxxorrax 5y ago
        AI today is on a level of an illiterate toddler with a talent for stochastic at least. Using it to classify people is unethical because it puts suspicion on them without evidence or sense.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Exactly, it is not that necessity would demand it anyway. Security today is often emotional and if there is no real threat, it will be made up.
- toss1 5y ago
  >>AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated. True, but I'd add in a touch of Hanlon's Razor — don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to mere incompetence — far too much of the time, the technology is just bad and wrong. It has been over-promised and under-delivered. It is so often wrong that there are numerous lawsuits, including one today about Uber being sued because the so-called "AI Facial Recognition" system cannot even recognize it's own employees [1]. Great idea to verify everyone automatically, but if the technology sucks, it is worse than nothing. As if falsely losing your employment is bad enough, the consequences of broad adoption of technology that is not fit for purpose is far worse than merely wasting money and time of law enforcement, courts, etc - it will literally falsely steal people's freedom, while letting actual criminals run loose. The EU is wise to call a halt to this over-hyped tech. (And frankly, calling it "AI" is ridiculous — it is just a fancy pattern-match search. This is what the industry gets for over-selling it's new stuff before it is actually ready - and deservedly so. It'd be an entirely different story if they'd fully developed and tested it until it was six+-sigma reliable). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-over-racially-discriminatory-facial-recognition-id-checks/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-ov...
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    > don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to mere incompetence Police use of this nonsense is either malice or _negligence_; it's not mere incompetence. If you're the enforcement arm of the state, you largely lose the right to plead incompetence; if you don't do the research; that's negligent.
    - potatoman22 5y ago
      I don't think police using ML is negligent in and of itself. Overly relying on a model, however, would certainly be negligent.
      - toss1 5y ago
        hmm, considering the seriously deficient state of these systems, I'd have to agree with rsynnott that using it without a very serious overlay of human checking before taking any action - probably enough to outweigh the benefits of the "AI" itself - would constitute negligence. The PDs either already know that the "AI" FR systems are not fit for purpose and are using them anyway without proper checking, or they don't know because they couldn't be bothered to do their due diligence. I want to catch the crooks as much as anyone, but catching the wrong people does no one any good, and has a hugely corrosive effect on society.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  I agree with the principle but the problem here is the word "AI" or "ML"; what we are talking about is really just fancy statistics. Are we forbidding statistical modeling of any kind? How would we even describe or enforce that? The ML courses I took started with just running a linear regression on a large data set, and those were considered a form of ML. This is tricky. And the problem is not just the techniques, but can we trust our institutions and practitioners -- what kind of systemic and unconscious biases are driving the misuses or potential misuses of ML?
bluecalm 5y ago
I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police over it. I mean if I am spending better part of my life working and giving away huge % of what I make to the government the least I could expect is said government having resources to catch the bad guys. I am in lucky position that the crime won't affect me much. It's a significant sum of money and a lot of days spent fixing stuff, worrying about security etc. I can't start to imagine how demoralizing it must be for someone who losses years of savings in a burglary and that's not even a stretch to imagine if they go for a few nice things you have (like say a nice mountain bike or skiing equipment). I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. As an honest working tax payer the government has all my data anyway and can get phone records to pinpoint my location most of the time. I don't care that much anymore. I do care about being safe though. As long as the cameras are in public places and not on private properties it's not such a big hit to privacy anyway.
- eunos 5y ago
  >I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying Ironically I think petty crimes are much more impactful personally than say political corruption/bribery. If you find out that your politicians received bribe/corrupt personally you don't feel it immediately. It's not like your tax amount suddenly increasing to cater the corruption. Petty crimes on the other hand are much more direct in impact. Personal property/Money loss, that feeling of "why me", terror, etc.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- noodlesUK 5y ago
  > I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognition is honestly really bad about getting people caught in the dragnet. If we have an attitude where “computer says no” means you’re now subjected to criminal penalties, that’s a nasty world.
kwere 5y ago
The honey Is too sweet to be left alone, Better for the EU to accept reality and regulate It in a pragmatic manner to not lose the modern race on arms with the other powers, expecially china. Wealth and peace has made the west ?security dumb?
sentinel 5y ago
How did the EU become such a bunch of luddites? Or does it only seem that way from outside? I get that there are legit concerns about face recognition (as there are benefits), but the concerns _could_ be regulated. Granted, regulation is a much more work intensive process – you have to sit down with a large number of people, get educated on the subject etc. Is it laziness? Or is this a negotiation tactic? Start asking for a permanent ban, and work your way back to regulation?
- kspacewalk2 5y ago
  This is a first step toward regulation. No PRC-style indiscriminate/"predictive" profiling, as a first step. Now let's come up with a way to use this tool to catch actual criminals when investigating actual specific crimes, with judicial oversight that protects our civil liberties without making the tool useless (by creating onerous obstacles to its use, or delaying it unacceptably).
- rightbyte 5y ago
  It is just a matter of time before stores and what not will track you via CCTV and spam you ads and adjust your credit rating depending on some opaque metrics. I rather have a ban on it before it happens.
  - sentinel 5y ago
    This is already happening without facial recognition.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      By the customer club card/membership? Ye but you don't have to have those. I don't think banks or Mastercard et al. are allowed to sell customer data in the EU?
    - simion314 5y ago
      But this can be disrupted, here it is a startup idea but probably Google and Amazon are already working on it 1 offer all shops free surveillance hardware, you will offer them notifications when a suspect enters the shop. You need some PR stuff with big numbers where you claim on how many of your partners/clients are marking suspects that commited theft and how many billions are saved with this AI tech. 2 collect all the videos, do face recognition and connect the people n the image with real identities , infer more personal data from the person facial expression, posture, clothing, stuff they look at 3 profit! 4 collaborate with NSA and FBI to make sure the government will not have an easy job shutting you down. bonus , you can extend to clubs, schools,parks, bars. You can rent the hardware for private owners with a discount if they mount at least one camera pointed at the street.
4wsn 5y ago
Ah, yes, the European Parliament. They have a great track record regulating technology, not at all like a bunch of out of touch clueless boomers. I'm sure something as complex as facial recognition is well within their capabilities to comprehend.
- simion314 5y ago
  I assume there are many proposals that are not adopted in US too. But if you want to feel superior read about the issue with robocall in US, I read comments here of people being forced to either respond 10+ more times a day on scam calls or blocking unknown numbers and risking missing important calls. So US free market + US legislature does not seem to me they made a good job either. Now let's talk surveillance, most people know there are false positives , most competent tech people know that there is also a bias with this technology, if you really want surveillance is better to implant people with chips, at least you won't execute innocent people because the SV startup that implemented the AI made a mistake and will not admit it until 15 years alter after a lengthy trial.
  - 4wsn 5y ago
    Criticism of the EU on this point ≠ the US is better at it. It's not a competition of "my politicians are better than yours". Almost _all_ of the EU's legislation on anything tech related has been playing to the voters by beating the privacy drum, without actually addressing the underlying issues. Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tech. All the EU seems capable of doing is creating additional bureaucracy while hamstringing Europeans trying to actually realize Europe's potential in the field.
    - gspr 5y ago
      > Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tech. All the EU seems capable of doing is creating additional bureaucracy while hamstringing Europeans trying to actually realize Europe's potential in the field. What are you talking about?
smarx007 5y ago
No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Which is already more than a first step. Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do. That’s not what predictive policing is, though. Nor indiscriminate use in public spaces.
  - da_big_ghey 5y ago
    Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Police cannot observe a face for years until they get a warrant then all suddenly have years of data, that is wrong.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Absolutely!
      - tetromino_ 5y ago
        Why not? Concrete use case: many property crimes have a minimum cutoff (a felony only if more than $X is stolen or damaged). So to convict someone who knows the letter of the law and regularly engages in some mischief under the cutoff amount, you will need to gather video evidence over a long time period - a period during which the person technically hadn't hit the felony threshold yet.
        5y ago
literallyaduck 5y ago
"Okay, we will send all our video surveillance to a third party intelligence partner with whom we own stock and they will do facial recognition and send us a list of suspects." - Most police and government entities. If the ban doesn't prevent 3rd party data access the above will likely happen.
- bluecalm 5y ago
  You can have a government owned database and not send anything to a third party. The way it works with fingerprints and DNA data, at least in my country.
- Luker88 5y ago
  No, that is still banned. The problem is not whether it's private or government. The problem are multiple, but the main two problems found in an experiment with public facial rec. in an Italian city (Como, and now in Udine, too) are: * municipalities should not have the power to conduct an investigation. That is a clear breach of the separation of powers. At least in Italy every access to information for investigation must be logged, from why it was collected to who requested access to it. Most of the initial deployments of facial rec are way too broad * Our laws require consent before gathering information on people, and biometric has even stricter rules. Just going around in public is hardly giving consent
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Do you need consent to be photographed or filmed in public spaces? At least in the US, there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces and if someone wants to film you - whether an amateur photographer, a journalist, or a police officer - they are permitted to, simply because it is their constitutional right to do so.
    - ginko 5y ago
      >Do you need consent to be photographed or filmed in public spaces? You do in Europe. You essentially own the copyright to your face.
thanatos519 5y ago
Have they invented a virus that induces prosopagnosia?
meibo 5y ago
Doubt this will pass, the EPP(conservatives) want the EU to enable surveillance states.
- smarx007 5y ago
  Ehrm, did you actually check https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2021-0232_EN.html?#_ftnref11 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2021-0232_... under FINAL VOTE BY ROLL CALL IN COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION?
kbos87 5y ago
Any discussion of regulating the use of facial recognition by government misses the point. Private industry has just as much if not more power to misuse the technology. I don’t know what a global opt out system would look like, but that’s the only serious answer to preventing misuse.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  I would sharply disagree with this. The ability to bring proper force into play is not with corporations. Looking at the 20th century, state actors are the ones that could and did kill millions.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  I have no idea why we can't focus on misuse by both governments and corporations. Your argument seems to be that even though harms can occur from misuse by two types of organizations (governments and industry), there is no point to addressing the harms from one type of organization (governments) because the other type of organization (industry) is more likely to commit harms. With that logic, you'd never get anything done.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  From the article: > In a resolution adopted overwhelmingly in favor, MEPs also asked for a ban on private facial recognition databases, like the ones used by the controversial company Clearview AI
- boredumb 5y ago
  Private entity and individuals come and go at a much higher frequency than government. You still raise a valid point but there is reason the focus is on government. I'd also go as far to say that at least on HN there is a lot more discussion of anti-privacy and invasive practices in the private sector facebook/google/amazon/messenger platforms/etc than in the government.
spunker540 5y ago
I’d be in favor of banning facial recognition as evidence used in trials, but still allowing it to aid in investigations. I.e let it help narrow down suspects when faced with grainy footage, but can’t be used to actually make a conviction.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  Seems way too easy to abuse. At least in the US, police already use junk science to "place" people near the scene of a crime, and then prosecutors use circumstantial evidence to get convictions. Or worse yet, police will, in the US, probably use this to get plea deals. I guess many EU countries don't have plea bargains through?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawaysea 5y ago
I don't understand why so many cities and other jurisdictions are trying to ban facial recognition. It's a tool, like anything else. We make policing easier by letting the police department have access to plumbed city water, electricity, computers, cars, and so on. Facial recognition is a way for them to work more efficiently and effectively. In Seattle, we've had rampant property crime to the point where people don't even bother reporting a lot of it anymore because the insurance deductibles and lack of consequences for thieves makes the effort a depressing waste of time. Unfortunately, without deterrents, most people expect crime will continue and likely get worse. This isn't the fault of the police department - Seattle has less than half the number of active officers per capita compared to other large US cities. So they can't afford to investigate property crimes, let alone locate suspects and bring them to justice. Having facial recognition as an available tool would help with that. It means the police can be dispatched to the location of a suspect and bring them to justice, instead of letting them continue consequence-free, or relying on dumb luck to stumble upon a suspect. False positive matches can be mitigated trivially by having a human in the loop. Does that mean the overall matching process is perfect? No, but it never can be, and perfect is the enemy of good. We need deterrents to crime and real consequences if we want to ensure a safe society, which is the most basic expectation taxpayers have. If facial recognition is regulated, I hope they don't go overboard, like requiring evidence of a crime (through surveillance footage) to run a search, or something to that effect.
- golemiprague 5y ago
  Because most of the criminals are from certain groups in society and the political elites, as well as many of the people here in HN, don't really rub shoulders with those people and don't care about solving crimes which affect the rest 80% of the population. They want to keep the police weak and criminals strong so they can keep controlling us.
viktorcode 5y ago
Consider the scenario which is now legal in the EU: A group of police personnel watching CCTV recordings and live feeds trying to find a suspect. They do it with their own eyes. They employ state of the art neural networks, trained on just a blurry photo and verbal description of the suspect. And it takes a lot of time. The benefits of automating this step are so large, that the ban if it were to happen will be temporary. Facial recognition is already here, and it becomes more accessible every year. I think instead of banning facial recognition we should find ways to prevent it from being abused. Something that would prevent democratic countries turning into another China or Russia of surveillance.
unchocked 5y ago
If you can ban public deployment of facial recognition, you can also ban public deployment of engagement maximizers. It’s time to start regulating algorithms.
trhway 5y ago
reminds the ban on crossbows 900 years ago because they were very effective against ironclad knights. Somehow such ban didn't work back then.
andygroundwater 5y ago
I guess all those malcontents working on "AI Ethics" committees now will be out of a job.

495 points by infodocket 5y ago

I don't see how they could make it work other than banning surveillance cameras in public spaces. I think it's hard to prove someone is using facial recognition - he might send data over a network, into the cloud, and analyze there. Web apps are black boxes, you don't know what's going on in there.

matthewmorgan 5y ago

Actually the European Commission called for it, the parliament (which cannot propose legislation) just rubber stamped it.

sealthedeal 5y ago

"predictive policing, a controversial practice that involves using AI tools in hopes of profiling potential criminals before a crime is even committed." Ummmmmm Minority Report?? WTF!

skywal_l 5y ago

The subtitle is also important: Non-binding resolution also asks for AI-based predictive policing ban. AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated.

hprotagonist 5y ago
Why are opacity and complexity so often invoked as a reason here? I don’t want to be mass-profiling populations with totally clear and simple technologies, either.
- capableweb 5y ago
  My guess is that "opacity" is referring to implementations, while "complexity" is referring to the effects. "Totally clear and simple technologies" is referring to just the implementation. We don't want to get involved with AI because of the complex issues it opens, not because the current implementations are complex.
- lmkg 5y ago
  Opacity (of which complexity is a form) is an impediment to accountability. I agree there are many reasons that I don't want mass surveillance and profiling, but I think a lack of accountability of a system is a very large force-multiplier for the malignant effects its ends up having.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    What do you think about police having to fulfill certain quotas in their policing?
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Opacity because if you are detained by the police they should be able to tell you why. Many, if not all, AI solution based on a training sets will have a hard time telling you exactly why you where flagged. Also even if they can tell you that the AI believe that the combination of your ears and nose makes you look like some wanted person, what are you suppose to do about it?
  - atoav 5y ago
    Maybe we can develop AI that decides who has a criminal look based on the shape of the skull? /s As someone living in Germany all these AI approaches have a distinct fascist flavour to them and remind me of my Nazi grandfather who claimed he "could just tell" our bosnian neighbours have "something criminal" in their blood.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  Even if the below commentor is correct about the lack of accountability - which I assume is important in a democracy - and the more insidious danger is the obvious moral and ethical issues.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Could you be a little clearer on what the “obvious moral and ethical issues” are? Personally I’m not sure what you’re referencing, and I also don’t think the many of the moral and ethical issues are obvious. If they were, then I suspect countries like the UK wouldn’t already be trialing many of these technologies.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      AI today is on a level of an illiterate toddler with a talent for stochastic at least. Using it to classify people is unethical because it puts suspicion on them without evidence or sense.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Exactly, it is not that necessity would demand it anyway. Security today is often emotional and if there is no real threat, it will be made up.
toss1 5y ago
>>AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated. True, but I'd add in a touch of Hanlon's Razor — don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to mere incompetence — far too much of the time, the technology is just bad and wrong. It has been over-promised and under-delivered. It is so often wrong that there are numerous lawsuits, including one today about Uber being sued because the so-called "AI Facial Recognition" system cannot even recognize it's own employees [1]. Great idea to verify everyone automatically, but if the technology sucks, it is worse than nothing. As if falsely losing your employment is bad enough, the consequences of broad adoption of technology that is not fit for purpose is far worse than merely wasting money and time of law enforcement, courts, etc - it will literally falsely steal people's freedom, while letting actual criminals run loose. The EU is wise to call a halt to this over-hyped tech. (And frankly, calling it "AI" is ridiculous — it is just a fancy pattern-match search. This is what the industry gets for over-selling it's new stuff before it is actually ready - and deservedly so. It'd be an entirely different story if they'd fully developed and tested it until it was six+-sigma reliable). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-over-racially-discriminatory-facial-recognition-id-checks/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-ov...
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to mere incompetence Police use of this nonsense is either malice or _negligence_; it's not mere incompetence. If you're the enforcement arm of the state, you largely lose the right to plead incompetence; if you don't do the research; that's negligent.
  - potatoman22 5y ago
    I don't think police using ML is negligent in and of itself. Overly relying on a model, however, would certainly be negligent.
    - toss1 5y ago
      hmm, considering the seriously deficient state of these systems, I'd have to agree with rsynnott that using it without a very serious overlay of human checking before taking any action - probably enough to outweigh the benefits of the "AI" itself - would constitute negligence. The PDs either already know that the "AI" FR systems are not fit for purpose and are using them anyway without proper checking, or they don't know because they couldn't be bothered to do their due diligence. I want to catch the crooks as much as anyone, but catching the wrong people does no one any good, and has a hugely corrosive effect on society.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
I agree with the principle but the problem here is the word "AI" or "ML"; what we are talking about is really just fancy statistics. Are we forbidding statistical modeling of any kind? How would we even describe or enforce that? The ML courses I took started with just running a linear regression on a large data set, and those were considered a form of ML. This is tricky. And the problem is not just the techniques, but can we trust our institutions and practitioners -- what kind of systemic and unconscious biases are driving the misuses or potential misuses of ML?

bluecalm 5y ago

I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police over it. I mean if I am spending better part of my life working and giving away huge % of what I make to the government the least I could expect is said government having resources to catch the bad guys. I am in lucky position that the crime won't affect me much. It's a significant sum of money and a lot of days spent fixing stuff, worrying about security etc. I can't start to imagine how demoralizing it must be for someone who losses years of savings in a burglary and that's not even a stretch to imagine if they go for a few nice things you have (like say a nice mountain bike or skiing equipment). I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. As an honest working tax payer the government has all my data anyway and can get phone records to pinpoint my location most of the time. I don't care that much anymore. I do care about being safe though. As long as the cameras are in public places and not on private properties it's not such a big hit to privacy anyway.

eunos 5y ago
>I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying Ironically I think petty crimes are much more impactful personally than say political corruption/bribery. If you find out that your politicians received bribe/corrupt personally you don't feel it immediately. It's not like your tax amount suddenly increasing to cater the corruption. Petty crimes on the other hand are much more direct in impact. Personal property/Money loss, that feeling of "why me", terror, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
noodlesUK 5y ago
> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognition is honestly really bad about getting people caught in the dragnet. If we have an attitude where “computer says no” means you’re now subjected to criminal penalties, that’s a nasty world.

kwere 5y ago

The honey Is too sweet to be left alone, Better for the EU to accept reality and regulate It in a pragmatic manner to not lose the modern race on arms with the other powers, expecially china. Wealth and peace has made the west ?security dumb?

sentinel 5y ago

How did the EU become such a bunch of luddites? Or does it only seem that way from outside? I get that there are legit concerns about face recognition (as there are benefits), but the concerns _could_ be regulated. Granted, regulation is a much more work intensive process – you have to sit down with a large number of people, get educated on the subject etc. Is it laziness? Or is this a negotiation tactic? Start asking for a permanent ban, and work your way back to regulation?

kspacewalk2 5y ago
This is a first step toward regulation. No PRC-style indiscriminate/"predictive" profiling, as a first step. Now let's come up with a way to use this tool to catch actual criminals when investigating actual specific crimes, with judicial oversight that protects our civil liberties without making the tool useless (by creating onerous obstacles to its use, or delaying it unacceptably).
rightbyte 5y ago
It is just a matter of time before stores and what not will track you via CCTV and spam you ads and adjust your credit rating depending on some opaque metrics. I rather have a ban on it before it happens.
- sentinel 5y ago
  This is already happening without facial recognition.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    By the customer club card/membership? Ye but you don't have to have those. I don't think banks or Mastercard et al. are allowed to sell customer data in the EU?
  - simion314 5y ago
    But this can be disrupted, here it is a startup idea but probably Google and Amazon are already working on it 1 offer all shops free surveillance hardware, you will offer them notifications when a suspect enters the shop. You need some PR stuff with big numbers where you claim on how many of your partners/clients are marking suspects that commited theft and how many billions are saved with this AI tech. 2 collect all the videos, do face recognition and connect the people n the image with real identities , infer more personal data from the person facial expression, posture, clothing, stuff they look at 3 profit! 4 collaborate with NSA and FBI to make sure the government will not have an easy job shutting you down. bonus , you can extend to clubs, schools,parks, bars. You can rent the hardware for private owners with a discount if they mount at least one camera pointed at the street.

4wsn 5y ago

Ah, yes, the European Parliament. They have a great track record regulating technology, not at all like a bunch of out of touch clueless boomers. I'm sure something as complex as facial recognition is well within their capabilities to comprehend.

simion314 5y ago
I assume there are many proposals that are not adopted in US too. But if you want to feel superior read about the issue with robocall in US, I read comments here of people being forced to either respond 10+ more times a day on scam calls or blocking unknown numbers and risking missing important calls. So US free market + US legislature does not seem to me they made a good job either. Now let's talk surveillance, most people know there are false positives , most competent tech people know that there is also a bias with this technology, if you really want surveillance is better to implant people with chips, at least you won't execute innocent people because the SV startup that implemented the AI made a mistake and will not admit it until 15 years alter after a lengthy trial.
- 4wsn 5y ago
  Criticism of the EU on this point ≠ the US is better at it. It's not a competition of "my politicians are better than yours". Almost _all_ of the EU's legislation on anything tech related has been playing to the voters by beating the privacy drum, without actually addressing the underlying issues. Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tech. All the EU seems capable of doing is creating additional bureaucracy while hamstringing Europeans trying to actually realize Europe's potential in the field.
  - gspr 5y ago
    > Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tech. All the EU seems capable of doing is creating additional bureaucracy while hamstringing Europeans trying to actually realize Europe's potential in the field. What are you talking about?

smarx007 5y ago

No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.

hef19898 5y ago
Which is already more than a first step. Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do.
- kergonath 5y ago
  > Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do. That’s not what predictive policing is, though. Nor indiscriminate use in public spaces.
- da_big_ghey 5y ago
  Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Police cannot observe a face for years until they get a warrant then all suddenly have years of data, that is wrong.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Absolutely!
    - tetromino_ 5y ago
      Why not? Concrete use case: many property crimes have a minimum cutoff (a felony only if more than $X is stolen or damaged). So to convict someone who knows the letter of the law and regularly engages in some mischief under the cutoff amount, you will need to gather video evidence over a long time period - a period during which the person technically hadn't hit the felony threshold yet.
      - 5y ago

literallyaduck 5y ago

"Okay, we will send all our video surveillance to a third party intelligence partner with whom we own stock and they will do facial recognition and send us a list of suspects." - Most police and government entities. If the ban doesn't prevent 3rd party data access the above will likely happen.

bluecalm 5y ago
You can have a government owned database and not send anything to a third party. The way it works with fingerprints and DNA data, at least in my country.
Luker88 5y ago
No, that is still banned. The problem is not whether it's private or government. The problem are multiple, but the main two problems found in an experiment with public facial rec. in an Italian city (Como, and now in Udine, too) are: * municipalities should not have the power to conduct an investigation. That is a clear breach of the separation of powers. At least in Italy every access to information for investigation must be logged, from why it was collected to who requested access to it. Most of the initial deployments of facial rec are way too broad * Our laws require consent before gathering information on people, and biometric has even stricter rules. Just going around in public is hardly giving consent
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Do you need consent to be photographed or filmed in public spaces? At least in the US, there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces and if someone wants to film you - whether an amateur photographer, a journalist, or a police officer - they are permitted to, simply because it is their constitutional right to do so.
  - ginko 5y ago
    >Do you need consent to be photographed or filmed in public spaces? You do in Europe. You essentially own the copyright to your face.

thanatos519 5y ago

Have they invented a virus that induces prosopagnosia?

meibo 5y ago

Doubt this will pass, the EPP(conservatives) want the EU to enable surveillance states.

smarx007 5y ago
Ehrm, did you actually check https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2021-0232_EN.html?#_ftnref11 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-9-2021-0232_... under FINAL VOTE BY ROLL CALL IN COMMITTEE ASKED FOR OPINION?

kbos87 5y ago

Any discussion of regulating the use of facial recognition by government misses the point. Private industry has just as much if not more power to misuse the technology. I don’t know what a global opt out system would look like, but that’s the only serious answer to preventing misuse.

RandomLensman 5y ago
I would sharply disagree with this. The ability to bring proper force into play is not with corporations. Looking at the 20th century, state actors are the ones that could and did kill millions.
humanistbot 5y ago
I have no idea why we can't focus on misuse by both governments and corporations. Your argument seems to be that even though harms can occur from misuse by two types of organizations (governments and industry), there is no point to addressing the harms from one type of organization (governments) because the other type of organization (industry) is more likely to commit harms. With that logic, you'd never get anything done.
rsynnott 5y ago
From the article: > In a resolution adopted overwhelmingly in favor, MEPs also asked for a ban on private facial recognition databases, like the ones used by the controversial company Clearview AI
boredumb 5y ago
Private entity and individuals come and go at a much higher frequency than government. You still raise a valid point but there is reason the focus is on government. I'd also go as far to say that at least on HN there is a lot more discussion of anti-privacy and invasive practices in the private sector facebook/google/amazon/messenger platforms/etc than in the government.

spunker540 5y ago

I’d be in favor of banning facial recognition as evidence used in trials, but still allowing it to aid in investigations. I.e let it help narrow down suspects when faced with grainy footage, but can’t be used to actually make a conviction.

ch4s3 5y ago
Seems way too easy to abuse. At least in the US, police already use junk science to "place" people near the scene of a crime, and then prosecutors use circumstantial evidence to get convictions. Or worse yet, police will, in the US, probably use this to get plea deals. I guess many EU countries don't have plea bargains through?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwawaysea 5y ago

I don't understand why so many cities and other jurisdictions are trying to ban facial recognition. It's a tool, like anything else. We make policing easier by letting the police department have access to plumbed city water, electricity, computers, cars, and so on. Facial recognition is a way for them to work more efficiently and effectively. In Seattle, we've had rampant property crime to the point where people don't even bother reporting a lot of it anymore because the insurance deductibles and lack of consequences for thieves makes the effort a depressing waste of time. Unfortunately, without deterrents, most people expect crime will continue and likely get worse. This isn't the fault of the police department - Seattle has less than half the number of active officers per capita compared to other large US cities. So they can't afford to investigate property crimes, let alone locate suspects and bring them to justice. Having facial recognition as an available tool would help with that. It means the police can be dispatched to the location of a suspect and bring them to justice, instead of letting them continue consequence-free, or relying on dumb luck to stumble upon a suspect. False positive matches can be mitigated trivially by having a human in the loop. Does that mean the overall matching process is perfect? No, but it never can be, and perfect is the enemy of good. We need deterrents to crime and real consequences if we want to ensure a safe society, which is the most basic expectation taxpayers have. If facial recognition is regulated, I hope they don't go overboard, like requiring evidence of a crime (through surveillance footage) to run a search, or something to that effect.

golemiprague 5y ago
Because most of the criminals are from certain groups in society and the political elites, as well as many of the people here in HN, don't really rub shoulders with those people and don't care about solving crimes which affect the rest 80% of the population. They want to keep the police weak and criminals strong so they can keep controlling us.

viktorcode 5y ago

Consider the scenario which is now legal in the EU: A group of police personnel watching CCTV recordings and live feeds trying to find a suspect. They do it with their own eyes. They employ state of the art neural networks, trained on just a blurry photo and verbal description of the suspect. And it takes a lot of time. The benefits of automating this step are so large, that the ban if it were to happen will be temporary. Facial recognition is already here, and it becomes more accessible every year. I think instead of banning facial recognition we should find ways to prevent it from being abused. Something that would prevent democratic countries turning into another China or Russia of surveillance.

unchocked 5y ago

If you can ban public deployment of facial recognition, you can also ban public deployment of engagement maximizers. It’s time to start regulating algorithms.

trhway 5y ago

reminds the ban on crossbows 900 years ago because they were very effective against ironclad knights. Somehow such ban didn't work back then.

andygroundwater 5y ago

I guess all those malcontents working on "AI Ethics" committees now will be out of a job.