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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

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.
      - atoav 5y ago
        Because a free society is a finely tuned balance between state power and individual freedom, and the pendulum is on the far side of state power since 9/11 anyways. The same thing that can be used to find perpetrators in minor crimes can also be used to trace political movements, that any given government happens to dislike. IMO there are certain uncertaintiws that any free society has to accept. One of those is that not every perpetrator will be punished. Not because there wouldn't be a way, but because a society in which this would be implemented wouldn't be free anymore.
        nitrogen 5y ago
        If a shopkeeper submits footage of a crime to the police, the police should be able to keep it as evidence. What's problematic is proactive gathering and aggregation of footage by police or by corporations.
        atoav 5y ago
        Sure. But we are talking about a global facial recognition technology, not about someones private surveilance video. There is a slight difference between the state having facial recognition AI-Cameras and a privat citizen submitting surveilance footage of their private shop after a crime has been committed, don't you think?
        bsenftner 5y ago
        What is the threshold of scale when a private citizen has multiple homes? Can that individual collect biometrics from their visitors and do whatever, privately, with that data as long as they wish? What if that same individual owned one or more private companies? Can they collect biometrics for internal, private use, then? Even if that private individual is an internationalists, traveling to different countries with access to that data at will, perhaps with specialist staff analyzing that data?
        adolph 5y ago
        When the private citizens use services explicitly connected to state police services, is the difference only a matter of latency? For now it looks like Ring is oriented around geography but its probably just a ToS change away from adding a face-print dimension for lookup. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-police-request-door-camera-footage-what-it-means-and-doesnt-mean https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-polic...
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I'm not really sure why we've normalized the collection of biometrics during police investigations that are kept forever. I know deleting them would defeat the purpose of the fingerprint/DNA databases but if we're gonna do this either collect and keep everyone's biometrics or no ones because creating two classes of people, those who have had run-ins with the police and not, is gross.
    - atlasunshrugged 5y ago
      Not only people who have had run ins with the police - when I took an entry level job at a bank I had to go and submit my prints to the local gov (via an expensive third party of course) as part of my onboarding requirements (and run a background check). These are now stored forever in some police database; I would guess there are some other jobs like that, maybe government employees as well.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      In todays political climate of fear that would mean everyone has to give their biometrics to state enforcement.
  - bko 5y ago
    What if someone is known to have committed a crime and police look at surveillance footage from nearby red-light cameras? Or if that person is thought to have visited that location in the past, could they use that footage? Which brings another question, what about facial recognition performed by a human? Investigators can presumably scour video or surveillance data by hand, but I guess just not by machine? Can they use face detection to simplify picking out faces? Zoom in and enhance? It's very tricky when passing legislation to narrow in on the pernicious aspects of "facial recognition"
    - Closi 5y ago
      Well the legislation is pretty specific in terms of what facial recognition is allowed actually, and the scenario you are describing is listed and explicitly allowed. The text is completely open so you can see exactly how they have scoped it.
    - da_chicken 5y ago
      If only there were some system in place where police would request the judiciary evaluate their evidence and reasoning to see if violating the privacy of the suspects were approved and warranted. Whatever would we call such a process?
    - da_big_ghey 5y ago
      Well i don't trust government to collect data on movements of every person but only use it with a warrant... i have issue with red-light camera for exactly this reason, we are not london, we should not have constant government surveilling. I am also concerned significantly by ring doorbell and similar, but unsure for what solution we need use. I think maybe as a first step we say they may not record any outside of a person's own property line.
  - adolph 5y ago
    > Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Wouldn't that inaccurately bias results towards people already involved with the criminal justice system?
- EastOfTruth 5y ago
  > Which is already more than a first step. How is it more then a first step? What did they do previously?
ashtonkem 5y ago
The latter bit is eminently reasonable; there are limits to how much political bodies should be capable of restraining private action, but the rules by which the police discharge their duties is something completely under political control.
bko 5y ago
> forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing I don't get what this means. If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies?
- Closi 5y ago
  > If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? It depends - These models are often non-transparent in terms of how they calculate, so what if the AI/model decides/calculate that a higher percentage of minorities in an area is a high predictor of crime, thus indirectly creates a policy that, for instance, areas with high levels of ethnic minorities require higher levels of policing or harsher restrictions (i.e. curfews, more CCTV e.t.c.). If it's just a basic 'well murders happen between these hours on this street so we will put a police officer there' then of course that should happen, but that's not really policing based on AI/ML, it's just based on basic statistics.
  - _ke2e 5y ago
    Where do you draw the line between statistics and ML?
    - brightly-salty 5y ago
      When you can no longer transparently explain the reasoning behind a decision made based on the statistics, and instead have to just shrug and say “because the model told us so”. Accountability is very important in this issue.
      - bko 5y ago
        Apart from neural networks most models are somewhat transparent in terms of reasoning. Neural networks would be the wrong model to use for this anyway. For instance, decision trees can tell us if the population density between this range and the percentage of single family residence is between this range, the probability of a package being stolen is X. Or regression could tell us that the square of the population density is positively correlated to this crime .
yholio 5y ago
They should ban facial recognition though, in all and every context where the owner of the face has not given explicit consent. Nothing good can come of it.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  If I've seen your face before, how can I help but recognize it? This violates freedom of thought.
  - yholio 5y ago
    If I can walk in a crowded mall with my feet, why can't I drive my 18-wheeler there? Traffic laws violate freedom of movement.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    This is fundamentally different than digital processing because of multiple reasons.
    - abecedarius 5y ago
      Portable brain-computer interfaces aren't common yet, but do you think they can't be? Where's the bright line between that sort of thing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor)? There may be space for a good law somewhere in this area. But you should be really leery of outlawing a particular kind of computation, unless you're cool with thoughtcrime, because that's what it will by default become over time, just as inflation made laws with hardcoded dollar figures become quite different without ever changing the law.
      - raxxorrax 5y ago
        I prefer to deal with that problem when we arrive there. Most neurologists tell me there is still some way to go despite significant advancements. Same with AI, today's reality is that machines are still completely incapable of thought. But anticipatory I would still think there is a difference because constant surveillance would still bind your time.

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.
    - atoav 5y ago
      Because a free society is a finely tuned balance between state power and individual freedom, and the pendulum is on the far side of state power since 9/11 anyways. The same thing that can be used to find perpetrators in minor crimes can also be used to trace political movements, that any given government happens to dislike. IMO there are certain uncertaintiws that any free society has to accept. One of those is that not every perpetrator will be punished. Not because there wouldn't be a way, but because a society in which this would be implemented wouldn't be free anymore.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        If a shopkeeper submits footage of a crime to the police, the police should be able to keep it as evidence. What's problematic is proactive gathering and aggregation of footage by police or by corporations.
        atoav 5y ago
        Sure. But we are talking about a global facial recognition technology, not about someones private surveilance video. There is a slight difference between the state having facial recognition AI-Cameras and a privat citizen submitting surveilance footage of their private shop after a crime has been committed, don't you think?
        bsenftner 5y ago
        What is the threshold of scale when a private citizen has multiple homes? Can that individual collect biometrics from their visitors and do whatever, privately, with that data as long as they wish? What if that same individual owned one or more private companies? Can they collect biometrics for internal, private use, then? Even if that private individual is an internationalists, traveling to different countries with access to that data at will, perhaps with specialist staff analyzing that data?
        adolph 5y ago
        When the private citizens use services explicitly connected to state police services, is the difference only a matter of latency? For now it looks like Ring is oriented around geography but its probably just a ToS change away from adding a face-print dimension for lookup. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-police-request-door-camera-footage-what-it-means-and-doesnt-mean https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-polic...
- Spivak 5y ago
  I'm not really sure why we've normalized the collection of biometrics during police investigations that are kept forever. I know deleting them would defeat the purpose of the fingerprint/DNA databases but if we're gonna do this either collect and keep everyone's biometrics or no ones because creating two classes of people, those who have had run-ins with the police and not, is gross.
  - atlasunshrugged 5y ago
    Not only people who have had run ins with the police - when I took an entry level job at a bank I had to go and submit my prints to the local gov (via an expensive third party of course) as part of my onboarding requirements (and run a background check). These are now stored forever in some police database; I would guess there are some other jobs like that, maybe government employees as well.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    In todays political climate of fear that would mean everyone has to give their biometrics to state enforcement.
- bko 5y ago
  What if someone is known to have committed a crime and police look at surveillance footage from nearby red-light cameras? Or if that person is thought to have visited that location in the past, could they use that footage? Which brings another question, what about facial recognition performed by a human? Investigators can presumably scour video or surveillance data by hand, but I guess just not by machine? Can they use face detection to simplify picking out faces? Zoom in and enhance? It's very tricky when passing legislation to narrow in on the pernicious aspects of "facial recognition"
  - Closi 5y ago
    Well the legislation is pretty specific in terms of what facial recognition is allowed actually, and the scenario you are describing is listed and explicitly allowed. The text is completely open so you can see exactly how they have scoped it.
  - da_chicken 5y ago
    If only there were some system in place where police would request the judiciary evaluate their evidence and reasoning to see if violating the privacy of the suspects were approved and warranted. Whatever would we call such a process?
  - da_big_ghey 5y ago
    Well i don't trust government to collect data on movements of every person but only use it with a warrant... i have issue with red-light camera for exactly this reason, we are not london, we should not have constant government surveilling. I am also concerned significantly by ring doorbell and similar, but unsure for what solution we need use. I think maybe as a first step we say they may not record any outside of a person's own property line.
- adolph 5y ago
  > Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Wouldn't that inaccurately bias results towards people already involved with the criminal justice system?
EastOfTruth 5y ago
> Which is already more than a first step. How is it more then a first step? What did they do previously?

ashtonkem 5y ago

The latter bit is eminently reasonable; there are limits to how much political bodies should be capable of restraining private action, but the rules by which the police discharge their duties is something completely under political control.

bko 5y ago

> forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing I don't get what this means. If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies?

Closi 5y ago
> If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? It depends - These models are often non-transparent in terms of how they calculate, so what if the AI/model decides/calculate that a higher percentage of minorities in an area is a high predictor of crime, thus indirectly creates a policy that, for instance, areas with high levels of ethnic minorities require higher levels of policing or harsher restrictions (i.e. curfews, more CCTV e.t.c.). If it's just a basic 'well murders happen between these hours on this street so we will put a police officer there' then of course that should happen, but that's not really policing based on AI/ML, it's just based on basic statistics.
- _ke2e 5y ago
  Where do you draw the line between statistics and ML?
  - brightly-salty 5y ago
    When you can no longer transparently explain the reasoning behind a decision made based on the statistics, and instead have to just shrug and say “because the model told us so”. Accountability is very important in this issue.
    - bko 5y ago
      Apart from neural networks most models are somewhat transparent in terms of reasoning. Neural networks would be the wrong model to use for this anyway. For instance, decision trees can tell us if the population density between this range and the percentage of single family residence is between this range, the probability of a package being stolen is X. Or regression could tell us that the square of the population density is positively correlated to this crime .

yholio 5y ago

They should ban facial recognition though, in all and every context where the owner of the face has not given explicit consent. Nothing good can come of it.

abecedarius 5y ago
If I've seen your face before, how can I help but recognize it? This violates freedom of thought.
- yholio 5y ago
  If I can walk in a crowded mall with my feet, why can't I drive my 18-wheeler there? Traffic laws violate freedom of movement.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  This is fundamentally different than digital processing because of multiple reasons.
  - abecedarius 5y ago
    Portable brain-computer interfaces aren't common yet, but do you think they can't be? Where's the bright line between that sort of thing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor)? There may be space for a good law somewhere in this area. But you should be really leery of outlawing a particular kind of computation, unless you're cool with thoughtcrime, because that's what it will by default become over time, just as inflation made laws with hardcoded dollar figures become quite different without ever changing the law.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      I prefer to deal with that problem when we arrive there. Most neurologists tell me there is still some way to go despite significant advancements. Same with AI, today's reality is that machines are still completely incapable of thought. But anticipatory I would still think there is a difference because constant surveillance would still bind your time.