4 ms·

It probably is an unethical technology. Its primary feature is to strongly tie someone's identity to their physical body. This alone is not inherently unethical

by daenz 5y ago

It probably is an unethical technology. Its primary feature is to strongly tie someone's identity to their physical body. This alone is not inherently unethical, but it opens the door for so many abuses that it is hard to consider it as ethical. These abuses come from the ability to use a centrally-controlled technology to systematically isolate and excommunicate people from society, no matter where they go. It becomes even more unethical when you consider the secondary, less publicly acknowledged feature: to provide plausible deniability for pursuing false positives. When facial recognition has the legal weight to drive searches and arrests, the "fuzziness" of false positives becomes an asset to those performing searches and arrests.

xeromal 5y ago
You could use that argument against DNA matching too. Sure, it helps with crime but it also allows someone to be tied to their physical body.
- gambiting 5y ago
  What makes facial recognition so dangerous is that it's so trivial and so cheap to deploy. You literally walk into a supermarket and tills have facial recognition built in to automatically bind your shopping to "you" even if you don't have an account or pay with cash. It's abused to hell basically and you will be facially recognized pretty much everywhere you go in public. It's definitely an "unethical" technology because of how it's generally used. DNA testing isn't, because the technology is far too expensive and time consuming to be used this way. The second supermarkets start scanning my DNA to give me special offers, I'll complain about it too. My point is, this sort of "well it could be used this way!" argument isn't helpful at all. Retina/fingerprint scanning could be used this way too, but it isn't - that doesn't make the argument against facial recognition invalid, or it any less unethical.
- datameta 5y ago
  You can't scan someone's DNA from 20 feet away in tens of milliseconds with <$100 of hardware. We're able to do facial recognition on microcontrollers costing less than $5. Commercial facial classification on that class of hardware is half a decade out.
- asxd 5y ago
  As others have alluded to, DNA matching likely isn't going to take away your anonymity in public spaces (or private for that matter) anytime soon.
- chatmasta 5y ago
  This analogy is somewhat valid, since facial and DNA data are mostly "public," given how often we show our face or incidentally shed some DNA (IIRC the police collected the golden state killer's DNA from a cup at a restaurant). But it also relies on a shallow comparison – unlike a facial scan, DNA is not a passively collectible identifier. Collecting and processing DNA requires active, physical surveillance that downloading and faceprinting a photograph does not. This physical limitation eliminates most practical risk of a global adversary exploiting DNA matching to build a dragnet surveillance regime. Meanwhile, facial recognition has already wrought such a state of affairs. Incidentally, passive DNA surveillance does happen, but only in aggregate, like when sampling wastewater for toxins or other biomarkers. I'm not aware of any technology that separates the distinct DNA of individuals from mixed wastewater. If that were possible, then maybe DNA dragnet surveillance would be, too.

by daenz 5y ago

xeromal 5y ago

You could use that argument against DNA matching too. Sure, it helps with crime but it also allows someone to be tied to their physical body.

gambiting 5y ago
What makes facial recognition so dangerous is that it's so trivial and so cheap to deploy. You literally walk into a supermarket and tills have facial recognition built in to automatically bind your shopping to "you" even if you don't have an account or pay with cash. It's abused to hell basically and you will be facially recognized pretty much everywhere you go in public. It's definitely an "unethical" technology because of how it's generally used. DNA testing isn't, because the technology is far too expensive and time consuming to be used this way. The second supermarkets start scanning my DNA to give me special offers, I'll complain about it too. My point is, this sort of "well it could be used this way!" argument isn't helpful at all. Retina/fingerprint scanning could be used this way too, but it isn't - that doesn't make the argument against facial recognition invalid, or it any less unethical.
datameta 5y ago
You can't scan someone's DNA from 20 feet away in tens of milliseconds with <$100 of hardware. We're able to do facial recognition on microcontrollers costing less than $5. Commercial facial classification on that class of hardware is half a decade out.
asxd 5y ago
As others have alluded to, DNA matching likely isn't going to take away your anonymity in public spaces (or private for that matter) anytime soon.
chatmasta 5y ago
This analogy is somewhat valid, since facial and DNA data are mostly "public," given how often we show our face or incidentally shed some DNA (IIRC the police collected the golden state killer's DNA from a cup at a restaurant). But it also relies on a shallow comparison – unlike a facial scan, DNA is not a passively collectible identifier. Collecting and processing DNA requires active, physical surveillance that downloading and faceprinting a photograph does not. This physical limitation eliminates most practical risk of a global adversary exploiting DNA matching to build a dragnet surveillance regime. Meanwhile, facial recognition has already wrought such a state of affairs. Incidentally, passive DNA surveillance does happen, but only in aggregate, like when sampling wastewater for toxins or other biomarkers. I'm not aware of any technology that separates the distinct DNA of individuals from mixed wastewater. If that were possible, then maybe DNA dragnet surveillance would be, too.