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Europe Is Building an International Facial Recognition System

unixhero 5y ago
Good news everyone, another dragnet for us to enjoy! /s
vgeek 5y ago
In America, people are paying to buy Ring and Nest cameras to further the privately built surveillance state. The best part is that the most common reason for doing so is package theft, but police won't really do anything about your stolen Amazon package, so what do cameras really facilitate?
- ahallock 5y ago
  We have people in our neighborhood posing as repairmen trying to get inside houses. I would like to have a buffer between me and the person at the door. Police might not do anything about stolen packages, but they will take incidents like this seriously. I also show the footage to my neighbors to give them a heads up.
belter 5y ago
Don't worry. You will be required to accept 74 cookies and read 3 privacy policies before they can scan your face.
- endorphine 5y ago
  Yeah but this won't matter when they make it mandatory.
  - jq-r 5y ago
    Plus, you'll still have to accept those cookies and privacy policies...
- jurschreuder 5y ago
  Luckily in our lifetime we won't have to worry about this since it's a government IT project so it will be way over budget and way over the deadline before it will eventually be canceled
i_like_waiting 5y ago
> Pictures of people’s faces shouldn’t be combined in one giant central database, the official proposal says, but police forces will be linked together through a “central router.” This router won’t store any data, the European Commission spokesperson says, adding that it will “only act as a message broker” between nations. From professional perspective, interesting to see real relevant use case of data mesh structure. From practical use case, what difference does it make for anybody outside IT?
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just the same abstraction as the Internet? Lots of separate databases linked together by a router (well, millions)? With something like Google as an obvious way to search and index it? What exactly do you mean by 'data mesh structure'?
- jq-r 5y ago
  So instead of one big centralised database they'll make couple of smaller ones which are all connected. In other words, same result, different implementation.
  - FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
    No, not really. For example, if one of the databases get hacked they can't just dump the pictures of all european citizens, just from the database they got access too It's slightly less worse.
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  The obvious one is that each national level server will be firmly under the national data protection authority, and so can be ordered censor or even completely withhold replies to (some) outside requests.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  There are subtle differences in the sense that individual databases can be detached, queries can be monitored and throttled by local authorities, etc. It will be much harder to have a single breach leak the whole database (e.g., the OPM hack [1].) It also makes automated surveillance (e.g., "track this person around and constantly notify the secret police of their location") much harder to implement without at least a few different countries cooperating to implement the system. However, as far as the core functionality ("look up a face, find a match from any country's data") the operation of this federated database will be nearly identical. I suspect that politicians/regulators either don't fully understand this, or else they don't want their constituents to understand this. [1] https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-incidents/ https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-incidents/
zxcb1 5y ago
Should only be permitted for serial criminals; debasing the rights of ordinary people. Debasement is a trend and possibly a current thing; do not support
- simulate-me 5y ago
  Isn’t any system a debasement of the rights of ordinary people? Their faces will still be scanned. There may be false positives. The definition of “criminal” may change.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Unfortunately, this is likely to result in charging people with crimes more frequently so they can be considered serial criminals. Been to three unlawful assemblies? Well, now you are a serial criminal, and we'll track you everywhere.
bamboozled 5y ago
Why? Why are they doing that? To get the criminals is it? Ha what a joke, there's criminals getting away with murder right now look at Putin, what has Europe done about him for the last 30 years?
- hans1729 5y ago
  Because we let institutions run wild and don't have auto-expiration dates for laws/measurements that restrict civil liberties. I elaborated further on this elsewhere in the thread, maybe that helps clearing things up.
  - ilammy 5y ago
    Auto-expiration dates won't help, the duration will be extended ad infinitum, because think of children. Unless you require quantifiable evidence of law's efficacy and causality to make an extension, which is quite a proposition given how every other law is unconditional. Even then, the data can be cooked.
    - peregren 5y ago
      In Ireland the legislation enabling government restrictions for covid expired, and the government who enacted that legislation have to desire to renew it. So it's not always extended ad infinitum.
- Heyso 5y ago
  What has Europe done about yemen, donbass, Syria, Lybia, Irak, etc. What has Europe done for itself regarding the scamdemic ? "The bad guy is dumb, he think I am the bad guy when he is the bad guy". You are part of the peoples that have decided in advance they are on the "good" side, that they have "truth from media and gouv, that never ever would lie to me". Ever thougth about putting the "I am definetly on the good side because I am european, and european is the definition of good" into question ?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
inductive_magic 5y ago
Just another step towards dystopia. After the reformations of german police laws in the last years, starting with Bavaria, I dropped hopes that the combination of state of law with civil liberties may be self-sustainable. The drive to sustain themselves is inherent to any institution we forge, and the reward incentives within those institutions simply have _zero_ alignment with civil liberties. The drive to power, relevance, funding and self-sustain goes _directly_ against civil liberties and privacy. If you understand this dynamic, you understand that the rest is merely a matter of time and precedent cases used as justifications for further extensions of the reach. Multiple problems: - inherent dynamics of self-sustain and growth in any institution - people drawn to enforce law-enforcement value stability and security over social ideals, civil liberty and privacy - people drawn to power (i.e. the top of the food chain in those institutions) are mostly sociopaths who will instrumentalize every tool at their disposal to better their own position - democracy has no protection against the populist appeal of what feels like security. politics will go one step further ad infinitum, and anyone who is against measurements which the majority of the population can be sold on as "this is good for you" is consequentially not one of the good guys. It doesn't matter wether all the smart people are extremely vary of this, because smarts don't win elections so what I'm trying to say is, yeah, we're fucked. I guess this is just baked into Europe, as we're not running on the model of "liberty for all". The upside is, we get decent healthcare, I guess. Meh.
- black_13 5y ago
  [dead]
Heyso 5y ago
How many accepted a pass for covid ? You guys complaining now, but if they say "it is for your health, for fighting covid", you will accept everything like good sheeps. Milgram experience, if autority say something, most are sheep, and if you accepted covid passport and restrictions you are part of the problem.
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
  COVID vaccination certificates are nothing interesting. My EU passport has my fingerprints and my face on the integrated chip and that's all going to be uploaded to some massive Schengen database. Half the websites I use in this country know my personal identity number and many interactions require ID. A certificate saying I got a jab is nothing to all this, and doesn't enable any interesting tracking that wasn't already happening.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    It merely normalises another means of control, and sets a behavioural precedent for similar such restrictions and documents in the future. As always the problem usually isn't with the very first use of anything, but what governments think they can get away with after testing the waters.
    - palmetieri2000 5y ago
      So does a Drivers License.
      - bigDinosaur 5y ago
        It is without precedent to have to show a vaccine pass to enter cafes in human history. I'm confident that we actually have set an entirely new precedent with them, and it's not a good one.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago
Havoc 5y ago
Given the open borders & ease with which people can move outside of the jurisdiction where a crime was committed that does make some sense. Still..huge amount of potential for problems & abuse
OtomotO 5y ago
Worry not, we are the good guys (TM), so only bad guys have to worry! Nevermind that in a few years Nazis could use that system for something else entirely... As an European by heart, I wish Europe would stop with such nonsense and grow some balls to go with its (theoretical) values
- retox 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >As an European by heart, I wish Europe would stop with such nonsense and grow some balls to go with its (theoretical) values But, think of the children (TM) /s
  - ttyprintk 5y ago
    Well, people are preoccupied with children with the recent abuse video of (reportedly arrested) Russian soldiers and small children in the war zone.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      I think you missed the the context here. The "think of the children" line is a cliché used in the West as a backdoor to justify the introduction of oppressive and invasive surveillance measures by governments, and if you try to oppose these measures, you can then be accused of being ok with children being harmed, so in the end there's no way you can win the argument and the surveillance measures are successfully pushed through. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
      - ttyprintk 5y ago
        Maybe that phrase can still be used sarcastically where the non-specificity of the victims makes debate inconclusive. But, Europe has unfortunately entered an era where we know precisely which nationality’s children are at risk.
Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
Technology seems to really help streamline the path to dystopia.
- brink 5y ago
  It concentrates power.
cm2187 5y ago
Not sure I understand the concerns. If it is used the same way fingerprints are used, it's not a massive privacy invasion. You are only registered to the database if you committed some crime, and searches in the database are only in relation to a specific crime. I am not seeing here a proposal for a chinese style face recognition on all CCTV in public transportation or something like that. And I think anyone who has played with a face recognition algorithm will agree that it cannot be used as evidence in court. But if it can help narrow down to a few suspects, why not?
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Because we know fully well that the people who use these systems are going ignore the probability of a false positive and just worship the oracle as if it infallible, as we are much too comfortable to offload our cognition on algorithms.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    I remember one master's graduate presenting his research and program using facial recognition to find offenders (I believe using phone while driving). When asked about false positives and their consequences, it was basically waved off and not many in the room were interested in the answer. This is the same country which is still handling a case where it had families fined because the system incorrectly flagged them for years (Netherlands, childcare benefit scandal). On top of these families still not being repaid, a lot of tax money is wasted on politicians talking about it without resolving the issue.
    - soundnote 5y ago
      I've noticed that people are increasingly comfortable with the idea of screwing over innocent people so long as the guilty are punished, and don't really value innocent until proven guilty anymore.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  Surveillance laws tend to gradually expand and very, very rarely get rolled back. Once the database is there, someone will bring up the proposal to apply it to some CCTV cameras. That will be shot down. Then someone will bring it up a few years later. Then a few years later it will actually happen. Then it will be slowly expanded. > And I think anyone who has played with a face recognition algorithm will agree that it cannot be used as evidence in court. Hope the court sees it the same.
retox 5y ago
The meme over the last decade has been "evidence based policing/medicine" causing me to ponder why there was ever anything BUT evidence policing/medicine. We're moving towards "algorithmic based policing".
- karpierz 5y ago
  The alternative to "evidence based medicine" is "biological plausibility", where you'd construct a model (say "humans have 4 humors") and reason about how the symptoms are caused via the model. So you might say: oh, high blood pressure causes the heart to be stressed, which causes heart attacks. So if we have the person eat less salt and drink more water, their blood pressure will go down, reducing their risk of heart attacks. In evidence-based medicine, the mechanism doesn't matter. You just need to show that X has an effect, it doesn't matter _why_ X has an effect. See here for more info: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8blgcc/has_ancient_medical_techniques_ever_proven/dxa1vkw/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8blgcc/has_a...
bsenftner 5y ago
This is going to cause fashion to adopt appearances similar to what one sees with a Google Image Search of "makeup illusions". Such makeup causes a human face to be unrecognizable as a human face to FR software. All it will take is such a fashion to catch on, and our world becomes significantly surreal.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  it won't because the counter culture will always lose against the technological system it tries to resist in the long run. resistance is allowed and encouraged because it helps to strengthen the system 8against dissent). any dissent is only a blip in the radar in the grand scheme of things. La Technique (Jacques Ellul) https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/ https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/
gentleman11 5y ago
Canada made it illegal to wear a mask while protesting a decade or so ago (a rule that was probably not enforced during the freedom convoy protests because of Covid). Imagine a world where every single protestor is on record forever as being at x and y events, leading to profiling and being turned down for jobs and future police harassment. Protesting anything is extremely dangerous from here on out
- questiondev 5y ago
  it happens all the time to people of color who get busted for weed in a non-legal state. it’s actually been this way for years in america, a lot of these overextending started from the red scare, terrorism but yeah a large part was based on the war on drugs which largely has been an expensive failure
  - ta_17354_tx 5y ago
    Why specify PoC? I have several non-PoC friends busted for minor possession (weed) while in grad school and found themselves unhireable upon graduation with masters of engineering degrees.
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      How does this work in practice? Do “all” companies do background checks that include criminal records?
      - dehugger 5y ago
        Every job I've gotten outside retail/customer service has done background checks. Criminal record is basically top of the list for what those checks are looking to uncover.
    - gumby 5y ago
      A simple glance at the statistics would show you why. The drug laws have race at their roots. If you don’t have time to look up the history I’ll give you an example: during the “crack cocaine epidemic” in the 80s and 90s the focus was on a version of cocaine mostly used by the poor and not on the use of the powdered stuff by the middle and upper classes — in fact that usage was celebrated. Oh but wait: I didn’t use the word “race” in that example. Just look at the wealth and access to the middle classes for Black people in the US and decide. Note: I haven’t looked at this for meth and fentanyl. Pot and cocaine in the beginning of the 20th century (the origin of the US recreational drug laws) were chosen because they were common the Black community at the time. I don’t doubt your experience (that of your friends I mean) but the burden is not spread uniformly.
blurbleblurble 5y ago
Face recognition is just the beginning. There are a whole array of biometric recognition techniques that are threatening to make anonymity completely obsolete.
ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
1984, here we come. I'm glad the UK got out of the EU because of things like this.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  You mean this UK? MET police uses facial recognition. > https://www.wired.co.uk/article/met-police-facial-recognition-new https://www.wired.co.uk/article/met-police-facial-recognitio... The UK has more CCTV cameras per capita than any other country, bar China. > https://www.yahoo.com/video/britain-more-surveillance-cameras-per-151641361.html https://www.yahoo.com/video/britain-more-surveillance-camera... UK parliament sneaks in new live facial recognition rules. > https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/08/23/uk-government-accused-of-sneaking-through-new-live-facial-recognition-rules/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/08/23/uk-go...
  - belter 5y ago
    They are on the next phase already. Take your hands of the keyboard right now, we sent agents to prevently arrest you: "Crime prediction software 'adopted by 14 UK police forces'" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47118229 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47118229 "The dangerous rise of policing by algorithm" https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/the-dangerous-rise-of-policing-by-algorithm https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/th...
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    You mean this UK? "Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26430266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26430266 "UK’s secret, ongoing mass surveillance rigorously frisked by watchdog (arstechnica.co.uk) 2016" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060832 "UK Home Secretary considering removing right to anonymity on social media (independent.co.uk)" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898249 "UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable" (reuters.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959953 "Bill that curtails ability to protest in England and Wales passes second reading" - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/16/bill-that-curtails-ability-to-protest-in-uk-passes-its-second-reading https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/16/bill-that-cu...
Hardik_Shah 5y ago

Good news everyone, another dragnet for us to enjoy! /s

In America, people are paying to buy Ring and Nest cameras to further the privately built surveillance state. The best part is that the most common reason for doing so is package theft, but police won't really do anything about your stolen Amazon package, so what do cameras really facilitate?

ahallock 5y ago
We have people in our neighborhood posing as repairmen trying to get inside houses. I would like to have a buffer between me and the person at the door. Police might not do anything about stolen packages, but they will take incidents like this seriously. I also show the footage to my neighbors to give them a heads up.

belter 5y ago

Don't worry. You will be required to accept 74 cookies and read 3 privacy policies before they can scan your face.

endorphine 5y ago
Yeah but this won't matter when they make it mandatory.
- jq-r 5y ago
  Plus, you'll still have to accept those cookies and privacy policies...
jurschreuder 5y ago
Luckily in our lifetime we won't have to worry about this since it's a government IT project so it will be way over budget and way over the deadline before it will eventually be canceled

i_like_waiting 5y ago

> Pictures of people’s faces shouldn’t be combined in one giant central database, the official proposal says, but police forces will be linked together through a “central router.” This router won’t store any data, the European Commission spokesperson says, adding that it will “only act as a message broker” between nations. From professional perspective, interesting to see real relevant use case of data mesh structure. From practical use case, what difference does it make for anybody outside IT?

bigDinosaur 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just the same abstraction as the Internet? Lots of separate databases linked together by a router (well, millions)? With something like Google as an obvious way to search and index it? What exactly do you mean by 'data mesh structure'?
jq-r 5y ago
So instead of one big centralised database they'll make couple of smaller ones which are all connected. In other words, same result, different implementation.
- FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
  No, not really. For example, if one of the databases get hacked they can't just dump the pictures of all european citizens, just from the database they got access too It's slightly less worse.
SiempreViernes 5y ago
The obvious one is that each national level server will be firmly under the national data protection authority, and so can be ordered censor or even completely withhold replies to (some) outside requests.
matthewdgreen 5y ago
There are subtle differences in the sense that individual databases can be detached, queries can be monitored and throttled by local authorities, etc. It will be much harder to have a single breach leak the whole database (e.g., the OPM hack [1].) It also makes automated surveillance (e.g., "track this person around and constantly notify the secret police of their location") much harder to implement without at least a few different countries cooperating to implement the system. However, as far as the core functionality ("look up a face, find a match from any country's data") the operation of this federated database will be nearly identical. I suspect that politicians/regulators either don't fully understand this, or else they don't want their constituents to understand this. [1] https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-incidents/ https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/cybersecurity-incidents/

zxcb1 5y ago

Should only be permitted for serial criminals; debasing the rights of ordinary people. Debasement is a trend and possibly a current thing; do not support

simulate-me 5y ago
Isn’t any system a debasement of the rights of ordinary people? Their faces will still be scanned. There may be false positives. The definition of “criminal” may change.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Unfortunately, this is likely to result in charging people with crimes more frequently so they can be considered serial criminals. Been to three unlawful assemblies? Well, now you are a serial criminal, and we'll track you everywhere.

bamboozled 5y ago

Why? Why are they doing that? To get the criminals is it? Ha what a joke, there's criminals getting away with murder right now look at Putin, what has Europe done about him for the last 30 years?

hans1729 5y ago
Because we let institutions run wild and don't have auto-expiration dates for laws/measurements that restrict civil liberties. I elaborated further on this elsewhere in the thread, maybe that helps clearing things up.
- ilammy 5y ago
  Auto-expiration dates won't help, the duration will be extended ad infinitum, because think of children. Unless you require quantifiable evidence of law's efficacy and causality to make an extension, which is quite a proposition given how every other law is unconditional. Even then, the data can be cooked.
  - peregren 5y ago
    In Ireland the legislation enabling government restrictions for covid expired, and the government who enacted that legislation have to desire to renew it. So it's not always extended ad infinitum.
Heyso 5y ago
What has Europe done about yemen, donbass, Syria, Lybia, Irak, etc. What has Europe done for itself regarding the scamdemic ? "The bad guy is dumb, he think I am the bad guy when he is the bad guy". You are part of the peoples that have decided in advance they are on the "good" side, that they have "truth from media and gouv, that never ever would lie to me". Ever thougth about putting the "I am definetly on the good side because I am european, and european is the definition of good" into question ?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

inductive_magic 5y ago

Just another step towards dystopia. After the reformations of german police laws in the last years, starting with Bavaria, I dropped hopes that the combination of state of law with civil liberties may be self-sustainable. The drive to sustain themselves is inherent to any institution we forge, and the reward incentives within those institutions simply have _zero_ alignment with civil liberties. The drive to power, relevance, funding and self-sustain goes _directly_ against civil liberties and privacy. If you understand this dynamic, you understand that the rest is merely a matter of time and precedent cases used as justifications for further extensions of the reach. Multiple problems: - inherent dynamics of self-sustain and growth in any institution - people drawn to enforce law-enforcement value stability and security over social ideals, civil liberty and privacy - people drawn to power (i.e. the top of the food chain in those institutions) are mostly sociopaths who will instrumentalize every tool at their disposal to better their own position - democracy has no protection against the populist appeal of what feels like security. politics will go one step further ad infinitum, and anyone who is against measurements which the majority of the population can be sold on as "this is good for you" is consequentially not one of the good guys. It doesn't matter wether all the smart people are extremely vary of this, because smarts don't win elections so what I'm trying to say is, yeah, we're fucked. I guess this is just baked into Europe, as we're not running on the model of "liberty for all". The upside is, we get decent healthcare, I guess. Meh.

black_13 5y ago
[dead]

Heyso 5y ago

How many accepted a pass for covid ? You guys complaining now, but if they say "it is for your health, for fighting covid", you will accept everything like good sheeps. Milgram experience, if autority say something, most are sheep, and if you accepted covid passport and restrictions you are part of the problem.

TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
COVID vaccination certificates are nothing interesting. My EU passport has my fingerprints and my face on the integrated chip and that's all going to be uploaded to some massive Schengen database. Half the websites I use in this country know my personal identity number and many interactions require ID. A certificate saying I got a jab is nothing to all this, and doesn't enable any interesting tracking that wasn't already happening.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  It merely normalises another means of control, and sets a behavioural precedent for similar such restrictions and documents in the future. As always the problem usually isn't with the very first use of anything, but what governments think they can get away with after testing the waters.
  - palmetieri2000 5y ago
    So does a Drivers License.
    - bigDinosaur 5y ago
      It is without precedent to have to show a vaccine pass to enter cafes in human history. I'm confident that we actually have set an entirely new precedent with them, and it's not a good one.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

Havoc 5y ago

Given the open borders & ease with which people can move outside of the jurisdiction where a crime was committed that does make some sense. Still..huge amount of potential for problems & abuse

OtomotO 5y ago

Worry not, we are the good guys (TM), so only bad guys have to worry! Nevermind that in a few years Nazis could use that system for something else entirely... As an European by heart, I wish Europe would stop with such nonsense and grow some balls to go with its (theoretical) values

retox 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>As an European by heart, I wish Europe would stop with such nonsense and grow some balls to go with its (theoretical) values But, think of the children (TM) /s
- ttyprintk 5y ago
  Well, people are preoccupied with children with the recent abuse video of (reportedly arrested) Russian soldiers and small children in the war zone.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    I think you missed the the context here. The "think of the children" line is a cliché used in the West as a backdoor to justify the introduction of oppressive and invasive surveillance measures by governments, and if you try to oppose these measures, you can then be accused of being ok with children being harmed, so in the end there's no way you can win the argument and the surveillance measures are successfully pushed through. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
    - ttyprintk 5y ago
      Maybe that phrase can still be used sarcastically where the non-specificity of the victims makes debate inconclusive. But, Europe has unfortunately entered an era where we know precisely which nationality’s children are at risk.

Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago

Technology seems to really help streamline the path to dystopia.

brink 5y ago
It concentrates power.

cm2187 5y ago

Not sure I understand the concerns. If it is used the same way fingerprints are used, it's not a massive privacy invasion. You are only registered to the database if you committed some crime, and searches in the database are only in relation to a specific crime. I am not seeing here a proposal for a chinese style face recognition on all CCTV in public transportation or something like that. And I think anyone who has played with a face recognition algorithm will agree that it cannot be used as evidence in court. But if it can help narrow down to a few suspects, why not?

ganzuul 5y ago
Because we know fully well that the people who use these systems are going ignore the probability of a false positive and just worship the oracle as if it infallible, as we are much too comfortable to offload our cognition on algorithms.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  I remember one master's graduate presenting his research and program using facial recognition to find offenders (I believe using phone while driving). When asked about false positives and their consequences, it was basically waved off and not many in the room were interested in the answer. This is the same country which is still handling a case where it had families fined because the system incorrectly flagged them for years (Netherlands, childcare benefit scandal). On top of these families still not being repaid, a lot of tax money is wasted on politicians talking about it without resolving the issue.
  - soundnote 5y ago
    I've noticed that people are increasingly comfortable with the idea of screwing over innocent people so long as the guilty are punished, and don't really value innocent until proven guilty anymore.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Surveillance laws tend to gradually expand and very, very rarely get rolled back. Once the database is there, someone will bring up the proposal to apply it to some CCTV cameras. That will be shot down. Then someone will bring it up a few years later. Then a few years later it will actually happen. Then it will be slowly expanded. > And I think anyone who has played with a face recognition algorithm will agree that it cannot be used as evidence in court. Hope the court sees it the same.

retox 5y ago

The meme over the last decade has been "evidence based policing/medicine" causing me to ponder why there was ever anything BUT evidence policing/medicine. We're moving towards "algorithmic based policing".

karpierz 5y ago
The alternative to "evidence based medicine" is "biological plausibility", where you'd construct a model (say "humans have 4 humors") and reason about how the symptoms are caused via the model. So you might say: oh, high blood pressure causes the heart to be stressed, which causes heart attacks. So if we have the person eat less salt and drink more water, their blood pressure will go down, reducing their risk of heart attacks. In evidence-based medicine, the mechanism doesn't matter. You just need to show that X has an effect, it doesn't matter _why_ X has an effect. See here for more info: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8blgcc/has_ancient_medical_techniques_ever_proven/dxa1vkw/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8blgcc/has_a...

bsenftner 5y ago

This is going to cause fashion to adopt appearances similar to what one sees with a Google Image Search of "makeup illusions". Such makeup causes a human face to be unrecognizable as a human face to FR software. All it will take is such a fashion to catch on, and our world becomes significantly surreal.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
it won't because the counter culture will always lose against the technological system it tries to resist in the long run. resistance is allowed and encouraged because it helps to strengthen the system 8against dissent). any dissent is only a blip in the radar in the grand scheme of things. La Technique (Jacques Ellul) https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/ https://ellul.org/themes/ellul-and-technique/

gentleman11 5y ago

Canada made it illegal to wear a mask while protesting a decade or so ago (a rule that was probably not enforced during the freedom convoy protests because of Covid). Imagine a world where every single protestor is on record forever as being at x and y events, leading to profiling and being turned down for jobs and future police harassment. Protesting anything is extremely dangerous from here on out

questiondev 5y ago
it happens all the time to people of color who get busted for weed in a non-legal state. it’s actually been this way for years in america, a lot of these overextending started from the red scare, terrorism but yeah a large part was based on the war on drugs which largely has been an expensive failure
- ta_17354_tx 5y ago
  Why specify PoC? I have several non-PoC friends busted for minor possession (weed) while in grad school and found themselves unhireable upon graduation with masters of engineering degrees.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    How does this work in practice? Do “all” companies do background checks that include criminal records?
    - dehugger 5y ago
      Every job I've gotten outside retail/customer service has done background checks. Criminal record is basically top of the list for what those checks are looking to uncover.
  - gumby 5y ago
    A simple glance at the statistics would show you why. The drug laws have race at their roots. If you don’t have time to look up the history I’ll give you an example: during the “crack cocaine epidemic” in the 80s and 90s the focus was on a version of cocaine mostly used by the poor and not on the use of the powdered stuff by the middle and upper classes — in fact that usage was celebrated. Oh but wait: I didn’t use the word “race” in that example. Just look at the wealth and access to the middle classes for Black people in the US and decide. Note: I haven’t looked at this for meth and fentanyl. Pot and cocaine in the beginning of the 20th century (the origin of the US recreational drug laws) were chosen because they were common the Black community at the time. I don’t doubt your experience (that of your friends I mean) but the burden is not spread uniformly.

blurbleblurble 5y ago

Face recognition is just the beginning. There are a whole array of biometric recognition techniques that are threatening to make anonymity completely obsolete.

ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago

1984, here we come. I'm glad the UK got out of the EU because of things like this.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
You mean this UK? MET police uses facial recognition. > https://www.wired.co.uk/article/met-police-facial-recognition-new https://www.wired.co.uk/article/met-police-facial-recognitio... The UK has more CCTV cameras per capita than any other country, bar China. > https://www.yahoo.com/video/britain-more-surveillance-cameras-per-151641361.html https://www.yahoo.com/video/britain-more-surveillance-camera... UK parliament sneaks in new live facial recognition rules. > https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/08/23/uk-government-accused-of-sneaking-through-new-live-facial-recognition-rules/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2021/08/23/uk-go...
- belter 5y ago
  They are on the next phase already. Take your hands of the keyboard right now, we sent agents to prevently arrest you: "Crime prediction software 'adopted by 14 UK police forces'" https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47118229 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47118229 "The dangerous rise of policing by algorithm" https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/the-dangerous-rise-of-policing-by-algorithm https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/th...
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  You mean this UK? "Two UK Broadband ISPs Trial New Internet Snooping System" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26430266 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26430266 "UK’s secret, ongoing mass surveillance rigorously frisked by watchdog (arstechnica.co.uk) 2016" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060832 "UK Home Secretary considering removing right to anonymity on social media (independent.co.uk)" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28898249 "UK Home Secretary says encryption on messaging services is unacceptable" (reuters.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13959953 "Bill that curtails ability to protest in England and Wales passes second reading" - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/16/bill-that-curtails-ability-to-protest-in-uk-passes-its-second-reading https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/16/bill-that-cu...

Hardik_Shah 5y ago