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House Democrats debut new bill to limit US police use of facial recognition
- findalex 4y agoHaven't read but I'm gonna guess they don't consider federal law enforcement "police".
- tb_technical 4y agoGood. We need to dismantle the tools that can be used to oppress the masses.
- deltree7 4y agoDo you have evidence that this tool is used to oppress masses in the US?
- pessimizer 4y agoDo you accept that facial recognition can be used to oppress the masses in the US?
- deltree7 4y agoAgain where is the evidence? Except manufactured imaginary persecution by HNers?
- donatj 4y agoThe qualification was "can be", not "is". I think it's pretty self-evident that it can be.
- deltree7 4y agoIt is not. We have a great judicial system and technology has always favored innocent to prove their innocence rather than it's absence. More Technology => More Evidence => More chance of acquittal of the innocent. Technology also helps deter and catch crime It's really sad that these psuedo-privacy and soft-on-crime policies are destroying America far greater than imaginary oppression dreamed up by privileged white sitting comfortably in their homes with cushy jobs.
- donatj 4y ago> We have a great judicial system and technology has always favored innocent to prove their innocence rather than it's absence. None of this has been true for a very long time. Wrongly accused almost always take a plea deal these days. If you don't have money for a fancy lawyer, you're almost certainly taking a plea deal whether you did it or not. This is spoken like someone who has never had any dealings with police or the legal system. All that said, I don't know what any of that has to do with my original comment. OP said > We need to dismantle the tools that can be used to oppress the masses and you replied > Do you have evidence that this tool is used to oppress masses in the US? can be was the original qualifier. Is doesn't matter. Can be matters. You don't give a baby a loaded gun and then say "but is it currently shooting you?". There's no logical argument that a government could not possibly under any circumstance be physically capable of misusing this, so "It is not" is false.
- infamouscow 4y agoEmpirical evidence isn't necessary for politicians to make decisions. This has been true since the time of the Greeks and applies to every politician in every party, without exception.
- tb_technical 4y agoDonatj is on point. I'm wary of government power and want to destroy tools that can be used to oppress people.
- NaturalPhallacy 4y agoA lot of the things that came with the Patriot act have been used predominantly to arrest drug dealers.
- deltree7 4y agoYou mean people breaking the law were arrested and the crime rate of US was rapidly declining? Sure, we can't have that, right? What we want is smash-and-grab, locked-down-shops, rampant crime. But hey most of the HNers are sitting at their comfortable suburban home with cushy jobs. None of this affects them, only imaginary persecution of them
- NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
- nemo44x 4y agoAll this will do is open an industry for private camera and facial recognition private enterprise to sell data to police forces. Building owners can work with the company to mount hardware that feeds into the database and compares faces to public records and other observations. This data is sold to police forces and governments and really anyone that would like the information. 1a protects this. So at least democrats are all about letting the free market do it.
- dangerlibrary 4y agoOpen? That's the state of the world. It has been for a couple years, now. Police don't have their own tech, they just have subscriptions to clearview. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/facial-recognition-clearview-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/faci...
- Spivak 4y agoWorded correctly you can legally prevent police from accessing certain data even though 3rd parties. 1a doesn’t mean shit when it comes so what’s admissible in court. The law is about what police are allowed to hear not what people are allowed to say.
- exabrial 4y agoHow about license plate scanners too? And Civil forfeiture?
- mminer237 4y agoWhat limitation would you want for license plate scanners? I know in my area they've been the key to solving half a dozen murders in the last year or two since they've been introduced.
- exabrial 4y agoThe ends do not justify the means, ever. Repeat this ad infinum.
- mminer237 4y agoOkay, but that doesn't answer the question. Would you want a complete ban? Privacy is a pretty nebulous concept. You obviously have to draw the line between privacy and security somewhere. You can say the ends don't ever matter, but generally things are a balancing act. Bodycams obviously reduce people's privacy, but the accountability provided was considered to justify it. Metal detectors obviously reduce people's privacy, but people justify that by the ends too. Typically in the US, we give up privacy rights to things done in public and not to things done in private unless if a judge agrees to a warrant. It's already legal for police to send out an amber alert and have everyone look for a license plate. How is that practically any different than flagging it in a computer and having it alert you automatically when it's viewable in a public place?
- an1sotropy 4y agoThe one-pager [1] ends with some points about auditing, but when I search for "audit" int the full-text [2], I'm wanting more details. It refers to GAO audits, and ensuring that arrest photographs are not stored, but I would think the purpose of auditing is a more general and quantitative assessment of whether the system is working as intended, such as: - measurements of accuracy rates, using new photos of people known to be in database, and people known to not be in database, and measurements of how accuracy is related to race. - records of who is accessing the database, in the context of which investigation. The one pager outlines things you can't do, but within whatever the allowed uses are, there may be fishy harvesting things going on, and how will you notice that? - facial-recognition technology is only as good as its software interface, and how will the development and versioning of that software be audited? what will prohibit vendors from including secret APIs what law-enforcement can use in a way that side-steps auditing? [1] https://lieu.house.gov/sites/lieu.house.gov/files/FRT%20One%20Pager%20FINAL%20.pdf https://lieu.house.gov/sites/lieu.house.gov/files/FRT%20One%... [2] https://lieu.house.gov/sites/lieu.house.gov/files/Lieu%20FRT%20Bill%20FINAL.pdf https://lieu.house.gov/sites/lieu.house.gov/files/Lieu%20FRT...
- amluto 4y agoI am not at all in favor of this. If the police can legally obtain information, they should be allowed to use it. IMO the right fix is at the other end: severely restrict the use of facial recognition for everyone. I don’t want corporations to have powers exceeding that of the police, thank you very much.
- Ajedi32 4y agoI think it's a bit silly to target face recognition. The data's already there, so to say "yeah you can have all this video footage, and you can review the footage all you want, you just aren't allowed to use a computer to analyze it" is dumb. To the extent that further privacy protections are needed they should be enforced at the point of data collection/retention, not at the point of analysis.
- vorpalhex 4y agoIt costs a lot of hours to watch cctv footage. Tracking everyone who ever is on cctv footage without face/gait/whatever recognition is impossible. We do want the police to do their jobs. We don't want them to be an intelligence apparatus.
- omniglottal 4y agoIf you outlaw facial recognition, only outlaws will recognize faces. Consider how gun control laws have some efficacy because not everyone is a skilled gunsmith with machining equipment. Someone with a mill/lathe in their garage can still make them. Software allows even unskilled people to do the thing. This can be performed today with off-the-shelf, existing hatdware and open-source software. Attempting to outlaw its use is about like trying to close Pandora's box. The horses are already out of the barn on this one...
- amluto 4y agoOn the other hand, if you outlaw the collection, retention, and sale, transfer, or other trafficking in information derived from large scale face recognition, then the availability of the information will decrease radically. People deploy or obtain access to large scale privacy-invading data sets because they can legally monetize it. If it becomes illegal to collect the data and illegal to be on either side of a transaction, then the information becomes a liability instead of an asset. And outlaws don’t have enormous fleets of cameras.
- egberts1 4y ago
- Gunax 4y agoBut police (well, anyone, really) can still take a photo of protestors and examine it manually, right? The technology is just a tool that makes it easier, but in principle changes nothing. I guess my point is that there isn't any fundamental change here, we have just made things easier. Maybe before, compiling facial databases if everyine was just impractical, and now it's easy. On a scarier note: anyone can do this. You can tell the police to pinky-promise they wont use it, but nothing stops me or you or a corporation from taking photos and identifying the people on them.
- jonathankoren 4y agoThe difference is scale is a difference in kind though. The thing I'm worried about is parallel construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- rightbyte 4y agoIs it just me. Or did I just read some HN post of the oposite. Like use it to deanonymize people?
- dvhh 4y agoTarget different people - "Peaceful" protestors vs - "Violent" "anonymous" cyberstalker
- Eleison23 4y agoWho needs face recognition when we're all carrying around fingerprintable electronic devices anyway. Well, I suppose Congress has no shortage of red herrings to energize their base and cause public debate.
- rr888 4y ago> The use of facial recognition has grown in recent years, despite fears that the technology is flawed, disproportionately misidentifies people of color (which has led to wrongful arrests) and harms civil liberties, but is still deployed against protesters, for investigating minor crimes and used to justify arrests of individuals from a single face match. I feel like I'm the only peron where who doesn't see a problem with Police having access to facial recognition. Its not like anything used right now is accurate, eg eyewitnesses. If it really is unreliable it shouldn't be used as a sole basis to arrest people, I'd expect a civil suit if that really happened. However just because some police mis-used it doesn't mean it should be banned.
- wang_li 4y agoYou’re not the only person who thinks this. It’s just a tool, people who think police shouldn’t properly use a useful tool are morons.
- akira2501 4y agoI agree.. I think the length of the time the data is stored and who has access to it and whether that access is audited or not are the important factors to legislate on. If it can still be useful while protecting the rights of the citizens, then why should the police not use it? If it can't be useful with these protections in place, then why would the police spend money on it?
- kevingadd 4y agoThe problem here is the definition of "proper", and many people use a very broad definition of it where if a police officer is doing a thing it can't possibly be improper. This is often referred to as "qualified immunity"
- ok_dad 4y ago> people who think police shouldn’t properly use a useful tool are morons I agree, I think police should *properly* use their useful tools, but I don't trust them to use nearly any tool properly, so I would prefer they have a limited set of tools that still get the job done if they apply themselves but don't allow massive scales of mis-use. Unfortunately, cops are lazy and want to pick the lowest hanging fruit, like pulling over shitty looking cars and such.
- narrator 4y agoThe FBI will have this power in spades though. They also have a 98% conviction rate. I think the federal government might be worried that local police could get too good at their jobs thanks to technology and that would create a state/federal power imbalance.
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoThe sad thing is that our constitutional right to privacy is nowhere near as broad as our modern understanding, and that's exactly why the Supreme Court was able to get away with the crap it did when they ruled against the precedent Roe v Wade. Not only should we have an amendment that ensures that we have a reasonable right to privacy, but it should include a right to privacy from the government even if the data collected is by a third party.
- int_19h 4y agoFederal legislation on pretty much any "hot button" political topic is practically guaranteed to not pass on the federal level these days. And anything having to do with regulating police is one of such topics. This isn't going anywhere.
- cavisne 4y agoAnd the story above this one on HN “US government plans to develop AI that can unmask anonymous writers” This isn’t about individual liberties, it’s about centralizing enforcement at the federal level, where federal politicians can control it.
- hayst4ck 4y agoBetween devices like stringrays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker), police drones, license plate scanners in police cars, RFID tags associated with cars, toll stations, and the pervasive "divine eye," (ubiquitous cameras) that can be seen in a large number of intersections, I feel like this bill is as disingenuous as the bills designed to regulate congress person's stock trades. Why do you need facial recognition when you have access to stingrays or IMEI and telco side geolocation info? Why is the law explicitly banning facial recognition and not addressing the philosophical underpinnings of why facial recognition in the hands of law enforcement is bad?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tinus_hn 4y agoIt would surprise me if this wasn’t written in such a way it was 100% certain never to pass. There isn’t a lot of politicians that don’t fall for the ‘but what about the turrrists! Think about the children! But drugs!’ arguments made by law enforcement stooges when their power is in danger of being curtailed.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago> It would also require police departments and agencies to purge databases of photos of children who were subsequently released without charge, whose charges were dismissed or were acquitted. Feeling weird about the notion that law enforcement keeps photos of children who have had run-ins with the law but ultimately weren't convicted of any crime. Why would they even need to keep such photographs? Data retention == legal liability.
- giantg2 4y ago"Data retention == legal liability" The government has ensured to give itself very little liability.
- stormbrew 4y agoYou assume police experience anything that can be called legal liability. There is rarely any consequence for abuse of power by police, because for the most part the people tasked with investigating any such abuses are either police or people who have a vested interest in keeping police happy. So they keep any data they can and hide any data that makes them look bad. It's always useful to them to point out the kid they just shot might have stolen a pack of gum in the past.
- skrowl 4y agoThis is the correct take here. Law enforcement, at least in the United States, often operates above the law, particular at the federal level. Pass all the laws you want, but they'll continue getting away with abuses of power.
- ss108 4y agoMore true at the local level than the Federal.
- tcmart14 4y agoIt very much can be. The sheriff in the county I grew up in used to search people's property without a warrant and they weren't home. I remember my buddy's dad when I was a teen was growing a little marijuana deep in his cornfield. Buddy and I were home, his parents gone. Sheriff knocks on the door with the plants at his feet to tell us to tell his dad that he better not catch him growing anymore. I also remember others having similar experiences with them coming home to the sheriff looking through their sheds for a stolen ATV. No warrant, no nothing. And nobody ever did anything about him because he was too well connected with town leadership and county leadership. Small and rural areas can be heavily screwed up because the sheriff and many of the county commissioners or city councilmen or other people in local governance all went to highschool together. Nothing like an old good ol' boys network.
- HWR_14 4y agoThis seems like a good rule. Warrants are good. Outlawing using it to ID peaceful protestors is good. While the points about facial recognition misidentifying black people are true, I'd rather it rely only on the civil rights issues associated with it working and not tie it to misidentifying minorities. That's a situation where in 5 years "it works on black people now, kay" is the argument to overturn the law.
- colechristensen 4y agoAt this point I’m thinking “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind” would be a good constitutional amendment. That is, if a reasonable number of humans couldn’t do it, the government can’t do it with computers against its population.
- jrochkind1 4y agohow is a machine that does something "a reasonable number of humans couldn't do" "in the likeness of a human mind"?
- colechristensen 4y agoMany AI systems these days are adequate counterfeit humans in ways that adding machines and spreadsheets (and advanced systems that reduce to these things) are not. In other words, computers interpreting things in ways that counterfeit humans or computers generating things that counterfeit humans needs to be banned for government use. I’m not talking about banning the steam shovel but systems where it becomes difficult to determine whether or not a human did it.
- everforward 4y agoI think that's probably far too broad. E.g. I don't have a problem with the IRS using computers to calculate how much people owe in taxes based on the info they collect. The number of people it would take to do that manually might be unreasonable. W-2 info has to be to the IRS by Jan 31st, taxes are due April 15th, that's 51 days to generate a couple hundred million tax return numbers. Federal payroll is something else that would probably take an unreasonable number of people to manage manually.
- battery_glasses 4y agoI would love to see more bills where Democrats provide more police funding but tie it to accountability reforms like this one. Seems like a winning move.
- mrguyorama 4y agoAmerican police are funded locally, often with large budgets, and would happily turn away that extra federal funding and associated accountability. Even more, lots and lots of conservative politicians and talking heads would make a point about how they fought off "big government" and "democrat" control of their local police departments, and you'd be hard pressed to convince people not already pissed at their local PD that such a situation is a bad one.
- mistrial9 4y agobut, since covid times, many small towns are legitimately in financial distress.. especially around pension commitments.. its a slow-moving train wreck
- jrochkind1 4y agoIf they had to turn away things like surplus military gear and federal dollars for training in military tactics because they weren't willing to take the accountability measures -- that'd be progress.
- YeBanKo 4y agoPolice really rarely needs military surplus gear anyway. Neither do they need training in the military tactics, unless they want to treat policing streets as a battlefield, which is very concerning if they do.
- jrochkind1 4y agoOh, they do, pretty widely, and it is concerning. https://theintercept.com/2014/08/14/militarization-u-s-police-dragged-light-horrors-ferguson/ https://theintercept.com/2014/08/14/militarization-u-s-polic...