6 ms·

I'm unclear about the rationale for banning facial recognition here (other than sour grapes about the technology preventing them personally from attending a con

I'm unclear about the rationale for banning facial recognition here (other than sour grapes about the technology preventing them personally from attending a concert). Are they arguing against the concept of looking for a particular human face on a video feed? Then it's completely illogical to ban automated ways of doing so and allow the old-fashioned eyeballs-on-screens method. In other words, the very concept of trying to identify someone in a crowd at an event ought to be illegal. Or is it merely the effectiveness, brought about by facial recognition algorithms, that they object to? In other words, go ahead and have humans do it very ineffectively, that's somehow not against my rights, it's only when it actually works that it becomes a Violation Of My Human Rights. Not a great argument either.

woodruffw 4y ago
I don’t know why you think that the law must allow every technique, so long as a basic one is always functionally available. The right to own a small gun does not promote the right to own a howitzer. (Put another way: it’s perfectly ordinary for the courts to rule on methods themselves.)
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  In your gun analogy, there's some rationale about the end goal of owning the weapon. A handgun can plausibly be owned for personal self defence, a howitzer cannot. What is the analogous argument with facial recognition? Only that it works better than the non-automated method (more accurate, but especially more cost effective). It is either okay to pick undesirable customers out of a crowd after (or perhaps in the process) of granting them entry, and kicking them out. Or it's not okay. Whether I use a room full of employees, a bigger room full of underpaid "interns", or a computer algorithm in a small box to do the matching is a detail of implementation.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    The argument would be either (1) that automated facial recognition goes above and beyond the reasonable requirements of the facility, representing an unnecessary intrusion into a person’s private life, (2) that the same does unacceptable harm in the public sphere, or (3) that its particular application is capricious and clearly represents an attempt to stifle the right to seek legal recourse. Any of these would be sufficient, and may or may not be convincing to a judge.
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      I still fail to see the uniqueness, as it were, of automated facial recognition. In 1 and 3, what changes if a human being either looks at your face on a screen or looks into your face attentively at the turnstile, and then matches it using a big old binder with photos? Just the effectiveness of the method? If you're arguing 3, surely the argument has nothing to do with the technology used to identify you and kick you out to stifle your methodology of obtaining evidence outside the court-approved methods of discovery, it is the act of kicking you out that is in itself an issue. If you're arguing 1, I'd say your private life is not being intruded upon in any fashion that's new. You chose to go to a public place, so it is unreasonable to expect that no one might try to identify you based on your facial characteristics. Not sure what to make of 2 without further elaboration. I can sort of steel-man a coherent argument to this effect when it comes to government surveillance, but I don't think it'll apply to a private entertainment venue.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    Weird how you act as if it was always possible, yet it has not begun to occur until recently, with the application of facial recognition. Must be some sort of weird coincidence, right? What reason do you propose?
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      >Weird how you act as if it was always possible, yet it has not begun to occur until recently, with the application of facial recognition. While I can't claim to know for certain about the goings on in casino security rooms, I've seen films from pre-facial-recognition era featuring attentive personnel browsing through dozens of CCTV cams, with binders full of photos of undesirables within arms reach.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        We aren't talking about Casino rooms though? We are talking about MSG and you are proposing that it's been a trivial thing for MSG to do since, I guess photographs have existed? So, it's on you, not me to establish that. I think it's a pretty ridiculous proposition that you've offered. I think the fact that it hasn't been a problem yet, until facial recognition was used, demonstrates that your pushback is baseless.
        kspacewalk2 4y ago
        We're talking about venues with a massive number of customers and a blacklist, so I fail to see why a casino is special for the purposes of this discussion. If you go back and re-read the article a bit more attentively, I think you'll find examples from the early 20th century onward of this having been a problem. Without agreeing or disagreeing with the idea that such venues (whether casinos or concert halls, the distinction being irrelevant at least to me) ought to be summarily disallowed to ban customers - nothing changed with facial recognition other than their ability to do this a bit better. At least I can still grow a beard or put on one of those funky anti-recognition glasses from Hong Kong, though I think I won't try that at a casino.
joshuaheard 4y ago
From the original story, the person was barred after she purchased a ticket, travelled to New York, and entered the venue. She was with her child and a group of children from the child's school, along with their parents. She was confused, embarrassed, and humiliated for being singled out and kicked out of the venue in front of the group. She said it wouldn't have been so bad if they had just denied her a ticket. It would have saved her all the time, expense, and embarrassment. However, that is the problem inherent in using facial recognition in this way.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  >However, that is the problem inherent in using facial recognition in this way. Would it have all been a-okay if an employee "manually" spotted her face on a CCTV feed and matched to a physical binder with lawyers' photos? No? Then this has nothing whatsoever to do with facial recognition itself.
  - neaden 4y ago
    The sheer scale facial recognition allows makes it different yes. You could ban millions of individuals with automatic facial recognition which you simply can't do manually.
    - kspacewalk2 4y ago
      Banning millions is objectionable while banning dozens is okay, purely due to numbers involved? I am trying to find this argument coherent in any way and failing. Maybe someone can help me out.
      - fivefives55555 4y ago
        I'm having the same exact issue. I don't understand the argument that many here seem to implicitly be making, that "businesses should be allowed to ban as many people as they can without using automated technology". First of all, the question is 'why?' Why should a business be allowed to ban a person so long as they're not using technology to do so? The next question is, this would still allow a big business like MSG to ban significantly more people than a smaller business, just by virtue of being able to hire more security staff.
josephcsible 4y ago
> I'm unclear about the rationale for banning facial recognition here I don't think facial recognition needs to be banned. The two things that need to be banned are denying people access to events after you already took their money for admission to them, and denying people access to events for what their co-workers did.
- freejazz 4y ago
  They can't buy the tickets directly from MSG, so they never gave money to MSG. So that can't be the reason either. Would it be fair to prohibit entry to the attys that did sue MSG? Even though attys just represent the interests of their clients?
  - xp84 4y ago
    It really seems like the intent of that is to make it so that people who have been harmed by M.S.G. won't be able to find an attorney next time. Which is a very scumbag gangster type of behavior, so I'm completely happy to have it be smacked down violently by the law.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      I totally agree. Especially as a NYC-based attorney, that loves the Rangers, concerts at MSG, and is suing a close business partner of MSG.
- kspacewalk2 4y ago
  >denying people access to events after you already took their money for admission to them What if you discover fraud or criminality after the ticket is sold but before entry? Leave this lawyer tempest in a teapot aside for the moment, I'm talking unambiguous crime. >denying people access to events for what their co-workers did Say I'm known to be employed by the Lawyers for The Right to Throw Octopi at Hockey Players Coalition, but haven't yet thrown my first octopus. Why can you not act proactively to prevent nuisance? Employment at a particular organization is not protected status, like race or sexual orientation would be. Also, what constitutes an event? If there's a trade show or a product unveiling I don't want certain competitors to attend, why should I have to grant them access? Other than you being in rather narrowly specified groups, if I don't want your money, I should be allowed to refuse it.

woodruffw 4y ago

I don’t know why you think that the law must allow every technique, so long as a basic one is always functionally available. The right to own a small gun does not promote the right to own a howitzer. (Put another way: it’s perfectly ordinary for the courts to rule on methods themselves.)

kspacewalk2 4y ago
In your gun analogy, there's some rationale about the end goal of owning the weapon. A handgun can plausibly be owned for personal self defence, a howitzer cannot. What is the analogous argument with facial recognition? Only that it works better than the non-automated method (more accurate, but especially more cost effective). It is either okay to pick undesirable customers out of a crowd after (or perhaps in the process) of granting them entry, and kicking them out. Or it's not okay. Whether I use a room full of employees, a bigger room full of underpaid "interns", or a computer algorithm in a small box to do the matching is a detail of implementation.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  The argument would be either (1) that automated facial recognition goes above and beyond the reasonable requirements of the facility, representing an unnecessary intrusion into a person’s private life, (2) that the same does unacceptable harm in the public sphere, or (3) that its particular application is capricious and clearly represents an attempt to stifle the right to seek legal recourse. Any of these would be sufficient, and may or may not be convincing to a judge.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    I still fail to see the uniqueness, as it were, of automated facial recognition. In 1 and 3, what changes if a human being either looks at your face on a screen or looks into your face attentively at the turnstile, and then matches it using a big old binder with photos? Just the effectiveness of the method? If you're arguing 3, surely the argument has nothing to do with the technology used to identify you and kick you out to stifle your methodology of obtaining evidence outside the court-approved methods of discovery, it is the act of kicking you out that is in itself an issue. If you're arguing 1, I'd say your private life is not being intruded upon in any fashion that's new. You chose to go to a public place, so it is unreasonable to expect that no one might try to identify you based on your facial characteristics. Not sure what to make of 2 without further elaboration. I can sort of steel-man a coherent argument to this effect when it comes to government surveillance, but I don't think it'll apply to a private entertainment venue.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Weird how you act as if it was always possible, yet it has not begun to occur until recently, with the application of facial recognition. Must be some sort of weird coincidence, right? What reason do you propose?
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    >Weird how you act as if it was always possible, yet it has not begun to occur until recently, with the application of facial recognition. While I can't claim to know for certain about the goings on in casino security rooms, I've seen films from pre-facial-recognition era featuring attentive personnel browsing through dozens of CCTV cams, with binders full of photos of undesirables within arms reach.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      We aren't talking about Casino rooms though? We are talking about MSG and you are proposing that it's been a trivial thing for MSG to do since, I guess photographs have existed? So, it's on you, not me to establish that. I think it's a pretty ridiculous proposition that you've offered. I think the fact that it hasn't been a problem yet, until facial recognition was used, demonstrates that your pushback is baseless.
      - kspacewalk2 4y ago
        We're talking about venues with a massive number of customers and a blacklist, so I fail to see why a casino is special for the purposes of this discussion. If you go back and re-read the article a bit more attentively, I think you'll find examples from the early 20th century onward of this having been a problem. Without agreeing or disagreeing with the idea that such venues (whether casinos or concert halls, the distinction being irrelevant at least to me) ought to be summarily disallowed to ban customers - nothing changed with facial recognition other than their ability to do this a bit better. At least I can still grow a beard or put on one of those funky anti-recognition glasses from Hong Kong, though I think I won't try that at a casino.

joshuaheard 4y ago

From the original story, the person was barred after she purchased a ticket, travelled to New York, and entered the venue. She was with her child and a group of children from the child's school, along with their parents. She was confused, embarrassed, and humiliated for being singled out and kicked out of the venue in front of the group. She said it wouldn't have been so bad if they had just denied her a ticket. It would have saved her all the time, expense, and embarrassment. However, that is the problem inherent in using facial recognition in this way.

kspacewalk2 4y ago
>However, that is the problem inherent in using facial recognition in this way. Would it have all been a-okay if an employee "manually" spotted her face on a CCTV feed and matched to a physical binder with lawyers' photos? No? Then this has nothing whatsoever to do with facial recognition itself.
- neaden 4y ago
  The sheer scale facial recognition allows makes it different yes. You could ban millions of individuals with automatic facial recognition which you simply can't do manually.
  - kspacewalk2 4y ago
    Banning millions is objectionable while banning dozens is okay, purely due to numbers involved? I am trying to find this argument coherent in any way and failing. Maybe someone can help me out.
    - fivefives55555 4y ago
      I'm having the same exact issue. I don't understand the argument that many here seem to implicitly be making, that "businesses should be allowed to ban as many people as they can without using automated technology". First of all, the question is 'why?' Why should a business be allowed to ban a person so long as they're not using technology to do so? The next question is, this would still allow a big business like MSG to ban significantly more people than a smaller business, just by virtue of being able to hire more security staff.

josephcsible 4y ago

> I'm unclear about the rationale for banning facial recognition here I don't think facial recognition needs to be banned. The two things that need to be banned are denying people access to events after you already took their money for admission to them, and denying people access to events for what their co-workers did.

freejazz 4y ago
They can't buy the tickets directly from MSG, so they never gave money to MSG. So that can't be the reason either. Would it be fair to prohibit entry to the attys that did sue MSG? Even though attys just represent the interests of their clients?
- xp84 4y ago
  It really seems like the intent of that is to make it so that people who have been harmed by M.S.G. won't be able to find an attorney next time. Which is a very scumbag gangster type of behavior, so I'm completely happy to have it be smacked down violently by the law.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    I totally agree. Especially as a NYC-based attorney, that loves the Rangers, concerts at MSG, and is suing a close business partner of MSG.
kspacewalk2 4y ago
>denying people access to events after you already took their money for admission to them What if you discover fraud or criminality after the ticket is sold but before entry? Leave this lawyer tempest in a teapot aside for the moment, I'm talking unambiguous crime. >denying people access to events for what their co-workers did Say I'm known to be employed by the Lawyers for The Right to Throw Octopi at Hockey Players Coalition, but haven't yet thrown my first octopus. Why can you not act proactively to prevent nuisance? Employment at a particular organization is not protected status, like race or sexual orientation would be. Also, what constitutes an event? If there's a trade show or a product unveiling I don't want certain competitors to attend, why should I have to grant them access? Other than you being in rather narrowly specified groups, if I don't want your money, I should be allowed to refuse it.