13 ms·

New Yorkers want to stop landlords from using facial recognition

264 points by onychomys 3y ago

Aardwolf 3y ago
> Landlords, under this bill, would be banned from collecting biometric data on anyone unless they have “expressly consented” in writing or through a mobile app. So old fashioned writing is ok, a mobile app is ok, but the in-the-middle technology of a website on a PC is not ok? Why does the form factor of the computing device matter here? This also reads like landlords can still do it, they just have to require you to consent first to be able to enter the building.
- jmclnx 3y ago
  I think this should be completely banned. I can see cases where people will say "no" and then will no be allowed to rent or put on the top of the list for large rent increases.
  - vegetablepotpie 3y ago
    Rental leases are contracts of adhesion. Consent to facial recognition will be added to the boiler plate text. If tenants want to negotiate, they’ll be told that the contract is just a standard form that can’t change.
    - ambicapter 3y ago
      And even if you don't consent in writing, they'll just do it anyways because they're too lazy to special-case your request, and they'll bank on you not figuring out that they're doing it anyways, and then not bothering to drag you into court even if they did do it.
      - Aardwolf 3y ago
        > and they'll bank on you not figuring out that they're doing it anyways I mean, if this is the kind of apartment that requires an app, and showing your face at the door, to enter, you'd figure it out
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        There's no conspiracy here. It's that they bought a particular iot hardware package from some company like Yardi or Realpage for half a million, installed that in every apartment, and since they're using the management software from those same companies they have little ability (or frankly, desire) to exempt the one jackass who demands that from that lease clause, when they don't even know how to turn off the facial recognition for the one customer. You talk as if it's part of some sinister plan, when it's really someone making $19/hr at the front office who is bad at the software that their business uses to manage said business. Besides, everyone complains when they have to dig their phone out of their pocket every time they want to open up a gate or door to the building, when it could just unlock itself when it sees them coming (it's not as if there are going to be many apartment buildings relying on brass keys here in 10 years). This is apathy, trends, and convenience. Nothing more.
        ambicapter 3y ago
        Right, it's the "banality of evil" all over again.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        It's not even evil. It's just the plain fact that corporations choose a business model that means they do not care to negotiate with individual consumers on contract terms. Then you have several layers of products (software titles in this case) being stacked one on top of another, until the renter isn't even the consumer of the product. Virtually none of these places are using anything that allows them to one-off a lease for a grouchy asshole. But if renters really demanded that and wanted to pay for it, I guess there could be an onsite lawyer willing and able to vet those modifications and put the lease through. But in a day and age where every whiny Starbucks barista complains that they can't afford the 4000sqft studio apartment of their dreams, I doubt they want to pay the extra premium that would result from individualized lease contracts. It's the banality of "you're not important enough to spend the time on". No one's being loaded into cattle cars.
        3y ago
    - tristor 3y ago
      > they’ll be told that the contract is just a standard form that can’t change. One of the biggest problems with rental contracts is that the person who is counter-signing the contract on behalf of the property owner often doesn't have the authority within the organization to negotiate, only the owner does, but you have no opportunity as a tenant to speak to them. The manager of most apartment complexes is a low-mid paying role that basically exists to say "no" a whole lot and be a scapegoat for the choices/decisions of the owners. This is even /more true/ with corporate-owned apartments. When you combine this with the systems used to effectively illegally price fix via collusion with other landlords (although somehow this is never prosecuted), it becomes an untenable system for renters who have essentially no legal recourse. Ironically, the more expensive the apartment rent, the less likely you are to put up with these things because the owners know that their tenants can afford to sue them and are likely educated and know their rights. It's primarily lower rent locations where abuses occur en masse. In order for a contract to be enforceable it must allow for negotiation and must provide consideration for both parties. But there's a huge difference between a contract being legally enforceable and upheld by a court vs a contract you must follow because you have no means to legally challenge it. Contracts of adhesion are very rarely fully enforceable, because they often do not include consideration and may be unconscionable. As an example, you are not allowed to contractually sign away your civil rights in most jurisdictions, but many rental contracts include clauses that effectively have you do so.
- contravariant 3y ago
  Here I wa thinking that was just journalists jumping to hasty conclusions, but no that is the actual text: > [...] except where such user has expressly consented, in writing or through a mobile application [...] Not sure how they defined "mobile application" however.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pc86 3y ago
  The mobile app thing is weird for sure. I think reasonable people can disagree on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement (in the "point a camera at the sidewalk and see what happens" sense) but I see absolutely no reason why a private entity should be able to use this type of technology. A landlord doesn't have the right to know the identity of every guest every one of their tenants has - they just don't. A commercial venue like the whole MSG thing is a little stickier but the scale of it and the wild potential for abuse (again, MSG) makes my gut reaction an outright ban. I'm not crazy about the government/LE doing this either but I'm really not crazy about private entities doing it.
  - tzs 3y ago
    > A landlord doesn't have the right to know the identity of every guest every one of their tenants has - they just don't. I don't think it would give them that. My understanding is that these facial recognition systems for building access work by registering and storing the face data of the people who are supposed to be able to open the locked door.
    - runnerup 3y ago
      This was partially driven by this[0]: "Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies MSG Entertainment, the owner of the arena and Radio City Music Hall, has put lawyers who represent people suing it on an “exclusion list” to keep them out of concerts and sporting events." 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-g...
    - atkailash 3y ago
      [dead]
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Unless you’re “frozen caveman lawyer”, recently thawed and awoken from the glacial ice, it should be pretty obvious that scale changes things. It’s not creepy when the guy at the coffee shop knows your order because you come in every day. It is creepy if every Starbucks barista knows who you are and what you want. Technology has already put significant limits on free movement and privacy. It is impossible, for example, to enter or leave an urban area by vehicle without at minimum LPR footprints tracking that movement. Photos and video are increasingly common. The problem in a place like NYC is that the residents there will feel it first. Nobody can afford property, so private entities can record everyone in your home at any time, in public or private spaces. We’ve already seen abuses of this - an employee of a law firm was ejected from Radio City Music hall because her law firm was suing MSG, the venues parent company.
endisneigh 3y ago
pointless. renters are hardly in any kind of position to negotiate in NYC. if the city wants to stop it, simply ban it.
- pc86 3y ago
  Yes this is exactly why it just needs to be banned outright, with no wiggle room. Don't even allow people to consent to it, especially for residential areas, because they can't reasonably consent for something like this on behalf of guests they may or may not even know yet. If you allow FR by landlords in certain scenarios, you'll just end up with everyone slapping one line on their standard rental agreement and now it's everywhere.
cornhole34 3y ago
aimco properties have been requesting tenants drivers licenses or passports to be scanned by facial recognition technology from their contractors in india and then sold to advertisers. They have been doing this since 2010, you cannot live without selling your soul to landlords and advertisers
- anaganisk 3y ago
  At a certain point it seems like the start of all shit is targeted ads, just ban em. And all the tracking and targeting magically disappears.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    Yes this. 100% this. Surveillance at scale must be paid-for, and regardless of how cheap we make the surveillance, if no one pays, it won't happen.
alex_young 3y ago
How does this even work? Are the landlords trying to prove that the tenants aren’t living there anymore because they don’t see them on a recording? If so, isn’t it plausible that the tenant in question is bedridden or similar and someone is bringing them things to assist them? Seems like a poor use for the technology even if we ignore the privacy issues.
- shagie 3y ago
  Tenants putting the apartment up on Airbnb and not using the property themselves. That could run counter to other laws in NYC and have the property owner at least partially liable if they are complicit or didn't take action to prevent their properties from being used as short term rentals. https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/stay-in-the-know/information-for-hosts.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/stay-in-the-know... > Under the NYC Administrative Code, property owners are responsible for ensuring their properties are maintained in a safe and code-compliant manner at all times. Property owners can and will be issued the violation for any illegal short-term rentals at their property -- even if it is conducted by tenants. Even aside from that, short term rentals can generate more complaints from neighbors and increase wear and tear on the property.
  - bdowling 3y ago
    These issues arise anytime you have rent control and units with a large disparity between the legally-allowed rent and the market rate rent. Some tenants will want to capture that value (e.g., by subletting to a market rate tenant and living somewhere else).
    - shagie 3y ago
      Yep, except now it's all of NYC that has the "property owner on the hook for any short term rentals". Rough math... let's say a doorman costs $200/day ($70k/year). 20 units in the building. This would amount to $10/day/unit and thus a rent increase of $300/month for everyone. For a one bedroom rental, that would represent a 15% increase (on average) for rent increase (based on https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ny/new-york https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ny/new-york ). Note that the long term sublet isn't necessarily a problem - it's the situations where someone is renting out their apartment for less than 30 days and are not occupying it themselves during that period of time. So now that the property owner is going to be issued a violation if there is an illegal short term rental, how does the property owner prevent that? Note that it is legal to rent out a bedroom of a 2 bedroom apartment on a short term basis if the person who holds the rental lease is there the entire time.
ejb999 3y ago
Honestly not sure what the big deal is - if you have a doorman recognizing your face and letting you in vs a camera doing the same thing seems pretty much like the same thing to me - plus I am certain an awful lot of people would prefer that only people that are supposed to be let in their building, are let in. Can it be abused? probably, but that is pretty much true of any technology or business process.
- jollyllama 3y ago
  Good doorman forgets if you slip him a tenner, unless the cops show up that week.
- epc 3y ago
  The doorman isn’t dumping a log of your comings and goings as well as who entered or exited with you into an unsecured s3 bucket in the cloud.
  - ejb999 3y ago
    then thats the problem to fix - your landlord could also be dumping copies of your drivers license, rental application, lease and other financial data onto an unprotected s3 bucket as well - are we going to ban them from collecting that information? The solution is harsh penalties for negligence or willful misuse of customer data - not banning the technology imo.
    - epc 3y ago
      Yeah. That ship has sailed. Too many companies have been too blithe about customer data in order to blitzscale that growth curve and make their investors jump for joy. The next decade is going to be a series of overreaching regulatory baseball bats to the tech industry for abusing the trust and naiveté of the generic consumer.
      - fnimick 3y ago
        As it should be. Companies that abuse the public trust _should_ be regulated harshly.
wildpeaks 3y ago
> Landlords, under this bill, would be banned from collecting biometric data on anyone unless they have “expressly consented” in writing or through a mobile app. Even if it probably started from good intentions, this sounds more like CYA when the biometrics and surveillance data gets leaked given it's not really consent when they'll just refuse to rent to anyone who doesn't agree to the data collection.
- JustSomeNobody 3y ago
  > ... in writing or through a mobile app. Great, so now tenant is required to have the app to pay rent. But to use the app to pay rent, you have to agree to the ToS which includes expressly consenting to having your bio data scooped up.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    I am already mildly aggravated about app only menu at some restaurants ( and promptly leave if I can't get basic service from the waiter ), but there is something to be said about requiring app for an actual necessity ( eating at a restaurant isn't a necessity ), where one can't simply walk away.
- matsemann 3y ago
  GDPR is nice in this regard: Consent isn't enough. The consent must be freely given (aka no stipulation saying you can't rent without accepting), informed (aka you should be told all your rights and what's included in your consent, just not a general "by signing the rental agreement you're accepting us collecting your data"), and they can't even collect the data unless they have a legitimate use for it (which again someone could challenge, the landlord doesn't need to know when I come&go to do their job).
  - UweSchmidt 3y ago
    All of that might not be enough. Renters might still find they are in a weak position to negotiate a contract details like that, if they even comprehend the full meaning and consequences. Landlords will figure out the "Legitimate use" legalese and paste it in each contract, and it is in the nature of data collection that mose abuse goes unnoticed. Casual surveillance and the landlord-renter power dynamic are things that should be established at the society-level.
scsteps 3y ago
Sad that this is happening and sad that it had to come to online shaming to make changes happen.
Physkal 3y ago
"If left unchecked, she said, racially biased algorithms driving these systems risked further fueling gentrification, which threatened to, “erode what should be a diverse collective identity in the city.” I don't get this statement. If s minority already has a apartment lease, how is registering their face data leads to all of that?
- MisterTea 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - brvsft 3y ago
    Whoa holy shit this is the kind of nuanced and intelligent discussion I come to Hacker News for. Can you write in a cyborg executioner that extrajudicially murders the black man and then gets a puff piece from the local news rewarding him for protecting the building?
- perihelions 3y ago
  It's explained right there in the same paragraph, - "she feared aggressive landlords could use the tech to issue petty lease violations against tenants, which could eventually lead to their eviction" Selective enforcement is a tool for capricious abuses. If you allow landlords to spy on their tenants with automated systems, passively collecting vast amounts of data, it's very easy for them to "find" an infraction if they deliberately set out to find one. It empowers petty tyrants.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    What kind of violation can happen in a building lobby that leads to an eviction? I'm seriously confused. Littering?
    - jackson1442 3y ago
      - violation of guest policies (having too many or staying too long) - if you hook up a decibel meter, being too loud - loitering - allowing someone to tailgate etc.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Seems like the U.S. needs some kind of data protection law like the EU's GDPR. I can't see any reason why the data needs to be stored and it sounds like an invasion of the tenants' privacy if the landlord is recording their coming and going.
- anaganisk 3y ago
  But but freedom, free market blah blah. That's the argument I receive. I strongly believe the free market only works when a business is small, but not when companies become big.
philip1209 3y ago
I'm curious how these systems deal with COPPA. If a young child is coming home from school, how does this internet-connected system comply?
- bombcar 3y ago
  Existing security cameras don't turn off when a kid walks by; otherwise they'd be easy to defeat.
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
Tenants are breaching contracts with landlords, sub-leasing and renting out their property to others without the consent of the owner-landlord. The lease is a contract that always specifies who is permitted to use the property. It is the right of the owner-landlord to hold the tenant accountable for breaching contract. Facial recognition access control systems are the same as a human being posted at the door permitting the same. However, the latter is far more costly and unnecessary.
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
It's like when neighbors in an apartment building get a Ring. I immediately think less of them.
- bearjaws 3y ago
  My HOA (condo) banned Ring door bells thankfully. Not only does it track everyones movements without consent, it would stare directly into neighbors apartments depending on door locations in the hall way...
fwlr 3y ago
A minor technical nitpick: the article, and the activists it quotes, make the claim that facial recognition discriminates against minorities because it is inaccurate. The state of the art in facial recognition technology has been superhumanly accurate (e.g. telling apart identical twins better than humans can, finding pictures with significant weight or age differences) on all subgroups for several years now, and the racial disparities in accuracy are minuscule relative to the level of noise. It will keep improving: e.g. it is quite plausible we will be able to infer parts of a person’s genotype from ordinary pictures of their face. I call this a nitpick because “face rec discriminates because it is inaccurate” vs “face rec discriminates because it very accurately reproduces society’s bias” doesn’t make much difference to the activists’ argument; after all, it matters little whether the discrimination arises by bumbling incompetence or by efficient indifference. But I thought I would mention it so that the more technically-minded are not accidentally misled about the technological progress in the area.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  Sure and state-of-the-art cars will hit the brake before running into another car. Doesn't mean the car behind you at the red light will brake. Just like the fact that a model can tell twins apart doesn't mean the model the cops used can tell you apart from the actual criminal. Or that a Landlord will have tested the model at all or required it to meet some standard of twin detection.
  - fwlr 3y ago
    My usage of “state of the art” was misleading, I apologize. To be more precise I should say “most of the companies offering services in this area are this good and getting better”. This is not like batteries or carbon nanotubes where research is way ahead of production; it is more like LLMs where commercial offerings are significantly ahead of published research offerings.
    - jamiek88 3y ago
      Can you give some examples of real world successes of this? Because your (several) comments defending this technology boil down to ‘trust me bro, I’ve seen it in the lab’.
rglover 3y ago
Join the Dark Carnival [1]. [1] https://consequence.net/2019/07/juggalo-makeup-facial-recognition/ https://consequence.net/2019/07/juggalo-makeup-facial-recogn...
anovikov 3y ago
From the article it seems like that "current tenants don't want the building to be improved at all so it won't become more attractive to new tenants and current ones get priced out". Looks like inverse NIMBY, NIMBY for tenants? Sad.
- bdowling 3y ago
  Current tenants won’t be priced out because the apartments in question are under rent control. Tenants sometimes want to move, however, but if they do they will lose their below-market-rate rent. So, they instead sublet their apartment to someone else and keep the difference in value. This is a violation of their rental agreements, but if the landlord doesn’t find out they don’t see a problem. Facial recognition and other technologies help landlords identify these tenants who are gaming the system in this way. The tenants gaming the system obviously don’t like that.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    This is the root of the issue; smaller landlords can find out that subletting is happening because they only have one or two properties, and may even live in one. Massive landlords can't do that, because they have thousands of tenants; but facial recognition and computers could flag the ones to be interested in, and then they hire the private investigators.
  - anovikov 3y ago
    Then maybe the very existence of regulated rentals is the problem that should be fixed. It's little but bending of market, Soviet Union style, which naturally creates abuses. Commonplace in Europe especially in Nordic countries, where a net worth of a typical family is mostly the value of their regulated rental contract stretching from 1950s, which they sublet and make sometimes more than their entire income.
coding123 3y ago
New Yorkers Want to Stop Landlords from Existing
- ausbah 3y ago
  unironically this
axus 3y ago
In a perfect world, 100% accurate facial recognition and record-keeping would encourage apartment owners to make their leasing decision based on a person's actual rental history, instead of deciding based on prejudice. But my own prejudice is that the people selling the renter blacklist software solution will only care about sales, and not the software accuracy or people affected by false positives.
gooseyman 3y ago
How does this jack up prices and force people out? The article mentions petty lease violations, but if a tenant is committing "petty" lease violations, then there are lease violations. Neighbors in my building regularly left trash in the hallway. It was gross and fits the bill for a petty violation. The landlord had no proof and so couldn't (wouldn't) enforce. That said, lease violations go both ways with the added requirements of NYC housing laws. If a landlord is violating either, however petty, they are violating. If hot water is 119 and not the required 120, its a violation. It's binary. To be clear, I'm not in favor of biometrics for this use case. A key fob, pin code, or dial by name system doesn't seem broken, so why "fix it" and add the risk that sensitive biometrics info is leaked because of hacking/theft/accidental loss. I'm seeking to understand what the root of the concern for being forced out is over a change in method used to enter the building?
- bdowling 3y ago
  Two issues: (1) Subletting by a rent-controlled tenant to a sub-tenant, for a profit and without the consent of the landlord. (2) “Giving” a rent-controlled apartment to a friend or family member, without the consent of the landlord. A rent-controlled apartment that a tenant has held for 20+ years and is renting at a small fraction of the market rate is a valuable asset that some tenants want to capitalize on.
  - olalonde 3y ago
    Bingo. I think that's exactly what tenants are really worried about. The "racist gentrifiers" narrative just doesn't hold up.
    - oatsandfieldso 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - ocrow 3y ago
    It doesn't even require that the tenant be trying to "capitalize". Perhaps they are subletting for a few weeks, or just having friends stay over on the regular. If that is disallowed by the lease agreement, it's enough for the landlord to begin an eviction proceeding.
jayess 3y ago
Don't just ban facial recognition for landlords, ban it for everyone, including the government.
CraigRo 3y ago
NYC LLs suffer huge penalties if a tenant airbnbs an apartment (there are extra special fines for that). They basically can't get a tenant out without tons of video evidence that the T is violating their lease. Now this. Basically it is a set up to enable different groups of people to sue and bankrupt LLs.
- yakireev 3y ago
  Oh these poor poor NYC landlords, hardly evading the bankruptcy under the unfair and unjust pressure of the evil renters. /s
shipscode 3y ago
You’d have to be a maniac to want to become a landlord in NY these days.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
onetokeoverthe 3y ago
[dead]

264 points by onychomys 3y ago

> Landlords, under this bill, would be banned from collecting biometric data on anyone unless they have “expressly consented” in writing or through a mobile app. So old fashioned writing is ok, a mobile app is ok, but the in-the-middle technology of a website on a PC is not ok? Why does the form factor of the computing device matter here? This also reads like landlords can still do it, they just have to require you to consent first to be able to enter the building.

jmclnx 3y ago
I think this should be completely banned. I can see cases where people will say "no" and then will no be allowed to rent or put on the top of the list for large rent increases.
- vegetablepotpie 3y ago
  Rental leases are contracts of adhesion. Consent to facial recognition will be added to the boiler plate text. If tenants want to negotiate, they’ll be told that the contract is just a standard form that can’t change.
  - ambicapter 3y ago
    And even if you don't consent in writing, they'll just do it anyways because they're too lazy to special-case your request, and they'll bank on you not figuring out that they're doing it anyways, and then not bothering to drag you into court even if they did do it.
    - Aardwolf 3y ago
      > and they'll bank on you not figuring out that they're doing it anyways I mean, if this is the kind of apartment that requires an app, and showing your face at the door, to enter, you'd figure it out
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      There's no conspiracy here. It's that they bought a particular iot hardware package from some company like Yardi or Realpage for half a million, installed that in every apartment, and since they're using the management software from those same companies they have little ability (or frankly, desire) to exempt the one jackass who demands that from that lease clause, when they don't even know how to turn off the facial recognition for the one customer. You talk as if it's part of some sinister plan, when it's really someone making $19/hr at the front office who is bad at the software that their business uses to manage said business. Besides, everyone complains when they have to dig their phone out of their pocket every time they want to open up a gate or door to the building, when it could just unlock itself when it sees them coming (it's not as if there are going to be many apartment buildings relying on brass keys here in 10 years). This is apathy, trends, and convenience. Nothing more.
      - ambicapter 3y ago
        Right, it's the "banality of evil" all over again.
        NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        It's not even evil. It's just the plain fact that corporations choose a business model that means they do not care to negotiate with individual consumers on contract terms. Then you have several layers of products (software titles in this case) being stacked one on top of another, until the renter isn't even the consumer of the product. Virtually none of these places are using anything that allows them to one-off a lease for a grouchy asshole. But if renters really demanded that and wanted to pay for it, I guess there could be an onsite lawyer willing and able to vet those modifications and put the lease through. But in a day and age where every whiny Starbucks barista complains that they can't afford the 4000sqft studio apartment of their dreams, I doubt they want to pay the extra premium that would result from individualized lease contracts. It's the banality of "you're not important enough to spend the time on". No one's being loaded into cattle cars.
        3y ago
  - tristor 3y ago
    > they’ll be told that the contract is just a standard form that can’t change. One of the biggest problems with rental contracts is that the person who is counter-signing the contract on behalf of the property owner often doesn't have the authority within the organization to negotiate, only the owner does, but you have no opportunity as a tenant to speak to them. The manager of most apartment complexes is a low-mid paying role that basically exists to say "no" a whole lot and be a scapegoat for the choices/decisions of the owners. This is even /more true/ with corporate-owned apartments. When you combine this with the systems used to effectively illegally price fix via collusion with other landlords (although somehow this is never prosecuted), it becomes an untenable system for renters who have essentially no legal recourse. Ironically, the more expensive the apartment rent, the less likely you are to put up with these things because the owners know that their tenants can afford to sue them and are likely educated and know their rights. It's primarily lower rent locations where abuses occur en masse. In order for a contract to be enforceable it must allow for negotiation and must provide consideration for both parties. But there's a huge difference between a contract being legally enforceable and upheld by a court vs a contract you must follow because you have no means to legally challenge it. Contracts of adhesion are very rarely fully enforceable, because they often do not include consideration and may be unconscionable. As an example, you are not allowed to contractually sign away your civil rights in most jurisdictions, but many rental contracts include clauses that effectively have you do so.
contravariant 3y ago
Here I wa thinking that was just journalists jumping to hasty conclusions, but no that is the actual text: > [...] except where such user has expressly consented, in writing or through a mobile application [...] Not sure how they defined "mobile application" however.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pc86 3y ago
The mobile app thing is weird for sure. I think reasonable people can disagree on the use of facial recognition by law enforcement (in the "point a camera at the sidewalk and see what happens" sense) but I see absolutely no reason why a private entity should be able to use this type of technology. A landlord doesn't have the right to know the identity of every guest every one of their tenants has - they just don't. A commercial venue like the whole MSG thing is a little stickier but the scale of it and the wild potential for abuse (again, MSG) makes my gut reaction an outright ban. I'm not crazy about the government/LE doing this either but I'm really not crazy about private entities doing it.
- tzs 3y ago
  > A landlord doesn't have the right to know the identity of every guest every one of their tenants has - they just don't. I don't think it would give them that. My understanding is that these facial recognition systems for building access work by registering and storing the face data of the people who are supposed to be able to open the locked door.
  - runnerup 3y ago
    This was partially driven by this[0]: "Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies MSG Entertainment, the owner of the arena and Radio City Music Hall, has put lawyers who represent people suing it on an “exclusion list” to keep them out of concerts and sporting events." 0: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-g...
  - atkailash 3y ago
    [dead]
Spooky23 3y ago
Unless you’re “frozen caveman lawyer”, recently thawed and awoken from the glacial ice, it should be pretty obvious that scale changes things. It’s not creepy when the guy at the coffee shop knows your order because you come in every day. It is creepy if every Starbucks barista knows who you are and what you want. Technology has already put significant limits on free movement and privacy. It is impossible, for example, to enter or leave an urban area by vehicle without at minimum LPR footprints tracking that movement. Photos and video are increasingly common. The problem in a place like NYC is that the residents there will feel it first. Nobody can afford property, so private entities can record everyone in your home at any time, in public or private spaces. We’ve already seen abuses of this - an employee of a law firm was ejected from Radio City Music hall because her law firm was suing MSG, the venues parent company.

endisneigh 3y ago

pointless. renters are hardly in any kind of position to negotiate in NYC. if the city wants to stop it, simply ban it.

pc86 3y ago
Yes this is exactly why it just needs to be banned outright, with no wiggle room. Don't even allow people to consent to it, especially for residential areas, because they can't reasonably consent for something like this on behalf of guests they may or may not even know yet. If you allow FR by landlords in certain scenarios, you'll just end up with everyone slapping one line on their standard rental agreement and now it's everywhere.

cornhole34 3y ago

aimco properties have been requesting tenants drivers licenses or passports to be scanned by facial recognition technology from their contractors in india and then sold to advertisers. They have been doing this since 2010, you cannot live without selling your soul to landlords and advertisers

anaganisk 3y ago
At a certain point it seems like the start of all shit is targeted ads, just ban em. And all the tracking and targeting magically disappears.
- flerchin 3y ago
  Yes this. 100% this. Surveillance at scale must be paid-for, and regardless of how cheap we make the surveillance, if no one pays, it won't happen.

alex_young 3y ago

How does this even work? Are the landlords trying to prove that the tenants aren’t living there anymore because they don’t see them on a recording? If so, isn’t it plausible that the tenant in question is bedridden or similar and someone is bringing them things to assist them? Seems like a poor use for the technology even if we ignore the privacy issues.

shagie 3y ago
Tenants putting the apartment up on Airbnb and not using the property themselves. That could run counter to other laws in NYC and have the property owner at least partially liable if they are complicit or didn't take action to prevent their properties from being used as short term rentals. https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/stay-in-the-know/information-for-hosts.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/stay-in-the-know... > Under the NYC Administrative Code, property owners are responsible for ensuring their properties are maintained in a safe and code-compliant manner at all times. Property owners can and will be issued the violation for any illegal short-term rentals at their property -- even if it is conducted by tenants. Even aside from that, short term rentals can generate more complaints from neighbors and increase wear and tear on the property.
- bdowling 3y ago
  These issues arise anytime you have rent control and units with a large disparity between the legally-allowed rent and the market rate rent. Some tenants will want to capture that value (e.g., by subletting to a market rate tenant and living somewhere else).
  - shagie 3y ago
    Yep, except now it's all of NYC that has the "property owner on the hook for any short term rentals". Rough math... let's say a doorman costs $200/day ($70k/year). 20 units in the building. This would amount to $10/day/unit and thus a rent increase of $300/month for everyone. For a one bedroom rental, that would represent a 15% increase (on average) for rent increase (based on https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ny/new-york https://www.apartmentlist.com/rent-report/ny/new-york ). Note that the long term sublet isn't necessarily a problem - it's the situations where someone is renting out their apartment for less than 30 days and are not occupying it themselves during that period of time. So now that the property owner is going to be issued a violation if there is an illegal short term rental, how does the property owner prevent that? Note that it is legal to rent out a bedroom of a 2 bedroom apartment on a short term basis if the person who holds the rental lease is there the entire time.

ejb999 3y ago

Honestly not sure what the big deal is - if you have a doorman recognizing your face and letting you in vs a camera doing the same thing seems pretty much like the same thing to me - plus I am certain an awful lot of people would prefer that only people that are supposed to be let in their building, are let in. Can it be abused? probably, but that is pretty much true of any technology or business process.

jollyllama 3y ago
Good doorman forgets if you slip him a tenner, unless the cops show up that week.
epc 3y ago
The doorman isn’t dumping a log of your comings and goings as well as who entered or exited with you into an unsecured s3 bucket in the cloud.
- ejb999 3y ago
  then thats the problem to fix - your landlord could also be dumping copies of your drivers license, rental application, lease and other financial data onto an unprotected s3 bucket as well - are we going to ban them from collecting that information? The solution is harsh penalties for negligence or willful misuse of customer data - not banning the technology imo.
  - epc 3y ago
    Yeah. That ship has sailed. Too many companies have been too blithe about customer data in order to blitzscale that growth curve and make their investors jump for joy. The next decade is going to be a series of overreaching regulatory baseball bats to the tech industry for abusing the trust and naiveté of the generic consumer.
    - fnimick 3y ago
      As it should be. Companies that abuse the public trust _should_ be regulated harshly.

wildpeaks 3y ago

> Landlords, under this bill, would be banned from collecting biometric data on anyone unless they have “expressly consented” in writing or through a mobile app. Even if it probably started from good intentions, this sounds more like CYA when the biometrics and surveillance data gets leaked given it's not really consent when they'll just refuse to rent to anyone who doesn't agree to the data collection.

JustSomeNobody 3y ago
> ... in writing or through a mobile app. Great, so now tenant is required to have the app to pay rent. But to use the app to pay rent, you have to agree to the ToS which includes expressly consenting to having your bio data scooped up.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  I am already mildly aggravated about app only menu at some restaurants ( and promptly leave if I can't get basic service from the waiter ), but there is something to be said about requiring app for an actual necessity ( eating at a restaurant isn't a necessity ), where one can't simply walk away.
matsemann 3y ago
GDPR is nice in this regard: Consent isn't enough. The consent must be freely given (aka no stipulation saying you can't rent without accepting), informed (aka you should be told all your rights and what's included in your consent, just not a general "by signing the rental agreement you're accepting us collecting your data"), and they can't even collect the data unless they have a legitimate use for it (which again someone could challenge, the landlord doesn't need to know when I come&go to do their job).
- UweSchmidt 3y ago
  All of that might not be enough. Renters might still find they are in a weak position to negotiate a contract details like that, if they even comprehend the full meaning and consequences. Landlords will figure out the "Legitimate use" legalese and paste it in each contract, and it is in the nature of data collection that mose abuse goes unnoticed. Casual surveillance and the landlord-renter power dynamic are things that should be established at the society-level.

scsteps 3y ago

Sad that this is happening and sad that it had to come to online shaming to make changes happen.

Physkal 3y ago

"If left unchecked, she said, racially biased algorithms driving these systems risked further fueling gentrification, which threatened to, “erode what should be a diverse collective identity in the city.” I don't get this statement. If s minority already has a apartment lease, how is registering their face data leads to all of that?

MisterTea 3y ago
[flagged]
- brvsft 3y ago
  Whoa holy shit this is the kind of nuanced and intelligent discussion I come to Hacker News for. Can you write in a cyborg executioner that extrajudicially murders the black man and then gets a puff piece from the local news rewarding him for protecting the building?
perihelions 3y ago
It's explained right there in the same paragraph, - "she feared aggressive landlords could use the tech to issue petty lease violations against tenants, which could eventually lead to their eviction" Selective enforcement is a tool for capricious abuses. If you allow landlords to spy on their tenants with automated systems, passively collecting vast amounts of data, it's very easy for them to "find" an infraction if they deliberately set out to find one. It empowers petty tyrants.
- olalonde 3y ago
  What kind of violation can happen in a building lobby that leads to an eviction? I'm seriously confused. Littering?
  - jackson1442 3y ago
    - violation of guest policies (having too many or staying too long) - if you hook up a decibel meter, being too loud - loitering - allowing someone to tailgate etc.

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Seems like the U.S. needs some kind of data protection law like the EU's GDPR. I can't see any reason why the data needs to be stored and it sounds like an invasion of the tenants' privacy if the landlord is recording their coming and going.

anaganisk 3y ago
But but freedom, free market blah blah. That's the argument I receive. I strongly believe the free market only works when a business is small, but not when companies become big.

philip1209 3y ago

I'm curious how these systems deal with COPPA. If a young child is coming home from school, how does this internet-connected system comply?

bombcar 3y ago
Existing security cameras don't turn off when a kid walks by; otherwise they'd be easy to defeat.

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

Tenants are breaching contracts with landlords, sub-leasing and renting out their property to others without the consent of the owner-landlord. The lease is a contract that always specifies who is permitted to use the property. It is the right of the owner-landlord to hold the tenant accountable for breaching contract. Facial recognition access control systems are the same as a human being posted at the door permitting the same. However, the latter is far more costly and unnecessary.

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

It's like when neighbors in an apartment building get a Ring. I immediately think less of them.

bearjaws 3y ago
My HOA (condo) banned Ring door bells thankfully. Not only does it track everyones movements without consent, it would stare directly into neighbors apartments depending on door locations in the hall way...

fwlr 3y ago

A minor technical nitpick: the article, and the activists it quotes, make the claim that facial recognition discriminates against minorities because it is inaccurate. The state of the art in facial recognition technology has been superhumanly accurate (e.g. telling apart identical twins better than humans can, finding pictures with significant weight or age differences) on all subgroups for several years now, and the racial disparities in accuracy are minuscule relative to the level of noise. It will keep improving: e.g. it is quite plausible we will be able to infer parts of a person’s genotype from ordinary pictures of their face. I call this a nitpick because “face rec discriminates because it is inaccurate” vs “face rec discriminates because it very accurately reproduces society’s bias” doesn’t make much difference to the activists’ argument; after all, it matters little whether the discrimination arises by bumbling incompetence or by efficient indifference. But I thought I would mention it so that the more technically-minded are not accidentally misled about the technological progress in the area.

lesuorac 3y ago
Sure and state-of-the-art cars will hit the brake before running into another car. Doesn't mean the car behind you at the red light will brake. Just like the fact that a model can tell twins apart doesn't mean the model the cops used can tell you apart from the actual criminal. Or that a Landlord will have tested the model at all or required it to meet some standard of twin detection.
- fwlr 3y ago
  My usage of “state of the art” was misleading, I apologize. To be more precise I should say “most of the companies offering services in this area are this good and getting better”. This is not like batteries or carbon nanotubes where research is way ahead of production; it is more like LLMs where commercial offerings are significantly ahead of published research offerings.
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    Can you give some examples of real world successes of this? Because your (several) comments defending this technology boil down to ‘trust me bro, I’ve seen it in the lab’.

rglover 3y ago

Join the Dark Carnival [1]. [1] https://consequence.net/2019/07/juggalo-makeup-facial-recognition/ https://consequence.net/2019/07/juggalo-makeup-facial-recogn...

anovikov 3y ago

From the article it seems like that "current tenants don't want the building to be improved at all so it won't become more attractive to new tenants and current ones get priced out". Looks like inverse NIMBY, NIMBY for tenants? Sad.

bdowling 3y ago
Current tenants won’t be priced out because the apartments in question are under rent control. Tenants sometimes want to move, however, but if they do they will lose their below-market-rate rent. So, they instead sublet their apartment to someone else and keep the difference in value. This is a violation of their rental agreements, but if the landlord doesn’t find out they don’t see a problem. Facial recognition and other technologies help landlords identify these tenants who are gaming the system in this way. The tenants gaming the system obviously don’t like that.
- bombcar 3y ago
  This is the root of the issue; smaller landlords can find out that subletting is happening because they only have one or two properties, and may even live in one. Massive landlords can't do that, because they have thousands of tenants; but facial recognition and computers could flag the ones to be interested in, and then they hire the private investigators.
- anovikov 3y ago
  Then maybe the very existence of regulated rentals is the problem that should be fixed. It's little but bending of market, Soviet Union style, which naturally creates abuses. Commonplace in Europe especially in Nordic countries, where a net worth of a typical family is mostly the value of their regulated rental contract stretching from 1950s, which they sublet and make sometimes more than their entire income.

coding123 3y ago

New Yorkers Want to Stop Landlords from Existing

ausbah 3y ago
unironically this

axus 3y ago

In a perfect world, 100% accurate facial recognition and record-keeping would encourage apartment owners to make their leasing decision based on a person's actual rental history, instead of deciding based on prejudice. But my own prejudice is that the people selling the renter blacklist software solution will only care about sales, and not the software accuracy or people affected by false positives.

gooseyman 3y ago

How does this jack up prices and force people out? The article mentions petty lease violations, but if a tenant is committing "petty" lease violations, then there are lease violations. Neighbors in my building regularly left trash in the hallway. It was gross and fits the bill for a petty violation. The landlord had no proof and so couldn't (wouldn't) enforce. That said, lease violations go both ways with the added requirements of NYC housing laws. If a landlord is violating either, however petty, they are violating. If hot water is 119 and not the required 120, its a violation. It's binary. To be clear, I'm not in favor of biometrics for this use case. A key fob, pin code, or dial by name system doesn't seem broken, so why "fix it" and add the risk that sensitive biometrics info is leaked because of hacking/theft/accidental loss. I'm seeking to understand what the root of the concern for being forced out is over a change in method used to enter the building?

bdowling 3y ago
Two issues: (1) Subletting by a rent-controlled tenant to a sub-tenant, for a profit and without the consent of the landlord. (2) “Giving” a rent-controlled apartment to a friend or family member, without the consent of the landlord. A rent-controlled apartment that a tenant has held for 20+ years and is renting at a small fraction of the market rate is a valuable asset that some tenants want to capitalize on.
- olalonde 3y ago
  Bingo. I think that's exactly what tenants are really worried about. The "racist gentrifiers" narrative just doesn't hold up.
  - oatsandfieldso 3y ago
    [flagged]
- ocrow 3y ago
  It doesn't even require that the tenant be trying to "capitalize". Perhaps they are subletting for a few weeks, or just having friends stay over on the regular. If that is disallowed by the lease agreement, it's enough for the landlord to begin an eviction proceeding.

jayess 3y ago

Don't just ban facial recognition for landlords, ban it for everyone, including the government.

CraigRo 3y ago

NYC LLs suffer huge penalties if a tenant airbnbs an apartment (there are extra special fines for that). They basically can't get a tenant out without tons of video evidence that the T is violating their lease. Now this. Basically it is a set up to enable different groups of people to sue and bankrupt LLs.

yakireev 3y ago
Oh these poor poor NYC landlords, hardly evading the bankruptcy under the unfair and unjust pressure of the evil renters. /s

shipscode 3y ago

You’d have to be a maniac to want to become a landlord in NY these days.

deleted 3y ago

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onetokeoverthe 3y ago

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