5 ms·

With the 24/7 surveillance camera setup, the cost to the landlord of gathering enough violations to evict minority tenants is “watch all recorded video from all

by fwlr 3y ago

With the 24/7 surveillance camera setup, the cost to the landlord of gathering enough violations to evict minority tenants is “watch all recorded video from all cameras, looking for the target”. Facial recognition allows landlords to start with a target in mind and have the technology filter an arbitrary amount of data for just the moments when the target is on camera. The tech removes that O(n) search where n is hours recorded, which was the dominating factor making it impractical, and crucially was the only thing that made pervasive recording correspondingly more expensive to mine for violations.

brvsft 3y ago
Cameras can just recognize humans, so a lot of the N hours can be removed simply by detecting human activity and without using facial recognition. It's still quite practical. I have cheap Wyze cameras that allow me to do this. It would also be trivial to pore through those videos and just pick out the ones where the human has dark skin if I'm a racist landlord. The thing is, I agree with people against this simply on the principle that the landlord shouldn't be able to use facial recognition on tenants without their permission, and the landlord also shouldn't be able to use that lack of agreement to withhold a lease in the first place. But the race-reductionist arguments being used to prop up this position come off as sophistry. I don't think a landlord in NYC of all places is going to waste time targeting black people that they already gave a lease to an apartment, rather than just targetting shitty tenants. The cameras will probably be able to find people littering in the building, for example. Those are the people you target if the plan is to start kicking people out of the building to improve it.
- fnimick 3y ago
  > It would also be trivial to pore through those videos and just pick out the ones where the human has dark skin if I'm a racist landlord. Yes, but you can't do it at scale. Automation via facial recognition makes it cheap. That's the problem. I have no problem with an individual person remembering the face of another individual person - I have a problem with a system that allows a landlord to pick out every interaction with any person they choose after the fact for the entire term of the data collection.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    > I have a problem with a system that allows a landlord to pick out every interaction with any person they choose after the fact for the entire term of the data collection. If that's the case, then why bring race into it? The racial aspects of the argument infers that such law would only be put in place, in spirit, to protect the privacy of minorities, and not anyone else.
    - fnimick 3y ago
      I'm not the one who brought race into it, I'm pointing out that it should be banned for everyone. Nobody here is saying "we should ban facial recognition only on minorities", they are pointing out that it can and is likely to be abused specifically to further existing racial inequality.
      - zdragnar 3y ago
        If you're going to move the goalposts in the middle of a conversation, you might want to call that out a little clearer.
        fnimick 3y ago
        I'm not sure "enabling easier abuse of power will likely have bad consequences for populations of people who are already targeted for abuse by people in power" is moving the goalposts.
        bequanna 3y ago
        Shoehorning racism into every argument has the opposite effect of what you are expecting. Rather than some call to action, people either roll their eyes or tune it out because of overuse. Continued tyranny over the poor by the powerful is the real injustice in this story, not racism.
zdragnar 3y ago
You're assuming that a landlord who wants to evict a tenant without "proper" cause is going to bother with gathering evidence, instead of simply fabricating it or finding some other way to lay blame on them.
bequanna 3y ago
This is a HUGE leap. You're saying a technology should be banned because there might be some racist landlord who could leverage it to capture minority tenant lease violations? First, we already have systems to deal with this sort of behavior. If someone is found selectively applying rules based on race it is typically illegal and punishable. Second, why would a racist landlord rent to a minority and then spend all of that effort gathering evidence against just that tenant to kick them out?

by fwlr 3y ago

brvsft 3y ago

Cameras can just recognize humans, so a lot of the N hours can be removed simply by detecting human activity and without using facial recognition. It's still quite practical. I have cheap Wyze cameras that allow me to do this. It would also be trivial to pore through those videos and just pick out the ones where the human has dark skin if I'm a racist landlord. The thing is, I agree with people against this simply on the principle that the landlord shouldn't be able to use facial recognition on tenants without their permission, and the landlord also shouldn't be able to use that lack of agreement to withhold a lease in the first place. But the race-reductionist arguments being used to prop up this position come off as sophistry. I don't think a landlord in NYC of all places is going to waste time targeting black people that they already gave a lease to an apartment, rather than just targetting shitty tenants. The cameras will probably be able to find people littering in the building, for example. Those are the people you target if the plan is to start kicking people out of the building to improve it.

fnimick 3y ago
> It would also be trivial to pore through those videos and just pick out the ones where the human has dark skin if I'm a racist landlord. Yes, but you can't do it at scale. Automation via facial recognition makes it cheap. That's the problem. I have no problem with an individual person remembering the face of another individual person - I have a problem with a system that allows a landlord to pick out every interaction with any person they choose after the fact for the entire term of the data collection.
- brvsft 3y ago
  > I have a problem with a system that allows a landlord to pick out every interaction with any person they choose after the fact for the entire term of the data collection. If that's the case, then why bring race into it? The racial aspects of the argument infers that such law would only be put in place, in spirit, to protect the privacy of minorities, and not anyone else.
  - fnimick 3y ago
    I'm not the one who brought race into it, I'm pointing out that it should be banned for everyone. Nobody here is saying "we should ban facial recognition only on minorities", they are pointing out that it can and is likely to be abused specifically to further existing racial inequality.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      If you're going to move the goalposts in the middle of a conversation, you might want to call that out a little clearer.
      - fnimick 3y ago
        I'm not sure "enabling easier abuse of power will likely have bad consequences for populations of people who are already targeted for abuse by people in power" is moving the goalposts.
        bequanna 3y ago
        Shoehorning racism into every argument has the opposite effect of what you are expecting. Rather than some call to action, people either roll their eyes or tune it out because of overuse. Continued tyranny over the poor by the powerful is the real injustice in this story, not racism.

zdragnar 3y ago

You're assuming that a landlord who wants to evict a tenant without "proper" cause is going to bother with gathering evidence, instead of simply fabricating it or finding some other way to lay blame on them.

bequanna 3y ago

This is a HUGE leap. You're saying a technology should be banned because there might be some racist landlord who could leverage it to capture minority tenant lease violations? First, we already have systems to deal with this sort of behavior. If someone is found selectively applying rules based on race it is typically illegal and punishable. Second, why would a racist landlord rent to a minority and then spend all of that effort gathering evidence against just that tenant to kick them out?