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Can somebody explain to me, succinctly and without the slippery slope nonsense immanent in this link, why facial recognition is seen by some reasonable people t

by avazhi 3y ago

Can somebody explain to me, succinctly and without the slippery slope nonsense immanent in this link, why facial recognition is seen by some reasonable people to be a problem? I’m not interested in why anarcho-fascists or tinfoil hat libertarians or Luddites think it’s a bad idea - I’d like to know why your average reasonable man would have a problem with this. As somebody with both a law and a science degree, I just can’t understand the outrage. We already have to take our photos for passports and our IDs - how the fuck is this substantively different? I get the sense this a situation that proves that rule that somebody, somewhere will always find a way to be outraged about everything in 2023.

from-nibly 3y ago
Because it gives the government a direct up to date photo of you, while it's already tracking where you are going. It's just that much easier to decide you have committed a crime. And find you. However, the slippery slope holds true when you complain about previous actions. I.e. the government knowing where you go when you fly, and searching your private belongings without a warrant. This isn't the first thing on the slope. With just those two examples this is the 3rd. I'll believe the slope isn't slippery when they repeal the patriot act. Edit: finished first thought.
rebeccaskinner 3y ago
> I’m not interested in why anarcho-fascists or tinfoil hat libertarians or Luddites think it’s a bad idea - I’d like to know why your average reasonable man would have a problem with this. I think this is an overly adversarial view of people trying to take a long and systems based view of this, but even if we do focus on the immediate practicalities, there are a couple of obvious ones. First, and foremost, I don't trust TSA to get it right. Facial recognition is one of many technologies that works well enough most of the time that it might be fine for non-critical infrastructure, but there are enough issues with it that at the scale of imposing it on all passengers we should anticipate a lot of negative impact. This can include both the possibility of bad actors being allowed to travel because they can find effective ways to defeat the system, and innocent people being negatively impacted through no fault of their own. Early on the system may be opt-in, and in the medium term there may be reasonable paths to opt out, but once the system is mandatory- or a significant default, people will be punished with a significantly degraded experience because the technology doesn't work well for them. There's also the infosec angle. I don't trust TSA to get security right any more than I trust them to get facial recognition working right. We've already seen leaks of images from millimeter wave scanners. Although a photo of your face may not be as private as the images leaked from those scanners, there are a lot of potential negative outcomes from someone getting a hold of a corpus of facial recognition data, especially if it contains more than just a raw photo and includes information that could help someone to impersonate you.
tavavex 3y ago
To me, widespread facial recognition isn't that different from an ID... except you're always obligated to walk with your ID taped to your forehead. Once the system is in place, expanding it to other locations could be a trivial task. Hypothetically, this leads to a situation where you can discretely "card" anybody by just recording them, with no need to ask for an ID or even let the person know that they're being checked. And if that's in place, then, given enough cameras, tracking every person's location is also simplified. So, I guess my opposition here isn't directed at specifically TSA, but rather creating a centralized facial recognition database in general.

by avazhi 3y ago

from-nibly 3y ago

Because it gives the government a direct up to date photo of you, while it's already tracking where you are going. It's just that much easier to decide you have committed a crime. And find you. However, the slippery slope holds true when you complain about previous actions. I.e. the government knowing where you go when you fly, and searching your private belongings without a warrant. This isn't the first thing on the slope. With just those two examples this is the 3rd. I'll believe the slope isn't slippery when they repeal the patriot act. Edit: finished first thought.

rebeccaskinner 3y ago

> I’m not interested in why anarcho-fascists or tinfoil hat libertarians or Luddites think it’s a bad idea - I’d like to know why your average reasonable man would have a problem with this. I think this is an overly adversarial view of people trying to take a long and systems based view of this, but even if we do focus on the immediate practicalities, there are a couple of obvious ones. First, and foremost, I don't trust TSA to get it right. Facial recognition is one of many technologies that works well enough most of the time that it might be fine for non-critical infrastructure, but there are enough issues with it that at the scale of imposing it on all passengers we should anticipate a lot of negative impact. This can include both the possibility of bad actors being allowed to travel because they can find effective ways to defeat the system, and innocent people being negatively impacted through no fault of their own. Early on the system may be opt-in, and in the medium term there may be reasonable paths to opt out, but once the system is mandatory- or a significant default, people will be punished with a significantly degraded experience because the technology doesn't work well for them. There's also the infosec angle. I don't trust TSA to get security right any more than I trust them to get facial recognition working right. We've already seen leaks of images from millimeter wave scanners. Although a photo of your face may not be as private as the images leaked from those scanners, there are a lot of potential negative outcomes from someone getting a hold of a corpus of facial recognition data, especially if it contains more than just a raw photo and includes information that could help someone to impersonate you.

tavavex 3y ago

To me, widespread facial recognition isn't that different from an ID... except you're always obligated to walk with your ID taped to your forehead. Once the system is in place, expanding it to other locations could be a trivial task. Hypothetically, this leads to a situation where you can discretely "card" anybody by just recording them, with no need to ask for an ID or even let the person know that they're being checked. And if that's in place, then, given enough cameras, tracking every person's location is also simplified. So, I guess my opposition here isn't directed at specifically TSA, but rather creating a centralized facial recognition database in general.