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I understand that my viewpoint differs from that of many here. I don’t see the problem with the live face detection. What I see as a problem is the process foll

I understand that my viewpoint differs from that of many here. I don’t see the problem with the live face detection. What I see as a problem is the process followed after the detection. Simply saying with any system like this there will be mistakes. The reaction should be designed such that we account for these mistakes. It sounds like the system as designed has at least three unhandled exceptions: - your system thinks I am someone who stole something but I am not that someone. (Mis-identification) - your system thinks I am someone who stole something, and I am that someone but I did not stole anything ever. (Mistake in the database) - your system thinks I am some who stole something, and I did, but I have already been properly punished for it. (Rehabilitation) If you just bar people from the shop automatically on a positive identification you are going to make the above mistakes on a massive scale. And because of the nature of these system if they made a mistake once with someone it is possible they will make the mistake again and again, so you better handle the exceptions in a gracefull and sensible maner. And shops will absolutely not do the right thing on their own. Because it is just so much cheaper to hassle the few who has fallen off from the happy path than build in the proper safeguards, so shops on their own will just decide to “eat” the losses caused by persecuting innocents. And that is the part which is not right. That is where laws should come in and mandate proper procedural safeguards. What are the proper safeguards? I don’t know. I have ideas on how that could go, but this comment is already getting very long. What I am saying is that I think the correct solution is not “no cctv with facial detection allowed” as many here seems to propose, but it is also not letting shops persecute innocent victims of the above exceptions. There is a third way with regulated and safeguarded procedures where I think we should be looking.

EnigmaFlare 2y ago
Maybe a solution is the cost of lawsuits from false positives vs the cost of theft from false negatives means shopkeepers or their insurance companies have to make a reasonable trade-off in how they use that information that keeps most people happy. The odd incorrectly identified person can still get cleared after a bit of inconvenient legal procedure and be paid for their trouble.
- krisoft 2y ago
  I’m not so sure about those lawsuits. With the current system (as the laws are today) there is very little standing against operators who wrongly ban you. You might get lucky and sue them for defamation if they do something outrageous like call you a thief in front of people. But they probably won’t. It is just so much easier to call you asside and trespass you from the store quietly without giving you a reason, or only giving a very general one. And then you don’t have any standing to sue them. And if we are already proposing new laws to provide standing to sue why would we not also mandate some procedure so people can work out these edge cases among themselves?
  - EnigmaFlare 2y ago
    Seems like there should be some sort of legal protection against being banned from nearly every shop. If it's just one shop owner who doesn't like you for whatever reason, you can go somewhere else, but if they're all sharing information and excluding someone, that's obviously bad. Perhaps this hasn't needed a law before because it was too hard for them all to coordinate on identifying everyone on their blacklist, but with facial recognition provided by a single vendor, it becomes a real risk. This has been an issue with tenancy in my country. A tenant goes to the tenancy tribunal for any reason - even if it's the landlord's fault, and then all property managers, who collectively control most of the rental market, blacklist that person and suddenly they can't live anywhere. With suing, the parties can already work it out among themselves if they both want to avoid going to court. I don't think it needs a mandated procedure. No-win-no-fee lawyers exist to serve poor people who have a clearly winnable case.
bsenftner 2y ago
I don't believe these systems are ready for mass, non-expert use. I spent 7 years as lead developer of one of the globally leading FR systems, and I've left the industry. It is fundamentally unsafe in the hands of ordinary people, ordinary people who are not scientifically and rationally discriminate in their day to day activities. Ordinary people treat FR like an AI Gawd, and the police are hopeless with it. The straw that broke my camel's back was learning of the wide spread practice of police asking crime victims "what celebrity does the perpetrator look the most alike?" And then the police would put that celebrity's photo into their FR system and start harassing people in their city that look like the celebrity. So, mind numbingly stupid, I got angry at clients doing this, got barred from talking to clients, and soon there after quit the industry. The industry believes it is "not their problem".
data-ottawa 2y ago
I'm guessing unless you go to the press these issues will never get resolved for you and you'll just be banned from random stores. So a 1% error rate will over time creep up to a 5% surprisingly quickly. How many grocery stores will tell you what's security system they use when they already assume your a thief?
pc86 2y ago
Strictly to your point about rehabilitation, that doesn't mean the store necessarily needs to let you shop there again. So unless there is a statutory requirement to the contrary stores would still get that information and presumably there would be a chain-specific SOP about whether or not that person was allowed on the property.
- lkramer 2y ago
  That is perhaps reasonable if it's one store, or even a chain, but the article spoke about this applying across multiple chains, whichever used this software. If we end up banning people for life from shopping in physical sto ed because they shoplifted once when they were young, we are creating a deeply disturbing society.
- lsaferite 2y ago
  I think the danger in systems like this is in the article. They said the shopper was banned from all establishments running that system. So, even if the accused person is not accused of doing anything in that particular establishment, they are now capable of being globally banned. That should 100% be prohibited.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > unless there is a statutory requirement to the contrary I’m aware of that. What I’m proposing is that we should make that a statutory requirement. If you are operating a camera system with automatic face detection it must be operated in a certain manner.
bcrosby95 2y ago
Ain't no one gonna use the tech if they have to spend 30 minutes doing a background check after it flags someone. I also guarantee this is not how sales and marketing are pitching it.

EnigmaFlare 2y ago

Maybe a solution is the cost of lawsuits from false positives vs the cost of theft from false negatives means shopkeepers or their insurance companies have to make a reasonable trade-off in how they use that information that keeps most people happy. The odd incorrectly identified person can still get cleared after a bit of inconvenient legal procedure and be paid for their trouble.

krisoft 2y ago
I’m not so sure about those lawsuits. With the current system (as the laws are today) there is very little standing against operators who wrongly ban you. You might get lucky and sue them for defamation if they do something outrageous like call you a thief in front of people. But they probably won’t. It is just so much easier to call you asside and trespass you from the store quietly without giving you a reason, or only giving a very general one. And then you don’t have any standing to sue them. And if we are already proposing new laws to provide standing to sue why would we not also mandate some procedure so people can work out these edge cases among themselves?
- EnigmaFlare 2y ago
  Seems like there should be some sort of legal protection against being banned from nearly every shop. If it's just one shop owner who doesn't like you for whatever reason, you can go somewhere else, but if they're all sharing information and excluding someone, that's obviously bad. Perhaps this hasn't needed a law before because it was too hard for them all to coordinate on identifying everyone on their blacklist, but with facial recognition provided by a single vendor, it becomes a real risk. This has been an issue with tenancy in my country. A tenant goes to the tenancy tribunal for any reason - even if it's the landlord's fault, and then all property managers, who collectively control most of the rental market, blacklist that person and suddenly they can't live anywhere. With suing, the parties can already work it out among themselves if they both want to avoid going to court. I don't think it needs a mandated procedure. No-win-no-fee lawyers exist to serve poor people who have a clearly winnable case.

bsenftner 2y ago

I don't believe these systems are ready for mass, non-expert use. I spent 7 years as lead developer of one of the globally leading FR systems, and I've left the industry. It is fundamentally unsafe in the hands of ordinary people, ordinary people who are not scientifically and rationally discriminate in their day to day activities. Ordinary people treat FR like an AI Gawd, and the police are hopeless with it. The straw that broke my camel's back was learning of the wide spread practice of police asking crime victims "what celebrity does the perpetrator look the most alike?" And then the police would put that celebrity's photo into their FR system and start harassing people in their city that look like the celebrity. So, mind numbingly stupid, I got angry at clients doing this, got barred from talking to clients, and soon there after quit the industry. The industry believes it is "not their problem".

data-ottawa 2y ago

I'm guessing unless you go to the press these issues will never get resolved for you and you'll just be banned from random stores. So a 1% error rate will over time creep up to a 5% surprisingly quickly. How many grocery stores will tell you what's security system they use when they already assume your a thief?

pc86 2y ago

Strictly to your point about rehabilitation, that doesn't mean the store necessarily needs to let you shop there again. So unless there is a statutory requirement to the contrary stores would still get that information and presumably there would be a chain-specific SOP about whether or not that person was allowed on the property.

lkramer 2y ago
That is perhaps reasonable if it's one store, or even a chain, but the article spoke about this applying across multiple chains, whichever used this software. If we end up banning people for life from shopping in physical sto ed because they shoplifted once when they were young, we are creating a deeply disturbing society.
lsaferite 2y ago
I think the danger in systems like this is in the article. They said the shopper was banned from all establishments running that system. So, even if the accused person is not accused of doing anything in that particular establishment, they are now capable of being globally banned. That should 100% be prohibited.
krisoft 2y ago
> unless there is a statutory requirement to the contrary I’m aware of that. What I’m proposing is that we should make that a statutory requirement. If you are operating a camera system with automatic face detection it must be operated in a certain manner.

bcrosby95 2y ago

Ain't no one gonna use the tech if they have to spend 30 minutes doing a background check after it flags someone. I also guarantee this is not how sales and marketing are pitching it.