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> They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public. They already have your photo if you have a driver's license or US passpor

> They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public. They already have your photo if you have a driver's license or US passport or basically any form of government ID. The whole point is to compare it to what they already have. So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here, but maybe I'm missing something. Is there something that these cameras record that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos? (You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport, of course.)

rgrieselhuber 2y ago
It’s the principle.
- CPLX 2y ago
  State the principle.
  - gouggoug 2y ago
    The right for privacy and not being constantly filmed, monitored and recorded. That principle.
    - grugagag 2y ago
      Not worried about leaks?
    - ahazred8ta 2y ago
      "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own." -- Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner
    - rvnx 2y ago
      If you voted for the lawmakers in power, it's your responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and to check at that level. If you didn't vote for them, these laws still represent the choice of the majority (or at least of their representatives). Either way, surveillance laws are a direct consequence of our democratic process and must be acknowledged as such.
      - XMPPwocky 2y ago
        Did you reply to the right post? You say "it's your responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and to check at that level"- but all I see in the parent comments is people discussing politics. People saying "I think this law is bad" is a critical part of the exact democratic process you seem to hold in high regard. That's how you get a consensus among the electorate that can push representatives to oppose future surveillance legislation and repeal existing stuff. (If you replied to the wrong comment, and meant to say this to somebody proposing overthrowing democracy or whatever, disregard my comment, obviously!)
        rvnx 2y ago
        I suggest to go and talk with the people who make the laws rather than make on-the-spot scandal with the agents. Because here, we have a series of people who don't like the law (potentially for good reasons). If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things (additional control during plane boarding, to have border guards, to allow spying on private messages, etc). The "majority" defended their right; the right to feel safe. A bit like someone who does Open Carry in a state who doesn't want you to show weapons. It may be not dangerous if you openly have a weapon, but other people still voted against that for their own reasons.
        gouggoug 2y ago
        > I suggest to go and talk with the people who make the laws rather than make on-the-spot scandal with the agents. Opting-out isn't "making a scandal". You can both opt-out and "talk with the people who make the laws", one doesn't preclude the other. > If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things That is an idealistic view not grounded in reality at all.
        chimpanzee 2y ago
        > it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things > other people still voted against that for their own reasons You are describing a direct democracy, not the representative democracy that actually exists. There are plenty of examples of laws, existent and nonexistent, whose status has little to do with the preferences of the general public. One need only look where there is a conflict between the general public’s interest and that of the government. Surveillance is prime territory.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      Well we don't have a right to privacy anymore so it's hard to argue even a basic principle, thanks SC.
  - rgrieselhuber 2y ago
    The entitlement in your imperative demonstrated the principle.
  - elphinstone 2y ago
    State the principal that says totalitarians have the right to oppress. Don't make bad faith arguments that burden the innocent to state the obvious.
  - j2kun 2y ago
    The principle to exercise your rights, for any reason you please and without having to explain yourself.
    - 1659447091 2y ago
      Sadly enough, this is the one most people who ask me why I opt out of face rec at airports don't seem to "get". They probe for more info, as if there needs to be some extraordinary reason for opting out to be justified over simply going along with it. "They already have your photo". Yes, I know. I gave it to them in exchange for documents that grant international travel privileges. The rules/laws also say I can opt out of face rec and are posted on that big ass sign. I exercised my rights as a citizen to apply for documents within the rules allowed. Now I am excising my rights to the part that says I can opt out of having my pic taken every time I want to get on a plane. I would like more clarity on the storage of the bio info derived from the photos. My guess is they keep updating profiles every time they take the pic, but discard the actual photo. This is not why I opt out, but like the salami slicing up-thread, I would guess they are waiting for everyone to get use to the pic at TSA before removing the opt-out clause and letting everyone know they are storing it to update profiles - for your safety. I am just waiting for that big leak, and then massive bio id fraud that will be harder to clean up than it is now. I know someone that has been a victim of id fraud (complete nightmare), I can't even imagine how one would clean that up once bio fraud becomes the norm.
    - CPLX 2y ago
      That's definitely a reasonable point of view. There's another point of view though that says that the aviation system is particularly fragile, and of course it has a history of being used for acts of extreme violence. So there's a compelling state interest question here. Like I think people definitely DO and SHOULD have the right to be secure in their own homes, in their personal papers, and to be free from surveillance of their personal life. I'm extremely amenable to the idea that you should be able to "exercise your rights, for any reason you please and without having to explain yourself" in that regard. I think it's also clear that the rights one has are going to be circumscribed when participating in the aviation system. So it's more a matter of degree than principle.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    The ability to go do something anonymously, perhaps some act of protest or resistance or sabotage, and then resume normal life afterwards without having to live forever after as a fugitive, it contributes to the legitimacy of a system that requires us to occasionally make compromises like being groped by TSA. So long as I can assume an anonymous role on occasion, and other people can too, I must think twice before doing anything destructively rash. Nobody else has bombed this thing yet, and they surely could, so perhaps it exists with the consent of the people around it. But if surveillance and control exceeds some ill defined threshold such that its not clear that so many of us actually could get away with fighting back against the machinery of control that surrounds us. Well then one must question whether it actually exists with our consent. And in that case, if we're lucky enough to be able to get away with dismantling it, it very well may be our responsibility to do so. That's the principle. There must still be some line not yet crossed. Because otherwise there's nothing to do besides fight. So we don't let them cross whatever the arbitrary line is because most of us are not prepared for the fight.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      The issue with that "principle" is that it takes one person, who could very well be from a different society with different ideas of consent, or just a suicidal lunatic or someone in for an insurance scam, to ruin it for everyone.
      - pineaux 2y ago
        There is no real way around this.
        __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I'm not sure if we're worried that the outliers are at the top exerting illegitimate control or at the bottom undermining it without justification but either way I agree that there are no easy answers here. It's just something you've got to navigate if you want to have a society.
        deleted 2y ago
  - dmichulke 2y ago
    "I don't want to" is enough as long as I'm not legally obliged. It doesn't matter for my purposes whether you agree with this as a principle.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
> already have your photo > biometrics they already have > obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras The whole “boiling the frog” meme is that nobody notices the rights being curtailed over time. I understand the whole “not in public” thing but there’s still got to be a point where the depth and/or breadth of information gathered is too much.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  It’s less of boiling the frog and instead a deliberate salami slicing tactics coined by Hungarian communists. It’s more apt in that we are aware of what is being done but unable to resist because each small change is ‘trivial’ until they have the whole salami and by then it’s too late. It should be noted the frogs regulate their body temperature by jumping in and out of water and thus do react to even slow increases of temperature.
  - chii 2y ago
    > until they have the whole salami and by then it’s too late. so what is the whole salami? It's not unreasonable to know exactly who is on which flight imho. It is slightly worse to have face recognition in public spaces, but your identity is not a secret. As long as this information is not available for private uses (aka, it is only used by law enforcement), i don't see the privacy implications of public facial recognition.
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      I’m old enough to remember a time when it didn’t really matter, the wrong person getting on the wrong flight was more of an issue for that person and maybe the airline. Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services. By the time it happens the response is; ‘of course we need these things’, and in time that will be replaced by ‘that’s the way it has always been’ by people who don’t know any better. Just because it’s normal now doesn’t mean it always had to be this way. I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.
rgrieselhuber 2y ago
Privacy is a concern but it’s more a matter of conditioning. Every time you actively consent to it, you’re submitting to the conditioning and further enabling the system to move in this direction as a whole.
- orbillius 2y ago
  > a matter of conditioning I remember, it must have been in the late '90s, when Windows added the ability to get "important security updates" via the internet and a lot of people were turning it off. I remember a comment on slashdot about how we would all become conditioned to accept it.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    Wow, did they also predict we’d “become conditioned” to upgrade Windows without using a CD-ROM?
    - orbillius 2y ago
      Note the difference between what you said: "here's a different way of doing a thing that you're already doing, and don't mind doing, and understand the reasong for doing" ...and the thing that I said: "here's a thing that you don't want to do, and don't see the need for, but don't worry because it wont happen often" (then over time it starts happening often. The former is not conditioning. The latter is.
stemlord 2y ago
"They already have this info" is one of four forms of "privacy nihilism" commonly argued against the right to privacy. I forget all four, but one other one is "I have nothing to hide anyway"
- sdsd 2y ago
  I found your comment by idly searching the word "nihilism" in the Algolia HN search box. I was delighted to learn about privacy nihilism and am curious what the other forms are, haha
cookiengineer 2y ago
> privacy concerns The super duper classified high security no-flight list was shared internationally via a public ftp server with the username and password anonymous:anonymous. A hacker that disclosed that responsibly got into lots of troubles for exposing that. [1] So I'd argue indeed I assume that TSA and border control use the most incompetent and most lying way to solve anything when the control mechanism are privacy laws. They literally care 0% about that. If they say they delete something, I assume they keep a physical copy. And I totally understand people worrying a lot about that, given the golden age of deep fakes we live in. Imagine what's possible 10 years ahead when that biometric data can be used to imitate and authenticate you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673
akira2501 2y ago
> They already have your photo It's not that they took my picture at the DMV to put it on my license. It's the idea that through this picture, they're going to decide if I can fly or not, and I have no process to challenge that determination. > So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here Why is the government allowed to decide if I can fly domestically or not? > that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos? Why is my biometric data required to fly? This is why I can't fly. I refuse real ID. I refuse a passport. These are not prescriptive rights the government has over my affairs. > You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport Do they also have my drivers license information?
- kredd 2y ago
  Participation in large scale societal interaction requires some trust. Throughout the history, we've slowly decided to compromise by giving up on privacy and increasing that trust in specific circumstances. You can argue whether post-9/11 changes are necessary or it's just a security theater, but it does bring a peace of mind for everyone else on the plane (e.g. "all these hundreds of random people at least are not in no-fly list").
  - akira2501 2y ago
    > we've slowly decided Have _we_? What mechanism did _we_ decide this by? Why is there zero alternative mechanisms for boarding a flight if I refuse to share my "biometrics" with the state? > but it does bring a peace of mind We were given specific intelligence on the 9/11 attackers and their plans before they were enacted. The "shoe bomber" was let on a plane and only stopped by alert passengers. Private plane passengers do not have to go through security checks. Your peace of mind is a total lie.
  - spolitry 2y ago
    It doesn’t bring me peace of mind to know I have the privilege of flying, today, while other innocent people are banned by a racist authoritarian government. It gives me fear that I could be the next victim.

rgrieselhuber 2y ago

It’s the principle.

CPLX 2y ago
State the principle.
- gouggoug 2y ago
  The right for privacy and not being constantly filmed, monitored and recorded. That principle.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Not worried about leaks?
  - ahazred8ta 2y ago
    "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own." -- Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner
  - rvnx 2y ago
    If you voted for the lawmakers in power, it's your responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and to check at that level. If you didn't vote for them, these laws still represent the choice of the majority (or at least of their representatives). Either way, surveillance laws are a direct consequence of our democratic process and must be acknowledged as such.
    - XMPPwocky 2y ago
      Did you reply to the right post? You say "it's your responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and to check at that level"- but all I see in the parent comments is people discussing politics. People saying "I think this law is bad" is a critical part of the exact democratic process you seem to hold in high regard. That's how you get a consensus among the electorate that can push representatives to oppose future surveillance legislation and repeal existing stuff. (If you replied to the wrong comment, and meant to say this to somebody proposing overthrowing democracy or whatever, disregard my comment, obviously!)
      - rvnx 2y ago
        I suggest to go and talk with the people who make the laws rather than make on-the-spot scandal with the agents. Because here, we have a series of people who don't like the law (potentially for good reasons). If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things (additional control during plane boarding, to have border guards, to allow spying on private messages, etc). The "majority" defended their right; the right to feel safe. A bit like someone who does Open Carry in a state who doesn't want you to show weapons. It may be not dangerous if you openly have a weapon, but other people still voted against that for their own reasons.
        gouggoug 2y ago
        > I suggest to go and talk with the people who make the laws rather than make on-the-spot scandal with the agents. Opting-out isn't "making a scandal". You can both opt-out and "talk with the people who make the laws", one doesn't preclude the other. > If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things That is an idealistic view not grounded in reality at all.
        chimpanzee 2y ago
        > it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things > other people still voted against that for their own reasons You are describing a direct democracy, not the representative democracy that actually exists. There are plenty of examples of laws, existent and nonexistent, whose status has little to do with the preferences of the general public. One need only look where there is a conflict between the general public’s interest and that of the government. Surveillance is prime territory.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Well we don't have a right to privacy anymore so it's hard to argue even a basic principle, thanks SC.
- rgrieselhuber 2y ago
  The entitlement in your imperative demonstrated the principle.
- elphinstone 2y ago
  State the principal that says totalitarians have the right to oppress. Don't make bad faith arguments that burden the innocent to state the obvious.
- j2kun 2y ago
  The principle to exercise your rights, for any reason you please and without having to explain yourself.
  - 1659447091 2y ago
    Sadly enough, this is the one most people who ask me why I opt out of face rec at airports don't seem to "get". They probe for more info, as if there needs to be some extraordinary reason for opting out to be justified over simply going along with it. "They already have your photo". Yes, I know. I gave it to them in exchange for documents that grant international travel privileges. The rules/laws also say I can opt out of face rec and are posted on that big ass sign. I exercised my rights as a citizen to apply for documents within the rules allowed. Now I am excising my rights to the part that says I can opt out of having my pic taken every time I want to get on a plane. I would like more clarity on the storage of the bio info derived from the photos. My guess is they keep updating profiles every time they take the pic, but discard the actual photo. This is not why I opt out, but like the salami slicing up-thread, I would guess they are waiting for everyone to get use to the pic at TSA before removing the opt-out clause and letting everyone know they are storing it to update profiles - for your safety. I am just waiting for that big leak, and then massive bio id fraud that will be harder to clean up than it is now. I know someone that has been a victim of id fraud (complete nightmare), I can't even imagine how one would clean that up once bio fraud becomes the norm.
  - CPLX 2y ago
    That's definitely a reasonable point of view. There's another point of view though that says that the aviation system is particularly fragile, and of course it has a history of being used for acts of extreme violence. So there's a compelling state interest question here. Like I think people definitely DO and SHOULD have the right to be secure in their own homes, in their personal papers, and to be free from surveillance of their personal life. I'm extremely amenable to the idea that you should be able to "exercise your rights, for any reason you please and without having to explain yourself" in that regard. I think it's also clear that the rights one has are going to be circumscribed when participating in the aviation system. So it's more a matter of degree than principle.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  The ability to go do something anonymously, perhaps some act of protest or resistance or sabotage, and then resume normal life afterwards without having to live forever after as a fugitive, it contributes to the legitimacy of a system that requires us to occasionally make compromises like being groped by TSA. So long as I can assume an anonymous role on occasion, and other people can too, I must think twice before doing anything destructively rash. Nobody else has bombed this thing yet, and they surely could, so perhaps it exists with the consent of the people around it. But if surveillance and control exceeds some ill defined threshold such that its not clear that so many of us actually could get away with fighting back against the machinery of control that surrounds us. Well then one must question whether it actually exists with our consent. And in that case, if we're lucky enough to be able to get away with dismantling it, it very well may be our responsibility to do so. That's the principle. There must still be some line not yet crossed. Because otherwise there's nothing to do besides fight. So we don't let them cross whatever the arbitrary line is because most of us are not prepared for the fight.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    The issue with that "principle" is that it takes one person, who could very well be from a different society with different ideas of consent, or just a suicidal lunatic or someone in for an insurance scam, to ruin it for everyone.
    - pineaux 2y ago
      There is no real way around this.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I'm not sure if we're worried that the outliers are at the top exerting illegitimate control or at the bottom undermining it without justification but either way I agree that there are no easy answers here. It's just something you've got to navigate if you want to have a society.
      - deleted 2y ago
- dmichulke 2y ago
  "I don't want to" is enough as long as I'm not legally obliged. It doesn't matter for my purposes whether you agree with this as a principle.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago

> already have your photo > biometrics they already have > obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras The whole “boiling the frog” meme is that nobody notices the rights being curtailed over time. I understand the whole “not in public” thing but there’s still got to be a point where the depth and/or breadth of information gathered is too much.

cjbgkagh 2y ago
It’s less of boiling the frog and instead a deliberate salami slicing tactics coined by Hungarian communists. It’s more apt in that we are aware of what is being done but unable to resist because each small change is ‘trivial’ until they have the whole salami and by then it’s too late. It should be noted the frogs regulate their body temperature by jumping in and out of water and thus do react to even slow increases of temperature.
- chii 2y ago
  > until they have the whole salami and by then it’s too late. so what is the whole salami? It's not unreasonable to know exactly who is on which flight imho. It is slightly worse to have face recognition in public spaces, but your identity is not a secret. As long as this information is not available for private uses (aka, it is only used by law enforcement), i don't see the privacy implications of public facial recognition.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I’m old enough to remember a time when it didn’t really matter, the wrong person getting on the wrong flight was more of an issue for that person and maybe the airline. Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services. By the time it happens the response is; ‘of course we need these things’, and in time that will be replaced by ‘that’s the way it has always been’ by people who don’t know any better. Just because it’s normal now doesn’t mean it always had to be this way. I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.

rgrieselhuber 2y ago

Privacy is a concern but it’s more a matter of conditioning. Every time you actively consent to it, you’re submitting to the conditioning and further enabling the system to move in this direction as a whole.

orbillius 2y ago
> a matter of conditioning I remember, it must have been in the late '90s, when Windows added the ability to get "important security updates" via the internet and a lot of people were turning it off. I remember a comment on slashdot about how we would all become conditioned to accept it.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Wow, did they also predict we’d “become conditioned” to upgrade Windows without using a CD-ROM?
  - orbillius 2y ago
    Note the difference between what you said: "here's a different way of doing a thing that you're already doing, and don't mind doing, and understand the reasong for doing" ...and the thing that I said: "here's a thing that you don't want to do, and don't see the need for, but don't worry because it wont happen often" (then over time it starts happening often. The former is not conditioning. The latter is.

stemlord 2y ago

"They already have this info" is one of four forms of "privacy nihilism" commonly argued against the right to privacy. I forget all four, but one other one is "I have nothing to hide anyway"

sdsd 2y ago
I found your comment by idly searching the word "nihilism" in the Algolia HN search box. I was delighted to learn about privacy nihilism and am curious what the other forms are, haha

cookiengineer 2y ago

> privacy concerns The super duper classified high security no-flight list was shared internationally via a public ftp server with the username and password anonymous:anonymous. A hacker that disclosed that responsibly got into lots of troubles for exposing that. [1] So I'd argue indeed I assume that TSA and border control use the most incompetent and most lying way to solve anything when the control mechanism are privacy laws. They literally care 0% about that. If they say they delete something, I assume they keep a physical copy. And I totally understand people worrying a lot about that, given the golden age of deep fakes we live in. Imagine what's possible 10 years ahead when that biometric data can be used to imitate and authenticate you. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673

akira2501 2y ago

> They already have your photo It's not that they took my picture at the DMV to put it on my license. It's the idea that through this picture, they're going to decide if I can fly or not, and I have no process to challenge that determination. > So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here Why is the government allowed to decide if I can fly domestically or not? > that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos? Why is my biometric data required to fly? This is why I can't fly. I refuse real ID. I refuse a passport. These are not prescriptive rights the government has over my affairs. > You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport Do they also have my drivers license information?

kredd 2y ago
Participation in large scale societal interaction requires some trust. Throughout the history, we've slowly decided to compromise by giving up on privacy and increasing that trust in specific circumstances. You can argue whether post-9/11 changes are necessary or it's just a security theater, but it does bring a peace of mind for everyone else on the plane (e.g. "all these hundreds of random people at least are not in no-fly list").
- akira2501 2y ago
  > we've slowly decided Have _we_? What mechanism did _we_ decide this by? Why is there zero alternative mechanisms for boarding a flight if I refuse to share my "biometrics" with the state? > but it does bring a peace of mind We were given specific intelligence on the 9/11 attackers and their plans before they were enacted. The "shoe bomber" was let on a plane and only stopped by alert passengers. Private plane passengers do not have to go through security checks. Your peace of mind is a total lie.
- spolitry 2y ago
  It doesn’t bring me peace of mind to know I have the privilege of flying, today, while other innocent people are banned by a racist authoritarian government. It gives me fear that I could be the next victim.