5 ms·

You have no right to privacy in public. If you make this illegal private companies will do it instead, and the first amendment makes that impossible to stop.

worik 2y ago
> first amendment makes that impossible to stop. How so? Preventing facial recognition misuse (or use even). How is that impinging on the freedoms guaranteed in the First Ammendment?
- nickff 2y ago
  Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech. For example, recording police officers in public is speech. If the government can ban private parties from recording people's faces in public, the same could be done to prevent recording the police.
  - kyleee 2y ago
    And a valid news/press activity protected by the first amendment
  - mindslight 2y ago
    Resolving this pathological impasse is straightforward - differentiate between personal activity and commercial activity. Individuals recording the police, other people happenstance, or even spending a considerable amount of their personal time compiling a self-administered facial recognition database of people - fine. Businesses (or really, entire industries) creating surveillance databases that would make a Stasi agent blush, likely by paying the salaries of many people to do this, and likely selling [access to] the databases to pay for it all - not fine. Societally, we've basically been hoodwinked with this temporarily embarassed millionaires fallacy - scale itself creates logical contradictions of our rights and we need to attack this head on.
    - nickff 2y ago
      It seems like an impasse caused by the first amendment, which does not distinguish between "personal" and "commercial" activities. I suppose there could be another amendment to add in these categories, but the freedom of the (commercial) press seems to fall under your "commercial activity" category? I suppose the government could license the commercial press, but that seems problematic, as it's what many totalitarian regimes do to suppress speech, and is exactly what the first amendment was meant to forestall. On a slightly different note, why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term?
      - mindslight 2y ago
        The jurisprudence of the first amendment already makes many distinctions that are not there in the text of the amendment itself. This is inevitable - rights conflict with other rights and even with the same right as exercised by someone else. > why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term? The current jurisprudence is a pathlogical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_case) interpretation that clamps the solution space to maximal commercial/corporate rights at the expense of individual rights. The example of the press is actually quite poignant. The current legal regime neuters the free speech rights of most of the press. People can be fired for writing articles saying things their employer does not want to be said. They can even be fired for saying things in their own personal time that their employer does not want to be said! The end result is greatly diminished rights for the individuals making up the press, in order to support greatly increased rights for the controlling owners of the press.
    - kurthr 2y ago
      I don't see how you can differentiate between humans and corporations. They are both fundamentally the same. They are born... and oh wait, yeah. But still under the 14th ammendment's equal protection clause the Supreme court determined they were in 1886 (some argue 1819). Maybe we shouldn't treat corporate speech the same as human speech under the 1st amendment, but that would allow regulation of corporations giving money to political organizations? Ok, well that's beyond the pale. That's obviously originally the founders intent in writing the bill of rights. I'm sure it's in the Federalist Papers somewhere.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    Commercial speech is substantially less protected under First Amendment case law. You can't prohibit random individuals from declaring themselves a citizen journalist and recording people, but I think it would be entirely possible to pass a law saying private companies may not assemble facial recognition databases for sale to third parties.
    - beaglesss 2y ago
      They don't need to sell the database, just the video that builds the database. Or give it away for free and magically number go up in some bank account in Cyprus or Hong Kong.
  - charlie90 2y ago
    >Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech. Then make it not so, we aren't forced to live with the status quo for eternity. The law wouldn't be banning people recording faces. It would be much more specific: corporations can't record peoples faces at a mass scale to log them away and sell the data for a profit. If there's any edge cases to this, then let the courts handle it. We let the courts sort out grey areas already, that's their job.
infamouscow 2y ago
The fundamental flaw of cynicism is that it invariably opts for the path of least resistance—a facile dismissal rather than a constructive lens for genuine improvement. If an overwhelming majority—say, 80% of the populace—were deeply invested in this issue, they would elect representatives committed to outlawing it, and thus it would indeed become illegal. The cynic might retort that such laws are perpetually vulnerable to subversion under the guise of national security. While there's a kernel of truth in that, it's equally undeniable that if 80% of the citizenry truly felt impassioned, any rogue elements within the government would face severe repercussions. Acts of retribution against such actors would not only be tolerated but perhaps even tacitly endorsed by the public.
- beaglesss 2y ago
  I'm of the opposite opinion,that recording is a liberty and the right to mass record and identify people is a healthy sign of private free speech rights. I feel banning it would be dystopic. Where I disagree is the use of government at all in many of the capacities taking advantage of this such as TSA, DHS, CBP etc as they are essentially unhinged violent pirates.
  - LightHugger 2y ago
    Interesting opinion but there is no dystopian literature i know of that worries about banning mass surveillance. Mass surveillance on the other hand features very prominently.
    - GauntletWizard 2y ago
      Then you're looking in the wrong section. You don't want the sci-fi section, you want history - Cold War. The investigation of the government by the people was violently suppressed and the the official mouthpieces were jokes - "There is no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda."
    - beaglesss 2y ago
      Mass surveillance played out privately means every plated cop car can be tracked, every noted confidential informant and every detective, tax stasi, etc can be traced. This is already becoming the case on networked mapping apps where the road pirates are losing their revenue. It's more of a worry for the state than citizens IMO.
karaterobot 2y ago
There are two things wrong with this: first, in the U.S., you do have certain rights to privacy in public. Whether this is a case of those rights being violated is a different question. In any case, I don't like the creeping redefinition of civil rights I infer from that statement, intentional or not. Second, just as civil rights can be eroded, they can also be expanded, and the idea that we should just throw up our hands is not helpful in a free society that depends on people giving a shit.
drdaeman 2y ago
It's not exactly about the privacy in public, though. YMMV, but I'm 101% fine if a camera looks at me and a machine processes the image. What matters is what happens afterwards. Heck, I want an aid like that - my built-in wetware face recognition is barely functional (I don't even recognize actors in the movies, save for a few most iconic ones), and tying faces only works after repeating it a dozen times. I can pinky swear I won't be sharing this with anyone. I probably won't even keep records, because it's literal digital junk (but I'd like to have a right to record everything that happened around me that I could've possibly remembered naturally). But that's not about it - I just hate how mass surveillance made a lot of people hate all the cameras without making any distinctions (sure, I think I get it). What this is about is that while individual privacy in public is not expected (save for stalking or other forms of harassment, which aren't exactly about privacy anymore), privacy at scale is an open question. Large entities, like governments or big companies, can collect unprecedented amounts of data, and at that scale it holds a significant potential both for good use and for abuse. So, in a functional democracy, it must prompt a public discussion and search for a consensus. It can be argued that there are benefits, and whenever benefits outweigh the risks, and it also can be argued that old principles must be still upheld to the letter, or if reality had changed too much and those principles are not matching to the ideas and reasons... It especially matters when it's about the government, because government abuse can get really nasty, even deadly. That's why all the safeguards, checks and balances. Basically, I think it's not really about cameras, it's about ability to build large databases with information that may be, uh, socially sensitive.

worik 2y ago

> first amendment makes that impossible to stop. How so? Preventing facial recognition misuse (or use even). How is that impinging on the freedoms guaranteed in the First Ammendment?

nickff 2y ago
Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech. For example, recording police officers in public is speech. If the government can ban private parties from recording people's faces in public, the same could be done to prevent recording the police.
- kyleee 2y ago
  And a valid news/press activity protected by the first amendment
- mindslight 2y ago
  Resolving this pathological impasse is straightforward - differentiate between personal activity and commercial activity. Individuals recording the police, other people happenstance, or even spending a considerable amount of their personal time compiling a self-administered facial recognition database of people - fine. Businesses (or really, entire industries) creating surveillance databases that would make a Stasi agent blush, likely by paying the salaries of many people to do this, and likely selling [access to] the databases to pay for it all - not fine. Societally, we've basically been hoodwinked with this temporarily embarassed millionaires fallacy - scale itself creates logical contradictions of our rights and we need to attack this head on.
  - nickff 2y ago
    It seems like an impasse caused by the first amendment, which does not distinguish between "personal" and "commercial" activities. I suppose there could be another amendment to add in these categories, but the freedom of the (commercial) press seems to fall under your "commercial activity" category? I suppose the government could license the commercial press, but that seems problematic, as it's what many totalitarian regimes do to suppress speech, and is exactly what the first amendment was meant to forestall. On a slightly different note, why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term?
    - mindslight 2y ago
      The jurisprudence of the first amendment already makes many distinctions that are not there in the text of the amendment itself. This is inevitable - rights conflict with other rights and even with the same right as exercised by someone else. > why is the impasse "pathological"? Are you just throwing in a pejorative term? The current jurisprudence is a pathlogical (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_case) interpretation that clamps the solution space to maximal commercial/corporate rights at the expense of individual rights. The example of the press is actually quite poignant. The current legal regime neuters the free speech rights of most of the press. People can be fired for writing articles saying things their employer does not want to be said. They can even be fired for saying things in their own personal time that their employer does not want to be said! The end result is greatly diminished rights for the individuals making up the press, in order to support greatly increased rights for the controlling owners of the press.
  - kurthr 2y ago
    I don't see how you can differentiate between humans and corporations. They are both fundamentally the same. They are born... and oh wait, yeah. But still under the 14th ammendment's equal protection clause the Supreme court determined they were in 1886 (some argue 1819). Maybe we shouldn't treat corporate speech the same as human speech under the 1st amendment, but that would allow regulation of corporations giving money to political organizations? Ok, well that's beyond the pale. That's obviously originally the founders intent in writing the bill of rights. I'm sure it's in the Federalist Papers somewhere.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Commercial speech is substantially less protected under First Amendment case law. You can't prohibit random individuals from declaring themselves a citizen journalist and recording people, but I think it would be entirely possible to pass a law saying private companies may not assemble facial recognition databases for sale to third parties.
  - beaglesss 2y ago
    They don't need to sell the database, just the video that builds the database. Or give it away for free and magically number go up in some bank account in Cyprus or Hong Kong.
- charlie90 2y ago
  >Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech. Then make it not so, we aren't forced to live with the status quo for eternity. The law wouldn't be banning people recording faces. It would be much more specific: corporations can't record peoples faces at a mass scale to log them away and sell the data for a profit. If there's any edge cases to this, then let the courts handle it. We let the courts sort out grey areas already, that's their job.

infamouscow 2y ago

The fundamental flaw of cynicism is that it invariably opts for the path of least resistance—a facile dismissal rather than a constructive lens for genuine improvement. If an overwhelming majority—say, 80% of the populace—were deeply invested in this issue, they would elect representatives committed to outlawing it, and thus it would indeed become illegal. The cynic might retort that such laws are perpetually vulnerable to subversion under the guise of national security. While there's a kernel of truth in that, it's equally undeniable that if 80% of the citizenry truly felt impassioned, any rogue elements within the government would face severe repercussions. Acts of retribution against such actors would not only be tolerated but perhaps even tacitly endorsed by the public.

beaglesss 2y ago
I'm of the opposite opinion,that recording is a liberty and the right to mass record and identify people is a healthy sign of private free speech rights. I feel banning it would be dystopic. Where I disagree is the use of government at all in many of the capacities taking advantage of this such as TSA, DHS, CBP etc as they are essentially unhinged violent pirates.
- LightHugger 2y ago
  Interesting opinion but there is no dystopian literature i know of that worries about banning mass surveillance. Mass surveillance on the other hand features very prominently.
  - GauntletWizard 2y ago
    Then you're looking in the wrong section. You don't want the sci-fi section, you want history - Cold War. The investigation of the government by the people was violently suppressed and the the official mouthpieces were jokes - "There is no pravda in Izvestia and no izvestia in Pravda."
  - beaglesss 2y ago
    Mass surveillance played out privately means every plated cop car can be tracked, every noted confidential informant and every detective, tax stasi, etc can be traced. This is already becoming the case on networked mapping apps where the road pirates are losing their revenue. It's more of a worry for the state than citizens IMO.

karaterobot 2y ago

There are two things wrong with this: first, in the U.S., you do have certain rights to privacy in public. Whether this is a case of those rights being violated is a different question. In any case, I don't like the creeping redefinition of civil rights I infer from that statement, intentional or not. Second, just as civil rights can be eroded, they can also be expanded, and the idea that we should just throw up our hands is not helpful in a free society that depends on people giving a shit.

drdaeman 2y ago

It's not exactly about the privacy in public, though. YMMV, but I'm 101% fine if a camera looks at me and a machine processes the image. What matters is what happens afterwards. Heck, I want an aid like that - my built-in wetware face recognition is barely functional (I don't even recognize actors in the movies, save for a few most iconic ones), and tying faces only works after repeating it a dozen times. I can pinky swear I won't be sharing this with anyone. I probably won't even keep records, because it's literal digital junk (but I'd like to have a right to record everything that happened around me that I could've possibly remembered naturally). But that's not about it - I just hate how mass surveillance made a lot of people hate all the cameras without making any distinctions (sure, I think I get it). What this is about is that while individual privacy in public is not expected (save for stalking or other forms of harassment, which aren't exactly about privacy anymore), privacy at scale is an open question. Large entities, like governments or big companies, can collect unprecedented amounts of data, and at that scale it holds a significant potential both for good use and for abuse. So, in a functional democracy, it must prompt a public discussion and search for a consensus. It can be argued that there are benefits, and whenever benefits outweigh the risks, and it also can be argued that old principles must be still upheld to the letter, or if reality had changed too much and those principles are not matching to the ideas and reasons... It especially matters when it's about the government, because government abuse can get really nasty, even deadly. That's why all the safeguards, checks and balances. Basically, I think it's not really about cameras, it's about ability to build large databases with information that may be, uh, socially sensitive.