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ICE is using facial-recognition technology to quickly arrest people
- KnuthIsGod 9mo agoWhen China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights.... Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine.
- tartoran 9mo agoThis is still not fully supported by law. It is becoming normalized indeed, especially by the current admin. Let's hope this is not going to become widely used or that it doesn't stay permanently, eg. it gets at least restricted to some type of crime by future administrations.
- SlightlyLeftPad 9mo agoIt won’t be restricted until the people push against it to a point where it becomes too politically expensive to not restrict.
- netsharc 9mo agoAh, what's good is law when the branch^W [after rereading about it, executive power is given to one] person tasked with executing laws is... lawless? The notion that future administrations won't be offshots of the current regime (again, why do you think laws regarding democracy, like fair elections, will be upheld?) is also too hopeful. Happy new year!
- otterley 9mo agoNot supported by law where? I’m unaware of any legal proscription of this practice in the USA, and the Journal article makes no such claims, either. (IAAL but this is not my primary field of expertise, and this is not legal advice.)
- b112 9mo agoIndeed. And the latest admin is only a string in the ever increasing use of such tech. It should be illegal, but people are deluded if they think it started here.
- _delirium 9mo agoThere are many unresolved gray areas around what exactly the 4th amendment permits in the way of what United States v. Knotts called "dragnet-type law enforcement practices". Knotts suggested they might not be permitted, even if they were made up of permissible individual parts, but didn't elaborate. More recent case law has held, for example, that cell phone companies turning over large quantities of records is a 4th amendment search requiring a warrant, even if they do it voluntarily (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States). Most other types of dragnets haven't been litigated enough to have solid caselaw on their boundaries afaik. I don't know if it's likely a court will do anything about this particular program, but from what I've read I don't think 4th amendment scholars think this area is at all settled.
- otterley 9mo agoFrom what I understand, this isn’t so much a “dragnet” operation involving combing through mass quantities of records on demand; it’s more like “this person is in public in my field of view, and I want to know who they are.” More importantly, though, the cases so far have focused on the investigative activity that follows once a suspect has been identified. Here, we’re talking about de-anonymization: identifying one or more individuals who occupy a public space. AFAIK, the Court has never established a reasonable expectation of privacy of one’s identity in public. That will be a steep hill to climb.
- bakies 9mo agoI don't have to identify myself to police where I live. That's why, in my opinion, this is an unreasonable use of technology. I'm not sure what qualifies under the fourteenth but force-ably identifying me when I don't want to be and not required to seems unreasonable.
- wslh 9mo agoLaw is expensive.
- golemiprague 9mo agoBut china is safe and clean and nice, so it might be worth it. Anyway we got no privacy anymore, cameras are everywhere and we all captured on someone hard disk, so might as well take advantage of the benefits that comes with this technology
- thrance 9mo agoChina is not "safe, clean and nice" for everybody.
- FpUser 9mo ago>"When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights.... Now that we do this hundreds of times a day, it has become routine." Normally questions like this would be labeled as whataboutism, false equivalence etc. One rule for thee, another one for me. Personally I think we (The West) are heading to disaster. I really missed older times before 9/11
- aurareturn 9mo agowhataboutism This is the default response whenever HN commentators have no other way to say "china bad".
- fc417fc802 9mo agoHow is pointing out this inconsistency whataboutism? It might be reasonable to ask if it's a strawman since it seems reasonable to wonder if perhaps the people against what the Chinese are doing might also be against what ICE is doing. Regardless, it's quite relevant to point out that at this point two of the world's superpowers are actively engaging in this. Claiming that the technology won't be used this way - that people are just fearmongering - clearly doesn't hold water. (Not that it ever did, but now we've got concrete evidence.)
- FpUser 9mo ago>"How is pointing out this inconsistency whataboutism? " It is not, I said it is usually labeled as one here
- expedition32 9mo agoAmerica is not the West. There are a lot of things wrong in my country but we don't worship Jesus nor billionaires.
- servo_sausage 9mo agoChina is already doing abominable things; how people react to additional surveillance is always related to what the state is actually doing with that information. So a system that supports the abduction of polital rivals (an actual human rights violation) is not the same as a system that supports the lawful arrest of someone breaking a law that's accepted as part of a democracy. I also think the scale of investment plays a part, the investment in surveillance in China is absurd. Its a significant number of people (per capita) that do nothing but monitor people. These new systems are rather cheap; so much so that they feel a whole lot more inevitable.
- kingkawn 9mo agoIn both systems the law is being carefully followed to support inhumane goals
- concinds 9mo agoICE and USBP are quite famously breaking many laws.
- mlrtime 9mo agoUnfortunately ICE has somewhat broad powers that allow them to enforce Federal laws that local LEOs cannot get away with. This should be challenged in a court.
- hwguy45 9mo agoSome say unfortunate, others say fortunate. It's a luxury belief to want to let people walk across the border and have no repercussions. Enforce the border, get all the illegals out.
- goatlover 9mo agoEveryone in this country regardless of their status is still guaranteed due process by the Constitution. The Venezuelans and Abrego Garcia sent to CECOT was done without due process and in violation of a Federal Judge's orders. Not to mention CECOT is a horrible prison. I think it's cruel and inhuman to deport people already here unless they're engaged in criminal activities. Most of them are hard working people who gave up everything to flee bad circumstances in their home countries. We're a nation of immigrants. You want the border secure, fine (I would prefer immigration reform since we have a large country and tons of economic opportunity migrants fulfill). But don't be so cruel as to support what ICE is doing to hard working people who have established lives here. Most of them are not criminals.
- FuturisticLover 9mo agoThe US literary attacked a country and captured its leader. They always have a double standard.
- fiyec30375 9mo agoLiterary? Haha
- FuturisticLover 9mo agoI can't even ask for forgiveness for this diabolical.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> When China did this, this was seen as a terrible violation of rights "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" [1]. Beijing showed the way. We followed their path. Both are at fault. [1] https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
- lovich 9mo ago> Beijing showed the way. We followed their path. lol, just like China invented social credit scores which are for social control and definitely not like US credit scores which are just good business sense Edit: to be clear I am saying this from a US centric viewpoint. China is catching up but they’ve been behind us for over a century tech wise and the US has been really good at pioneering new forms of injustice. I’m laughing at the idea that we were trailing behind them on learning new for handling their population
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> like China invented social credit scores which are for social control and definitely not like US credit scores which are just good business sense …yes. You don’t get your credit score dinged because you tweeted something naughty. You can be a felon with perfect credit.
- lovich 9mo agoBrah, some employers in the US check your credit score to make sure you are trustworthy enough. Your credit score can be checked in multiple other situations that have nothing to do with you taking on debt, but still somehow your debt factors into the decision. If you think there is no social control as part of this system, then you are just blind to the system you grew up in
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> some employers in the US check your credit score to make sure you are trustworthy enough Sure. They’re evaluating your creditworthiness. What they’re not measuring is your political coherence or social “goodness.” The closest thing we have to a social score is a criminal record.
- saubeidl 9mo agoLet me quote the CEO of ycombinator. >You're thinking Chinese surveillance >US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955 https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955 American capitalists are ideologically driven hypocrites.
- aurareturn 9mo agoAre we allowed to criticize Garry Tan here?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mizzao 9mo agoYep, it's converging to the same system... In China government is controlled by chosen members of the ruling party who become wealthy through it; In the US the government is controlled by billionaires who become powerful through it. Neither is a "government by the people" nor a "democratic people's republic" and both are enacting more and more similar policies.
- mystraline 9mo agohttps://archive.is/UB9kC https://archive.is/UB9kC
- rootsudo 9mo agoIt’s not just facial it’s also gait recognition too.
- ikekkdcjkfke 9mo agoMostly gait probably. I wonder if there are any hacker techniques to scramble gait, like putting wooden planks or plastic parts inside clothes
- ileonichwiesz 9mo agoI remember reading that early systems could be defeated entirely by putting a pebble in your shoe, but I’m sure they’ve improved a lot since.
- raverbashing 9mo agoThe UK once had a ministry specialized on that /s
- duk3luk3 9mo agogait recognition is a pseudoscience. this is also obvious from the way it is used: to fabricate a pretext to detain undesirables.
- wiether 9mo agoIIRC that's exactly what a character did in either Person of Interest or Mr. Robot (I have a very hard time to distinguish both in my memory since they were so similar in their themes)
- bakies 9mo agodoes rock in shoe work? That's the only way i've heard
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> It’s not just facial it’s also gait recognition too Source? Where would they get the fingerprints from?
- imoverclocked 9mo ago> the agency has greenlighted a contract for a tool that can scan subjects’ irises Where does the initial iris data come from? Is this actually collected now?
- beeflet 9mo agoeverywhere
- noja 9mo agoDOGE
- f_devd 9mo agoOne likely source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/sam-altmans-worldcoin-becomes-world-and-shows-new-iris-scanning-orb-to-prove-your-humanity/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/17/sam-altmans-worldcoin-beco...
- plagiarist 9mo agoProbably from the airport scanners and cameras I see everyone gleefully sticking their faces in. A savings of several minutes per flight!
- close04 9mo agoIs this common? Airport scanners are usually face scanners. Iris scanners are almost always for employees with access to critical areas, not for travelers. I know Doha and Singapore airports use iris scanners at the security check. It's probably a growing trend, haven't seen any in the EU, is it already common in the US?
- fleroviumna 9mo ago[dead]
- throwfaraway135 9mo agoDepending on the crime, most people would agree that face/gait recognition is warranted, for example in case of murder or rape. The difference here is that some people consider "illegal immigration" to be more like a misdemeanor, others consider it to be something much more serious.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> Depending on the crime, most people would agree that face/gait recognition is warranted, for example in case of murder or rape That's the problem with dragnet surveillance. People are okay with it for extreme cases. And then the scope creeps. Free or secure. You can't have both. And you usually can't even have just the latter.
- fc417fc802 9mo ago> And then the scope creeps. Agreed and wanted to add. If it exists, can do the job, and the person in charge is aware of it, then it will inevitably be used. There's no such thing as "only for certain situations" unless there is a large inherent cost to using it outside of the proscribed scenario. If you mandate the placement of fireman's axes by every door, at some point someone is going to use one of them to commit murder or vandalism or some other crime. There is effectively nothing that can be done to prevent that other than choosing not to mandate their placement.
- dmitrygr 9mo ago> " others consider " laws are knowable. readable. Opinion on them does NOT matter.
- throwfaraway135 9mo agoLaws don't exist in a vacuum, in practice governments decide how to implement and to enforce them or not.
- kstrauser 9mo agoWe have a court system specifically meant to interpret the law, and a tiered appeals process for when one of the courtroom parties disagrees with that court’s interpretation. Quick, does the First Amendment allow the government to place any restrictions on speech? The words are right there for the reading and knowing, so that should be a simple question, surely?
- poulpy123 9mo agoWhat could go wrong?
- otikik 9mo agoAs if they needed an excuse.
- mirzap 9mo agoWe like to think surveillance is something you can turn on for one problem and turn off afterward. In practice, that never happens. Once the machinery is in place, it stays and looks for new work. Tools justified today by "illegal immigration" won’t stop there. They drift into credit scoring, health insurance pricing, hiring and firing decisions, school admissions, housing access, travel permissions, banking, welfare eligibility, and even which online accounts are allowed to exist. Not because anyone set out to build a dystopia, but because systems, once built, naturally expand to whatever can be measured and enforced. As Benjamin Franklin put it: those who give up essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither. The tradeoff rarely feels extreme at the time. It feels reasonable. By the time it isn’t, there’s no way back.
- gorgoiler 9mo agoThat first sentence of yours really struck a chord with me. I tried to think of other examples: Cars — essential for leveraging time to travel longer distances and carrying multiple passengers and heavy loads; ens up being used by one person to drive three minutes to get coffee. Guns — to quickly précis a … complex topic: good guys, but also bad guys. Electricity — power generation goes up decade after decade, but so too does consumption with wasteful consumption going hand in hand with productive consumption. As you might be able to tell, I think the answer to the question “how do we stop technology X from destroying us?” lies in licensing and regulation enacted through legislation.
- haritha-j 9mo agoclothing i think is a big one. Once the poster-child of industrialisation, now results in millions of tons being thrown away each other at a massive environmental cost.
- mirzap 9mo agoI think those examples miss an important distinction. Cars, guns, and electricity are consumer technologies. They’re widely distributed, regulated, and constrained by market forces and law. Individuals can choose how to use them, and misuse is at least partially visible and contestable. Surveillance is different. It’s inherently centralized and asymmetrical. By design, it gives one side - the state or large institutions - persistent visibility into everyone else, with little reciprocity. You can regulate how it’s used on paper, but the power imbalance remains. It’s closer to nuclear technology than to cars or electricity. I can’t build a nuclear weapon or possess fissile material, not because it’s inefficient, but because some technologies are considered too dangerous to be broadly accessible. Mass surveillance belongs in that category. Once it exists, citizens don’t get to opt out, and meaningful oversight tends to lag far behind capability. Licensing works when the technology is decentralized. With surveillance, the risk isn’t misuse at the edges - it’s concentration at the center.
- haritha-j 9mo agoWhats really scary is that ICE is now working with a myriad of other bodies such as FBI, meaning they all get used to using this tech.
- perihelions 9mo agoIn the Civil Rights era, segregationist states' police would systematically[0] stop and fingerprint black people, without individualized suspicion, to see if they were in criminal fingerprint databases. There's nothing new under the sun. Biometrics are centuries old; the tech we're talking about here is merely evolutionary, not something qualitatively new and different in human terms. The debate we're revisiting, safetyism vs. liberty, is old and well-trodden. And of course the part where these degrading searches are clearly targeted at minorities based on their appearance and skin color is of no novelty whatsoever. [0] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/721/ https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/721/ ("Davis v. Mississippi (1969)")
- dw_arthur 9mo agoWe've been building a turn key police state for the past 25 years.
- SanjayMehta 9mo agoSoon the chant will be "USSA! USSA! USSA!"
- expedition32 9mo agoIt's not the technology. The American people voted for this. That is the real discussion you should have. Why do Americans want fascism?
- 15155 9mo ago> Why do Americans want fascism? Americans don't want to expend their tax dollars on folks willing to break the law for financial gain.
- frogperson 9mo agoThis is a very shortsighted and frankly dumb argument. You would give up constitutional rights, to allow an unchecked police force, to arrest anyone they want, to save a few tax dollars? So stupid.
- R_D_Olivaw 9mo agoAll his replies in this thread are this false kneejerk boomerism. Sad, sick people. No empathy. No heart.
- 15155 9mo ago"No empathy" - how about not wanting to fund criminal enterprises using the tax dollars of hard-working Americans? Who has empathy for them - the people financing this "charity?" Why is importing unskilled foreigners the hill to die on?
- mapt 9mo agoJust a reminder that DHS just posted on Twitter for the holidays about how much of a paradise the US will be after 100 million "deportations". And that we don't have close to 100 million immigrants. That the "kavanaugh stop" allows them to detain you on he basis of skin color or accent. And that a driver's license with Real ID is no longer sufficient "papers".
- goatlover 9mo agoThat would be implementing remigration, meaning deport all the non-white folks. Never mind that whites are immigrants too and aren't indigenous to the Americas. I don't understand how the American public allows this administration to get away with half the shit it says and does. Every week is a new scandal.
- frogperson 9mo agoFor anyone still in denial, america is fully a fascist, authoritarian state. WE ARE NO LONGER A FREE COUNTRY.
- 46493168 9mo ago[dead]
- dpc_01234 9mo agoTotalitarians on one side convince their side, that it's totally fine and desirable to ignore the law and let millions of illegal immigrants in. Then then totalitarians on the other side convince their side it is necessary to ignore the law and introduce wide sweeping surveillance to undo it. Congratulations, both sides cooperated while hating each other because they are easy to play dummies.
- braunjohnson 9mo ago[dead]
- carolynmichael 9mo ago[dead]