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As I was told by no lesser expert than Yan LeCun [1], there's a difference between facial recognition and facial verification. The latter is when you stand in f

As I was told by no lesser expert than Yan LeCun [1], there's a difference between facial recognition and facial verification. The latter is when you stand in front of the automated gates at the airport and your fact is scanned and compared to the photo on your just-scanned passport to, well, verify, that you are the passport holder. Many countries have adopted this technology and after my exchange with LeCun I must say even I, terminally paranoid about being filed away in databases etc, am a little more comfortable with that. At the very least, in an EU country (and also the UK) you can ask for the operators of such services for all the data they have on you and instruct them to destroy it, so even if they keep your picture, you can often do something about it. Facial recognition is the use of the same technology to match a picture of your face to pictures in some face picture database in order to identify you, without the need of a passport or other photographic id. As the Wired article points out, this use case has a very high rate of failure "in the wild", i.e. with natural lighting conditions, varied body postures and facial accessories etc. There are a few police forces in certain countries that have adopted this tech, but it's not as widely deployed as facial verification. The article above is complaining about the use of facial recognition. It's a bit confusing because the article keeps using the term "verification" as does the Wired article, but there's a clear description of matching a picture taken on the street to faces in a "database", and there's no mention of using the tech to match a person to the photo on their id, so that's facial recognition, not verification. There's a serious issue of invasion of privacy from unchecked use of facial recognition. Unfortunately most people are not going to care much, like they didn't care much when e.g. the UK installed surveilance cameras [2] all over the place, and like they don't care much when Meta, Google, Amazon, and everyone else vacuums up their online behavioural patterns for targeted advertisement etc. ___________ [1] Twitter thread, can't find it now. [2] Or so-called CCTV. Please excuse a long-ago Metal Gear Solid player a small terminological transgression.

refurb 9mo ago
I don't really see the distinction? There are many countries now that don't require a passport to enter - you can simply get a facial scan. And even beyond that, the countries that do take a photo and compare with your passport and absolutely storing that photo and using it for whatever purpose they might have laid out. So if the issue is that your privacy is being threatened due to a stored photo of you - that happens whether it's facial recognition or facial verification.
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago
  > if the issue is that your privacy is being threatened You're straw-manning here. The issue isn't privacy in a vacuum. The issue is very directly privacy in the context of the current US government being undeniably and intentionally malicious in a way that few countries anywhere in the world currently are. @YeGoblynQueenne indicates as much by saying "At the very least, in an EU country (and also the UK) you can ...". The US government currently doesn't give a shit about the law or human rights in ways that are both completely unprecedented and very violent. People have concrete reason to fear the US government right now. That's what the article is about, not merely privacy on its own. > There are many countries now that don't require a passport to enter - you can simply get a facial scan. Name all the ones that violently assault and kill people in the street and imprison people for weeks or months or even years without formal charges and ignore court orders to release people who are being illegally imprisoned and then only later comply with the law after injurious delays with the most malicious interpretations if ever.
  - refurb 8mo ago
    > You're straw-manning here. > The US government currently doesn't give a shit about the law or human rights in ways that are both completely unprecedented and very violent. I'm not sure you know what "strawmanning" is. You're making extraordinary claims with no evidence. That seems more like strawmanning. > Name all the ones that violently assault and kill people in the street and imprison people for weeks or months or even years without formal charges Huh? If you're talking about enforcing immigration laws, they all do. It's the US that is the odd outlier that doesn't enforce immigration laws.
    - BugsJustFindMe 8mo ago
      > If you're talking about enforcing immigration laws It's very clear that you don't converse honestly in good faith when you choose to draw a false equivalence between "violently assault and kill people in the street and imprison people for weeks or months or even years without formal charges" and a mealy-mouthed "enforcing immigration laws". We're done here.

refurb 9mo ago

I don't really see the distinction? There are many countries now that don't require a passport to enter - you can simply get a facial scan. And even beyond that, the countries that do take a photo and compare with your passport and absolutely storing that photo and using it for whatever purpose they might have laid out. So if the issue is that your privacy is being threatened due to a stored photo of you - that happens whether it's facial recognition or facial verification.

BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago
> if the issue is that your privacy is being threatened You're straw-manning here. The issue isn't privacy in a vacuum. The issue is very directly privacy in the context of the current US government being undeniably and intentionally malicious in a way that few countries anywhere in the world currently are. @YeGoblynQueenne indicates as much by saying "At the very least, in an EU country (and also the UK) you can ...". The US government currently doesn't give a shit about the law or human rights in ways that are both completely unprecedented and very violent. People have concrete reason to fear the US government right now. That's what the article is about, not merely privacy on its own. > There are many countries now that don't require a passport to enter - you can simply get a facial scan. Name all the ones that violently assault and kill people in the street and imprison people for weeks or months or even years without formal charges and ignore court orders to release people who are being illegally imprisoned and then only later comply with the law after injurious delays with the most malicious interpretations if ever.
- refurb 8mo ago
  > You're straw-manning here. > The US government currently doesn't give a shit about the law or human rights in ways that are both completely unprecedented and very violent. I'm not sure you know what "strawmanning" is. You're making extraordinary claims with no evidence. That seems more like strawmanning. > Name all the ones that violently assault and kill people in the street and imprison people for weeks or months or even years without formal charges Huh? If you're talking about enforcing immigration laws, they all do. It's the US that is the odd outlier that doesn't enforce immigration laws.
  - BugsJustFindMe 8mo ago
    > If you're talking about enforcing immigration laws It's very clear that you don't converse honestly in good faith when you choose to draw a false equivalence between "violently assault and kill people in the street and imprison people for weeks or months or even years without formal charges" and a mealy-mouthed "enforcing immigration laws". We're done here.