The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here • Hacker News Board

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#121

Post by finance-geek » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 7:31 AM UTC

cantrevealname wrote: post #34

ksenzee wrote: post #21

As someone with prosopagnosia (neurological inability to recognize faces) I find this incredibly frustrating. My everyday life would be immensely easier with assistive tech that told me the names of everyone I see. And now that the technology exists to develop such a useful device, what do we get instead? Mass societal surveillance.

That would be the killer app for Google Glass. Not just for your situation, but for salesmen, customer service reps, security guards, politicians, or anyone who needs to recognize lots of people, recall names, and bring up an instant profile about the person standing in front of them. (Granted, even this application has serious overtones of societal surveillance.) EDIT: Anyone care to speculate on why Google Glass do…

Forget about Google Glass banning facial recognition...any CV-type activity is too process-intensive. It will burn thru the Glass battery and the entire unit becomes stove-hot in 20minutes. I know because this is exactly the problem I tackled for three months (I was doing Glass-based CV for hand gesture recognition)

Glass, the current version, is not meant for CV-intensive operations.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#122

Post by finance-geek » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 7:33 AM UTC

domrdy wrote: post #46

Watching Minority Report the other day, this reminds me of the automated retina scans in the movie. Really creeped me out when Tom Cruise was walking through a mall, gets picked up by the scanners and they start shooting targeted advertising at him.

Tangent: I always chuckle at how prescient Minority Report was on some aspects, yet they didn't envision network storage or wireless communication -- do you remember at how they would transfer small glass disks all the time...how burdensome. LOL.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#123

Post by tbrake » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 7:49 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #78

macNchz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've spent years saving up to finally buy a home. You're having a baby in a few months, and you really need the space. You have the down payment ready, your credit is great, you've ticked all the boxes on the application, but you're turned down for the loan. Why? Maybe you walk home through a bad neighborhood. Maybe you sometimes grab a beer at a bit of a divey bar near your office. Maybe you've visited an old frie…

On the other hand you are just as likely to get a loan you otherwise wouldn't have because you haven't been seen with questionable folks. In any case that kind of policy is already illegal. And it's not even technically feasible at the moment. Even if it was, it's very unlikely there is a strong correlation between being seen with some random person in a photo, and your likelihood of paying a loan. There is plenty of…

> On the other hand you are just as likely to get a loan you otherwise wouldn't have because you haven't been seen with questionable folks.

I would imagine the list of things that will count against you in those situations will always be much longer than the list of things that can count for you, i.e. just because A can count against you doesn't mean that ¬A will count for you; ¬A will just be 0 points and the assumed baseline.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#124

Post by JupiterMoon » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 8:54 AM UTC

zardo wrote: post #27

JupiterMoon wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

www.cantheyseemydick.com

How reliably does dick pic recognition work at this point?

Very well if you use one of the many popular email or messaging services which does not use end-to-end encryption to send it or one of the popular cloud service providers that does not encrypt to data on your computer first to store it.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#125

Post by msellout » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 9:11 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #110

msellout wrote: post #94

Where's the line that separates generic image recognition from facial recognition? Forget corporations for a moment and think about your own rights as a programmer. I want to tinker with image-similarity scores by downloading random images from the internet and comparing with a photo I just took in a public place. Oops, my photo just so happened to have a stranger's face that matches a photo in my database and that f…

You're conflating regulating what software you can write with regulating what data you (or anyone else) can collect, use, and share. It is perfectly possible to restrict, say, the systematic collection of facial images or the commercial or government use of facial images or the transfer of facial images to another party, without impeding casual, incidental use such as taking your own personal photos that sometimes ha…

Au contraire, much of machine learning (learned?) software is simply the data used to train it. I think we can all agree that generic image recognition is benign and should be permitted. How about a database of publicity photos from famous movie actors and actresses? Would it be OK to use that database to identify which celebrity I saw getting out of a limousine? And if that's permitted, then the regulators are tasked with determining how famous someone must be or how much the purpose of the image must have been for publicity. These kinds of questions are best suited for a case-by-case interpretation in the courts using current and slowly evolving privacy standards, not some broad new catch-all.

Asserting that good laws are "perfectly possible" is a little tragic given our long history of poorly designed laws. Not to mention mismanaged and corrupt regulatory agencies.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#126

Post by msellout » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 9:25 AM UTC

PostOnce wrote: post #98

msellout wrote: post #94

Where's the line that separates generic image recognition from facial recognition? Forget corporations for a moment and think about your own rights as a programmer. I want to tinker with image-similarity scores by downloading random images from the internet and comparing with a photo I just took in a public place. Oops, my photo just so happened to have a stranger's face that matches a photo in my database and that f…

What you can do in your own time is one thing, what you can do commercially is another. Encryption is something you do by yourself or with another consenting party, facial recognition is something you do to someone else without their permission and possibly use for nefarious purposes. There's nothing wrong with outlawing certain activities from the commercial sphere, or any sphere. It's not an assault on your freedom…

It's illegal to stalk and harass, it's not illegal to make phone calls. The issue is not facial recognition, it's the misuse. I'm all for gun control, not gun ban.

Cameras in the bathroom? Fine. Whatever. If that's the new normal, then I guess I'll get over it. Are you saying that will now be legalized? I'm pretty sure we don't need any new laws to prevent cameras in changing rooms. The "scary" scenarios that have been described in the other threads are already illegal for other reasons -- harassment, redlining (racial profiling), spam, etc.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#127

Post by jensen123 » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 9:27 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #6

A HN contest: Provide an elevator pitch, to completely non-technical end-users, that will make them aware of this issue and persuade them that it is important to them. Vote up the best ones. [EDIT: The goal is to persuade them about its dangers, not sell them something based on it] That elevator pitch is key. I have extensive knowledge about this issue but have a hard time coming up with it; I need to be prepared. Ch…

I don't think it's possible to educate non-technical end-users (ie. most of the general public) about this. They're too dumb.

But on the bright side, surveillance technology will probably mean the end of democracy. With extensive surveillance, it should be easy enough to eliminate/sabotage people who speak up for the common man, such as labor union activists, universal suffrage activists or politicians before they become major problems.

Then we über-nerds can finally rule the world! The common people will make useful servants. And we get to impregnate their women, eventually, slowly but surely, turning all of the Earth's population into nerds! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#128

Post by msellout » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 9:31 AM UTC

tbrake wrote: post #123

Houshalter wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand you are just as likely to get a loan you otherwise wouldn't have because you haven't been seen with questionable folks. In any case that kind of policy is already illegal. And it's not even technically feasible at the moment. Even if it was, it's very unlikely there is a strong correlation between being seen with some random person in a photo, and your likelihood of paying a loan. There is plenty of…

> On the other hand you are just as likely to get a loan you otherwise wouldn't have because you haven't been seen with questionable folks. I would imagine the list of things that will count against you in those situations will always be much longer than the list of things that can count for you, i.e. just because A can count against you doesn't mean that ¬A will count for you; ¬A will just be 0 points and the assume…

They're actually trying to give you the lowest rate they can while staying profitable, you know, to be competitive with other lenders. There's no baseline, all our characteristics are inputs to a function that estimates risk of default. Then the lender chooses what rate to offer based on their portfolio design.

In one sense, it's a zero-sum game. If person A is a better debtor, A gets a better rate than B. However, a more sophisticated portfolio will try to find anti-correlated debtors. Rather than lending to 100 low-risk people all similar to each other, I'd rather diversify and include some very different people that may be higher risk on an individual basis; the aggregate risk can be much lower than individual. To that end, the more the lender can learn about me, the more chance I have to reveal how anti-correlated I am with others.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#129

Post by msellout » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 9:41 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #38

hackuser wrote: post #6

A HN contest: Provide an elevator pitch, to completely non-technical end-users, that will make them aware of this issue and persuade them that it is important to them. Vote up the best ones. [EDIT: The goal is to persuade them about its dangers, not sell them something based on it] That elevator pitch is key. I have extensive knowledge about this issue but have a hard time coming up with it; I need to be prepared. Ch…

In the near future, I will be able to point my phone at you, and know who you are.

Why bother pointing the phone, just use the camera built into your eyeglasses.

Re: The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

#130

Post by kaybe » Tue, Oct 06, 2015, 9:59 AM UTC

sdoering wrote: post #102

Estragon wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe what's needed more than an elevator pitch is an open-source app using facial recognition to creep people out without abusing them.

Why not abuse them. If they let themselves be led to the slaughterhouse that easily and voluntarily maybe they have to feel the pain of being abused to learn? I get more cynical by the day, the more I read/hear such accounts. I am/was an idealist, but I catch myself every so often to think, that these people do not deserve anything else. Everything is clearly visible - that possible paths are not that hard to underst…

I tried to discuss the dual-use nature of their research with some machine learning/pattern recognition people (I was there to discuss maybe working with them as a student). They didn't seem to ever have thought about it at all, and were not open to start now. This was quite shocking to me. I'm not sure how to deal with the issue when even the people creating the technology are like that.