I don't welcome "general facial recognition", but I do welcome this specific and single use case. As someone with an active stalker for the past two decades, I really appreciate the value provided by a device that watches specifically for the person that's sent me death threats.
Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
71–80 of 128 posts
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#72It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…
> a good old security guard also does 'face recognition' of everyone passing by, but with a human
Not many people can afford their own good human security guard. Not everyone lives in areas where the police department is properly funded either.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…
"if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option." This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I fear these systems. A world where this is common is a world where it's no longer safe to take a stroll through your own neighborhood.
A society of persistent, constant hi-tech surveillance already exists. It's called Singapore.
I also wouldn't want to live in that world. There are many problems with it, but not being safe for "a stroll through your own neighborhood" is not a problem for that world.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get why this could be problematic under the wrong context. But if I have video footage of someone approaching my door, not knocking and just looking aroud to then leave; and I'm given the option to track if that person shows up again in future video footage, you bet I would use that option. This is not because I'm paranoic and I think right away that anyone showing up to my door will murder or rob me, but because s…
So under this system if I walk up to your door mistakenly before realizing I'm at the wrong place, the police will be alerted any time I walk past a house.
If systems like this are abused, police will just treat it like most burglar alarm systems; it will most likely be ignored.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#75It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…
"After all, a good old security guard also does 'face recognition' of everyone passing by" Yes, but the essential difference is that the good old security guard isn't photographing everyone passing by and putting those pictures into a database.
Which is only a problem because its... entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage..
It wouldn’t be as concerning if it was only being stored in a local sqlite db.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#76It is not the technology that is dangerous but the scale and manner of its deployment. Patented, opaque, closed source, championed by mega-corporations closely allied with powerful governments, entirely beyond the analysis or oversight of the vast majority of citizens, completely connected realtime to various other systems, automated, eternally slurping up data for indefinite storage... these are the real concerning…
"After all, a good old security guard also does 'face recognition' of everyone passing by" Yes, but the essential difference is that the good old security guard isn't photographing everyone passing by and putting those pictures into a database.
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Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#77In my neighborhood, we are impacted by constant property crime - burglaries, car break-ins, mail theft, porch pirates, you name it. After being a victim myself, I can say that it does indeed cause an increase in anxiety, especially the sense of helplessness that comes with it. The police department here is woefully understaffed and has been ordered to not focus on property crime because their staffing only leaves room to focus on violent crime. The under-staffing is in part due to the anti-cop sentiment of the far-left activists. This leaves law-abiding residents to largely fend for themselves.
I have always felt it would be very useful to be able to identify people in videos who may have committed a crime locally or elsewhere in the city, to learn of their movements, where they might live, what other crimes they committed, etc. This would help police prioritize some non-violent crime effectively, get a high return on the time they spend investigating property crimes (actually catching criminals), which would then in turn serve as a deterrent that is outright missing right now. I would gladly contribute my video to that cause, as would almost everyone in my neighborhood.
A word on the commenters here going on about 'pearl-clutching': that's just the latest in pejoratives that are nothing but empty stereotypes. Most people on NextDoor in my city are reasonable, but are regularly unfairly characterized by the far-left progressive cabal in this manner. Caring about the safety of yourself, your loved ones, and your property is not a bad thing. We work and live in part for those very things. If you disagree, then try outlawing door locks. It is unbelievable to me that the rights of criminals are more important to commenters here than the rights of those who want to protect their own. And worse yet, the conspiracy-theory notion that we are about to be taken over by a tyrannical government because of doorbell recordings. If this was a topic they disagreed with, those same commenters would readily call this a "slippery slope fallacy".
A further aside: The ACLU has been wrong a lot on this topic - for example when they called AWS's Rekognition service a "facial recognition service" instead of what it is, a generic object recognition service. They also did not seem to understand how false positives/negatives are managed and why it is fine to use an imperfect object recognition service as a first-pass filter. And they are wrong again here - people are allowed to film on public property and share it with whomever they want. They're allowed to perform whatever analysis they want and share it with whomever they want, period.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
So under this system if I walk up to your door mistakenly before realizing I'm at the wrong place, the police will be alerted any time I walk past a house.
Ring their doorbell. When they answer, tell them "Hi, this isn't the house I was looking for, but you've got that surveillance system in place, so I don't want to be registered as 'suspicious'. OK, sorry not sorry for wasting your time, goodbye."
Me: Presses doorbell button
Ring: Please provide a valid email address to continue.
Me: Turns to leave
Ring: Sorry we missed you! Please state your reason for visit and someone will reach out to you. Please provide a valid email address to continue.
Ring: Warning! This entry attempt have been recorded. An unauthorized entry attempt will be reported to the cloud and local law enforcment.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#79Likewise, homeowners can also add photos of “suspicious” people into the system and then the doorbell’s facial recognition program will scan anyone passing their home. This has to be the worst part of it, if you've ever been part of a suburban neighborhood that uses NextDoor as a community tool you'll know that Ring doorbell videos of "others" crank the pearl-clutching paranoia of bored homeowners up to 11. The comme…
You wonder what a suburb inmate's idea of a threat is. This is exurban America, not Brazil, where people have a good change of experiencing an express kidnapping or crossfire. Yet still the suburbanites act like that, it's disquieting.
Re: Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ring their doorbell. When they answer, tell them "Hi, this isn't the house I was looking for, but you've got that surveillance system in place, so I don't want to be registered as 'suspicious'. OK, sorry not sorry for wasting your time, goodbye."
Me: Presses doorbell button Ring: Please provide a valid email address to continue. Me: Turns to leave Ring: Sorry we missed you! Please state your reason for visit and someone will reach out to you. Please provide a valid email address to continue. Ring: Warning! This entry attempt have been recorded. An unauthorized entry attempt will be reported to the cloud and local law enforcment.
Couldn't help myself but read this as if the last line suddenly changed to be in the voice of ED-209