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A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

nytimes.com

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Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#121

Post by codedokode »

Balgair wrote: post #83
idrios wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along the same lines, imagine someone allergic to bees getting stung on the face causing their face to swell, so the system doesn't recognize them and they can't get into their apartment to grab their epipen. This system could literally kill a person

Heck, imagine something as mundane a haircut, a beard-shave, or a sunburn from a beach trip.

Hair and skin tone is not used in recognition. The points to build the model are taken from eyebrows, eyes, nose and mouth. So as long as you don't have hair covering your eyes it won't affect anything.

Also, face recognition technologies are better than described in the comments; you can take a photo of a random person from the street and successfully find their social network account with publicly available sites. Compared to this, recognising just several hundred faces looks like an easy task.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#122

Post by scarface74 »

tmp192489 wrote: post #53
lazyasciiart wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminal histories, eviction records, poor credit....lots of reasons to sublet instead of going to the landlord.

ok - i mean it doesn't have to be one or the other. If I were subleasing a place I wouldn't want a tenant who had terrible credit either though. But could be both. I'm just hypothesizing like everyone else.

If you’re subletting the apartment under the table, it is a lot easier to kick them out if they don’t pay the rent. It’s not like they can go to court for an unlawful eviction. Even in my relatively landlord friendly state, it can take two or three months to get rid of a tenant.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#123

Post by sdenton4 »

Karunamon wrote: post #101
mgleason_3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, there’s a lot to take exception with in this comment. “Makes sense for publicly subsidized housing (which is what rent control is, in essence). In the US, rent control is when the government controls the amounts charged for rented housing - it’s not “publicly subsidized”. “It’s not like the facial recognition is resulting in any privacy loss...” Ouy, where to even start. Of course it is. Every time you’re tracke…

Except the people doing the tracking already know where you live, and in this case, own the land you live on, so I'm not at convinced that this amounts to any kind of loss.

And who comes over, how often they stay over, etc etc.... Lots and lots of stuff that is in no way the business of the landlord.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#124

Post by crooked-v »

Hamuko wrote: post #112
closeparen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a single tenant, I've always gotten 2 keys for my apartment door, and only one fob for the main entrance.

That also sounds weird since here it's pretty much universal that your apartment key also works for the main entrance.

RFID access fobs instead of keys are becoming increasingly common for main entrances because it allows property management to revoke access for one person without making everyone else in the building also change keys.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#125

Post by scarface74 »

purplezooey wrote: post #80

What we need is a lot more affordable housing and rent controlled apartments. Spend the money on that, not this.

What is my motivation for investing in property if I can’t charge market rates? Would you be okay if the government controlled the amount of money you could make instead of the market?

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#126

Post by BurningFrog »

Cpoll wrote: post #91
C14L wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clone it to a sticker and send it to you via mail. So they have a database full of addresses together with their digital keys? What could possibly go wrong...

To be honest, not a lot, they only let you past the building door. So as a thief, I can: A. Scrub through a hypothetical leak of all that data, or B. Tailgate someone (even in security-conscious buildings this isn't much harder than following someone while carrying a box in both hands) Locks are for honest people.

So it can be used to steal or deliver packages.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#127

Post by patch_collector »

chaostheory wrote: post #73
pavel_lishin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like the facial recognition is resulting in any privacy loss for those that legally live there. Except knowing exactly when they come and go. And depending on how the camera works, how they're dressed, what they're carrying, how they got there, who they said goodbye to on the sidewalk, etc., etc.

Doesn’t a key fob already achieve this?

A key fob only tells you that someone authorized to a certain apartment entered. It doesn't tell you if it's the husband, wife, kid, mother in law who watches the kids on Thursdays, or friend who's taking care of the plants while you're on vacation, etc.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#128

Post by mindslight »

blfr wrote: post #81
abeppu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm misreading your tone, but you seem to find this distasteful. If this guy was stopped from doing this, and the landlord evicted him, the landlord would just capture that value. The distinction I don't understand is, why is it might be acceptable for the landlord to try to want market rate for the apartment, but not acceptable for the tenant to want market rate for a room when a new subtenant starts? Perhaps…

We find it acceptable for people to benefit from their property by default. Economists would also add that having the owner benefit encourages investment in the property.

A landlord in a hot market isn't deriving most of the income from his property though, but rather from the real estate.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#129

Post by BurningFrog »

grey-area wrote: post #26
abhinai wrote: post #4

As a computer engineer, I get excited to see latest technology being applied to our every day lives. I can't wait to see a facial recognition system in action somewhere. On the other hand, it is hard to disagree with this article. Getting photographed everyday or perhaps several times in a single day could quickly start feeling like a huge violation of privacy. All the security cameras in this building make things ev…

I now view this outcome as inevitable. Such systems are already being trialled on the streets of london. However our privacy is not just about face recog - we leave myriad digital traces thousands of times a day (payments, phone, search, maps, likes, car plates, emails, phone calls, store cameras) which can already be used to trace out our lives in excruciating detail. Just one of these factors gives a lot of colour;…

You're missing that regular people will also soon be recording everything around their persons, homes and vehicles.

Cameras cost nothing already and will be deployed everywhere, all the time.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#130

Post by codedokode »

chaostheory wrote: post #73
pavel_lishin wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like the facial recognition is resulting in any privacy loss for those that legally live there. Except knowing exactly when they come and go. And depending on how the camera works, how they're dressed, what they're carrying, how they got there, who they said goodbye to on the sidewalk, etc., etc.

Doesn’t a key fob already achieve this?

Key fob doesn't record the faces of visitors and for how long they have stayed.
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