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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

#151

Post by manfredo »

sdenton4 wrote: post #123
Karunamon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Guests are tracked in plenty of apartment buildings. Sure, many might not bother with strictly policing guests but effectively every apartment building I lived in reserved the right to manage who comes in and out of the building.

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

#152

Post by tmp192489 »

codedokode wrote: post #113
tmp192489 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't own the property and don't even live there then what's the problem? You can make them pay upfront.

haha i mean if we're talking about a situation where someone has bad credit, or a criminal history or whatever how many people with that background will have the funds to pay upfront (or want to)?

Having subleased to a legitimate person before, it's already annoying/stressful enough to be a sublandlord since you are taking on a lot of credit risk as is. If I'm in a position where I'm going to shadily rent out my below market apartment I'm not going to rent it out to someone that a normal landlord otherwise wouldn't pick.

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

#153

Post by pseudalopex »

scarface74 wrote: post #122
tmp192489 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In New York, a subtenant in a rent-stabilized apartment can sue the prime tenant to recover overcharged rent. They can also report the prime tenant to the landlord, who will probably evict them. The subtenant can even take over the lease in some cases.

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

#154

Post by crooked-v »

0815test wrote: post #150
crooked-v wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is it an acceptable basis to discriminate on height, but not melanin content? Because society as a whole hasn't spent hundreds of years literally enslaving short people before deciding that strict moral and legal standards are necessary to prevent it from happening again.

> Because society as a whole hasn't spent hundreds of years literally enslaving short people Actually, they have done exactly that. For many centuries before appropriate nutrition became essentially ubiquitous, there was indeed a highly-significant correlation between height and social class - and the lowest class often faced near-slavery conditions in surprisingly recent times, especially outside Western Europe. Of…

Comparing the unpleasantness of peasant life to literal chattel slavery is disingenuous at best, and you're conflating correlation and causation here, as people in unpleasant lives coincidentally ending up short because of poor nutrition is a far cry from cross-continental kidnapping and selling members of a genetically-short ethnic group on an industrial scale.

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

#155

Post by grey-area »

BurningFrog wrote: post #129
grey-area wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't that make it preferable to give access to all? The other alternative means those who can access to all that footage in aggregate have huge power over those who only have access to a few cameras.

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

#156

Post by geodel »

cowpig wrote: post #141

My sister works as a lawyer in NYC on these kinds of cases. I can tell you that when landlords have a financial incentive to get rid of a tenant (as is very often the case in rent-stabilized housing), they can and will do anything in their power to do so, including every possible form of harassment. A system that allows landlords to track their tenants' activities with a computer, lock out whoever they want individua…

If balance of power is in landlorsd's favor, wouldn't they simply ask tenant to vacate instead of going in roundabout manner.

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

#157

Post by handoflixue »

FakeComments wrote: post #139
crooked-v wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It would take more development time, so we didn't do it" is not a sufficient excuse for discriminating against one racial group.

But we allow that kind of discrimination based on physical characteristics all the time. Why is it an acceptable basis to discriminate on height, but not melanin content? Because there’s a ton of “one size fits all” products which don’t fit the ends of the bell curve, and reflect the choice of manufacturer to not serve all body types. I think it’s a poor choice for a door lock, but I’m not sure I a priori think it’s…

> I think it’s a poor choice for a door lock, but I’m not sure I a priori think it’s unacceptable for a product to not work for some (~10%) portion of the population — especially when it reflects an engineering reality

If my employer specifies a uniform, it's their obligation to provide one to 100% of their employees, not the 90% covered by the cheap "one size fits all" company they prefer to use.

If my landlord specifies a locking system, it's their obligation to provide one that unlocks 100% of the time for everyone who rents there.

There's also an issue of scale: an apartment is a fairly major decision with a lot of other factors, that affects a huge chunk of your life. Being locked out by a small, easily changed decision on the landlord's part is unreasonable. Conversely, if you can't wear a "one size fits all" product, there's plenty of other options out there, and you're not potentially creating segregated neighborhoods, locking black people out of living near good jobs, etc..

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

#158

Post by jeffdavis »

cowpig wrote: post #141

My sister works as a lawyer in NYC on these kinds of cases. I can tell you that when landlords have a financial incentive to get rid of a tenant (as is very often the case in rent-stabilized housing), they can and will do anything in their power to do so, including every possible form of harassment. A system that allows landlords to track their tenants' activities with a computer, lock out whoever they want individua…

The problem starts when a landlord has a "financial incentive to get rid of a tenant". At that point it's a non-consenual business relationship and it's no surprise when it becomes toxic.

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

#159

Post by geodel »

komali2 wrote: post #137
booleandilemma wrote: post #57

I live in a building with plenty of shady-looking people coming and going and I wouldn’t mind something like this. I’m sure the tenants who have kids wouldn’t mind it either. It would be a problem for food deliveries though.

>shady looking What's shady look like?

Generally people know when they see it. I suppose you refer only to legal definitions of how people look.

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

#160

Post by crooked-v »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #71

All this door tech is just not in my MO. I don't need a camera in my doorbell, I don't need third parties keeping track of my visitors, I don't want my door to open for the package deliverer, and I don't want it to be my face that opens my door. "Hey Mom, here is my face, go right in, I'll be just a moment longer."

What I'd like to see is a self-contained home door lock that can use NFC or RFID, and even that just because of the convenience value in not having to get keys out with hands full of groceries. No Internet functionality, no Bluetooth or anything with a range over a couple of inches. Unfortunately, everything on the market that fills that want seems to be either completely unreliable, or hilariously insecure in either technological or physical senses.
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