Why does the system even care about color in the first place? Can't it measure other facial characteristics, measurements?
It doesn't care about color. Dark faces reflect less light, making them more challenging to photograph well. If you have less light illuminating a scene, you'll have more noise and less contrast/dynamic range in the image. You need these things to extract features reliably. It's physics, not racial bias.
> Dark faces reflect less light
Or at least less visible light. I wonder how skin pigmentation affects imaging with infrared light?
When I previously mentioned Google will put these systems into their housing project in Toronto, I got downvoted, but it's clear this tech will be ubiquitous in major North America just like it already is in large cities in China.
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.
Everyone should have access to all my personal cameras?
The privacy concerns here are huge, but the much more direct issue is from this quote from the article: > the same programs failed to identify darker-skinned women up to one-third of the time. A one-third failure rate means that on average, for every three times you try to return home, you are likely to have the system fail to identify you at least once. Being locked out, as a resident, one-third of the number of tim…
Why does the system even care about color in the first place? Can't it measure other facial characteristics, measurements?
Lead developer of an FR system here: this issue is dynamic range, darker faces, as well as very pale faces as well as any face that the brightest portions of the face are not far from the darker portions of the face, neglecting highlights is difficult for facial recognition simply because there is less distinguishable detail in faces with less visible feature variation. I see the same behavior in very pale Irish, those from Finland, soft featured Asians, darker than coffee Indians, and Africans. Anyone with very little illumination variation, which is necessary to distinguish their features.
Did you read the part about Privacy and Right of Use? Facial recognition would violate that.
Not sure if legally it would be considered to violate privacy. My guess would be the mentioned privacy is relating to the dwelling itself, that is, the landlord can’t come hang out in your living room or hide cameras in your apartment. Plenty of apartments have 24/7 concierge at the front door and monitored entrances. That isn’t considered violating privacy even though the concierge can see you come in and out. Would…
I think once you start documenting and recording exactly who is coming and going and exactly what apartment they're going to you are violating privacy.
No doubt cases like this will be tried as people test the bounds of that legal definition.
This is an absurd misunderstanding of FR and biometric security. I am a lead developer of a leading FR system, and whomever is designing this deployment does not know what they are doing. First off, for public access, FR is not secure because it does not prevent someone being forced through FR security, and in some opinions will encourage such coercion. Extra measures are required for piggy-back access behind the FR enabled entry, and at that point you may as well have a minimum wage human security guard. FR for doorway access makes sense inside a secured space, but not for access to the secured space. The secured space needs to be completely enclosed, and have 3 passive biometrics collected or something such as a key or a human guard to access to the secured space for the creation of a secured space ready for FR within that space. Are they even at that level of security yet?
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.
Take from someone whose been on the landlord side. It’s not worth the trouble of going through a lawsuit and trying to collect damages. The lawsuit is the easy part. Collecting is the hard part.
It sounds like you're talking about collecting from delinquent tenants. They can be hard to track down and rarely have the money.
I'm talking about a subtenant retaliating against a prime tenant who kicked them out. Getting the prime tenant evicted is easy. On average, they're easier to find and collect from. Suing to take over the lease is hard, but collecting from the landlord is easy.
It is always interesting to me to contrast the presence of laws, which enforced feel like privacy violations. At least in SF, I have to give my landlord notice if someone is going to stay with me longer than 2 weeks. But, my landlord and I have a great relationship and I never see him. Technically, I am violating the lease if someone stays too long, but he would never find out or care if someone did... Seems like the…
You probably pay market rate and not hearing from you or about you makes you the ideal tenant.
I’m rent controlled, from about 7 years ago, and am at about 60% of market for my neighborhood. However, I’m handy and have been pretty good about fixing/improving the house on the cheap for him.
Still, my own landlord aside, the enforceability of contracts that require intimate knowledge of my day to day life seem to rely on surveillance or over reporting.
Why? Because rent-stabilized == crime-infested shithole.
44% of NYC apartments are rent-stabilized. If it had that many "crime-infested shitholes" it would be way higher in the crime rate stats compared to other cities than it actually is.
One result of doors being controlled by facial recognition -- or any other kind of biometric system -- is that you have to get permission from someone whenever you have a regular visitor. You can no longer give your girlfriend, boyfriend, dog sitter, relatives, or whoever you wish a key or access card to your home. You have to enroll that person in the facial database. And whoever is doing the enrolling can ask for l…
Rent-stabilized implies individuals that are less successful. This might be because of drugs, or various other distractions. Maybe it's their personal choice. Either way, any time you have rent stabilized, you have increased crime, increased disruption and increased disfunctionality. I think with greater restriction you are actually doing them a favor.
I've lived in dozens of non-rent controlled apartments, and it's almost always hell. You always have some douchebag that is above, or below or next to you who can't manage to respect personal boundaries of noise or space or smell. I would have much more enjoyed the experience if there was some level of enforcement.