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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

#191

Post by albedoa »

mbrumlow wrote: post #166
chrisco255 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would seem to violate a tenant's rights to Quiet Use and Enjoyment, as is recognized by real estate law: https://www.landlordology.com/implied-covenant-quiet-enjoyme...

How so? I read your link and can't help to see it is about tenants rights, not visitors of tenants. It seems this would only stop non-tenets from having access to the facilities. At least without being accompanied by actual tenants.

> it is about tenants rights, not visitors of tenants.

That link is not the best. Quiet Enjoyment does cover the tenant's right to have visitors. A landlord cannot interfere with that right, including by blocking access to the unit by unaccompanied visitors who don't have the tenant's face.

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

#192

Post by pavel_lishin »

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?

Yes, except for the part about how they're dressed, what they're carrying, how they got there, who they said goodbye to on the sidewalk, etc., etc.

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

#193

Post by pavel_lishin »

manfredo wrote: post #145
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.

> 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. Where in the article did it state that people's activities were being tracked? Let alone inferring what they are carrying, how they are dressed. The latter things are the stuff of science fiction. I talked with a guy…

> Where in the article did it state that people's activities were being tracked?

How about this part, that verbatim says that's what the landlord used the currently-installed cameras for?

> In order to let neighbors who might not have seen the letter know what was potentially coming, five tenants convened in the lobby of one of the two buildings on a late October morning to spread the word. A few days later, those five tenants — like most of the residents at Atlantic, black women — received a notice from property management with pictures of the gathering taken from a security camera; they were told that the lobby was not “a place to solicit, electioneer, hang out or loiter.”

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

#194

Post by pavel_lishin »

gist wrote: post #29
alister wrote: post #10

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…

> And whoever is doing the enrolling can ask for lots of further information about your visitor Why are you jumping to the conclusion that is has to go this way? Very possible that a landlord would be happy to simply have someone log a face and then go back to that person if there was a particular and legal reason to know who the face was. Now sure if they wanted maybe they could google image search the face and find…

Also, keep in mind that in the article, the landlord is already using the cameras to spy on the comings and goings of tenants, and harassing them for meeting to talk about this:

> In order to let neighbors who might not have seen the letter know what was potentially coming, five tenants convened in the lobby of one of the two buildings on a late October morning to spread the word. A few days later, those five tenants — like most of the residents at Atlantic, black women — received a notice from property management with pictures of the gathering taken from a security camera; they were told that the lobby was not “a place to solicit, electioneer, hang out or loiter.”

> New York State law, in fact, grants tenants the right to meet peacefully in nearly any location in a building as long as they are not obstructing passageways. Management maintains that tenants were getting in the way even if the pictures did not clearly indicate that.

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

#195

Post by Scoundreller »

nemothekid wrote: post #60
scrollaway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every apartment I've lived in with such difficult-to-duplicate keys (such as magnetic locks and what not), I've been ask whether I want a second set; and/or the owner told me to ask them should that ever be the case. Not quite sure what's different with that situation from before, other than slightly cheaper keys.

In my experience, in San Francisco, the owner will only give you a key for every name on the lease.

Some buildings (or just the owners?) keep the copy for cleaners in a realtors lock box. Doesn’t stop a sophisticated attacker, but probably does the job when you want to fire the cleaner.

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

#196

Post by Scoundreller »

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.

Letting people get into the locker room or bike room can create issues.

You can get a great lock, but what they lock into is usually a very weak link.

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

#197

Post by manfredo »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #193
manfredo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Where in the article did it state that people's activities were being tracked? Let alone inferring what they are carrying, how they are dressed. The latter things are the stuff of science fiction. I talked with a guy…

> Where in the article did it state that people's activities were being tracked? How about this part, that verbatim says that's what the landlord used the currently-installed cameras for? > In order to let neighbors who might not have seen the letter know what was potentially coming, five tenants convened in the lobby of one of the two buildings on a late October morning to spread the word. A few days later, those fi…

None of that says that the facial recognition system was used to identify the tenants. From what it looks like this happened without any use of the facial recognition system. It looks like a security guard staring at cameras all day saw something that looked suspicious.

Here's a thought: maybe if facial recognition was used, all of the people in the halls would be recognized as tenants and wouldn't have been bothered by management? Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

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

#198

Post by FakeComments »

handoflixue wrote: post #157
FakeComments wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

> 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.

Only if such clothes are reasonably commercially available — otherwise, they have a bonda fine business reason to discriminate in hiring, and may do so.

I think you’d find you also had a really hard time for suing if they just didn’t hire you on the basis of the uniforms they had not fitting.

So you seem factually incorrect about the height case.

> 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..

This is again mistaken.

If you’re at the ends of the bell curve for height, you can’t reliably find work clothes through normal channels, and are thus unable to reliably signal your qualification for a white collar job.

The lack of height appropriate clothing impacts the ability of very tall or very short people to “dress for success”, and hence harms their chances of attaining the best jobs.

Your comments merely reflect your cis-height privilege and implicit heightism.

Further, it speaks to your implicit racism, because you view melanin as somehow biologically more meaningful than height.

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

#199

Post by [deleted] »

crooked-v wrote: post #143
FakeComments wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by lovich »

Faaak wrote: post #95
scrollaway wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every apartment I've lived in with such difficult-to-duplicate keys (such as magnetic locks and what not), I've been ask whether I want a second set; and/or the owner told me to ask them should that ever be the case. Not quite sure what's different with that situation from before, other than slightly cheaper keys.

In Switzerland I've always changed the locks to my apartment and its garage. 1) The landlord is _never_ allowed to enter your house 2) In an emergency, the firemen would just break the door.

In parts of the US I have lived in at least, not letting the landlord in under certain conditions allows the landlord to evict you or go after you for damages. There is no way to never let them in
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