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America is turning against facial-recognition software

economist.com

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Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#11

Post by Moru »

grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

It's easy to use face recognision on someone that has nothing to hide. That does not make it useful to track someone that does have something to hide. Is it enough to put on a mustache and some glases when you walk around a corner to fool the system? A painted face on the t-shirt and a helmet on the head?

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#12

Post by cheschire »

grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

That premise assumes that one can control safety, but that might be a hard assertion to build shared understanding on because not everyone shares that assumption.

Perhaps you would have more luck trying to build a foundation on the relationship of risk management and privacy. Mitigation vs acceptance vs avoidance, etc.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#13

Post by paganel »

diafygi wrote: post #4
xena wrote: post #2

Good. This kind of software is a mirror to the data fed into it. People on the edges of society (that the people making the mirror might either intentionally or accidentally ignore) will get fucked over tremendously by this technology. We should put a complete ban on it. Even if it means gimping my photo organization programs.

Just so I have good arguments when talking to someone about this specific point, can you or someone else please go into more detail on why this will happen?

Not the OP by technology like this will explicitly make racial profiling legal again, because the power that be will hide behind the decisions taken by algorithms: “The computer told us to stop and search this black person’s car, it wasn’t us, the computer is smart, we were just following the computer’s orders”.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#14

Post by pjmorris »

grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

How are you measuring safety, and how are you measuring privacy, to make the 'inversely related' claim? What is your evidence for this claim, measured in the measures you are using?

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#15

Post by grenoire »

SCdF wrote: post #10
grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

> all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have What leads you to think that this is always true? Do you not think there are any other solutions to reducing crime other than increasing surveillance?

I do, but at the same time I think that lower-hanging, yet not so easy-to-pick, fruits are ignored already. In that case, it becomes more feasible to target far out approaches that are simply easier to implement. Unfortunately, those also happen to be ones that compromise privacy.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#16

Post by trevyn »

diafygi wrote: post #4
xena wrote: post #2

Good. This kind of software is a mirror to the data fed into it. People on the edges of society (that the people making the mirror might either intentionally or accidentally ignore) will get fucked over tremendously by this technology. We should put a complete ban on it. Even if it means gimping my photo organization programs.

Just so I have good arguments when talking to someone about this specific point, can you or someone else please go into more detail on why this will happen?

Along the lines of “everyone is breaking some law”, there could be a shift from “technically illegal but generally harmless and tolerated” to “illegal and mindlessly enforced by automated technology”.

An example being China’s automated jaywalking-shamer.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#17

Post by masklinn »

donohoe wrote: post #8
diafygi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so I have good arguments when talking to someone about this specific point, can you or someone else please go into more detail on why this will happen?

Not specific to facial recognition but covers it and the deeper issues. It is a thorough yet accessible primer on the many ways bias can creep into these systems: https://parametric.press/issue-01/the-myth-of-the-impartial-...

As @pinboard noted back in the dark ages of 2016, "machine learning is money laundering for bias".

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#18

Post by lazyvoice »

grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

How does this differ from "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about."?

Surely it's not difficult for you to imagine fairly common scenarios where your equation is patently untrue. A battered spouse of LEO or a non gender-conforming individual in a theocratic society are only two really easy examples that come to mind.

If we assume that individuals who control or have access to surveillance mechanisms are universally magnanimous and actually capable of neutralizing threats to safety, then your negative relationship between safety and privacy might hold up to scrutiny. I have more than a bit of trouble seeing how that assumption is anything other than utopian.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#19

Post by grenoire »

jihadjihad wrote: post #7
grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

I ask, safety from what? From citizens or the state? Your statement implies that the freest societies are the least "safe", and the most repressed are the "safest". While you might be able to hinder criminality on the part of citizens with total surveillance, the cost of giving anyone that kind of power is too high. Relinquishing privacy puts a society on a path where all power accrues to the state, to the detriment…

I agree to most, but because solutions like facial recognition are simply easier to engage than educational reforms or welfare-based safety [sic] nets, this is not necessarily something we get to choose.

States will prefer the former to the latter and firms will provide, at which point I don't think that the definition of safety-from is necessary.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#20

Post by grenoire »

lazyvoice wrote: post #18
grenoire wrote: post #3

This has been debated extensively on HN (and is still being debated actively), but all I hope is that people realise sooner or later that the level of safety you can acquire in a society is inversely related to the level of privacy individuals can have. What I personally hope for is that people achieve a balance between safety and privacy.

How does this differ from "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about."? Surely it's not difficult for you to imagine fairly common scenarios where your equation is patently untrue. A battered spouse of LEO or a non gender-conforming individual in a theocratic society are only two really easy examples that come to mind. If we assume that individuals who control or have access to surveillance mechanis…

I don't mean to defend surveillance as a gateway to safety by any means, in fact I believe in the exact opposite. Unfortunately, it's going to be integrated into our society whether we like it or not, and after that point it's only a matter of time before we come to accept losing our privacy; having ignored all the exceptional "casualties" and enjoying the add scrutiny it yields to law enforcement.
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