America is turning against facial-recognition software

Post by lazyvoice » Fri, May 24, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

grenoire wrote: post #20

lazyvoice wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by mc32 » Fri, May 24, 2019, 12:25 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #26

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?

There have been numerous issues where corpora of peoples faces have been insufficiently stocked with a particular racial group, in such cases people's faces might not register as faces and therefore be shut out of whatever the facial recognition is supposed to implement. For example facial recognition at a high priced building, suddenly non-white people can't get in because you did not show a real face at the scanner…

Post by rmrfrmrf » Fri, May 24, 2019, 12:38 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #25

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.

I fully agree with your sentiment but I don't agree with a ban. Prohibition doesn't work. You should be able to use it but the legal risks and liability you open yourself up to by using it should be strong enough to deter its use except when there truly is no substitute. Asbestos comes to mind as an example. People (often on HN) often run in circles and scream about the sky falling because "OMG it's not banned" but t…

Post by bumby » Fri, May 24, 2019, 12:41 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #13

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 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”.

Post by rmrfrmrf » Fri, May 24, 2019, 12:47 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #33

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been numerous issues where corpora of peoples faces have been insufficiently stocked with a particular racial group, in such cases people's faces might not register as faces and therefore be shut out of whatever the facial recognition is supposed to implement. For example facial recognition at a high priced building, suddenly non-white people can't get in because you did not show a real face at the scanner…

>”corpora of peoples faces have been insufficiently stocked with a particular racial group, in such cases people's faces might not register as faces..” I’m not sure this is s good argument against the technology because there is a solution to this objection: they’ll improve it and ensure every face type is comparably recognized. It should be rejected on more basic principles.