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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

#131

Post by ppseafield »

notus wrote: post #93
Loughla wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with your statement is that it seems to put 'brilliant engineers' on some kind of magical pedestal. Engineers, much like police, are humans. Therefore they hold biases, they can be short-sighted, and they may not understand many of the long-term ramifications of their jobs. All this does is move the power and bias up the chain from police to engineers while simultaneously making some very, very pow…

Your average engineer is far more intelligent and introspective than your average police though. They will have biases, but not the same ones police have and far less racist or sexist ones. Police officers have a rate of domestic violence at 2-4x that of the normal population. We 100% benefit by moving the power up the chain from uneducated people to educated people.

Intelligent, possibly. Introspective, I'm not so sure.

Being educated can help protect some against abuses of power, but do you believe engineers are immune to abuses of power? I don't think so. The mechanisms are the same.

What would lower abuse is deescalation training, dedicated, well-founded mental health care, decriminalizing drugs, and most importantly breaking the blue shield: holding officers accountable by actually trying officers that have committed crimes, increasing the power of agencies regulating them, weakening the power of the police union so they can actually be accountable.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#132

Post by danShumway »

phissk wrote: post #103
danShumway wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still caries an uncomfortable implication that Downs and Autism are inherently negative traits, and that people who have them would be better off not having existed in the first place. Depending on where you fall on the fetal personhood debate, preventing someone from existing is much better than killing them. But that doesn't mean the choice can't reveal negative things about society's overall attitudes towards…

Whether it be autism or sexual orientation, it seems even more wrong to choose to have a child with something that will disadvantage them just to bolster the numbers of the other people already in the world being unfairly discriminated against. Given that in this scenario there are two potential children; the one with undesirable_trait_x, and the replacement without it, and one will come into existence and one will n…

Well, from a purely social perspective, the answer is pretty obviously no -- we have a vested interest in increasing social diversity for the same reasons we have a vested interest in increasing genetic diversity. And the ability to widely eliminate qualities that society deems undesirable on a whim will almost definitely lead towards increased homogeneity and worse social outcomes in general for anyone who has a trait that can't be eliminated.

However, I'm guessing you're actually talking about morality on an individual level -- that it's immoral for an individual parent not to try and guarantee their future child the happiest possible life. The problem is that even though being autistic is hard, having a hard life doesn't necessarily mean having a bad life. Being autistic is hard because autistic people are different, not because autism is inherently an undesirable trait.

Not everyone who is autistic or who has Downs would, if given the chance, flip a switch and erase that part of their personality, and they bristle at the "happy life" argument because they see it as (intentionally or not) just another way for people to imply, "differently abled people will always lead less satisfying lives." See also the controversy in the deaf community over hearing aids, which are a much less dicey proposition than eugenics but still prompt heated arguments sometimes.

As a side note, it's worth mentioning that no one is talking about artificially increasing the number of differently abled people as some kind of "recruitment strategy". Opponents to this kind of genetic selection are talking about just removing that characteristic as a determining factor entirely. It's not any different than banning sex-selective abortions, which is already an entirely normal and relatively uncontroversial policy in multiple developed countries.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#133

Post by mindgam3 »

ssully wrote: post #126
briatx wrote: post #66

> Earlier this year the Washington Post reported that many small police departments were abandoning body-worn-camera programmes because of the cost. > Although the cameras are cheap, officers can generate 15 gigabytes of video per shift; storage costs mount. Police unions often oppose body-worn cameras, fearing they imperil their members by giving superior officers licence to search them for punishable behaviour. >Ot…

Since 2004, Chicago Police Department paid out $662 million [1] in police misconduct settlements. The optimist in me says that the cost of proper police reform, training, body cameras, video storage, and actually punishing bad cops would be much less then that. [1]: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160320/NEWS07/1603...

I find this to be a really compelling counter-argument to the whole "accountability is too expensive" line. Even if proper tech + training cost only reduced rate of severe misconduct by 15%, that's over $100M in savings.

I'm sure implementing reform etc isn't cheap, but I seriously doubt it's on the order of $100M.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#134

Post by asdkhadsj »

supahfly_remix wrote: post #70
asdkhadsj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost ironic that we're progressing through a social evolution where we have to have conversations with people to understand their desired pronoun; while at the same time developing software that will suffer the same fate. Appearances mean nothing, but that's all (this) software can use. Perhaps a small badge with visual friendly metadata would be handy. Not that we need to give them more information of course,…

> The idea of everyone walking around with a little badge on their chest containing their metadata is oddly dystopian haha. This idea was tried before, but for just a subset of the population, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge

That's a bit dramatic to my comment, imo. You could say the same for police, or any institution that uses identifying information - even uniforms.

Like it or not we all have piles of metadata that follow us around. A big one is our face. It won't take long for facial recognition to do the same thing I mentioned in the previous post; except you won't have a choice then. Hell, you won't even know.

The metadata badge idea was of course not serious; but it doesn't seem so farfetched to me or absolutely terrible. It (as I proposed it), at least, would be something you controlled.

Which, unlike state IDs, licenses or Nazi' camp badges are not something you would control.

I do not appreciate the extreme association with a free-thought idea to that of the worst massacre in history. I'll assume you meant no harm, but still - I figured I had to at least express clarification.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#135

Post by this2shallPass »

Police are only one group who might use facial-recognition software. Body-worn-cameras can be used and not collect face data or use facial recognition technology, or their legal uses can be severely restricted and clearly defined (or outright banned, lots of options). Why conflate all these things. They overlap sometimes, not all the time.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#136

Post by aoeusnth1 »

mindgam3 wrote: post #133
ssully wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since 2004, Chicago Police Department paid out $662 million [1] in police misconduct settlements. The optimist in me says that the cost of proper police reform, training, body cameras, video storage, and actually punishing bad cops would be much less then that. [1]: https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160320/NEWS07/1603...

I find this to be a really compelling counter-argument to the whole "accountability is too expensive" line. Even if proper tech + training cost only reduced rate of severe misconduct by 15%, that's over $100M in savings. I'm sure implementing reform etc isn't cheap, but I seriously doubt it's on the order of $100M.

To the people performing the misconduct, training and accountability are restrictions and represent a reduction in power. No amount of money savings will make them in favor of it.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#137

Post by mindgam3 »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #136
mindgam3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to be a really compelling counter-argument to the whole "accountability is too expensive" line. Even if proper tech + training cost only reduced rate of severe misconduct by 15%, that's over $100M in savings. I'm sure implementing reform etc isn't cheap, but I seriously doubt it's on the order of $100M.

To the people performing the misconduct, training and accountability are restrictions and represent a reduction in power. No amount of money savings will make them in favor of it.

I agree. But of course the offending people can’t just come out and say that they’re against accountability on principle - they have to trot out the “too expensive” argument. That’s why the statistic on settlements is useful.

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#138

Post by thatoneuser »

briatx wrote: post #66

> Earlier this year the Washington Post reported that many small police departments were abandoning body-worn-camera programmes because of the cost. > Although the cameras are cheap, officers can generate 15 gigabytes of video per shift; storage costs mount. Police unions often oppose body-worn cameras, fearing they imperil their members by giving superior officers licence to search them for punishable behaviour. >Ot…

Huh so the cops think giving cops the ability to search for punishable behavior might be an issue...

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#139

Post by Barrin92 »

toephu2 wrote: post #111
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.

You have never been a victim of a crime have you? I'm pretty sure if you were, and the crime was caught on camera, your position on facial-recognition software would change.

>I'm pretty sure if you were, and the crime was caught on camera, your position on facial-recognition software would change.

yes, but likely in the wrong direction because I'd be angry and personally insecure. Decisions of liberty, privacy and law shouldn't be based on personal experiences or trauma.

I find this line of argument weird. Do you really think a personal decision about long term social issues is better than an impersonal one?

Re: America is turning against facial-recognition software

#140

Post by themacguffinman »

toephu2 wrote: post #112
mensetmanusman wrote: post #96

This backlash is the silver lining to China’s shortsighted implementations of this technology to their world renowned police state.

This may be an unpopular opinion here but on the flip side have you been to China lately? Street crime (including petty thievery) has dropped immensely. Any city in China is much safer than Oakland.

I don't think safety is the only thing that matters to people.
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