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FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

washingtonpost.com

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Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#41

Post by ma2rten »

bko wrote: post #34
xmichael999 wrote: post #7

I don't know too much about facial recognition technology (I work more in the ALPR space), but I know enough to tell you that a single photo is not enough to train the software to do anything useful. Either they were sold a dream by a company making bogus claims, or they just don't give a shit about false postives in the slightest and they use it as justification to randomly stop and search people. There was an artic…

A single picture is surprisingly effective in recognizing that person in another photo. I've been playing around with a python wrapper on dlib's facial recognition [0] and it's astonishing how it can identify people from just one photo. It's not like other machine learning methods that include training a classifier or even fine tuning a classifier. It works by encoding the persons face to a 128 dimension vector and t…

Accuracy depends on the dataset like you point out. It's a hard task to find a person among all driver license photos in the US.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#42

Post by aasasd »

I keep seeing the press complaining of police using face recognition that “is not accurate.” IMO yall might want to stop making that argument. Because you're gonna one day find cameras on every lamppost, and police tracking your every movement and saying “it's alright now because it's 100% accurate.”

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#43

Post by aasasd »

_iyig wrote: post #33

Fairness of the U.S. immigration system aside, what is wrong in principle with law enforcement using driver’s license photos to uphold and enforce the law? When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S. I would be much more concerned if law enforcement were, for example, using t…

> When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy

Would you say that someone stalking you all day every day is alright if it's in public?

(Also, you seem to have missed that the police aren't using photos from just road cameras, but that's beside the argument really.)

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#44

Post by godelski »

2Ccltvcm wrote: post #37
godelski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kinds of comments make me extremely upset. Such thinking is exactly why we're losing power in democracy. Such thinking is how authoritarians win. I will go as far as saying that spreading this idea is dangerous at best.

In my youth I spent thousands of hours I will never get back arguing about the merits of various social policies and I have never made a positive impact with my contributions.

Well then do more than just argue. And when you do argue, argue to change minds, not to win. I know I used to argue to win. I found that it just puts people off. It doesn't matter how right you are if you make the other person feel angry (obvious counter examples aside). Arguing to convince the other side is harder because you have to understand them. Not only that, but you have to demonstrate that understanding. It is always a continual battle.

But besides arguing there are things you can do. As coders and techies we can contribute code. We can encourage open source and make our own code open source. We can help others find secure forms of communication. We can also do what many others in the public can do: protest, write our congressmen, and raise hell. How much and how little of this you want to do or have time for is okay. But I wouldn't say that just because you haven't convinced others means you shouldn't try. It just means you should change strategies. You after all, no matter how smart or right you are, are not perfect and neither is the person you're trying to convince.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#45

Post by _iyig »

aasasd wrote: post #43
_iyig wrote: post #33

Fairness of the U.S. immigration system aside, what is wrong in principle with law enforcement using driver’s license photos to uphold and enforce the law? When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S. I would be much more concerned if law enforcement were, for example, using t…

> When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy Would you say that someone stalking you all day every day is alright if it's in public? (Also, you seem to have missed that the police aren't using photos from just road cameras, but that's beside the argument really.)

Sorry, I think I failed to clarify my point. I don't think ubiquitous vehicle position tracking is legal, or a good idea. I do think that if you're a driver on public roads, your face will be photographed at some point (such as for your license), and _that's_ legal and to be expected.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#46

Post by godelski »

macinjosh wrote: post #28
roywiggins wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never publicly proposed. When was it proposed, and by who? It's not been seriously debated by Congress.

It was passed by Congress in 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act

What the parent is trying to say is that it was not public. This can mean that they just weren't aware of it too, or thought it was something else. I know when I heard about the RealID act there wasn't much discussion about it among my peers. It just seemed like an update into how licenses were done, and one that would make them more secure (and let's be honest, identification in the US is atrocious. We even use SSNs for identification!)

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#47

Post by gizmoduck »

_iyig wrote: post #33

Fairness of the U.S. immigration system aside, what is wrong in principle with law enforcement using driver’s license photos to uphold and enforce the law? When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S. I would be much more concerned if law enforcement were, for example, using t…

>When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

False. Until the observer effect occurs, I - essentially - do not exist but as a record in a database. Someone who knows me, my car, or has the ability to ascertain who I am from identifiers on the vehicle, is able to collapse that sense of privacy but, until that happens, I am just one of the many of the nameless mass. In that, I have privacy and you would be hard-pressed to prove otherwise.

>Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S.

False. Tinted windows which obscure the driver's view is illegal. It's perfectly legal for you to have a high iridescent finish on the outside of your tint, which will obstruct the outside view of the driver (in sunlight).

>...or using them in an otherwise illegal manner.

When - in the history of ever - has law enforcement never abused the resources afforded to them? Your credulous, at best, belief in law enforcement's use of the system largely ignores the prevailing example given in the article - which was that they used the system on someone who was under "suspicious circumstance". The "suspicious circumstance" bar is so low that even a two-dimensional being couldn't limbo under it.

Some might argue that since the agreements were made that the three-lettered agencies would only use them for criminal investigations, that the example of the "suspicious circumstance" that was given just now is in fact illegal.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#48

Post by IIAOPSW »

xmichael999 wrote: post #7

I don't know too much about facial recognition technology (I work more in the ALPR space), but I know enough to tell you that a single photo is not enough to train the software to do anything useful. Either they were sold a dream by a company making bogus claims, or they just don't give a shit about false postives in the slightest and they use it as justification to randomly stop and search people. There was an artic…

>or they just don't give a shit about false postives in the slightest and they use it as justification to randomly stop and search people.

We already have this. Look up the false positive rate of drug sniffing dogs.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#49

Post by aasasd »

_iyig wrote: post #45
aasasd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy Would you say that someone stalking you all day every day is alright if it's in public? (Also, you seem to have missed that the police aren't using photos from just road cameras, but that's beside the argument really.)

Sorry, I think I failed to clarify my point. I don't think ubiquitous vehicle position tracking is legal, or a good idea. I do think that if you're a driver on public roads, your face will be photographed at some point (such as for your license), and _that's_ legal and to be expected.

As far as I know, the problem here is police running photos that it has from some cameras against the DMV database. Which is a) apparently of dubious legality because it's a biometric search and should be done in a criminal case but is instead done promiscuously left and right; and b) is ethically dubious because it creeps into the territory of ubiquitous surveillance.

Vehicles and roads don't enter the equation apart from people having gotten driver licenses. The licenses just make the largest database of US citizens' faces.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#50

Post by RaceWon »

Imagine a USA where the citizens are no longer armed, and the 1st Amendment has been cannibalized by the passing of various "hate speech" laws that only serve the interests of the current elected... and then imagine trying to redress a Government gone full Orwellian. Just sayin.
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