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France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

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Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#41

Post by conradfr »

jokoon wrote: post #19
mytailorisrich wrote: post #5

This is a rather poor and click-baity article. According to the French government's page on this system [1] (in French): The system is an app that generates login details to allow online access to (public?) services. You install the app on your smartphone. It uses NFC (I suppose) to read your picture (also other details?) from your passport's chip, and stores it locally on the phone. It then uses this to perform faci…

I'm french, I've heard of this biometric thing, and so far it doesn't seem people are really scared of this, so... yeah, it sounds click-baity. French people are very sensitive to their rights and liberties, and are very quick to organize protests. Many steps were taken to monitor potential terrorists since the Paris attacks, and those were not well received, but politically it was hard to not implement those measure…

> French people are very sensitive to their rights and liberties

How many protests over the several laws that have continually reduced those rights since for at least the last ten years ?

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#42

Post by ElFitz »

gbersac wrote: post #30

Don't worry, if capgemini or accenture win the project (as they often do), the project will never work /s (but no so sarcastic either)

Oh, Capgemini! Had to work with one of their SDKs once. Oh my. Wish I hadn't.

But maybe we could suggest them to pick, say... Steria? Louvois was such a success[^1]

Reminds me of https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-fro...

[1]: http://en.rfi.fr/africa/20140404-faulty-software-robs-french...

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#43

Post by mieseratte »

laumars wrote: post #33
cm2187 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity, it will not take very long for someone asking for it to be used to identify violent criminals. Then terrorists at airport gates. Then demonstrators. etc.

This app doesn't provide the government any new information (it uses ID the government already issue) nor invent any new technology (face recognition already exists). If French government - or any government for that matter - wished to do what you described then this app wouldn't be the proverbial gateway drug to that point. In fact, the entire point of passports is to identify people at airport gates and other natio…

> This app doesn't provide the government any new information

> wished to do what you described then this app wouldn't be the proverbial gateway drug to that point.

It's not about "gateway drug" - it's about taking small, incremental steps to get from point A to point B such that you don't realize it, and each action is a small change from the previous. This is widely known as Salami Slicing[0], though I like to call it "slow boiling a frog."

This is the same tactic I use to slowly bring errant teams and projects up-to-code at work, start off slow with a build server, add in pass-fail rules, add in style rules, add in test requirements, add in code review to ensure these things are up to snuff and before you know it we have a nice compliant project, whereas if I walked in on Day 0 and laid down the law there is guaranteed revolt.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#44

Post by 20190820234322 »

yardie wrote: post #8

Can we give french citizens the benefit of the doubt here. Living there I can tell you the resident are much quicker to point out these new systems as fascist than, say, Americans. Even in Paris, the number of surveillance cameras was dramatically lower than London. The police would tout the crime fighting advantages of having these cameras in certain areas, someone would write an opinion on Nazi occupied Paris, the…

Agreed. Although it may not sound politically correct to say this, actions must be interpreted in light of the quality of the humans who performed them.

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#45

Post by black_puppydog »

yardie wrote: post #8

Can we give french citizens the benefit of the doubt here. Living there I can tell you the resident are much quicker to point out these new systems as fascist than, say, Americans. Even in Paris, the number of surveillance cameras was dramatically lower than London. The police would tout the crime fighting advantages of having these cameras in certain areas, someone would write an opinion on Nazi occupied Paris, the…

First, I think the argument is not against how French citizens deal with this, but how the government is pushing this stuff to begin with.

Second, I'd like to agree with you, I really would. BUT: After the charlie hebdo and bataclan attacks, seeing...

* completely unopposed état "d'urgence" being prolonged for TWO YEARS when the real urgency was over within a few days * the way that it was abused [1], and largely not discussed let alone really opposed in public or by my relatively tech savvy colleagues and friends in private conversation * how some of the most outrageous parts have been made into regular law now * how we still have military patrolling everywhere * bag checks at university lecture halls (seen yesterday) * the vigipirate logo (which looks like straight out of a dystopian scifi comic [2]) plastered all over town * the kindergarden on my way to work still being surrounded with concrete barriers blocking the parking, to ostensibly (and practically completely irrelevantly, given the geometry of the place) block a car from driving through the fence

after all of that, I have little to no confidence that France is any less prone to a slide into totalitarianism than any other country. :(

[1]: https://wiki.laquadrature.net/%C3%89tat_urgence/Recensement [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigipirate#/media/File:Vigipir...

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#47

Post by ekianjo »

jokoon wrote: post #19
mytailorisrich wrote: post #5

This is a rather poor and click-baity article. According to the French government's page on this system [1] (in French): The system is an app that generates login details to allow online access to (public?) services. You install the app on your smartphone. It uses NFC (I suppose) to read your picture (also other details?) from your passport's chip, and stores it locally on the phone. It then uses this to perform faci…

I'm french, I've heard of this biometric thing, and so far it doesn't seem people are really scared of this, so... yeah, it sounds click-baity. French people are very sensitive to their rights and liberties, and are very quick to organize protests. Many steps were taken to monitor potential terrorists since the Paris attacks, and those were not well received, but politically it was hard to not implement those measure…

> French people are very sensitive to their rights and liberties

Oh really, like the non-existing demonstrations against the increase of surveillance in the past 10 years?

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#48

Post by edelans »

jarfil wrote: post #34
GrantZvolsky wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there is a vulnerability in the flow: 1. Attacker reads the photo form the passport 2. Attacker prints out the photo, perhaps with some perspective correction 3. Attacker tricks the phone into recognizing the print as the subject Am I wrong? My knowledge of the flow is entirely based on the comment above.

That's the problem with any biometric data being used for authentication: once an attacker gets a copy, it's game over. Biometric passports are a means of identification, not authentication, with the biometric data being signed by a trusted third party, but not considered a secret. The only protection they include is a password printed inside the passport to thwart silent NFC data access.

Indeed, "biometrics are usernames, not passwords".

It reminds me of an old thread :

http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2013/10/fingerprints-are-user...

HN discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11549536

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#49

Post by bb123 »

cm2187 wrote: post #26
mytailorisrich wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This system reads the data from your passport (which the government collected when you applied for one and stored there) and store them on your phone. Software then uses facial recognition to check that the person holding the phone matches the picture from your passport. Hardly 1984...

If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity, it will not take very long for someone asking for it to be used to identify violent criminals. Then terrorists at airport gates. Then demonstrators. etc.

I'm okay with identifying terrorists at airport gates. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Re: France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

#50

Post by drhodes »

Ensorceled wrote: post #9
jacquesm wrote: post #4

One day we will regret this computer revolution in ways that we currently can't begin to imagine.

I would say quite a few sci-fi authors have done a good job on this ...

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

"The god of machine-logic was overthrown by the masses and a new concept was raised..."

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