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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

#51

Post by cm2187 »

raverbashing wrote: post #36
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.

> If you build a system you can query for any face and get the identity True, but you can't. Facebook can't. That's (one of the reasons) they suggest tagging amongst your friends, not amongst all of FB people. You can identify one person (with a certain degree of certainty) against a certain range of candidates. Or you can search for one person on a small sample of images (100s or 1000s of images). So yes you can hav…

True, but that's not different from fingerprints. Fingerprints have collisions. That doesn't mean that it isn't a highly effective tool.

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

#52

Post by mieseratte »

bb123 wrote: post #49
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.

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

Which is fine and dandy until the day you're a target. Power is a sword that cuts both ways.

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

#54

Post by icebraining »

mieseratte wrote: post #43
laumars wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way.

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

#55

Post by Aaargh20318 »

edelans wrote: post #48
jarfil wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Indeed, "biometrics are usernames, not passwords".

Biometrics are neither. They are a completely separate factor in authenticating a person, and used in different scenario's.

Biometrics have advantages and disadvantages based on your threat model. For example, unlocking your laptop with a fingerprint while working on a train or plane might be preferable to a username/password because the risk of a shoulder-surfer may be higher than the risk of someone lifting your fingerprint.

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

#57

Post by Barrin92 »

mieseratte wrote: post #52
bb123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which is fine and dandy until the day you're a target. Power is a sword that cuts both ways.

you can always be the target to border or airport controls regardless of how much technology is involved, and policing was no less crude before we introduced facial recognition checks.

I've been checked at airports before and I have no problem with airport security either. Terrorism or crime are real threats and police without technology is just as biased if not more so then machine aided ones.

The minority report fears every time technology is introduced to policing is an abstract and slightly silly complaint given that most police brutality and abuse of power occurs in impoverished, low tech areas, where if anything police has fewer tools and force available than in public airports and surveilled neighbourhoods.

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

#58

Post by tobylane »

mieseratte wrote: post #52
bb123 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which is fine and dandy until the day you're a target. Power is a sword that cuts both ways.

That’s only a problem if you are a terrorist. Or have been classed by the government as someone to catch, in which case that is the step you want to avoid. Trying to throw away every chair or step a child drags towards the countertop is silly when all you need to do is keep the knife off the surface and safely hidden away.

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

#59

Post by Ensorceled »

lucb1e wrote: post #13
Ensorceled wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My favorite author in that genre is Daniel Suarez, who makes some scarily accurate thrillers. It's not all 100% realistic, but as someone who is often annoyed at the deus ex machina[1] of other (science) fiction, this is really great. The author is a former software engineer, so I guess they know quite well how technology works in general. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

That is one of my favourites as well, World of Warcraft meets the Real World in a way that, while not necessarily believable, did not cause retinae detachment from extreme eye-rolling.

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

#60

Post by mieseratte »

icebraining wrote: post #54
mieseratte wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way.

> But it's not an incremental step. The French government already had that database. This is just using the data they already had in a new way.

Yes, it is a new, small, incremental step!

This is introducing a new procedure, a procedure they can change later to move the needle forward.

This is the whole point, doing small incremental steps. Each of which appears rather banal and unobjectionable.

That you don't care is proof it works!

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