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France Set to Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition ID Program

bloomberg.com

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

#81

Post by homonculus1 »

tobylane wrote: post #58
mieseratte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Or have been classed by the government as someone to catch, in which case that is the step you want to avoid.

This chilling effect is the exact purpose, the true goal. When every terrorist and criminal can be instantly, systematically caught in the all-encompassing web of a total police state, then so can anybody else. And that means you always have to watch what you say, weigh the consequences of protest, think twice about associating with fringe ideas or people.

Terrorists are a conveniently indefensible target, but the measures against them are nonetheless a threat toward everybody else. This Can Happen To You Too. But it's okay, you have nothing to fear, just avoid being classed as a dissident. Shut up, keep your head down, and toe the line.

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

#82

Post by Barrin92 »

lifty wrote: post #75
Barrin92 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fe…

The problem is that these kind of automated system give governments more leverage than policing using people, and it enables them to do systemic oppression. Also, people have a moral compass that can prevent them from doing bad things, while machines don't. But everything is fine as long as the government is ok. I come from one of the eastern EU states which were under communist rule, and I am naturally more skeptica…

>The problem is that these kind of automated system give governments more leverage than policing using people,

they also take power away from arbitrary police action because cameras work both ways. Surveillance doesn't just discipline citizens, it also disciplines authorities. If you're in a room alone with a police officer, do you prefer the cameras to be on or off?

Automated systems can have bias just like people, but at least with a digital system the data is catalogued, we can reason about why they make the decisions they make and document abuse and fix them accordingly. Try fixing corrupt police in a small town without papertrails.

That the Soviet Union was so good at oppressing people without any automated surveillance actually proves the point. Oppressive systems function just fine with people all the way down.

The narrative of surveillance as just a tool for oppression is one-sided. Citizens would be wise to use this point in time when the laws are still being drawn to use it as a tool to hold authority accountable.

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

#83

Post by grimjack00 »

tobylane wrote: post #58
mieseratte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That’s only a problem if you are a terrorist. Like NRA members, as per the city of San Francisco.

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

#84

Post by ameister14 »

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…

It's the non-invasive nature of facial recognition that presents a problem. If you install a camera above the entrance of a community center, then record everyone coming and going, you can identify who is attending what meeting and when. Perhaps someone walks in to a far right or a far left meeting group. Maybe an environmental action group. With that, 20 years later, you can destroy their career. They didn't sign anything, they didn't do anything, they were just witnessed going in and out. That's enough.

Since the community center belongs to the government, it's just a matter of connecting things they already own, so it does not give the government anything it doesn't already have (or could have.) The problem is that people don't think that way. Nobody expects your movements to be associated with something undesirable in a decade or two, but it's happened before.

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

#85

Post by ameister14 »

tobylane wrote: post #58
mieseratte wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Or have been classed by the government as someone to catch, in which case that is the step you want to avoid.

This is more difficult than it may sound. Guilt by association is alive and well in most governments, and you don't always get to choose who you are associated with.

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

#86

Post by conanbatt »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #2

>France says the ID system won’t be used to keep tabs on residents. Unlike in China and Singapore, the country won’t be integrating the facial recognition biometric into citizens’ identity databases That's what they all say but once the systems exists the temptation is there to use it and each successive bunch of authoritarians will use it a little bit more. They don't even need to be more than a small minority of go…

If it were true, they could release the system while making it illegal to be used in ANY kind of legal proceding ANY time now and in the future.

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

#88

Post by yohannparis »

andrerm wrote: post #77

So if police or someone can get your phone they can just point the phone to your face and get access to all info ?

No, the app just compare the face in front of the camera with the photo saved in the NFC chip in your passport. So that the government agrees that the user of the phone and the passport are the same person. Once this is done, the photo is destroyed as well as the comparaison. It's an app that does what every custom officer do when you cross a border.

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

#89

Post by mratsim »

ekianjo wrote: post #47
jokoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Surveillance by which country?

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

#90

Post by mratsim »

rebuilder wrote: post #28
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…

So the verification is done on the user's device? That seems like it would come with a lot of security problems.

More power to Google/Apple
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