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Banning facial recognition is missing the point

schneier.com

1–10 of 163 posts

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#2
I see his point, but practical face recognition is a lot easier to implement and a lot harder to defend against than all the other types of recognition. You could, for example, no carry a phone or turn it off. But your face is expected to be on show (obv exceptions aside).

So no, it’s not missing the point. It’s a different point. He’s right, but action against face recognition is also worthwhile.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#6
post #5

It took me awhile to grok but I think that people like Schneier want to take the ideology of online anonymity and apply it IRL.

What is the ideology of online anonymity?

I think there is some expectation of privacy online. No such expectation exists in a public space.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#7
post #5

It took me awhile to grok but I think that people like Schneier want to take the ideology of online anonymity and apply it IRL.

What is the ideology of online anonymity?

The internet was originally (for good or bad) the wild west. You could be anyone you wanted on the internet and for a lot of people it was an escape from ordinary life that may have been suffocating.

On my Discord. I have a HomoSexual Nazi (I don't think he is a real Nazi I think he is larping because I believe works in a very PC environment), A socialist transexual woman, a half Mexican / Chinese American Immigrate who just got his first job in the USA after he got his Green Card and many other personalities. These people can be who they want and if they want to stop being that, they can just leave and it is gone forever and it is all harmless.

Flamewars, Trolling and some Drama (before the likes of actually harmful stuff like doxxing, swatting etc) were sometimes kinda fun.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the ideology of online anonymity?

I think there is some expectation of privacy online. No such expectation exists in a public space.

There are. For example, if you were to put your phone in someone’s face as if you were recording, most folks would have a problem. Now where I might agree is if you meant there is no expectation of anonymity.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#10

I see his point, but practical face recognition is a lot easier to implement and a lot harder to defend against than all the other types of recognition. You could, for example, no carry a phone or turn it off. But your face is expected to be on show (obv exceptions aside). So no, it’s not missing the point. It’s a different point. He’s right, but action against face recognition is also worthwhile.

> action against face recognition is also worthwhile.

there's limited resources for political action. If you focus on facial recognition, may be it succeeds. But the data brokering industry will continue on unabated because there are plenty of other sources of data other than face. And now there's less political capital left to fight the fight again.

Best to deploy the limited resources to fight the root cause - that private data and correlation is unregulated, and put limits and transparency laws around it so that no matter what source or what type of data is collected/correlated, the outcomes for citizens are still good.

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