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Banning facial recognition is missing the point

schneier.com

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Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#71

Post by _frkl »

codegladiator wrote: post #60
Barrin92 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you devour a whale? One bite at a time. I don't think there is any purpose to being caught up in theoretical discussions about privacy. Privacy is won by extending the real rights of people piece by piece and sustaining that effort for a long time. There is no one time, root cause fix that holds forever in a democracy. >Must we repeat it again every five years? Yes we must. We live in a society where people ov…

> how do you devour a whale? One bite at a time. Missed a step. You gotta kill it first.

Not really, it'll die eventually if you've taken enough bites. Might be a bit more difficult to take the bites if you didn't kill it beforehand, but still ...

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#72

Post by mirimir »

emodendroket wrote: post #14
James_Henry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schneier's point doesn't have to do with the specifics of, as he says, "identification, correlation and discrimination" methods, but rather he's arguing that focusing just on facial recognition instead of focusing on the larger more important question of surveillance in general is not useful. If you just ban facial recognition, then you are missing the point Schneier's making. Also, I think it might be easier to wear…

I wear a mask outside in the winter, usually, but this makes people uncomfortable inside at best and obviously prevents you from eating or drinking. And you would not be comfortable yourself either. So I'm going to say wearing a mask at all times is not practical.

One winter, I canvassed when it was -40 C. So I wore a Neopreme ski mask. Which are, by the way, quite comfortable.

I did get a few jokes when people came to the door, but everyone knew why I was wearing it. Some did call me a dumbass for doing it, but whatever.

But if it'd been during the summer?

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#73

Post by mindgam3 »

jammygit wrote: post #21

> These efforts are well intentioned, but facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we're in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control.…

“In countries like the United States, it's being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.”

No, he’s not right about it being “incidental”. The use of facial recognition by police is widespread and widely reported (0). Unlike other forms of digital surveillance, this one has serious and potentially deadly consequences when misused. Banning it at least temporarily is a major win for civil liberties and I would wager that anyone thinking this is a step backward is privileged enough to never have experienced police brutality.

0. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-priv...

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#74

Post by speedplane »

We shouldn't ban any technology. However, we should ban a technology when it is used for _____. The ban should cover the use, not the technology itself. It's fine to make building a nuclear bomb illegal, but studying radioactive elements should not be.

Similarly, the technologies this article describes "identification, correlation and discrimination" should not be outright banned, but maybe they should be when their use conflicts with other important values (e.g., due process in criminal prosecution, privacy rights).

Recent targeting of facial recognition does not "miss the point", the reason it has become an issue is because it has started being used in the criminal justice system. No one really gets upset when it's just used to tag your photos.

I know developers love abstractions, but we should not try to build abstractions of technology and regulate those. To borrow from the article, identifying a person based on their "gait" is not nearly as serious an issue as facial recognition, even if abstractly they may seem similar to a developer. Instead, focus on the direct problem at hand, regulate it, and only after the passage of time when commonalities become clear, build an abstraction.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#75

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jammygit wrote: post #21

> These efforts are well intentioned, but facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we're in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control.…

I wonder if the EU has done any other notable things to fight mass surveillance, because if so it would mean they weren't focusing on one particular identification method. I mean maybe they are working on multiple fronts.

Also perfect being the enemy of the well-intentioned here.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#76

Post by igorkraw »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #75
jammygit wrote: post #21

> These efforts are well intentioned, but facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we're in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control.…

I wonder if the EU has done any other notable things to fight mass surveillance, because if so it would mean they weren't focusing on one particular identification method. I mean maybe they are working on multiple fronts. Also perfect being the enemy of the well-intentioned here.

Well the GDPR helped quite a bit already. Creates a proper inventive to not "just for good measure" aggregate PI

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#77

Post by Certhas »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #37
jammygit wrote: post #21

> These efforts are well intentioned, but facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we're in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control.…

> but we should take every winning battle we can, no? It's treating the symptoms not the cause though, and this little victory will likely serve to dampen resolve to continue fighting against the root cause: increased surveillance, invasion of privacy, and the overall devaluing of privacy. Facial recognition may be a battle that gets won, but it could be a key moment that results in the war on ubiquitous surveillance…

Politics isn't medicine.

Banning one technology might well make banning the broader practice easier (or harder). At the very least it creates precedent: This is a reason we ban technologies for.

The notion that we must spurn incomplete victories in order to hold our resolve for complete victory has achieved approximately nothing ever in politics. One of the most successful movements of the 20th century was the environmental movement (even if it isn't perceived that way). We now have comprehensive systems for regulating and approving chemicals that didn't exist at all until the last couple of decades of the 20th century. This wasn't achieved by saying we shouldn't stop destroying nature until we reform all of society.

Tech reformers and activists could do well to learn from previous successful movements.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#78

Post by raxxorrax »

petre wrote: post #64
schlowmo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is already illegal in some other western countries for quite some time. In Germany for example since 1985 (one year late though). It's often used as legitimation when the police is using violence against otherwise peaceful protests. In the aftermath of the G20 summit in Hamburg there were some advancements to even tighten the law while at the same time the police was using illegal face recognition…

What about fake beards and moustaches? I've heard they're the norm in Korea. Imagine thousands of Santa Claus or Paul von Hindenburg protesting.

Illegal surveillance technology deployed warrants illegal masks in my opinion. But you should also hide eyes, ears and nose to the highest degree as possible. But even then advanced image processing will probably be able to identify you if you are already on record in some form.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#79

Post by WA »

mindgam3 wrote: post #73
jammygit wrote: post #21

> These efforts are well intentioned, but facial recognition bans are the wrong way to fight against modern surveillance. Focusing on one particular identification method misconstrues the nature of the surveillance society we're in the process of building. Ubiquitous mass surveillance is increasingly the norm. In countries like China, a surveillance infrastructure is being built by the government for social control.…

“In countries like the United States, it's being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.” No, he’s not right about it being “incidental”. The use of facial recognition by police is widespread and widely reported (0). Unlike other forms of digital surveillance, this one has serious and potentially deadly consequences when misused. Banning it at least…

I think nobody says that banning facial recognition is a step backwards. It just doesn’t solve the underlying issue and might even distract from the real problems.

Now politicians can say "but we banned facial recognition, isn’t that good enough?".

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#80

Post by raxxorrax »

radu_floricica wrote: post #67

Because the conversation is so lopsided, I feel like somebody has to ask: what opportunities are we giving away when banning face recognition tech? Obvious one would be no more purse snatchers, ever. Almost no rapes, much fewer violent crimes. No lost kids. Lives and wallets saved. What else? This feels like the kind of tech that creates its own broad fields of use where there were none before. It might take time or…

There is a pretty strong surveillance in prisons. Does it mean there are no rapes?

Surveillance is a control mechanism and every time you are pictured, you have to justify yourself for you behavior in the worst case. To suggest that surveillance eliminates crime is intuitive but wrong.

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