Banning facial recognition is missing the point • Hacker News Board

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#131

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:38 PM UTC

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…

Facial recognition for Black people has been in play for decades. Generally if you’re Black you fit the description. Cameras actually are a huge net positive for this group.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#132

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

dmje wrote: post #88

Everyone on HN is no doubt sitting there nodding along sagely but there’s also a pretty good bet that 90% of us (nerdy, apparently in-the-know tech types) have done very little to think about cutting down on smartphone use. It’s the single biggest surveillance vector (a device that you carry everywhere that knows where you are and reports your habits into a data store we know pretty much nothing about!), but we all n…

You assume people haven’t already done the cost-benefit analysis. Just like they have for driving cars, salt, and windows.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#133

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

petermcneeley wrote: post #121

xupybd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I don't think this is it. IRL actions are forgotten over time and they're not indexed against each other. If all your actions can be tied to your face with automated tools everything you do can be recorded, indexed and cross referenced. Now maybe that protest you went to as a college student shows up every time you attend a job interview. That time you drank too much and were seen peeing against a building by the…

I don't think your taking this to its logical conclusion. Crime is increasingly more and more difficult to pull off with additional layers of tracking. If one uses systems like this to harass people that harassment can also too be tracked.

Correct. The problem with lack of privacy is because it is often unilateral. If there was actually more transparency across the board we might actually opt for less privacy.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#134

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #11

blazespin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>No such expectation exists in a public space. It sure as hell does in any practical sense. I expect that I can walk around town, and people that I don't know, don't know my name, phone number, purchase history, etc. Let's say I want to buy a butt plug or something. I could go to the sex shop in town, and make sure nobody I knew was around before I went in, buy it and leave. If I wanted to buy a studded electro-shock…

You walk in and your neighbor is working the cash register. Now he tells everyone you know.

All you’ve done is try to obtain privacy, but you can’t walk into the shop and demand that your neighbor shouldn’t be there.

The “expectation of privacy” is really a hope that you’ve marked your identity well enough, which is really the same thing you do online.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#135

Post by _carl_jung » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #109

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The technical space moves so fast at times, that reality has been made before the law can even start to think about what is okay and what isn't. In general I think this is exactly how it should work. You cannot stop all technological developments early on and make rules for imagined problems that may or may not arise. Imagine it's 1995. The Web gets banned for five years so that a government committee can meet to fi…

> Imagine it's 1995. The Web gets banned for five years so that a government committee can meet to figure out what could possibly go wrong with that technology. Fortunately we already know what can go wrong with facial recognition technology. We have China, and we have American and Israeli and various Asian marketing startups inventing abuse after abuse after abuse. So there is already a test bed in place; it doesn't…

But the context in those countries is too different to ours to come to any meaningful conclusion about what should be allowed "here" (I'm assuming UK + US mainly).

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#136

Post by moksly » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #82

moksly wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No street art. No protesting. Social credit. No way to break away from the stigmas assigned you your face. No speeding. No jaywalking. No pissing outside. No way to rebel. I mean, it wouldn’t really stop crime. London has something close to total surveillance, and they have a lot of crime. But if you really want that sort of thing, you can actually have a taste of it in parts of China.

This comment reinforces the OP's point: opponents of facial recognition seem to approach the world with a particular value system that includes a disagreement with several existing laws. Instead of working to get these laws changed, facial recognition opponents advocate bans on technology that would maken these laws easier to enforce. Why should they succeed? > No street art Good. Graffiti is a blight. > No protestin…

The holocaust was legal. No one ever entered a Gulag without a sentence. The Uyghurs of China are being persecuted within the law.

Laws aren’t a model for society, or at least they shouldn’t be. Ideals and morals should, and throughout human history we’ve needed a metric fuckton of law breaking to get to the democracy we have now.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#137

Post by crazygringo » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

> Finally, we need better rules about when and how it is permissible for companies to discriminate. Discrimination based on protected characteristics like race and gender is already illegal...

This is they key point of the article, but unfortunately he doesn't give any solutions or even hint at them. Does anyone know if he does elsewhere?

It also feels a bit disingenuous for him to use the word "discriminate" here.

"Discrimination" is generally understood to give someone an unfairly negative experience due to inherently irrelevant factors, such as denying someone a job due to the color of their skin.

I think most people would agree that "discrimination" is the wrong word to use when showing different people different ads due to their browsing history, or giving different people different credit card offers based on their credit scores, or charging young people more for car insurance based on their age. All of these are based on what people generally consider to be non-discriminatory, evidence-based distinctions -- and so words like "targeting" or "market segmentation" are more appropriate.

If he wants to argue for a better framework for what is considered legitimate targeting/segmentation or not, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise there's not really much to say?

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#138

Post by selimthegrim » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

benjymo wrote: post #103

jammygit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, it’s now illegal to hide your face during a protest (a gift from the Harper years)

In Austria it's illegal to wear a face mask if it's not cold enough or for special cultural activities that are "tradition" thanks to the last right wing - far right government.

I.e. Krampus?

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#139

Post by EdwardDiego » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

firediamond wrote: post #42

sircastor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Gait recognition seems a far easier thing to spoof via a limp, change in shoes...

I had that thought when I heard about gait recognition too, and I'm still curious if the general counterpoint is the same as the next thought I had, or unrelated: It seems surprisingly hard to spoof a limp (or any other biomechanic change, like randomly swapping shoe inserts or some prosthesis to change arm movement patterns or something), consistently, for an extended period. Also, painful. Also, noticeable to human…

An artificially induced limp is classic fieldwork from the "good ol days" of the Cold War.

What I've read of gait recognition though is that it's not so much about identifying you, as identifying someone walking "suspiciously" in a given area.

Or tracking a person where you can't see their face, based on their gait once recorded.

However, I haven't yet been able to find any papers that describe gait recognition with a subject consciously modifying their gait.

For example, when I'm stressed I tend to walk fast, but when I catch myself doing so, I will actively slow my pace down, and change the distance of my steps - like the old adage of "smiling makes you feel happy when you're not", I find deliberately slowing down my pace, and not taking such long strides, helps me calm myself - especially when combined with a focus on breathing.

What I can't find is any discussion of how existing gait analysis algorithms handle an observed subject deliberately varying their gait.

And what papers I can find on this are largely written by Chinese academics who don't find a 94% identification rate (leaving 6% false positive or negative) to be an issue, which I guess works in a totalitarian collectivist regime where an arrest on a false positive isn't considered a violation of human rights because, lol, human rights.

Which brings me, verbosely, to the academics researching this. How do they incorporate improving the surveillance capabilities of an oppressive government into their personal mores?

Do they take the stance that those doing nothing wrong have to nothing to be afraid of?

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#140

Post by EdwardDiego » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

xioxox wrote: post #116

firediamond wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had that thought when I heard about gait recognition too, and I'm still curious if the general counterpoint is the same as the next thought I had, or unrelated: It seems surprisingly hard to spoof a limp (or any other biomechanic change, like randomly swapping shoe inserts or some prosthesis to change arm movement patterns or something), consistently, for an extended period. Also, painful. Also, noticeable to human…

A stone or insert in your shoe would probably work (albeit painfully). I don't think people would think you were actively dodging ML if you had a limp, unlike strange face painting or haircuts.

I've been looking into anti facial-recognition make up, and I wonder how much you'd have to apply to defeat the algorithm - like, would a line of make-up breaking up the contrast pit of an eye be sufficient?

And then there's reflectacles - glasses designed to reflect IR and visible light. I presume they'd mess with an algorithm, but could you code that algorithm to recognise them and raise a flag requiring human input?

Ah man, I love how the cyberpunk dystopian future of my youth has slowly arrived, sadly with less magic and orks, and last I checked, no shady street samurai in bars looking to hire me for my leet decker skills.

But you know, I live in CV beDazzled[1] hope.

[1]https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/designer-a...