Banning facial recognition is missing the point • Hacker News Board

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#151

Post by tremon » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #45

fzeroracer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire reason why we're facing down these privacy and surveillance issues is because they came one small step at a time. First it's rolled out for some incredibly small part of the population, gradually expanded to everyone else as people get used to the new norm. Rinse and repeat. The way you win battles like this is by winning many smaller ones and pushing back what is acceptable or not one step at a time.

I'm on both sides of the fence a bit. I agree entirely that victories are piecemeal, but the facial recognition issue just feels like the piece of the iceberg that's above the water. The rest of the iceberg, supporting things such as facial recognition, feels as if it will never be addressed, and that's the war that needs to be won. My original reply written prior to the above: And yet nothing has been done about the…

The Cambridge Analytica situation wasn't a founding cause for the GDPR, it came to light after the legislation was already finalized. It just happened to coincide (roughly) with the GDPR enforcement date, and helped illustrate why such regulation was necessary.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#152

Post by fauigerzigerk » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #150

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. This analogy doesn't work because the web is something I can choose to use or not, whereas facial recognition isn't. > But as a general principle I think problems should be solved when they arise. Solving imagined problems before they arise is impossible and…

>This analogy doesn't work because the web is something I can choose to use or not

You cannot choose whether or not others use Facebook and get manipulated by micro targeted ads into making stupid political decisions. And yet you are affected by those decisions.

You cannot choose whether or not all the services you depend on are only available online while the physical branches in your neighborhood are closing.

Most technologies have systemic effects that individuals cannot choose freely. Isn't that exactly why some people argue in favour of "let's stop and think before we jump"?

>Also, "figure out problems when they arise" is rather naïve

On the contrary, I think it's very naive to think we could just stop the clock and think very hard until we have figured out all the consequences of the technologies we are introducing. We have to live with the possibility of bad surprises and try to deal with them as good as we can.

>history has shown that corporations will do anything to make a buck and will lie and bribe to get away with it.

But that is not just true for change. It's also true for blocking change. Would oil companies not go to great lengths to stop us transitioning to renewable energy for instance?

Just look at what's happening in the US right now. You have an administration that thinks climate change is a hoax and that we should dig up more coal and pump more oil and gas. And yet the transition to renewables is in full swing.

Would you really want this administration to be able to press the stop button on all new renewables development based on some fanciful claims about potential future risks?

>The problems aren't imagined;

Which problems? I was talking about a general principle not about face recognition. I did say myself that I think face recognition and similar tech needs to be regulated in some shape or form.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#153

Post by atoav » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #91

atoav wrote: post #84

While he is right I think Bruce is also missing the point here himself: he states that this law is the wrong way to fight surveillance – but that is not the stated goal of the law. The goal of the law is to prevent the development of a technical reality in Europe, to which a Jurisdiction can only passively react. The technical space moves so fast at times, that reality has been made before the law can even start to t…

>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…

The difference here is that the EU bans something here that some of its governments actually want (e.g. the german minister of internal affairs said he'd like to role out surveillance that can do that).

I understand that things that are new should not be banned per default (as they aren't) — however if it is quite obvious beforehand they might hurt civil rights I think we can make an exception.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#154

Post by radu_floricica » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #127

radu_floricica wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That screams "better reporting".

Sounds plausible, but the police disagrees.

Looks like police are saying there's an unrelated reason. From google translate:

"The police explain this with fights among young immigrants who met in 2018 in the camera area. Now the situation has calmed down. There are no numbers."

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#155

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 12:26 AM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #83

BurningFrog wrote: post #16

Some times a technology is so cheap and easy to use that banning it becomes absurd, and you just have to accept the new reality. Face recognition isn't quite there yet, but in 5 or 10 years every kid with a phone can do this.

Technology is never inevitable and I don't put much faith in people that cannot shape their future. If there is political will, it is pretty easy to ban public cameras for example. The hardware is already mass produced and as cheap as it gets, but not everyone became as paranoid as Londoners.

Would you ban cell phone cameras, cameras in cars (mine came with 3 cameras) and Ring cameras?

They're all used in public.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#156

Post by rpdillon » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #46

cryptoz wrote: post #43

Schneier is missing the point. > The whole purpose of this process is for companies — and governments — to treat individuals differently. This isn't true. It's about population control, not treating individuals differently. He has an extremely close-minded view of the future here. The point of this isn't to treat people differently, it's to contain the overton window and basically thought-police entire populations. N…

> This isn't true. It's about population control Uhh, why do you think that? So far, I only see evidence that mass surveillance is to catch criminals and for marketing. "1984" was a work of fiction, and it seems more a warning about perpetual war, totalitarian, and the communism concept of "cult of personality" than just surveillance.

Marketing is population control. Getting someone to buy something is the same as getting them to believe something.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#157

Post by Enginerrrd » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #134

Enginerrrd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>You walk in and your neighbor is working the cash register.

This is a total fantasy.

1. If I was concerned about it, I probably would have noticed before entering that he was there.

2. If I knew him, I'd probably know where he worked and could avoid him.

3. If I didn't catch myself in time, I could walk in and buy something mundane, or nothing at all, or a gift card.

4. If I was really concerned, I'd go the next town over.

5. There's a massive difference between taking a very low probability risk of being identified multiplied by further low probabilities of it being spread notable, remembered, and spread around, and a 100% chance of being categorically identified and logged by an automated system.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#158

Post by bawana » Sun, Jan 26, 2020, 12:07 AM UTC

proves we are in hell. Some geek ape figured out to use a rock as a tool-the rest of the apes started throwing rocks at each other and just took what the other apes made. Some geeks figure out nuclear power and a way to provide endless free energy- the rest of us turn it into a weapon. Some other geeks make a foolproof way to communicate for free-the rest of us weaponize that too. Cant wait for skynet to clean out this crap. Our brains just cannot handle complexity.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#159

Post by martin_a » Sun, Jan 26, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #143

martin_a wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General data retention was also banned by EU courts, I think. While Germany is over and over trying to integrate something like that with dubious reasoning ("it will only be used against terrorists and other really bad crimes" - reality is that everybody wants his piece of it, even to use against false parking), the EU regularly puts a stop to this. So, it's great to have this higher-level legislative to stop single…

yes, I suppose my post was too dryly sarcastic to be obvious but really the EU has been doing quite a bit more than other nations or international organizations to stop the surveillance state and it seems a little unfair to pick on what attack of a symptom and saying but stopping this symptom won't do enough. Not sure if this kind of problem isn't best solved by attacking the symptoms anyway, until you build up a sor…

Missed half your point. ;-)

Nevertheless, I think temporary bans are not a bad idea till we can come up with a better solution. Let's see what others are making out of this for the next five years, and come up with better rules. I'm totally with you on that.

Re: Banning facial recognition is missing the point

#160

Post by avmich » Sun, Jan 26, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #146

mbel wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should people get to break the law? Because laws are made by people and as such can be flawed.

Laws can also be unmade by people. What gives random individuals the right to nullify laws made by everyone? Don't like a law? Get it repealed. In the meantime, you have to follow it.

> In the meantime, you have to follow it.

You also would like to expect that if the law is unjust, it can't manage to make too much harm while getting repealed.

And repeals can take a long time. If people would easy organize for things like repeal a law or a government which suddenly become despotic according to majority opinion, we'd live in a different world. What we're trying to make here, banning face recognition, is to make mistakes in laws less costly - sometimes way less costly.