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King County, WA bans facial recognition software

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Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#91

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

The backstory seems to be that WA state had succumbed to lobbying from Microsoft and had passed a law allowing facial recognition, with limits, in 2020.1,2,3 The OP, OTOH, refers to an new ordinance that only applies to one county. Statewide, it appears the rules are more lax.

Note that other states had already limited the use of facial recognition, by law enforcement, before California or Washington, e.g., NH in 2013 and OR in 2017.4,5

1 https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-wants-rules-facial-rec...

2 https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-state-oks-facial-rec...

3 https://housedemocrats.wa.gov/blog/2020/03/12/house-and-sena...

4 http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/VII/105-D/105-D-2.h...

5 https://law.justia.com/codes/oregon/2017/volume-04/chapter-1...

I would bet Microsoft is lobbying in many states regarding facial recognition and privacy laws to try to get the laws they want. The news will report that they are proponents of passing laws governing these issues, but the point is that they want to shape how the laws are written to benefit Microsoft. I can find citations if anyone doubts this is happening.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#92

Post by kenjackson »

cactus2093 wrote: post #36

Genuine question - why not ban cameras altogether? Or ban the use of computers in police stations, make them write up all their reports by hand. I truly don't understand why there would be a line at facial recognition, it's just a law against making a process more efficient. It's clear to me that there should be a line to prevent fully convicting someone of a crime without any humans in the loop at all. Don't replace…

I agree. It's hard to understand how this is different than using a computer to detect, for example, credit card fraud. Both pour through tons of private data (typically using algorithms that don't make sense to a layperson -- or maybe even to experts since they likely use some DNNs) to determine is something problematic may have occurred. Both technologies can be used for nefarious purposes, but both can have safeguards that minimize the likelihood and impact of these purposes.

I'm way more scared of guns than I am of facial recognition and as a country we will never ban guns.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#93

Post by kenjackson »

didibus wrote: post #54
cactus2093 wrote: post #36

Genuine question - why not ban cameras altogether? Or ban the use of computers in police stations, make them write up all their reports by hand. I truly don't understand why there would be a line at facial recognition, it's just a law against making a process more efficient. It's clear to me that there should be a line to prevent fully convicting someone of a crime without any humans in the loop at all. Don't replace…

I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place. You could argue that humans make similar mistakes and bias, but the scale is always smaller when humans are involved, just because of how slow they are. Say a model is wrong 37% of the time, and so are humans, but the model runs 1000 times a mi…

> I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place.

It seems like we should then ban eyewitness testimony. That has tons of accuracy issues and bias.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#94

Post by stakkur »

"The legislation bans the use of the software by county government agencies and administrative offices, including by the King County Sheriff’s Office."

So anybody else can use it anywhere, including third-party contractors performing work for any of the above parties.

Also, strangely, I see no mention of hardware or other non-software facial recognition technology.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#96

Post by tick_tock_tick »

geephroh wrote: post #61
throwaway1959 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right. The facial recognition does seem to interact with the 4th amendment, at least. But then it happens in the public place? I don't know the answer to that one. I fear that in the age of social media and Antifa, the protections that we had before are no longer enough. Now we have additional actors on the streets who may turn to physical violence on a dime. I feel that the streets should be free from phy…

Well, there's another amendment to the US constitution that is a substantial contributor to the level and severity of physical violence on our streets. But we won't talk about that...

Ok I'm at a loss what amendment don't we talk about that leads to violence on the streets. Are you just being trying to be cute and talk about the 13th?

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#97

Post by lewdev »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #70
matz1 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surveillance technology enables all sorts of new attacks Sure, but like any other tools it also enable all sorts of new benefit. The preferable action would be to take advantage of the benefit while also try to fix whatever it is that cause problem with the tools instead of simply banning it.

That's what they're doing. The problem is automated identification of faces. The solution is banning that.

I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that the justice system believes that it's enough to convict someone of a crime.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#99

Post by throwawaysea »

cactus2093 wrote: post #36

Genuine question - why not ban cameras altogether? Or ban the use of computers in police stations, make them write up all their reports by hand. I truly don't understand why there would be a line at facial recognition, it's just a law against making a process more efficient. It's clear to me that there should be a line to prevent fully convicting someone of a crime without any humans in the loop at all. Don't replace…

I agree with you - this is just forcing policing to be more expensive and inefficient. It would be absurd to ban a police department from using Microsoft Office for example, and instead forcing them to track data in physical spreadsheets. Banning facial recognition is equivalent to forcing a police department to hire enough staff to monitor county-wide feeds and match feeds against a long list of criminals they're looking out for. With humans in the loop and requirements for when facial recognition can be used, I feel like there isn't a "real problem" here. But when we look at quotes from this article, for example the person quoted from Latino Advocacy who is concerned about ICE enforcing the law against illegal immigrants, it's clear that the motivation to ban facial recognition is really more political in nature - it's about letting some people get away with breaking the law more so than fundamental concerns with facial recognition.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#100

Post by TechnoTimeStop »

The ridiculousness that is King County at this point is borderline a conspiracy. Most of it surrounds, "insert skin color" bad, all others good.

Our subreddits are cancer and have been known for a while to be the highest manipulated forums for astroturfing on reddit.

Can anyone help? Can we help ourselves?

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