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European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

politico.eu

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Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#41

Post by Luker88 »

literallyaduck wrote: post #19

"Okay, we will send all our video surveillance to a third party intelligence partner with whom we own stock and they will do facial recognition and send us a list of suspects." - Most police and government entities. If the ban doesn't prevent 3rd party data access the above will likely happen.

No, that is still banned.

The problem is not whether it's private or government.

The problem are multiple, but the main two problems found in an experiment with public facial rec. in an Italian city (Como, and now in Udine, too) are:

* municipalities should not have the power to conduct an investigation. That is a clear breach of the separation of powers. At least in Italy every access to information for investigation must be logged, from why it was collected to who requested access to it. Most of the initial deployments of facial rec are way too broad

* Our laws require consent before gathering information on people, and biometric has even stricter rules. Just going around in public is hardly giving consent

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#42

Post by kbos87 »

Any discussion of regulating the use of facial recognition by government misses the point. Private industry has just as much if not more power to misuse the technology. I don’t know what a global opt out system would look like, but that’s the only serious answer to preventing misuse.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#43

Post by 4wsn »

simion314 wrote: post #29
4wsn wrote: post #12

Ah, yes, the European Parliament. They have a great track record regulating technology, not at all like a bunch of out of touch clueless boomers. I'm sure something as complex as facial recognition is well within their capabilities to comprehend.

I assume there are many proposals that are not adopted in US too. But if you want to feel superior read about the issue with robocall in US, I read comments here of people being forced to either respond 10+ more times a day on scam calls or blocking unknown numbers and risking missing important calls. So US free market + US legislature does not seem to me they made a good job either. Now let's talk surveillance, most…

Criticism of the EU on this point ≠ the US is better at it. It's not a competition of "my politicians are better than yours".

Almost _all_ of the EU's legislation on anything tech related has been playing to the voters by beating the privacy drum, without actually addressing the underlying issues.

Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tech. All the EU seems capable of doing is creating additional bureaucracy while hamstringing Europeans trying to actually realize Europe's potential in the field.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#44

Post by tetromino_ »

hef19898 wrote: post #35
da_big_ghey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Police cannot observe a face for years until they get a warrant then all suddenly have years of data, that is wrong.

Absolutely!

Why not? Concrete use case: many property crimes have a minimum cutoff (a felony only if more than $X is stolen or damaged). So to convict someone who knows the letter of the law and regularly engages in some mischief under the cutoff amount, you will need to gather video evidence over a long time period - a period during which the person technically hadn't hit the felony threshold yet.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#45

Post by Spivak »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #31
hef19898 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is already more than a first step. Using facial recognition as part of a legitimate investigation is an acceptable thing to do.

Only if face images also are acquired from a legitimate investigation (ideally a prior criminal conviction). Police cannot observe a face for years until they get a warrant then all suddenly have years of data, that is wrong.

I'm not really sure why we've normalized the collection of biometrics during police investigations that are kept forever. I know deleting them would defeat the purpose of the fingerprint/DNA databases but if we're gonna do this either collect and keep everyone's biometrics or no ones because creating two classes of people, those who have had run-ins with the police and not, is gross.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#46

Post by commandlinefan »

noodlesUK wrote: post #9
bluecalm wrote: post #4

I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police ov…

> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognitio…

> If we have an attitude where “computer says no” means you’re now subjected to criminal penalties

You've made quite a leap here - he's talking about using facial recognition software to automate the comparison of pictures from a surveillance video against known criminals (something police have been doing, manually, for decades) and you've jumped straight to "an algorithm is judge, jury and executioner".

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#47

Post by lmkg »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3
skywal_l wrote: post #2

The subtitle is also important: Non-binding resolution also asks for AI-based predictive policing ban. AI, by its complexity and opacity should not be used to profile people. Just because it could be so easily manipulated.

Why are opacity and complexity so often invoked as a reason here? I don’t want to be mass-profiling populations with totally clear and simple technologies, either.

Opacity (of which complexity is a form) is an impediment to accountability. I agree there are many reasons that I don't want mass surveillance and profiling, but I think a lack of accountability of a system is a very large force-multiplier for the malignant effects its ends up having.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#48

Post by humanistbot »

kbos87 wrote: post #42

Any discussion of regulating the use of facial recognition by government misses the point. Private industry has just as much if not more power to misuse the technology. I don’t know what a global opt out system would look like, but that’s the only serious answer to preventing misuse.

I have no idea why we can't focus on misuse by both governments and corporations. Your argument seems to be that even though harms can occur from misuse by two types of organizations (governments and industry), there is no point to addressing the harms from one type of organization (governments) because the other type of organization (industry) is more likely to commit harms. With that logic, you'd never get anything done.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#49

Post by gspr »

4wsn wrote: post #12

Ah, yes, the European Parliament. They have a great track record regulating technology, not at all like a bunch of out of touch clueless boomers. I'm sure something as complex as facial recognition is well within their capabilities to comprehend.

Oh hey, dumb baseless rhetoric! It's ridiculous to describe this age distribution as "a bunch of out of touch boomers": https://nonempty.org/stuff/screenshot_20211006-174820_i708Ao...

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#50

Post by gspr »

4wsn wrote: post #43
simion314 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume there are many proposals that are not adopted in US too. But if you want to feel superior read about the issue with robocall in US, I read comments here of people being forced to either respond 10+ more times a day on scam calls or blocking unknown numbers and risking missing important calls. So US free market + US legislature does not seem to me they made a good job either. Now let's talk surveillance, most…

Criticism of the EU on this point ≠ the US is better at it. It's not a competition of "my politicians are better than yours". Almost _all_ of the EU's legislation on anything tech related has been playing to the voters by beating the privacy drum, without actually addressing the underlying issues. Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tec…

> Meanwhile, the EU slides farther and farther into irrelevancy when it comes to being anything other than consumers of tech. All the EU seems capable of doing is creating additional bureaucracy while hamstringing Europeans trying to actually realize Europe's potential in the field.

What are you talking about?

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