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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

#71

Post by simion314 »

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…

I am happy with GDPR , thank you.

Sure the shit companies are trying to screw me over, but I click the "Configure" button, make sure all 100+ toggles are off and then click Accept only for required cookies.

But if you love advertising you can just click "Accept All" if the website is forced to show you the popup, if not you can't even opt-out or even get informed about the 100 "partners".

I can tell you who is at failt for bad GDPR UX , is the developers or who ever forces them to install 10 tracking/analytics and other third party shit. And the browsers could propose a standard like "do not track" and I could enable or disable it globally or per webpage. In EU the browsers could default to "Always Ask" and ad-loving guys could click "always track me, do not ask again"

I am also happy on how EU handled mobile phone interoperability, like porting numbers, or carrier locking, how they standardized the charger so I can charge most of my devices with same thing etc.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#72

Post by _ke2e »

Closi wrote: post #58
bko wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing I don't get what this means. If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies?

> If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? It depends - These models are often non-transparent in terms of how they calculate, so what if the AI/model decides/calculate that a higher percentage of minorities in an area is a high predictor of crime, thus indirectly creates a policy…

Where do you draw the line between statistics and ML?

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#73

Post by nitrogen »

atoav wrote: post #70
tetromino_ wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because a free society is a finely tuned balance between state power and individual freedom, and the pendulum is on the far side of state power since 9/11 anyways. The same thing that can be used to find perpetrators in minor crimes can also be used to trace political movements, that any given government happens to dislike. IMO there are certain uncertaintiws that any free society has to accept. One of those is that…

If a shopkeeper submits footage of a crime to the police, the police should be able to keep it as evidence. What's problematic is proactive gathering and aggregation of footage by police or by corporations.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#74

Post by vagrantJin »

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.

Even if the below commentor is correct about the lack of accountability - which I assume is important in a democracy - and the more insidious danger is the obvious moral and ethical issues.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#75

Post by simion314 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #62
gspr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Not the person you are addressing, but I believe he is referring to the somewhat common belief (in North America) that it is foolish to try to start a tech company in Europe due to the regulatory and business environment. The results bear this out, there just aren’t many European tech companies that reach global relevancy.

Many of the relevant startups get bought by US giants (you know that protein folding results, that Google division was bought from UK), but US guys still are proud because a US bag of money was involved in the results.

The reality is that US has a ton of money, they burn in in possible unicorns but also in buying talent and companies from EU, I don't want to speculate why US has so much money in tech sector.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#76

Post by simion314 »

sentinel wrote: post #67
sentinel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that this would happen.

Yea I think: - Google and Amazon etc won’t touch it cause it is bad PR - stores won’t buy it cause it’s bad PR; fear of boycotting etc. - physical retail is already on the decline; why spend money in a dying industry - the whole project would have one big flaw - people wearing masks

So if the masks will be here forever then this guys complaining they can't use face recognition anymore in public places do not know this or they are betting that masks will be gone soon.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#77

Post by simion314 »

4wsn wrote: post #68
gspr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

https://www.politico.eu/article/pr-problem-high-flying-start... Relevant bits to this particular point. > For investors, the European market is less overheated and so more attractive to participate in than the U.S. market and less "tough" than China, Russia or Brazil. But that's not thanks to the EU. Systemic problems, like a lack of harmonization across the Continent, mean EU startups have to spend a lot of energy o…

I am assuming that a different branch is working on VISA and taxes, but do you realize that is not easy to get every EU country to be on the same page on VISA and taxes, some will say that this would be a cause for a new "Brexit"

But does EU needs to make it easy for giants like Google,Apple,Facebook, Tik Tok to appear? Are you sure that the barriers those startups complain are not actually a local issue?

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#79

Post by b0rsuk »

I don't see how they could make it work other than banning surveillance cameras in public spaces. I think it's hard to prove someone is using facial recognition - he might send data over a network, into the cloud, and analyze there. Web apps are black boxes, you don't know what's going on in there.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#80

Post by brightly-salty »

_ke2e wrote: post #72
Closi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? It depends - These models are often non-transparent in terms of how they calculate, so what if the AI/model decides/calculate that a higher percentage of minorities in an area is a high predictor of crime, thus indirectly creates a policy…

Where do you draw the line between statistics and ML?

When you can no longer transparently explain the reasoning behind a decision made based on the statistics, and instead have to just shrug and say “because the model told us so”. Accountability is very important in this issue.
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