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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

#101

Post by sentinel »

simion314 wrote: post #92
sentinel wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rephrase please.

We have: 1 some people complaining that EU will block innovation if it is not allowed to do face recognition on public places or without consent. This people want to "disrupt/innovate" 2 we have the theory that people will wear masks so facial recognition is impossible So 1 and 2 can't happen at the same time, if the guys from 1 need to innovate then they need no masks , if 2 will happen then the guys from 1 are comp…

Yea it's a weird situation for sure. I would assume that any facial recognition attempt has taken a hit with masks being so prevalent.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#102

Post by nitrogen »

throwawaysea wrote: post #90
nitrogen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that problematic? Individuals are allowed to capture photos and footage in public spaces, and there isn't an expectation of privacy there. I don't see why capturing footage is a problem - without that the cost to actually apprehend a criminal is so high that we might as well not have laws for many crimes.

expectation of privacy

People keep using this phrase as if it's binary. I 100% expect that when I go in public, there isn't someone following me with a notebook, keeping a log of everything I do. I also expect that someone won't walk up into my face and take a picture of me without asking.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#103

Post by nocturnial »

sentinel wrote: post #63
nocturnial wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the technology is so spot on that 99% of the time you commit the crime you'll get caught And in 1% of the time[1], you are an innocent who had nothing to do with the crime. Now you have to spend your time: getting arrested, spending time with lawyers, getting people to collaborate your alibi ( If you want to make a case for facial recognition, criminal justice is one of worst possible cases you could make for it…

The 1% there is that “the criminal won’t get caught”. Not that someone else, an innocent bystander, will get caught. Also what you described can happen to you today as well. It’s the imperfect system we live in.

> The 1% there is that “the criminal won’t get caught”.

So the 99% is for the facial recognition system to identify criminals?

What error rate does the best facial identatification have? If it's not zero then my original point still stands. You are throwing a lot of innocent people into the judicial system. Or at best being pestered by police for no good reason.

> Also what you described can happen to you today as well. It’s the imperfect system we live in.

That's correct. So instead of improving it, you suggest to automate it? This sounds insane to me. Why would you automate something that you know is defective? Check the user support of all the top tech companies who use "AI" to automate things. Now check the worst of the worst customer support of the top tech companies. There's an overlap. And if you want to expand (*censored*) tech support to the criminal justice system, people like me are going to get upset.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#104

Post by master_lincoln »

ginko wrote: post #97
throwawaysea wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you need consent to be photographed or filmed in public spaces? At least in the US, there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces and if someone wants to film you - whether an amateur photographer, a journalist, or a police officer - they are permitted to, simply because it is their constitutional right to do so.

>Do you need consent to be photographed or filmed in public spaces? You do in Europe. You essentially own the copyright to your face.

That's not true. At least in Germany you can take pictures of people in public places without consent (with certain restrictions). Publishing these pictures is where the "copyright" on your face part comes into play.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#105

Post by mbostleman »

yholio wrote: post #84
smarx007 wrote: post #13

No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.

They should ban facial recognition though, in all and every context where the owner of the face has not given explicit consent. Nothing good can come of it.

Sorry to be cynical, but this will not stop the use of the technology. No universal ban like this will happen. What will happen is that the government(s) will end up being the sole user of it via a plea to the public for some sort of safety or security that "benefits" them.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#106

Post by feanaro »

throwawaysea wrote: post #90
nitrogen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is that problematic? Individuals are allowed to capture photos and footage in public spaces, and there isn't an expectation of privacy there. I don't see why capturing footage is a problem - without that the cost to actually apprehend a criminal is so high that we might as well not have laws for many crimes.

> without that the cost to actually apprehend a criminal is so high that we might as well not have laws for many crimes.

Which crimes are those? Perhaps it's a sign that they shouldn't be considered crimes after all?

Whatever those crimes are, we've apparently successfully lived with them prior to the advent of modern mass surveillance technology so it can't be that bad.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#107

Post by sentinel »

nocturnial wrote: post #103
sentinel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1% there is that “the criminal won’t get caught”. Not that someone else, an innocent bystander, will get caught. Also what you described can happen to you today as well. It’s the imperfect system we live in.

> The 1% there is that “the criminal won’t get caught”. So the 99% is for the facial recognition system to identify criminals? What error rate does the best facial identatification have? If it's not zero then my original point still stands. You are throwing a lot of innocent people into the judicial system. Or at best being pestered by police for no good reason. > Also what you described can happen to you today as we…

> So instead of improving it, you suggest to automate it?

I said no such thing. Read the whole thing again, take the upset level down a few notches and get back to us.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#108

Post by smolder »

sentinel wrote: post #63
nocturnial wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the technology is so spot on that 99% of the time you commit the crime you'll get caught And in 1% of the time[1], you are an innocent who had nothing to do with the crime. Now you have to spend your time: getting arrested, spending time with lawyers, getting people to collaborate your alibi ( If you want to make a case for facial recognition, criminal justice is one of worst possible cases you could make for it…

The 1% there is that “the criminal won’t get caught”. Not that someone else, an innocent bystander, will get caught. Also what you described can happen to you today as well. It’s the imperfect system we live in.

False positives always exist in these systems along with the false negatives. There's no avoiding every case of false conviction if you rely on imprecise methods. That's admittedly already a problem without facial recog, but is a problem when using it, too.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#109

Post by sentinel »

bnralt wrote: post #85
noodlesUK wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For some crimes you'd probably be able to drastically lower penalties. If there's a 100% chance a shoplifter is going to get caught when they leave the store, then just making them return the stolen goods would be enough. Harsh penalties are partly the result of an inability to apprehend people (using the fear of harsh penalties to compensate for the low chance of being caught). It also seems likely that more surveil…

> It also seems likely that more surveillance will result in fewer innocent people convicted, not more.

+1 – my gut instinct tells me this is the case. I don't have any data to back it up though, but I have a feeling this is true.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#110

Post by munk-a »

nitrogen wrote: post #102
throwawaysea wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that problematic? Individuals are allowed to capture photos and footage in public spaces, and there isn't an expectation of privacy there. I don't see why capturing footage is a problem - without that the cost to actually apprehend a criminal is so high that we might as well not have laws for many crimes.

expectation of privacy People keep using this phrase as if it's binary. I 100% expect that when I go in public, there isn't someone following me with a notebook, keeping a log of everything I do. I also expect that someone won't walk up into my face and take a picture of me without asking.

But why won't anyone think of the poor paparazzi that need to be able to take awful photos of people in public so they can destroy people's reputation?

It might be nice if we gave public figures a bit more privacy through this whole process.

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