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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

#151

Post by raxxorrax »

lmkg wrote: post #47
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What do you think about police having to fulfill certain quotas in their policing?

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#152

Post by raxxorrax »

avianlyric wrote: post #115
vagrantJin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Could you be a little clearer on what the “obvious moral and ethical issues” are? Personally I’m not sure what you’re referencing, and I also don’t think the many of the moral and ethical issues are obvious. If they were, then I suspect countries like the UK wouldn’t already be trialing many of these technologies.

AI today is on a level of an illiterate toddler with a talent for stochastic at least. Using it to classify people is unethical because it puts suspicion on them without evidence or sense.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#153

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

My car got beaten up not too long ago. Costly yes, but nothing compared to constant surveillance, it doesn't even come close. Of course that would have a chilling effect on behavior everywhere. If crime goes down, more security companies should go belly up. We don't yet see that happen with the latter.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#154

Post by abecedarius »

raxxorrax wrote: post #148
abecedarius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I've seen your face before, how can I help but recognize it? This violates freedom of thought.

This is fundamentally different than digital processing because of multiple reasons.

Portable brain-computer interfaces aren't common yet, but do you think they can't be? Where's the bright line between that sort of thing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor)?

There may be space for a good law somewhere in this area. But you should be really leery of outlawing a particular kind of computation, unless you're cool with thoughtcrime, because that's what it will by default become over time, just as inflation made laws with hardcoded dollar figures become quite different without ever changing the law.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#155

Post by raxxorrax »

abecedarius wrote: post #154
raxxorrax wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fundamentally different than digital processing because of multiple reasons.

Portable brain-computer interfaces aren't common yet, but do you think they can't be? Where's the bright line between that sort of thing and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor) ? There may be space for a good law somewhere in this area. But you should be really leery of outlawing a particular kind of computation, unless you're cool with thoughtcrime, because that's what it will by default become over…

I prefer to deal with that problem when we arrive there. Most neurologists tell me there is still some way to go despite significant advancements. Same with AI, today's reality is that machines are still completely incapable of thought.

But anticipatory I would still think there is a difference because constant surveillance would still bind your time.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#157

Post by randomswede »

mrighele wrote: post #95
yholio wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Shouldn't this already be covered by GDPR thought? While we usually associate it to the Internet, tracking and cookies, from what I understand it is much more general and should include facial recognition (but of course IANAL etc.)

Your face biometrics probably[] constitute PII. Your gait biometrics probably[] constitute PII.

[*] I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever played one on television. This is not legal advice.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#158

Post by randomswede »

bko wrote: post #87
tsegers wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using basic statistical methods to determine effective policies can result in policies that a lot of people would consider unfair and unethical.

Can you elaborate? For instance, I lived in an area where there was a lot of bike thefts. Everyone knew it and police got a lot of bike theft reports (it was in the statistics). I would like to see more police enforcement to deter bike thefts. I think its unethical to ignore the needs of a neighborhood when allocating police resources.

But if you then over-intensify the bike theft enforcement in that area, you will continue to have an over-reporting of bike thefts in that area, leading to more intense bike theft enforcement, eventually leading to an unjust and unethical police presence across the municipality.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#159

Post by toss1 »

potatoman22 wrote: post #129
rsynnott wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to mere incompetence Police use of this nonsense is either malice or _negligence_; it's not mere incompetence. If you're the enforcement arm of the state, you largely lose the right to plead incompetence; if you don't do the research; that's negligent.

I don't think police using ML is negligent in and of itself. Overly relying on a model, however, would certainly be negligent.

hmm, considering the seriously deficient state of these systems, I'd have to agree with rsynnott that using it without a very serious overlay of human checking before taking any action - probably enough to outweigh the benefits of the "AI" itself - would constitute negligence.

The PDs either already know that the "AI" FR systems are not fit for purpose and are using them anyway without proper checking, or they don't know because they couldn't be bothered to do their due diligence.

I want to catch the crooks as much as anyone, but catching the wrong people does no one any good, and has a hugely corrosive effect on society.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#160

Post by adolph »

clairity wrote: post #146
adolph wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would happen if murder stopped being policed. Would the murder rate remain unchanged as “numerous studies” suggest? Or would an unchanged base rate in murder without official retribution lead to blood feud style relationships between people and increase a secondary, tertiary, … n-terary murder rates? If police leave 45% of murders unaddressed, I wonder how many current murders are secondary in nature, a…

the extreme limit (anarchy) isn't a practical possibility, since no government, however small, would give up its coercive power that way. it's more fruitful to talk about varying levels of policing and varying legal consequences, and the prevailing conclusion there is that murder rates aren't particularly sensitive to these variables in the practical bands of interest. but note that "policing" need not be done by a p…

> "policing" need not be done by a police force--in tribal groups for instance, tribal members generally police each other

How would that be different from vigilantes and lunch mobs?

What would the ideal ratio of police to detectives be in different contexts?

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