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Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

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Re: Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

#42
post #7

The network effects of large databases lead to an imbalance of power between surveillance and sousveillance: a personal face recognition DB will never match a government one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance As such, we can not, say, catch not-so-publically-known but well-connected public officials where they should not be.

Obviously, a government has more power and more means than an individual.

But when it comes to databases, individuals have access to ridiculously large databases too. With Facebook and Google you can peek into the private life of most people, even the police does it because there is more data there than in their own files. And I am just talking about ordinary access. Not what Facebook and Google can do as a company.

Add a bit of social engineering and crowdsourcing and no one is safe if enough people want to find them. There have been some pretty impressive "doxing" in the past.

And staying off social media is pretty hard if you want to live a normal life. You may not have a Facebook account but your friends do, you may find your picture on your company website, maybe even in a local newspaper. And officials are no different, if they want to live normally, they are going to be exposed.

Re: Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

#43

I believe that the efforts to ban technologies such as this one are futile. Pandora's boxes can only be opened, never closed.

We banned mines, too, and it‘s been fairly successful. Not 100%, sure, but just imagine a world were mines weren’t banned, and what Europe and the US would look like, and you know the ban was very effective.

Re: Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everywhere though, in Spain it's illegal to film the street. "In Spain, the law protects the rights of citizens to use public spaces, which is free from interference (Clavell et al., 2012)" If you want to live a functioning non-Orwellian society, move here.

Spain seems really competent right now compared to the UK, they even have a digital nomad visa for people outside the EU. With remote working being mainstream going forward I'm certainly going to consider somewhere with more sunshine and less harsh winters...

The other easier option (although doesn't solve the sunshine problem..) is moving out of cities into rural areas. Very few cameras where we live in Cornwall.

Re: Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

#47
post #36

Pre-crime facial recognition surveillance is authoritanism. Post-crime facial recognition of surveillance is investigative process. The cat is out of the bag, the only thing that prevents it's inevitable abuse is strict legal framework for its implementation

It's also trivially easy to regulate. Mandate that all cameras recording public spaces record to encrypted storage. The key is in possession of the judicial system. It can only be decrypted and examined with a warrant , with probable cause, as you would need for wiretapping or raiding a home or searching someone's computer.

Now explain that to a lawyer.

They won't get it. Trust me.

Re: Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

#48
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also trivially easy to regulate. Mandate that all cameras recording public spaces record to encrypted storage. The key is in possession of the judicial system. It can only be decrypted and examined with a warrant , with probable cause, as you would need for wiretapping or raiding a home or searching someone's computer.

> The key is in possession of the judicial system. It can only be decrypted and examined with a warrant, with probable cause, as you would need for wiretapping That's how you end up with the NSA and CIA being inside every single camera in the country :)

Including your phone ;)

Re: Face recognition is being banned, but it’s still everywhere

#50

I believe that the efforts to ban technologies such as this one are futile. Pandora's boxes can only be opened, never closed.

We banned mines, too, and it‘s been fairly successful. Not 100%, sure, but just imagine a world were mines weren’t banned, and what Europe and the US would look like, and you know the ban was very effective.

Most countries banned mines, but not US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
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