Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones • Hacker News Board

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#161

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

Kon-Peki wrote: post #10

jollyllama wrote: post #7

The facial recognition isn't on the drone, the cop just uploads the footage to a tagging service *trollface*

The law covers both scenarios, as shown in the linked text: > A law enforcement agency operating a drone under this Act is prohibited from using, during a flight, onboard facial recognition software that works in conjunction with the drone. A law enforcement agency operating a drone under this Act is prohibited from using any information gathered by a drone with any facial recognition software

That depends on the grouping of clauses.

Grouped as (prohibited from using any information gathered by a drone) (with any facial recognition software), you might be right.

Grouped as (prohibited from using any information gathered by a (drone with any facial recognition software)), I don't think you're right. Personally, I would naturally group the clauses in this way and conclude that off-drone facial recognition was not effectively barred by this statute but onboard facial recognition was.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#162

Post by piperswe » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:34 PM UTC

DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #145

piperswe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"weapons" should be missing the "s" to reduce ambiguity in that case. Right now it reads like (weapons) and (facial recognition). "weapons recognition" doesn't quite sound right to me.

> Right now it reads like (weapons) and (facial recognition). That's because that is what it says. The parent comment's confusion was due to both parsing the comma as a list separator instead of a conjunction as well as not recognizing the implication of the "s" at the end of "weapons".

Oh. Ignore me then, I'm just misinterpreting everything.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#163

Post by activiation » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

It should not be limited to police... All government agencies should be subject to the same restrictions... Sheriff, FBI, USPS, IRS, etc...

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#164

Post by abeppu » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #142

nathan_compton wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't this kind of depend on the law? Do you really think "guns and and facial recognition on drones" is the kind of thing we have to do experiments on? I kind of get where you're coming from in the sense that it is scary for so much power over so many people to be concentrated in such a small place, but, on the other hand, when the case is simple or the moral calculus is clear enough, I think we ought not feel a s…

No, it doesn't depend on the law. I think all laws need experimentation regardless of the subject matter because no law is perfect. I also think a federal government that can quickly enact laws is far too powerful an entity to exist in a country of 330,000,000 people. While some "good" laws might get enacted sooner "bad" laws will as well. Remember we are a country guilty of genocide. As an exercise try writing down…

I don't think anyone would accuse our federal government of being "agile" or able to "quickly enact laws". And I agree that in almost all things getting the right law is more important than getting a law quickly.

However, your insistence that "it doesn't depend on the law" makes me view your whole stance more critically; the answer in complex areas is very rarely "it doesn't depend". There's a bunch of domains where stuff just happens across state lines so frequently that a patchwork would only create confusion. It would be really disruptive if NY made it illegal to drive on gas you bought in NJ b/c NY officials hadn't specifically tested it to confirm that all additives were acceptable; it's easier if we just have federal standards.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#165

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #60

RajT88 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point. I would hope there's an exemption for bomb disposal robots, because functionally there's not that much difference between these and (basically) Killbotz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSkYxW5Ii28

There shouldn't be an exemption on the equipment, but prohibition of using anything as a killbot. Dallas police used a bomb-disposal robot to remotely deliver a bomb to kill a suspect some years back. https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/08/use-robot-kill-dalla...

"Hourslong negotiations with the man broke down into an exchange of gunfire, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said at a news conference Friday morning. At that point, the officers deployed a robot armed with an explosive."

That's hardly the stuff of Robocop dystopia. That seems a reasonable and proportionate response to a long siege and multiple instances of gunfire exchange in which 5 policemen had lost their lives engaging the suspect.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#166

Post by godelski » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:40 PM UTC

throwbadubadu wrote: post #150

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. >> - Sometimes law enforcement must be able to use deadly force. Isn't it better if in those situations, officers aren't also putting their lives at risk? What about drones that can be used to deploy non-lethal weapons?…

Nope, "violent mobs" are something that if it exists and rich enough modern democratic societies (and others) that is effect of some cause that needs immediate fixing, even beating them just down is maybe too much - I know I'm a bit too idealistic and romantic (: But no, please let us not starts with robots/machines fighting our own society but fix it, drones in warfare are already enough of an ethical problem..

I think for the vast majority of cases I agree. If there are public riots, the system fucked up. This doesn't mean that the public riots are directed at the appropriate solution or have correctly identified the underlying issue, it just means that something broke and that thing is serious. Almost nothing is going to lead to a public riot overnight. It is because the problem was left unsolved and the pressure built.

I'm perfectly okay if there are severe consequences for authorities who do not attempt to solve problems that cause pressure to build. If you play with a pipe bomb, you gotta be careful and attentive.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#167

Post by hanniabu » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:41 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #51

Can we get a federal bill with the same prohibitions? It would be absurd if the right to be free from fear of automated death from the skies is left to a patchwork of state and local restrictions. Irresponsible arguments that I would totally not be surprised to hear to push in the opposite direction: - If law enforcement doesn't have armed drones, we live in a world where only the criminals have armed drones. - Somet…

Probably won't happen, but I bet they'll pass something like that for civilian drones

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#168

Post by gus_massa » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #131

ryandrake wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. It's helpful to remember: for every law you like and want promoted to the federal level, there's another law you probably don't like that someone else thinks would be great to promote to the federal level. Although moving states to flee terrible laws is a burden, it's not as much of a burden as fleeing your entire country. Laws should be as local as practically possible.

A kamikaze drone can have a variable blast radius that can kill a vehicle's driver but not passengers. That sounds extremely local. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/kamikaze-drones-new-we...

In the video at 1:10 there are a lot of glass shards in the passenger seat. I'll call bullshit until it's tested in Mythbusters with Buster as the passenger.

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#169

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #144

xtreme wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are good counters to these arguments?

I'll bite: The response to "then only criminals will have armed drones" is: Ok, let's give all the cops a lot of drugs and child porn, because it would be bad if only criminals had that stuff, and maybe we can give them anthrax and components for a dirty bomb, because it would be bad if only terrorists had those. Or maybe, that's a broken line of reasoning and law enforcement isn't a war in which enemies must be met…

[deleted]

Re: Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

#170

Post by hospitalJail » Fri, Jun 16, 2023, 7:43 PM UTC

What a world we live in. Major companies are doing facial recognition to improve security and likely lower insurance costs, but the police can't.

The cat is out of the bag on this stuff.

If teenagers can use this technology on Facebook, do we really need to add additional hoops to pretend we have privacy? I'd much rather not put on the show and be aware we are being watched.