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Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

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131–140 of 165 posts

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#131
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tech is there, in the long run the only question is: Do you want government to have it, or everyone to have it? Privacy may have been a temporary phenomenon - a side-effect of the anonymity of cities/large crowds. You didn't have it in the mediaeval village, and you probably won't have it in the global village. (David Brin's been beating this drum for about three decades now - I doubt I could say anything he h…

> Do you want government to have it, or everyone to have it? That is a strange dichotomy, "government vs everyone". You miss the much more important large private organizations. Government can at least be held accountable, if voters are willing. What the private orgs do you don't even have a chance to know about without a (tragic doomed person) whistleblower. Even the "evil" government actions heavily uses those unac…

Even normal POS units have been discovered to have facial identification like that years ago.

You're tapping and paying and the system stores your purchase under "male, 35-45, hispanic, anxious"...

Creepy as all hell.

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public photography is not a crime, nor should it be. However, that doesn't mean your likeness can be used for just any purpose.

Public photography that focusses specifically on a person requires permission in some jurisdictions, notably France. See https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/law-regarding-photogra...

Also very often people mistake the right to take a picture with the right to distribute it afterwards.

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people were uncomfortable with simply having their pictures taken and shown without their knowledge gives lie to the idea that "You're in a public place—of course you have no right to privacy." It's great to be given the chance to face your principles.

Public photography is not a crime, nor should it be. However, that doesn't mean your likeness can be used for just any purpose.

Well sure but all this is doing is displaying the audience on screens and drawing squares around their faces. I seriously doubt this breaks any law, I saw them in summer last year and they were already doing this, given that the article is about it happening rather than them getting sued, I think it's probably fine.

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#134

> The band deployed live facial recognition technology that captured and analyzed attendees during their recent performance. I think more drama has been created around this than is necessary. Based on the video, the real-time projected visitor's faces were not analyzed. They were simply shown with a random description flag attached, such as "energetic," "compassionate," "inspiring," "fitness influencer," or "cloud wa…

such as "energetic," "compassionate," "inspiring," "fitness influencer," or "cloud watcher."

One season Saturday Night Live did this with its studio audience as a recurring gag.

The one that stuck with me was the couple labeled "Pregnant two hours."

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#135

> The band deployed live facial recognition technology that captured and analyzed attendees during their recent performance. I think more drama has been created around this than is necessary. Based on the video, the real-time projected visitor's faces were not analyzed. They were simply shown with a random description flag attached, such as "energetic," "compassionate," "inspiring," "fitness influencer," or "cloud wa…

The fact that people were uncomfortable with simply having their pictures taken and shown without their knowledge gives lie to the idea that "You're in a public place—of course you have no right to privacy." It's great to be given the chance to face your principles.

I didn't see a location stated in TFA.

Where I live, a concert is not considered "public", unless it's a government-run event on government property.

Otherwise, a concert is a private event, in which case you have no right to privacy. Just like going into a store.

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#137
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tech is there, in the long run the only question is: Do you want government to have it, or everyone to have it? Privacy may have been a temporary phenomenon - a side-effect of the anonymity of cities/large crowds. You didn't have it in the mediaeval village, and you probably won't have it in the global village. (David Brin's been beating this drum for about three decades now - I doubt I could say anything he h…

> Do you want government to have it, or everyone to have it? That is a strange dichotomy, "government vs everyone". You miss the much more important large private organizations. Government can at least be held accountable, if voters are willing. What the private orgs do you don't even have a chance to know about without a (tragic doomed person) whistleblower. Even the "evil" government actions heavily uses those unac…

[deleted]

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public photography is not a crime, nor should it be. However, that doesn't mean your likeness can be used for just any purpose.

The laws for this were written when "public photography" was someone with a film camera. It was maybe valid in the digital camera era. But now I can point a camera at a crowd and It will: - count the number of people and animals there - give me an estimated gender for each - analyse the sentiment of each person - save their facial features so I can find "Male-sg76fg" in future photos automatically - store the GPS loc…

[dead]

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#139
post #64

Think about the most notorious authoritarian regimes. Third Reich, GDR , USSR, Mao's China. They had relatively weak surveillance capacity. Secret police had to personally spy on the target and manually install bugs/taps. Technology was primitive and error prone. Most casual conversations were less vulnerable to spying. Rural people were relatively safe. Private conversations could be easily held in secret (e.g. walk…

I'm really scared that technology-enabled authoritarian regimes become much more powerful than they used to be.

In the past decade we had some examples where some countries had really big anti-government movements and protests... and they simply couldn't achieve anything substantial. Iran comes to mind, but I think we also had some in the East of Europe.

And then there are countries like Russia and North Korea (and likely many more) where it looks like (at least from the outside) that mass protests are pretty unlikely, because any kind of political opposition is suppressed before it reaches this level.

Re: Massive Attack turns concert into facial recognition surveillance experiment

#140
post #114
post #38

This lends even more weight to the theory that Massive Attack’s singer is, in fact, Banksy.

That theory is based on art springing up in locations where Massive Attack are playing. It's a bit odd because by that logic it could also be any of the dozens of people needed on tour.

Didn't Goldie accidentally refer to Banksy as 'Rob' in an interview once too.
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