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Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

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Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#101

Post by the_gorilla »

godelski wrote: post #91
AlbertCory wrote: post #31

The issue with governments implementing mass warrantless surveillance is not training or standards, NIST or otherwise. It should be straight-out illegal. Governments do not have "free speech" rights. As for private citizens doing it: I think there are already sufficient laws about recording people without their consent. You can hire someone to stand on a corner and watch for a specific person to walk by, but a law pr…

I just want to piggy back here. There's often counter arguments about how laws say that when you're in public you have no expectation or right to privacy. First off, this is not true, you definitely have some rights to privacy in public (an trivial example is using a public restroom). The law also is based on what is reasonable, and I don't think nearly everyone would think it is reasonable to expect some privacy if…

The fact that people so many have to be explicitly told they have no expectation of privacy by people online kind of proves that opposite, that the average person does expect some natural right to privacy and has to be instructed otherwise.

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#102

Post by darby_nine »

AlbertCory wrote: post #31

The issue with governments implementing mass warrantless surveillance is not training or standards, NIST or otherwise. It should be straight-out illegal. Governments do not have "free speech" rights. As for private citizens doing it: I think there are already sufficient laws about recording people without their consent. You can hire someone to stand on a corner and watch for a specific person to walk by, but a law pr…

I'm ok with this if it's also banned for everyone else. Otherwise this will just be laundered through private enterprise, the only party less trustworthy than the government.

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#103

Post by darby_nine »

AlbertCory wrote: post #58
Fogest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, don't many places like big retail stores or malls already use facial recognition with their security systems? Whether it be to deal with flagging banned individuals who come on premises, or for things like tracking where people go in a mall. These kinds of things privately I think are already used a lot.

There's a difference between recording everyone entering your space, and recording everyone in a public space.

Not really, it's antisocial behavior either way. This is just splitting hairs anywhere but a courtroom.

Anyway, a mall is a public space in the context of recording without consent. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. The law needs to be updated to reflect the vastly more invasive technology we have now compared to when these statutes were written to reflect actual social mores.

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#104

Post by JoshTriplett »

bentley wrote: post #96
frickinLasers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a perfectly pleasant experience opting out. The agent simply smiled at me, asked a question to verify that I was the person on the ID I had handed him, and off I went. It was much easier and less gropey than opting out of the mm wave scans.

I too find the domestic TSA photo opt‐out to be quite painless. I recommend simply saying “I’d like to opt out of the photo” as soon as you walk to the platform, because saying so as soon as possible minimizes the chance of holding up the line and irritating the agent. The only observable difference in processing is that the agent takes my ID, holds it up, and compares it to my face. CBP is another matter. When retur…

9 times out of 10 I've found opting out of the body scanners to be painless. 1 time out of 10 I get a bully who wants to make a scene in order to create social pressure to justify opting out. I always have to suppress the counterproductive and escalatory urge to say something along the lines of "this pointless conversation will be shorter if we skip ahead to where I reiterate that I'm still opting out".

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#105

Post by rockskon »

rockskon wrote: post #98
AlbertCory wrote: post #31

The issue with governments implementing mass warrantless surveillance is not training or standards, NIST or otherwise. It should be straight-out illegal. Governments do not have "free speech" rights. As for private citizens doing it: I think there are already sufficient laws about recording people without their consent. You can hire someone to stand on a corner and watch for a specific person to walk by, but a law pr…

Generally something that's okay to do to one person is okay to do to a billion in the law. Something legal applied a billion times doesn't make it illegal. That's also one of the legal principles underlying mass warrantless surveillance with the third party doctrine.

The hell are people down voting that for? It's not an endorsement of the legal principle.

This is the world we live in. But I'm sure many of you have money - why not try organizing and changing the law.

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#106

Post by thedrexster »

beaglesss wrote: post #85
hammock wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, why are you flagged? Visited an unsavory country?

I fought in a US-allied foreign militia against ISIS . So yes.

Is this something you've blogged about or otherwise discussed in more detail? A college acquaintance of mine ended up in Syria with the YPG and I found it fascinating in a that's-so-fucking-cool-but-I-could-never way.

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#107

Post by eimrine »

karaterobot wrote: post #67
chrismeller wrote: post #60

> Civil rights watchdog Well not quite. They keep getting money every year, but officially their mandate expired in the 90’s and has never been renewed. As crazy as that is by itself, they certainly don’t have the authority to do anything.

Honest question: what else can they do but warn people?

To be more numerous maybe?

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#108

Post by KAMSPioneer »

bentley wrote: post #96
frickinLasers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a perfectly pleasant experience opting out. The agent simply smiled at me, asked a question to verify that I was the person on the ID I had handed him, and off I went. It was much easier and less gropey than opting out of the mm wave scans.

I too find the domestic TSA photo opt‐out to be quite painless. I recommend simply saying “I’d like to opt out of the photo” as soon as you walk to the platform, because saying so as soon as possible minimizes the chance of holding up the line and irritating the agent. The only observable difference in processing is that the agent takes my ID, holds it up, and compares it to my face. CBP is another matter. When retur…

Can confirm that CBP is worse about this. I once had an agent insist that it was not possible to opt out, because the scan was mandatory. I pointed out that I had walked past no less than four signs proclaiming the opposite (if you are a US citizen) on my way through the line.

_He_ then held up the line as he walked off, consulted with someone who obviously knew better, came back and pouted while he verified my identity "manually."

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#109

Post by godelski »

the_gorilla wrote: post #101
godelski wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to piggy back here. There's often counter arguments about how laws say that when you're in public you have no expectation or right to privacy. First off, this is not true, you definitely have some rights to privacy in public (an trivial example is using a public restroom). The law also is based on what is reasonable, and I don't think nearly everyone would think it is reasonable to expect some privacy if…

The fact that people so many have to be explicitly told they have no expectation of privacy by people online kind of proves that opposite, that the average person does expect some natural right to privacy and has to be instructed otherwise.

Exactly. If it's news to people then they clearly had some expectation. But I think it's easy to fool yourself into thinking this isn't true post hoc knowing and especially if you're someone who visits HN and is more keen on the details.

I think it's also worth noting that most people don't want this to happen even when they do know. Of course some people don't care but even they do when they learn how it's being used

Re: Federal civil rights watchdog sounds alarm over Feds use of facial recognition

#110

Post by samarthr1 »

godelski wrote: post #90
samarthr1 wrote: post #88

Genuine question, are the ethics of "anonymous facial recognition", where the system keeps track of a particular face, does not remember the face, and does not correlate the face to a identity , comparable to a social-credit like system?

> anonymous facial recognition I don't have an answer to the specific question, but I have experience working on single and multi-camera person tracking systems and I can tell you that they highly focus on the faces for recognition[0]. There is no such thing as anonymous facial recognition or even person tracking. Data creeps in through things that can be later extracted, though you can make this process more difficu…

I see.

The reason I ask is that india has a bit of a littering problem at bus stands, and the fines for littering are hardly enforced due to lack of budget.

I was hoping to fix the issue by applying a small fine, all the time.

To do it, I was hoping I could build a sort of person-hood tracking system that says, see, that fellow who threw a packet of chips is now standing at platform 10, near the concession stand, go catch him, easy 100₹.

By consistently enforcing penalties, we can change the behavior of people. It is worse than useless if it is inconsistently applied, for those caught will be likely to reoffend, considering it plain chance that they got caught.

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