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King County, WA bans facial recognition software

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Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#131

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

kenjackson wrote: post #93
didibus wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place. You could argue that humans make similar mistakes and bias, but the scale is always smaller when humans are involved, just because of how slow they are. Say a model is wrong 37% of the time, and so are humans, but the model runs 1000 times a mi…

> I think it's a matter of accuracy and bias. If the tech keeps making false accusations, especially against the same kind of people over and over, then a ban might be in place. It seems like we should then ban eyewitness testimony. That has tons of accuracy issues and bias.

Please read the full post. The issue is inaccuracy and scale.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#132

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cryptoz wrote: post #126
gweinberg wrote: post #124

I can understand wanting to put heavy restrictions on the use of this technology, for example a rule that someone cannot be arrested based on software alone, and a rule that it can only be used to help identify individuals that are clearly committing a crime. But it seems to me to be batshit insane to ban it completely. If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list befor…

> If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list before we have human beings looking at mug shots, what is the alleged downside? Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed. Your suggestion i…

> Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed.

Then is it really fair to call it facial recognition if it doesn't work? Or to say "we are banning this until it is more reliable" or something like that?

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#133

Post by akomtu »

gweinberg wrote: post #124

I can understand wanting to put heavy restrictions on the use of this technology, for example a rule that someone cannot be arrested based on software alone, and a rule that it can only be used to help identify individuals that are clearly committing a crime. But it seems to me to be batshit insane to ban it completely. If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list befor…

A small chance of being robbed is way better than a global survellience system that's tracking my face in all public places. Besides, criminals will simply learn to wear masks.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#134

Post by godelski »

cryptoz wrote: post #126
gweinberg wrote: post #124

I can understand wanting to put heavy restrictions on the use of this technology, for example a rule that someone cannot be arrested based on software alone, and a rule that it can only be used to help identify individuals that are clearly committing a crime. But it seems to me to be batshit insane to ban it completely. If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list befor…

> If we have video of, say, an armed robbery, and we (only) use software to get a suspect list before we have human beings looking at mug shots, what is the alleged downside? Based on my reading of the article, the 'alleged' downside (this is very clearly real, there is no need to say alleged here!) is that minorities are being swept up in the system and wrongfully accused of crimes and then jailed. Your suggestion i…

To be clear, there are a lot more downsides too. Sci-Fi dystopians bring up facial recognition technology a lot and about how the technology can be abused and help a government rule with authoritarian power. I do think it is important to think about these issues since democracy isn't stable (Before we start a flame war: I'm not convinced any system is and I think you'd be hard pressed to argue one is). We should consider the vulnerabilities to our system of governance and this seems to be a common one: tracking citizens. But I think in our society "potential of authoritarian takeover" (sometimes called "turnkey tyranny") is less of a concern for people than racial bias (which is still an important topic, don't get me wrong). I think the difference is that one requires foresight and the other is an effect we can see right now. And of course, historically we've seen minorities become the early victims of authoritarians.

We should think long and hard about these technologies and how to use them properly. Historically we haven't thought about ethics much in computer science, but the time isn't post hoc. We (Hacker News readers) are the experts, and we need to be talking about this decades ago, not decades from now. So let's not ignore the conversation.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#135

Post by wizzwizz4 »

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #109
matz1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is automated identification of faces Whats the problem with this ?

I had a dream a few months ago where I was standing in front of a computer. I typed in my name and got back a stream of video which showed every single moment of my life from multiple angles starting from the moment I was born. The footage came from a variety of sources, CCTV, smartphone cameras, dashcams. The system had videos of everything anyone had ever done. I didn't like it. Found it kind of disturbing.

Fortunately, we can stop that from being a reality.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#136

Post by zdragnar »

542458 wrote: post #88
zdragnar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when do search warrants get automatically approved by a black box? It is on the judge to approve, not a machine. If that's not enough, make a human sign off that they have confirmed or at least agree with the black box's conclusion, and put the department on the hook if it was obviously wrong. > Who makes sure that the data sets used to train the models was 100% free of bias? The box is comparing a source image…

I mean, FISA warrants had (have?) a 99+% approval rate despite many applications having serious deficiencies. Utah’s e-warrant program has a 98% approval rate. Some warrants are approved in less than 30 seconds. Warrants across the US are frequently approved on evidence as shaky as a single anonymous tip. The problem (at least in my opinion) isn’t that facial recognition itself is inherently evil, it’s that: a) There…

> Warrants across the US are frequently approved on evidence as shaky as a single anonymous tip

Here is the crux of the problem. If facial recognition were good, then it would actually make things better. If it were bad, then it isn't making things substantially worse- if anything, it creates a track record which makes things like racial bias more obvious and auditable.

The real issue is that there isn't sufficient judicial oversight, nor recourse for when it fails.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#137

Post by godelski »

lewdev wrote: post #102

Why ban it? It's not the facial recognition that's the problem; the problem is that the justice system believes that it's enough to convict someone of a crime. It's hard to believe that prosecutors can be like, "The computer says it's you, so you're guilty." Especially when there's probably a known margin of error.

There's far more than the racial component. Do you want the government tracking you? It helps authoritarian rule (who always victimize minorities first and more harshly). I think a big problem with this topic is that we're only focusing on the "it doesn't work" aspect and not even considering the "but what if it perfectly works, do we still want it?" question. Humans haven't historically been great at dealing with questions that rely on foresight, but that doesn't mean we should ignore those questions.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#138

Post by renewiltord »

lewdev wrote: post #102

Why ban it? It's not the facial recognition that's the problem; the problem is that the justice system believes that it's enough to convict someone of a crime. It's hard to believe that prosecutors can be like, "The computer says it's you, so you're guilty." Especially when there's probably a known margin of error.

That's right. But the justice system can't be fixed. So we prevent it from using these tools.

It's to prevent some halfwit police officer talking to a halfwit judge and prosecuting some innocent fellow. #donttreadonme

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#140

Post by bob_roberts »

zdragnar wrote: post #136
542458 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, FISA warrants had (have?) a 99+% approval rate despite many applications having serious deficiencies. Utah’s e-warrant program has a 98% approval rate. Some warrants are approved in less than 30 seconds. Warrants across the US are frequently approved on evidence as shaky as a single anonymous tip. The problem (at least in my opinion) isn’t that facial recognition itself is inherently evil, it’s that: a) There…

> Warrants across the US are frequently approved on evidence as shaky as a single anonymous tip Here is the crux of the problem. If facial recognition were good, then it would actually make things better. If it were bad, then it isn't making things substantially worse- if anything, it creates a track record which makes things like racial bias more obvious and auditable. The real issue is that there isn't sufficient j…

> then it isn't making things substantially worse

At least in the United States, any encounter with law enforcement can potentially end in violence, so anything that makes it easier to get a questionable warrant will make things worse.

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