141–150 of 158 posts
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Homeless are that way for a reason. Logical thinking isn’t it.
Please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. We've had to warn you about this multiple times already. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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The word "targeted" appears in the document quoted in the article. I think describing the homeless as a vulnerable population is a pretty uncontroversial thing to say, but if you'd like I can only use language from the article. It's gross and deeply unethical to "target" homeless because they "didn’t know what was going on at all." Giving your subjects or customers incomplete information, such as "characterizing the…
Feel free to point to literally any harm to these people - there isn’t any. We’re talking about capturing faces in a public place where there’s no expectation of privacy. What does “gross” even mean beyond “it offends my sensibilities?”
Ethics[0] is not exactly concerned with material harms to people. You can unethically help people and ethically harm them. That said, what is considered "ethical" is generally based on ideas of what should promote the beneficence of everyone in the situation. Choosing to engage /specifically/ with a group who you think is unlikely to detect deception or tell others about your interaction is unethical.
If you aren't sure why, here are the problems I immediately think of:
- If you are misleading people, it's likely that you're worried they will perceive a harm (real or imagined) if they were fully informed.
- If you are seeking out people who are socially isolated because they are unlikely to speak to others, it suggests you are concerned about the outcome of them telling others about your actions. You can also see this in abusive personal relationships where the abusive party will socially isolate their victim.
- Both of these conditions (knowledge and social capital imbalances) make understanding the impact of a relationship (positive or negative) difficult to determine. It might be that no harm has been done, but the account in the article suggests that the contractor went out of their way to create conditions where, if the participants were harmed, they would not be aware of it or would not be able to communicate it.
Lest you think this is all bleeding heart hand wringing, you can see these same principles encoded in economics. Contract law has the notion of material misrepresentation and there's lots of economic theory around the harms of information asymmetry (you could also look into companies that are convicted for material misrepresentation in advertising).
All of which I find gross.
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There’s not even an expectation of privacy in a public setting, realistically what harm is being prevented by obtaining “informed consent?”
This isn't about being in a public setting, this is about taking photos of people with the intention of including them in a database for later use. It can't be that simply being in public means that you give up all such rights, since it's impossible to avoid being in public. That informed consent should be obtained seems obvious -- perhaps some of those people wouldn't want their faces to be used in that way. Are the…
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Feel free to point to literally any harm to these people - there isn’t any. We’re talking about capturing faces in a public place where there’s no expectation of privacy. What does “gross” even mean beyond “it offends my sensibilities?”
Gross doesn't mean anything beyond "it offends my sensibilities." I also don't know if the individuals in this situation feel harmed - nor do you, because that's not how harm works. What I did say was that the actions were unethical because they made discovering and communicating harms less likely. Ethics[0] is not exactly concerned with material harms to people. You can unethically help people and ethically harm the…
Material misrepresentations are a big part of contract law because they almost always, ya know, cause harm. Not too many people out there cooking the books to make their company cheaper to buy, for example.
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Then what would you accept as proof/evidence ?
A couple of solid independent studies would go a long way.
Questionnaires where they reveal things, often associated with at least a way to contact them for an interview, but sometimes with name and everything, usually is psychiatric settings (where people are often incarcerated without any proof, trial or any of that I might add). Things like whether they stole from their employer. Whether they ever used violence to obtain sex. They often ask children, homeless, prisoners, patients ... other groups with perceived or real precarious situations. (things that would never pass an ethical review board for, say, medicine)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.5694/j.1326-5377....
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.91.1...
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-07467-001
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1020007004436
So yes, I would say that a lot of people are willing to give up a LOT more privacy than a face picture for a small reward.
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There’s not even an expectation of privacy in a public setting, realistically what harm is being prevented by obtaining “informed consent?”
This isn't about being in a public setting, this is about taking photos of people with the intention of including them in a database for later use. It can't be that simply being in public means that you give up all such rights, since it's impossible to avoid being in public. That informed consent should be obtained seems obvious -- perhaps some of those people wouldn't want their faces to be used in that way. Are the…
Expanding your database? Great
Forgetting situational ethics? Disgusting
Joy at Media Lab has been looking at this issue for a while and advocating for balance. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612775/algorithms-crimina...
Also I find it weird that Nvidia was able to simulate realisticly looking people last year, and Google is struggling to find humans, can't they use that as ground-truth?
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I don’t think most people care about privacy all that much. Most live publicly with their faces on display for all to see and others taking it a step further, participating in Facebook alongside billions of others. It doesn’t scream facial identity being a major concern.
I think most people actually care quite a lot. That people live their lives accepting that their faces are on display is not evidence otherwise, since there is literally no other option. Participating Facebook is also not evidence otherwise -- at most, it's evidence that people are willing to trade privacy in some circumstances (and I think even that's a bit of a stretch), but I'll bet that most Facebook users would…
I say this with seriousness. When considering this alternative, the option of living alone, without human interaction, public identity shows it positive attributes.
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This isn't about being in a public setting, this is about taking photos of people with the intention of including them in a database for later use. It can't be that simply being in public means that you give up all such rights, since it's impossible to avoid being in public. That informed consent should be obtained seems obvious -- perhaps some of those people wouldn't want their faces to be used in that way. Are the…
But it simply can be. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy walking down a public street. I can walk down the street taking high definition photos and video of everyone I encounter and they would have no recourse to stop me, nor should they in a free society.
People can take your picture, but there are longstanding legal privacy protections in place for how that picture can be used (for instance, commercial use is restricted). What I'm arguing is that those existing protections are no longer sufficient, and restrictions for use should include requiring having permission to include the pictures in databases as well.
But none of this is terribly relevant to the issue at hand. In this case, an actual transaction and apparent deception is involved.