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The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

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Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#141

Post by Mirioron »

asveikau wrote: post #130
caconym_ wrote: post #7

I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this. Starting that way will cause a huge segment of the population to switch off as soon as you start talking. Imagine it works perfectly, and a three-letter agency with practically zero oversight, transparency, or accountability is collecting an accurate history of every single thing you do--everywhere you go, who yo…

But the accuracy point is a big deal. The fact that it doesn't work well should frighten the people who claim they are OK with it because they have nothing to hide. (However much we disagree with them.) Imagine being thrown in jail because somebody who looks like you committed a crime. (You didn't like the social justice angle, but actually, racial minorities get that all the time in the US.) "The computer said so" i…

Humans have a limited amount of attention. Imagine you're in a debate with somebody and you put out 2 hard hitting points of criticism and 18 easy to solve points of criticism. The other party can now counter/fix your 18 points of criticism and ignore the 2 hard hitting ones. To most people looking at the debate from the outside it will seem as though the other party has defended their argument, because they countered so many of your points.

This same situation applies here. If the government somehow fixes or sidesteps the issue of discrimination, then it's only going to marginally make the mass surveillance issue better for society. What if they deployed this system in a racially homogenous country? Now the argument about discrimination is much less effective, yet the negative impact of mass surveillance is nearly the same.

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#142

Post by mieseratte »

nl wrote: post #51
mieseratte wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here are just a couple of recent examples that invalidate your claim. They were pretty easy to find: These are several years old. Can you find something from the past year? Turnover happens, missions change. From the outside, looks like they've changed.

Some in a snowmobile race in Alaska refused to talk to police. They found some excuse to arrest him. ACLU is suing for violation of first amendment: https://www.aclu.org/cases/nieves-v-bartlett-17-1174 A guy setup a clothing brand called FUCT. Trademark denied because Brunetti’s application was refused on the ground that FUCT is “scandalous.” In reaching that conclusion the Board also noted that Brunetti’s website an…

Thank you!

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#143

Post by bryanlarsen »

dorchadas wrote: post #14
caconym_ wrote: post #7

I wish we would stop emphasizing the social justice/accuracy concerns so heavily when talking about this. Starting that way will cause a huge segment of the population to switch off as soon as you start talking. Imagine it works perfectly, and a three-letter agency with practically zero oversight, transparency, or accountability is collecting an accurate history of every single thing you do--everywhere you go, who yo…

Sadly, I know a lot of people who are ok with that. They're very much of the opinion, "Well, I'm doing nothing wrong, so I don't care. Especially if it helps catch bad guys". Not really sure how to fight that.

> Not really sure how to fight that.

"This will make it easier for a Democratic president to know about and take away your guns."

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#144

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #143
dorchadas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I know a lot of people who are ok with that. They're very much of the opinion, "Well, I'm doing nothing wrong, so I don't care. Especially if it helps catch bad guys". Not really sure how to fight that.

> Not really sure how to fight that. "This will make it easier for a Democratic president to know about and take away your guns."

[deleted]

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#145

Post by dingus »

staticjak wrote: post #135
dingus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript required for text rendering is incredibly poor design. For those of us with limited connections, I turn off Javascript because I don't want to download 10MB of Javascript ad tech and frameworks. This is expensive and takes forever to load on satellite and rural connections. Good design takes these basic common issues into account.

rural != common

A quarter of the US population isn't common? Not to mention entire countries with limited connections.

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#146

Post by lefstathiou »

pdonis wrote: post #133
lefstathiou wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I don't believe our government is inherently evil and unjust. They have and will continue to have access to all this information legally anyway (if it exists, they can legally get it). On the plus side, I see a lot of positives with this. I'm tired of graffiti everywhere. The other day I was walking home and some kid picked up a metal trash can on the corner of 37th and 8th, dumped it in the middle of the road a…

> All of these bad actors can be weeded out. The possibilities actually excite me. Sure, right up until someone in power decides that you are the "bad actor" and weeds you out.

The exercise was to imagine it working perfectly. : )

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#148

Post by pdonis »

lefstathiou wrote: post #146
pdonis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of these bad actors can be weeded out. The possibilities actually excite me. Sure, right up until someone in power decides that you are the "bad actor" and weeds you out.

The exercise was to imagine it working perfectly. : )

But nothing in the real world ever works perfectly. And past experience with giving governments power indicates that, before giving the government any power, you should imagine it being exercised by your worst enemy.

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#149

Post by LeftHandPath »

thelittleone wrote: post #120
wlesieutre wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the off chance someone reading this is OK with the government doing that for law enforcement purposes, also consider that >At least a dozen U.S. National Security Agency employees have been caught using secret government surveillance tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of their current or former spouses and lovers in the past decade, according to the intelligence agency’s internal watchdog. before giving…

> and store it in a database forever. This is an important point. Most people are deciding what they're ok with based on today's circumstances, government etc. What happens if some years from now, your past behavior is at odds with the current government. You will be flagged and there will undoubtedly be consequences, which, even if minor are still negative. E.g., flagged for searches at border crossings.

It's interesting that people worry about "the basilisk" and all of this happening with AI, but not about the fact that future governments and revolutionaries are equally likely to look back on old data and judge you for it - and have a much greater capability to use that data to do you harm.

Re: The FBI Is Tracking Our Faces in Secret, and We’re Suing

#150

Post by staticassertion »

Mirioron wrote: post #140
staticassertion wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that causing a huge part of the population to switch off? That's insane. Starting with a practical, serious, and concrete discriminatory problem sounds like a great place to start vs some general ethical issue with surveillance.

Because the discrimination problem is separate issue here. It leaves room for the idea that "if they just fix the discrimination problem, then this is fine". It's not, because privacy violations affect everyone. Even if they were somehow able to make these systems not discriminate, we would still not have moved even a little on the issue of mass surveillance.

I don't think it's a separate problem, and as I said this is a real, concrete problem. The end result isn't that it's fine after they fix this, but that doesn't matter at all, the goal isn't to end surveillance.

The obvious, no two sides about it problem right now is discrimination.

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