Live data from Hacker News

King County, WA bans facial recognition software

komonews.com

171–180 of 208 posts

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#171

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. 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 .

The scale is a complete strawman. They aren’t falsely accusing 300 people for a crime.

A great example is the Capitol Riots. They are narrowing the list down to manageable numbers. They aren’t suddenly arresting thousands of people for a crime committed by three.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#172
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.

[deleted]

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#173
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 would actually make things better.

If you are stuck living somewhere where music is illegal, and you happen to listen to some music on the sly and get caught by a perfect system, and punished, how is that better?

Better would be if people can live freely without having to worry about a perfect system tracking their every action.

There is no person alive on earth today who does not do things that would get them punished under the law of some government somewhere.

And you want the law enforcement systems to be perfect?

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#174
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even just arresting them or bringing them in for assessment is enough to put someone in a dangerous position, because cops can effectively legally execute people. So the problem is any police interaction is potentially deadly and this is giving cops another arbitrary, potentially racist tool to interact with people who are just living their lives.

Let me ask you a question: How many unarmed people were killed by police in 2020?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

According to this, 405, which is 405 too many.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#176
"""“Facial recognition technology is still incredibly biased and absolutely creates harm in the real world," said Jennifer Lee with ACLU Washington. "We now know of three black men who have been wrongfully arrested and jailed due to biased facial recognition technology. So, this powerful surveillance tool inevitably exacerbates already racially biased policing"""

Seems like a blatant error to reason that, because there are instances of facial recognition being used incorrectly that the technology itself is fundamentally flawed. You could apply the same reasoning to the police themselves - I know of at least three instances where the police arrested the wrong person, so we should ban the police?

With the police example it seems obvious we should continue iterating and improving the police to correct errors, but that we don't want to throw out the whole institution because that would be much worse. The police may have caused some harm, but did they do more good?

I'd bet that banning facial recognition is net harmful to black and Hispanic people. Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime, so denying effective tools to law enforcement will disproportionately hurt those communities. Of course, it's academic as King County didn't use facial recognition - but I bet it could be a useful tool if used responsibly.

I've read news articles before about cases where facial recognition was used irresponsibly. We absolutely need to put a stop to that. I think if we treat it more like an unreliable witness saying "The person I saw reminded me of X" and less like a definitive ID that may be a better position.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#177

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…

You're assuming that the technology works well and that people will understand its limitations and not gradually expand its application. The downside is that that assumption is an unrealistic fantasy.

Innocent people will be charged with crimes by lazy cops who don't want to do the actual police work of thoroughly investigating suspect lists. There will be juries who don't understand prediction error and find innocent people guilty because they trust the "expert" who says the facial recognition system reported "99.99% accuracy". Some of the 40% of cops who have committed domestic violence will make unauthorized use of this system to hunt down fleeing battered spouses - and this unauthorized use will go unpunished. Innocent black people will be identified as subjects and arrested because of racial disparities in accuracy of these systems. Innocent political activists will be charged with crimes they didn't commit because a cop found video of a crime that the software says plausibly looks like the activist.

Every time police get a new tool for establishing guilt, it is abused. The only way to make a facial recognition system that is just is if it is out of control of the police and it can only be used with a valid court warrant - and even then, I'm not sure that I trust the court's ability to control such a system securely.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#178
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 would actually make things better. If you are stuck living somewhere where music is illegal, and you happen to listen to some music on the sly and get caught by a perfect system, and punished, how is that better? Better would be if people can live freely without having to worry about a perfect system tracking their every action. There is no person alive on earth today who does not do things that would get t…

No, I want them to be held accountable for when they are wrong, and the hypothetical example of a good facial recognition system removing human bias was an example of that, and could protect people from the other example the post I replied to, which was search warrants granted under a single unreliable source's statement.

Facial recognition isn't going to care that you procured illegally distributed copies of protected works (your ISP already does that anyway), so lets stop moving the goal posts. It is a reactive, not proactive system, and while I am not fully convinced that it is actually ready, I am also not buying the slippery slope nonsense.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

As the parent post pointed out, questionable warrants are already supposedly trivial to get. This system, being more auditable as a single source rather than individual anonymous statements, means that it is far less likely to stick around if it consistently punts out bad matches.

Re: King County, WA bans facial recognition software

#180

NO, King County banned "government use" of facial recognition software. This is such an annoying trend in media coverage of this issue: every city in the world is happy to restrict THEIR USE of facial recognition. That's a symbolic and small victory. It will always be a symbolic and small victory. Every headline leaves the "government use" part out. Every single time. That's because people who write headlines know wh…

The corporate-government exploitation of the people is staggering. Corporations do all the spying and then give APIs to the government. No constitutional problems over here.

Fascism or public-private partnership... It's the same in-group in power, protecting each other, regardless of which arm of the state (corporate, government, religion, media, universities) is currently doing the most effective social engineering.
Post reply on HN