Facial recognition: It’s time for action • Hacker News Board

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#241

Post by Kiro » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 10:11 AM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #101

zoul wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If consent is not given then that can not bar you from service. What’s the reasoning for this? Shouldn’t I have the freedom to pick the conditions under which I offer my services, except for discrimination? Is it discrimination if I only offer biometric ID, say for business convenience?

The same reason that you aren't allowed to mix sawdust into the flour you sell, even if it is cheaper. Having a business incentive does not mean that you have a moral justification.

What's the moral justification here? Most people love biotmetrics.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#242

Post by ben_w » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 10:11 AM UTC

vallavaraiyan wrote: post #235

pixl97 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No snowflake is responsible for the avalanche, therefore I must pile on as much snow as possible -- The modern developer.

But the snowflake doesn't know that it is falling on a mountain slope.

Individual snowflakes are not capable of abstract reasoning.

Can we make it a requirement for ourselves to limit our power to our ability to keep that power safe?

I think that’s a superset of the problem of incentive alignment in AI safety, so probably not... but we also shouldn’t let the perfect to be the enemy of the improved.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#243

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 12:15 PM UTC

Kiro wrote: post #239

ekianjo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

justifying the destruction of privacy to find out child molesters who look for their victims online. there are many examples like that.

99% of people would support destruction of privacy for this cause.

That is the problem.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#244

Post by kaibee » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #212

JaRail wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced the US will be passing much of anything in the next two-years. Passing pro-privacy regulation? Seems very unlikely to me. Microsoft should engage with Canada and the EU where technology/privacy regulation is gaining traction.

Only 3 Republican senators need to support it, and there's a ton of them that don't care so much for Trump. If enough industry people are on the side of it and/or there no populist fight over it, Trump would have no reason to veto it. I don't think Trump really cares that much about these things, it'll only be a thing if it turns into a pop-culture war in which he may choose sides. But if MS and a bunch of other heav…

> I don't think Trump really cares that much about these things, it'll only be a thing if it turns into a pop-culture war in which he may choose sides.

> But if MS and a bunch of other heavyweights are in favour of it, he just might even go for it.

I remember the first time I heard about Net Neutrality as an issue, in what, 2011 or something? I couldn't have imagined it becoming politicized at all. Plus, Wikipedia, Google, basically any tech company who isn't an ISP should clearly be on the same side. And yet, it became a political issue. People who couldn't explain the first thing about what Net Neutrality is, have opinions about it. Trump's administration is against it.

Maybe it'll be different for Facial Recognition, since people can better intuit about it, but honestly, that probably just makes it easier to fear-monger about, rightly or wrongly.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#245

Post by bad_user » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #115

geephroh wrote: post #11

This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology that already has huge impacts on privacy and civil society. I was in the room for one of the meetings with Microsoft's senior leadership as a representative of a Seattle-based civil liberties group. While our coalition would like to see MS go further, it was quite clear that they take their commitment to corporate responsibility and ethics…

>> This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology... Perhaps I'm jaded, but I don't agree at all. They're trying to get it regulated so they can be creepy without fear. One of the first "good" uses listed was finding 3000 children. "Think of the children" is a common rallying cry for evil. Nothing else mentioned was really relevant. The line IMHO needs to be drawn at anything that you'd…

>> If a store wants to recognize me as a prior visitor, that's fine because an actual employee might do the same

It’s not the same. That employee is not always there, not always paying attention and he doesn’t keep a log.

A machine on the other hand is very efficient and it’ll recognize you every single time.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#246

Post by ilovetux » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:38 PM UTC

tcarn wrote: post #202

PaulKeeble wrote: post #26

Biometrics are creeping into everyday life. One of my local gyms this week switched to requiring fingerprints or you were barred from access. Another local gym uses facial recognition for entrance, although you can choose to have a member card instead if you ask for it directly, they don't list it as an option. Thankfully in the EU we have GDPR. It considers biometrics as a similar sensitivity to medical data, so unl…

I really hope the politicians in the US champion a GDPR law here. Unfortunately I'm not optimistic.

you know, after saying something like this, you have to vote :P

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#247

Post by pizzazzaro » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:43 PM UTC

geephroh wrote: post #11

This is a laudable first step in advocacy for real regulation of a technology that already has huge impacts on privacy and civil society. I was in the room for one of the meetings with Microsoft's senior leadership as a representative of a Seattle-based civil liberties group. While our coalition would like to see MS go further, it was quite clear that they take their commitment to corporate responsibility and ethics…

Note that aws runs on the Xen hypervisor, which has a new critical security hole pop up reliably every six months.

Taking matters into our own hands becomes an option.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#248

Post by ilovetux » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #231

Yhippa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you called out regulatory capture. The cynic in me wonders if Microsoft is so far behind in some AI aspects like this that they're taking this approach to slow down Amazon's and Google's forays into selling this tech to businesses and government.

I doubt Microsoft is behind in face recognition, which is an AI task that's been studied and done to death in academic literature. Microsoft has actually made some of the most important discoveries in AI (invented ResNets, co-authored Faster R-CNN), they can surely pull up a mere FR system.

This actually made me pause and think about what is already known about me. I wonder if there is a word for the collective knowledge about an individual.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#249

Post by ilovetux » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #117

dontreact wrote: post #18

This is the first instance I've seen of the tech industry calling for regulation. I admire this and the idea that people running a corporation can understand that despite their best intentions, in the long run the corporation will act to maximize profit via legal means, even if an action is not in the best interest of society. And so in some cases we need to make certain things illegal. I would love to see a company…

Adding new regulations for emerging technologies can reduce uncertainty. Why invest in something if you don't know if the government will curtail it in the future?

The idea is to be established in the field before regulation. That way you can lead the conversation around regulation which would, in effect, cement your continued relevance.

Re: Facial recognition: It’s time for action

#250

Post by Nasrudith » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

daveheq wrote: post #195

benwerd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This stands in stark contrast to the meeting I attended on Tuesday with Amazon's general counsel regarding their Rekognition service. And I think that cuts to the core of this: this is an anti-Amazon move. Nonetheless, I do also think it's a pro-consumer, pro-civil liberties stance. It's also a recognition that the tide is turning with respect to consumers and privacy; here, Microsoft is getting ahead of this chang…

Why do we always wait until it's too late and the repurcussions almost unbearable to put in any common-sense preventions to abusive technology or practices?

You can't meaningfully regulate for specific things before they exist for one. Trying to do so prematurely would result in nonsense that would only hold us all back. Not to mention matters of enforcibility.

Facial recognition's biggest abuses are from the fox watching the hen-house. "Common sense" would lead to such absurdities like banning using it on cops because "everybody knows criminals could use it to track them" while using it on every protester because "they might be terrorists" despite both known truths being complete bullshit.