Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 102 posts

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#41

Post by rqs »

F_r_k wrote: post #36
dmos62 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example? Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. I think ML is g…

> how to control your stance or manner Quite "easy". Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. You'll behave differently > Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. That was never proven. Please cite a (good) source or I'll take it to be false

Time to bring up this educational video: https://youtu.be/JASUsVY5YJ8?t=280

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#42

Post by Inu »

sveme wrote: post #18

Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. Normal people without any criminal, terrorist or activist intentions will be victims of this massive surveill…

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that.

But if the system is not able to assign a face to a specific identity, it might immediately mark them as "suspicious". You'd have to bypass the system by really putting on the appearance of a face within the database.

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#43

Post by dmos62 »

F_r_k wrote: post #36
dmos62 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example? Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. I think ML is g…

> how to control your stance or manner Quite "easy". Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin. You'll behave differently > Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. That was never proven. Please cite a (good) source or I'll take it to be false

> Please cite a source.

I can't, though I think you could argue about it deductively.

> That was never proven.

I guess you can't provide a source either :)

> Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin.

If someone you know well did that, would you be able to differentiate his limp from someone else's? I am sure you could. I think it's intuitive that our "limp" betrays features of our normal behaviour.

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#44

Post by dmos62 »

odessacubbage wrote: post #33
dmos62 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example? Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. I think ML is g…

a wheelchair seems like an easy bypass, albeit one with very specific use.

I can see all subversives having wheelchairs in not-so-distant future.

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#45

Post by titzer »

sveme wrote: post #18

Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. Normal people without any criminal, terrorist or activist intentions will be victims of this massive surveill…

> There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology

I wanna see someone successfully circumvent scent-based tracking. A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old. Imagine a network of 100,000 passive scent trackers as sensitive as dog noses, hooked up to the same centralized AI and recognition system.

With a single high-confidence hit, they can localize you. If you're on foot, you're not getting very far in any reasonable time frame.

We don't stand a chance. Sitting ducks, as it were.

You just better hope to God (or the AI, apparently) you're never a target of this system, inadvertently or intentionally, because that race is over, and humans lost.

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#46

Post by Spare_account »

odessacubbage wrote: post #33
dmos62 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of walking for example? Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently. I think ML is g…

a wheelchair seems like an easy bypass, albeit one with very specific use.

Crutches, gait-modifying shoes, roller-skates

There are lots of options

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#47

Post by sbhn »

It doesn’t matter if it works or not. What matters is that the presence of surveillance creates an impression that you are in some sort of danger, and the syphoning of public money in the name of security is justified and can continue to happen with minimal scrutiny

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#48

Post by liftbigweights »

sbhn wrote: post #47

It doesn’t matter if it works or not. What matters is that the presence of surveillance creates an impression that you are in some sort of danger, and the syphoning of public money in the name of security is justified and can continue to happen with minimal scrutiny

Also it creates an overbearing psychological impact on people like big brother's telescreens in 1984. Slavery is freedom.

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#49

Post by dsfyu404ed »

titzer wrote: post #45
sveme wrote: post #18

Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to avoid that. Normal people without any criminal, terrorist or activist intentions will be victims of this massive surveill…

> There might be a race between the recognition software and the circumvention technology I wanna see someone successfully circumvent scent-based tracking. A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old. Imagine a network of 100,000 passive scent trackers as sensitive as dog noses, hooked up to the same centralized AI and recogniti…

>A dog has a sense of smell a million times more sensitive than a human and can track people over miles, even when a trail is days old.

Dogs don't work very well in urban areas and there's plenty of tricks to throw dogs off your trail.

Re: Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears

#50

Post by isostatic »

philliphaydon wrote: post #19
anoncoward111 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet crime still does occur, and lifestyle choices are severely punished by jail, death, loss of career and loss of residency. And by lifestyle choices I mean being gay, smoking weed, or being Malay. I would quite literally live in any Chinese city before chosing Singapore. At least China would be cheaper.

There are many openly gay people in Singapore. I'm glad weed is banned, as is every other drug. Malay people are not stigmatized in Singapore. I would quite literally live in any Asian country before choosing any Western country. But hey, each to their own right?

> I would quite literally live in any Asian country before choosing any Western country.

You'd choose North Korea over Sweden?

Post reply on HN