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European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

politico.eu

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Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#81

Post by sentinel »

simion314 wrote: post #76
sentinel wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I think: - Google and Amazon etc won’t touch it cause it is bad PR - stores won’t buy it cause it’s bad PR; fear of boycotting etc. - physical retail is already on the decline; why spend money in a dying industry - the whole project would have one big flaw - people wearing masks

So if the masks will be here forever then this guys complaining they can't use face recognition anymore in public places do not know this or they are betting that masks will be gone soon.

Rephrase please.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#82

Post by atoav »

mrweasel wrote: post #66
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are opacity and complexity so often invoked as a reason here? I don’t want to be mass-profiling populations with totally clear and simple technologies, either.

Opacity because if you are detained by the police they should be able to tell you why. Many, if not all, AI solution based on a training sets will have a hard time telling you exactly why you where flagged. Also even if they can tell you that the AI believe that the combination of your ears and nose makes you look like some wanted person, what are you suppose to do about it?

Maybe we can develop AI that decides who has a criminal look based on the shape of the skull? /s

As someone living in Germany all these AI approaches have a distinct fascist flavour to them and remind me of my Nazi grandfather who claimed he "could just tell" our bosnian neighbours have "something criminal" in their blood.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#83

Post by ch4s3 »

spunker540 wrote: post #56

I’d be in favor of banning facial recognition as evidence used in trials, but still allowing it to aid in investigations. I.e let it help narrow down suspects when faced with grainy footage, but can’t be used to actually make a conviction.

Seems way too easy to abuse. At least in the US, police already use junk science to "place" people near the scene of a crime, and then prosecutors use circumstantial evidence to get convictions. Or worse yet, police will, in the US, probably use this to get plea deals. I guess many EU countries don't have plea bargains through?

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#84

Post by yholio »

smarx007 wrote: post #13

No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.

They should ban facial recognition though, in all and every context where the owner of the face has not given explicit consent. Nothing good can come of it.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#85

Post by bnralt »

noodlesUK wrote: post #9
bluecalm wrote: post #4

I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police ov…

> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognitio…

For some crimes you'd probably be able to drastically lower penalties. If there's a 100% chance a shoplifter is going to get caught when they leave the store, then just making them return the stolen goods would be enough. Harsh penalties are partly the result of an inability to apprehend people (using the fear of harsh penalties to compensate for the low chance of being caught).

It also seems likely that more surveillance will result in fewer innocent people convicted, not more. Anecdotally, every case I've read about that had video surveillance and involved innocent people were arrested, the video surveillance ended up being what exonerated them.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#86

Post by bko »

Closi wrote: post #58
bko wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing I don't get what this means. If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies?

> If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? It depends - These models are often non-transparent in terms of how they calculate, so what if the AI/model decides/calculate that a higher percentage of minorities in an area is a high predictor of crime, thus indirectly creates a policy…

> It depends - These models are often non-transparent in terms of how they calculate, so what if the AI/model decides/calculate that a higher percentage of minorities in an area is a high predictor of crime, thus indirectly creates a policy that, for instance, areas with high levels of ethnic minorities require higher levels of policing or harsher restrictions (i.e. curfews, more CCTV e.t.c.).

It's pretty simple to make the models transparent. Just select the inputs you want the model to have access to. You shouldn't be feeding your model the percentage of minorities in an area.

What's not transparent is how humans make decisions. You can't tell a human to consider only these characteristics but not these others ones.

> If it's just a basic 'well murders happen between these hours on this street so we will put a police officer there' then of course that should happen, but that's not really policing based on AI/ML, it's just based on basic statistics.

I don't see how you make a meaningful separation between the two. Either you can use predictive models or not. It's hard to carve out "use predictive models but not too predictive". The more likely scenario is just not using any model and distributing police resources uniformly regardless of need.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#87

Post by bko »

tsegers wrote: post #59
bko wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing I don't get what this means. If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies?

Using basic statistical methods to determine effective policies can result in policies that a lot of people would consider unfair and unethical.

Can you elaborate?

For instance, I lived in an area where there was a lot of bike thefts. Everyone knew it and police got a lot of bike theft reports (it was in the statistics). I would like to see more police enforcement to deter bike thefts. I think its unethical to ignore the needs of a neighborhood when allocating police resources.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#88

Post by throwawaysea »

I don't understand why so many cities and other jurisdictions are trying to ban facial recognition. It's a tool, like anything else. We make policing easier by letting the police department have access to plumbed city water, electricity, computers, cars, and so on. Facial recognition is a way for them to work more efficiently and effectively.

In Seattle, we've had rampant property crime to the point where people don't even bother reporting a lot of it anymore because the insurance deductibles and lack of consequences for thieves makes the effort a depressing waste of time. Unfortunately, without deterrents, most people expect crime will continue and likely get worse. This isn't the fault of the police department - Seattle has less than half the number of active officers per capita compared to other large US cities. So they can't afford to investigate property crimes, let alone locate suspects and bring them to justice.

Having facial recognition as an available tool would help with that. It means the police can be dispatched to the location of a suspect and bring them to justice, instead of letting them continue consequence-free, or relying on dumb luck to stumble upon a suspect. False positive matches can be mitigated trivially by having a human in the loop. Does that mean the overall matching process is perfect? No, but it never can be, and perfect is the enemy of good. We need deterrents to crime and real consequences if we want to ensure a safe society, which is the most basic expectation taxpayers have. If facial recognition is regulated, I hope they don't go overboard, like requiring evidence of a crime (through surveillance footage) to run a search, or something to that effect.

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#89

Post by clairity »

bko wrote: post #53
smarx007 wrote: post #13

No, EU parliament is not calling for a ban on facial rec. They are proposing to: forbid using it indiscriminately in public places and to forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing.

> forbid the use of any AI/ML in predictive policing I don't get what this means. If you use basic statistical methods and realize that murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours and adjust your police force accordingly, is this bad? Shouldn't police use basic statistical methods in determining effective policies?

> “…murders are more likely to occur in this location between these hours…”

you’re on the wrong track if murders (and the like) are the crimes you’re targeting. murders, while horrific, are a tiny and very localized danger. the crimes we need to be policing more actively happen around money and power (mass surveillance, corruption, etc.), which are far too common and have broad, highly externalized, and surreptitious effects.

i’d heartily support (heavy-handedly, even) applying any and all such techniques on (so-called) white-collar crimes. in contrast, social norming in communities (like not murdering) should be convivial rather than adversarial, as that’s much more effective (as evidenced by how little murder actually happens).

Re: European Parliament Calls for a Ban on Facial Recognition

#90

Post by throwawaysea »

nitrogen wrote: post #73
atoav wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a free society is a finely tuned balance between state power and individual freedom, and the pendulum is on the far side of state power since 9/11 anyways. The same thing that can be used to find perpetrators in minor crimes can also be used to trace political movements, that any given government happens to dislike. IMO there are certain uncertaintiws that any free society has to accept. One of those is that…

If a shopkeeper submits footage of a crime to the police, the police should be able to keep it as evidence. What's problematic is proactive gathering and aggregation of footage by police or by corporations.

Why is that problematic? Individuals are allowed to capture photos and footage in public spaces, and there isn't an expectation of privacy there. I don't see why capturing footage is a problem - without that the cost to actually apprehend a criminal is so high that we might as well not have laws for many crimes.
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