It's already pervasive:
1998:"Face-recognition CCTV launched" http://www.independent.co.uk/news/face-recognition-cctv-laun...
2015: "A scheme widely used by UK stores to identify criminals is testing facial recognition technology, the BBC has learned." http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35111363
2016: "Retailers are increasingly using facial recognition technology to track your face. With an estimated 59% of UK fashion retailers doing it, is the anonymity of cities an outdated idea?" https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/03/revealed-faci...
2014: "UK, the world’s most surveilled state, begins using automated face recognition to catch criminals" https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186435-uk-the-worlds-mos...
2014: "CCTV cameras on Britain's roads capture 26 million images every day" https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/23/cctv-cameras...
2017: "New York plans to install vast system of facial recognition cameras that matches drivers licenses to social media accounts at bridges and tunnels " http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4167854/New-York-ins...
You can google for more, watch out for those black helicopters tonight.
Wow. Just, wow. And I agree: even governments that "don't want to do it" will be compelled to at the first horrific incident that could have been prevented with the technology. The only way to stop that from happening is to outlaw it. I simply don't believe there are very many Edward Snowdens in the world.
Personally I prefer safety. And I avoid showing myself over online for privacy concerns. But I do not call safety measure a poly to implement totalitarian government.
If you have a systematic approach to achieve safety and counter terrorism, without monitoring citizens, then please state it briefly. I personally have no idea how to prevent without close monitoring.
China is different, it has always been totalitarian. It's natural for the government to monitor citizens without much resistance. This is a statement, without value judgement.
Why shouldn't the burden be on the other side? Can you - can anyone - demonstrate that "close monitoring" actually makes it possible to prevent terrorism? That states will actually use it that way, when the threat of terror is so politically useful?
Because without making a strong case along those lines first, you can't even take the "I'll trade privacy for safety" position in good faith at all.
The 9/11 attackers were already subjects of surveillance when they attacked. The Boston Marathon bombers were already being closely monitored but were not stopped.
Disciplinarians, cops for example, have dreamed of omniscience since the dawn of time. The panopticon dates to the 1790s! Despite the fact that we come closer to a state of all-seeing every day, I'm not aware of any compelling evidence that it's actually turning out to be very useful to prevent violent crime or acts of terror.
edit: link on Italian anti-terrorist efforts: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/23/why-has-italy-...
Further debate on the SlateStarCodex subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6j8703/cult...
Clearly, terrorism is a symptom. Its cause is not bad people are not monitored, but they have various reason to think harm innocent people is the only way to advance their objectives.
Can anyone address such issues? Unlikely. History has shown that terrorism is seldom solved, they are extinguished, through escalation to war or complete annihilation of the weaker part.
Do I support monitoring? Not always. But if I am not feeling safe, I am OK to sacrifice some privacy and take some risk of being harmed by the government.
I am not saying you should agree with this, but that's my thoughts.
> Can you - can anyone - demonstrate that "close monitoring" actually makes it possible to prevent terrorism?
This way of reasoning seems fine, but really is just a way of showing me being using unfounded argument to support my claim. In reality, as I said, solving terrorism is not monitoring's job, but it makes me feel safe, because someone is doing something that can reduce the risk (not substantially).
Police live under a fundamental illusion that people can be divided into good or bad, ignoring the role of circumstances, ease of deniability and special pleading in how it actually goes down. Most of all with their own abuse of power.
Attack the root cause of the problem, namely alienation of youths [0] (Aarhus Model). These preventative systems of surveillance only foment opportunities for abuse.
[0] - http://psy.au.dk/fileadmin/Psykologi/Forskning/Preben_Bertel...
It's incumbent upon all of us to apply that pressure and work to maintain that decentralization. It's especially incumbent upon technologists to a) refuse to develop or implement these types of systems and b) develop counter-measures.
Decentralization isn't as protective as you might think, as most capital funding for this type of public safety infrastructure comes from Federal grants.
Technologists have no professional ethical duties, licensure or other reasons to behave ethically. It's unrealistic to assume that individuals will choose some vague ethical position over money.
a) Western municipalities have deployed similar systems, albeit with massively significant differences in use case
b) Western political structures aren't perfect
c) the professional ethical obligations of technologists have yet to be codified
I'm certainly in agreement with you on all of these points, but I'm unclear on your argument. Is it just that many talented people will happily contribute to building a nightmarishly repressive socio-technical apparatus if the money is good enough? Again, no disagreement there, the article itself, and the many other stories on HN related to the shenanigans of Western security agencies, is ample proof of that.
If you ask a CPA or Attorney to do something contrary to their professional code of ethics, they will typically tell you "no" -- their livelihood is at stake.
The grey areas in IT are much broader and more situational. Is pervasive surveillance to protect citizens from terrorists unethical? Is it unethical to automatically police jaywalking? Is it unethical for me to use facial recognition to identify people approaching my home? There is no right answer to these questions.
I've forgotten the company name, but I googled it at the time and it was indeed a facial recognition hardware company.
Yes, US is more democratic and power is more decentralized, but without guardians or more awareness from the citizens, it's easily a slippery slope. Think UK and Theresa May. All Powers want more power.
Keep in mind, this necessarily includes not building those types of systems for their own use either.
Once a private entity has collected some juicy data, the government gets roll up and say "I'll help myself to some of that." And at that point the company has also preemptively conceded the vast majority of principled opposition to government use of such systems by exploiting them for commercial reasons.
this wouldn't defeat something like gait detection though: http://www.geradts.com/html/Documents/gait.htm
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528835-600-cameras-... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3925574/ [3] http://www.ai.mit.edu/research/abstracts/abstracts2001/visio...
1. A character in a Cory Doctorow novel does this for the same reason.I can't remember which novel though.
In addition to trying to protect the privacy of citizens, we should also be trying to make our government as transparent as possible. Ideally, the people would have the government under surveillance more closely than the government has the people under surveillance.
> (especially since this is not really considered a crime)
The seed is already planted: it is ok to display the face of a citizen, as long as he's a criminal. No debate about what kinds of public need does supersede the privacy rights of the individual citizen, or what kind of crimes would justify this kind of behavior from the part of the government. It is all "rulebreakers brought this on themselves" nowadays.
All they have to do now is to lower (or I'd say, keep lowering) the threshold; jaywalking is right around the corner.
Whether you display them publicly or not, if they broke the law, they should be punished. We can't live in some magical limbo situation where we simultaneously have laws and not enforce them most of the time. I.e.: If the tech is there to apply the laws that have currently been "agreed" by the public, then there should be no question or overriding factors to consider.
Talk of privacy and "individual rights" is just distracting fluff in that context. We've already decided that certain actions merit punishment. We're just now upset that the coming omnipotent presence of surveillance can actually make us adhere to the things we've been whacking other people over the head with. You know, the ones that "got caught" doing it.
Either that, or simply start repealing all these non-sense laws that we don't actually want to punish people for. The third alternative is a gigantic mess of exceptions and "buts" that want to enable us to eat our surveillance cake, and sometimes keep it. Make no mistake, that is exactly what the "privacy" folks are advocating for. More bureaucracy.