China’s facial-recognition systems crunch data from cameras to monitor citizens

Re:China’s facial-recognition systems crunch data from camer... by Spooky23 on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @12:23PM (#14646795)

You're being naive. Pervasive LPR and facial recognition technology has been publicly acknowledged and broadly deployed on highways and chokepoints like bridges. I'm sure that pedestrian monitoring has been deployed in facilities like airports and places like Manhattan, although I don't recall seeing any reporting on the topic.

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.

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Re:China’s facial-recognition systems crunch data from camer... by blackbagboys on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @12:36PM (#14646910)

You seem to make three points:

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.

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Re:China’s facial-recognition systems crunch data from camer... by Spooky23 on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @02:58PM (#14648182)

Without a legal or moral framework that protects civil liberties, individual actors won't make consistently ethical choices because there is no penalty for making an unethical choice and no common understanding of what is or isn't ethical.

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.

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Re:China’s facial-recognition systems crunch data from camer... by marvin on Tuesday June 27, 2017 @04:53PM (#14649333)

London's Heathrow airport has facial recognition cameras everywhere before the border checkpoint. They consist of small turbine-shaped cameras mounted in the ceiling, with a rotating circle of LEDs designed to catch your attention and make you look directly at the camera.

I've forgotten the company name, but I googled it at the time and it was indeed a facial recognition hardware company.

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