> security (home/building/car entry, detecting suspicious individuals, known terrorists, past offenders, restraining orders)

So now we literally destroy the lives of anyone who has ever committed a crime in the past. Imagine a world where every single store refuses you entry because you stole something years ago.

That’s the other thing that doesn’t get mentioned more in these discussion. Governments can be bad actors and suppress citizens like how China is doing right now, no guarantee your own country won’t use it to suppress citizens who they don’t agree with.

Sounds like they'd be leaving a lot of money on the table. More likely these people would be able to shop at retailers that took that into account and took appropriate precautions. People refuse to do business with people for reasons that are much dumber or more cynical than "has previously ripped off a similar business."

So we pass a law to prohibit that.

Passing laws like that is usually seen as "weak on crime" and is unpopular with politicians.

Because corporations and governments always follow the laws they write and laws never get repealed and overridden.

The fourth amendment already has a bunch of exceptions to it, and the constitution is the highest legal framework in the land. Other laws mean diddly.

Laws are a high latency side-chain of power and authority.

That doesn't mean they are completely useless.

I'm not sure anyone is proposing that laws are _entirely_ useless. But it a tech is powerful enough, any abuse at all has potential for widespread negative effects. In the US, we've already seen post-9/11 how laws are side-stepped, trampled or quietly ignored even by well-meaning actors. Plus, getting laws in place is _hard_. Much of the public doesn't care enough to make noise about this kind of tech until it has already been abused (and sometimes not even then). None of this is meant as an argument against your position per se; just counter-point.

If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend reading 1984. I'm sure you read it in high school or whatever, but actually read it as an adult.

Definitely a good idea. But the problem is that it's gone down the memory hole, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am... . It's a bit scary how much of it has been happening, and it's not been completely that either; there's a lot of elements from the other side of the picture. Typically espoused by Brave New World.

I wonder if the personality test Amazon has during the prelim-interview can detect if you've read such books in the past.

> I feel like there are clearly ways in which facial recognition can improve a lot of systems -- ticketing (think airports, sporting events, concerts etc); automated stores (like the amazon cashierless stores); payment (imagine not needing a wallet because the combination of your face, gait, and voice is enough to verify you); security (home/building/car entry, detecting suspicious individuals, known terrorists, past offenders, restraining orders)

I’m not even sure how facial recognition brings anything fundamentally different to the table in these examples: no airport will let you board only by facial recognition. Even payment is already super fast with contactless terminals, and credit card companies will never allow low fees billing by face recognition alone.

Every other low stake application already has a somewhat fast biometric option that didn’t take off because people just don’t want biometric databases of them (either by just being too lazy to opt in and give the info, either by clear opinion)

I would quibble with your basic premise of facial recognition improving these things or even if these things are worthy goals. At least from my personal and selfish interest I don't perceive any improvement offered for myself or society. From a perspective of a shareholder/interested-party looking to maximize X via Z then yeah it makes sense.

If it came with absolutely no downsides, of course it would be awesome if a subway could identify and charge you just by walking in. Or an Uber. Or a grocery store. It’s the perverse abuses of such technology by the government or advertising companies that makes it dystopian.

Honestly even if the tech were magically perfect I think the maximum benefit is pretty small. Pulling out my wallet to pay for something or show my id only takes a handful of seconds and it's a routine action with minimal cognitive load. Plus it has the benefit of me knowing exactly what's happening with the transaction. I can decide on the spot to use a different card for whatever reason and I know precisely when a transaction is taking place.

I'm sure the automatic charges described here would be loved by corporations, which would try to find ever more clever ways to manipulate people into making even easier impulse buys.

Indeed, convenience at all costs is a curse that's driving towards 1984. The destination of this absurdity is why even bother thinking if someone else can do it for you...

Cars are a device of personal freedom that you can own and operate yourself

Facial recognition tech is a device of surveillance owned by governments and large corporations that do not enable greater individual freedom, at best a few convenience benefits at worst total restriction

“payment (imagine not needing a wallet because the combination of your face, gait, and voice is enough to verify you)“

If it can be done from a distance, this is bone chilling to me. A company could use this to literally extract money from someone’s bank account.

I agree with the rest of your sentiment though.

Whats the big deal to not carry a wallet? It’s not the convenience I’d swap for privacy. If you imagine where this could go wrong it becomes easier to just stick to the wallet. Even to cash.

It seems to fall under the quiet assumption that technology advances and automation are inherently good, and that manual processes and analogue things are inefficient and undesirable.

We don't even do the whole 'should we' evaluation because it is assumed it will happen anyway somehow and we'll figure out the rules after the fact.

They'll just break the laws and pay the fine.