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Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by zdragnar on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @07:25PM (#27375283)
> Warrants across the US are frequently approved on evidence as shaky as a single anonymous tip

Here is the crux of the problem. If facial recognition were good, then it would actually make things better. If it were bad, then it isn't making things substantially worse- if anything, it creates a track record which makes things like racial bias more obvious and auditable.

The real issue is that there isn't sufficient judicial oversight, nor recourse for when it fails.

Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by bob_roberts on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @07:32PM (#27375325)
> then it isn't making things substantially worse

At least in the United States, any encounter with law enforcement can potentially end in violence, so anything that makes it easier to get a questionable warrant will make things worse.

Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by zdragnar on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @10:09PM (#27376428)
As the parent post pointed out, questionable warrants are already supposedly trivial to get. This system, being more auditable as a single source rather than individual anonymous statements, means that it is far less likely to stick around if it consistently punts out bad matches.
Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by natch on Thursday June 03, 2021 @03:21AM (#27378132)
Why aren't you afraid of good matches? Good matches open up far more horrifying possibilities.
Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by natch on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @09:17PM (#27376067)
> then it would actually make things better.

If you are stuck living somewhere where music is illegal, and you happen to listen to some music on the sly and get caught by a perfect system, and punished, how is that better?

Better would be if people can live freely without having to worry about a perfect system tracking their every action.

There is no person alive on earth today who does not do things that would get them punished under the law of some government somewhere.

And you want the law enforcement systems to be perfect?

Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by zdragnar on Wednesday June 02, 2021 @10:07PM (#27376418)
No, I want them to be held accountable for when they are wrong, and the hypothetical example of a good facial recognition system removing human bias was an example of that, and could protect people from the other example the post I replied to, which was search warrants granted under a single unreliable source's statement.

Facial recognition isn't going to care that you procured illegally distributed copies of protected works (your ISP already does that anyway), so lets stop moving the goal posts. It is a reactive, not proactive system, and while I am not fully convinced that it is actually ready, I am also not buying the slippery slope nonsense.

Re:King County, WA bans facial recognition software by natch on Thursday June 03, 2021 @03:10AM (#27378068)
>isn't going to care that you procured illegally distributed copies of protected works

Sorry, I wasn't clear maybe, but somehow you misunderstood me.

I wasn't talking about pirated music.

I was pointing out that some regimes have laws that forbid listening to music, period.

Fixing bias doesn't help when all it does is help accurately catch innocent people who in fact were accurately detected to be doing innocent things, and punishes them for doing those innocent things because those innocent things are illegal in that country for no good reason.