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Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @08:26AM (#28491414)
Ubiquitous facial recognition is inevitable. Governments that are prohibited by law from tracking faces and locations/times will just buy it from private companies, like has happened with automated license plate readers on tow trucks.

It is pointless to argue about legislation at this point. We have to assume governments and corporations will have this data. The only mitigation is to limit the overall power of governments and corporations.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by colechristensen on Saturday September 11, 2021 @08:42AM (#28491526)
It really isn’t pointless. Building, selling, or possessing facial recognition products or data obtained could easily be made illegal or extremely restricted.

We need to build an expectation of public privacy concept where everyone has the right to go about their public lives with only human levels of tracking, recognition, and memories. That is being seen and remembered a short while is acceptable, having every move recorded and attributed to me is not.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @08:55AM (#28491600)
How could it easily be restricted? As long as people or corporations are allowed to sell timestamped, geostamped photos and videos, the aggregation can be done.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by rt4mn on Saturday September 11, 2021 @10:24AM (#28492207)
Just because something can be technically done does not mean that we cant impose restrictions that make it to costly to use except in the most constrained and extreme circumstances.

This is an oversimplification of a complicated story, but a great example is when the NSA stopped doing mass phone / text analysis because of the additional regulatory burdens imposed by the USA Freedom Act. The NSA contends that the data is still useful, but also that the difficulties of complying with the law make it not worth it.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:07AM (#28492548)
I am not understanding how you get to possible restrictions.

How could I, as a private citizen or owner of a property be prevented from selling photos/videos with timestamps and geostamps?

How could a company be prevented from buying and aggregating that data (even in other jurisdictions)?

How could an end user be prevented from buying aggregated data as the cost plummets?

Do you really think the NSA is not buying all available data sets?

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by pope_meat on Saturday September 11, 2021 @02:44PM (#28494640)
Probably the same way you're prevented from selling CP, and fully automatic fire arms out of your home? It won't stop it 100%, but it certainly has an effect.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @02:51PM (#28494710)
Would you eliminate sales of Internet-connected security cameras? Or just the sale of the data they collect? I am trying to understand how you think this is a genie that can be rebottled.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mLuby on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:37PM (#28495143)
Banning individual product classes is a sure-fire way to keep regulators forever playing catch-up with industry.

Most ideal: make personal data a massive business liability, such that personal data is rarely even collected, let alone stored. This is much more possible than people believe (even making exceptions for current regulations like KYC). Does the local pizza place need to know anything more than my order, where to deliver it, and that the money arrived in their account?‡ Does a hotel or airline need anything other than a confirmation code to hand over the room key or seat? And yes, this may kill off or force pivots from businesses that exist today solely to spy on us—that's the point!

Only okay: personal data isn't shared or sold to third parties. Businesses can collect data on their own users, but it can't leak beyond the corp firewall or else big penalties come into play. Only okay because leaks are almost mathematically inevitable, so there will be constant lobby pressure to relax regulations, or enforcement thereof.

Not good: personal data can be collected, retained, and sold by basically all companies, and the penalties for unintentionally disclosing those data are just slaps on the wrist. At least it can't get much worse though, right? Right??

Businesses will adapt to any set of regulations—it's up to us citizens to demand the laws we want.

‡But what about remembering your favorite orders, or saving customers time by not entering their info for each new order? One options is to let them bookmark the page, so their device can get back to it easily.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:50PM (#28495266)
I am not arguing for any laws. I am saying that I don't see how any legislation will stop this technology from being used to identify and track people.

We saw how eager people were to install Google Analytics on their websites. They don't care what they do to their users.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by pope_meat on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:02PM (#28494833)
It's worth trying to get at least some of the genie back in the bottle. The laws against CP and automatic fire arms aren't 100% effective either, but that doesn't mean we abandon the idea of trying to regulate the activity completely, does it?
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:48PM (#28495241)
I am not arguing it would not be worthwhile to try. I argued that this data being collected and aggregated is inevitable. I still have not read a convincing reply otherwise. The ALPR data market is a perfect example of where we are heading.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by acover on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:23AM (#28492712)
How can you be prevented from murder? How was private ownership of gold illegal for decades? How was a farmer growing hay to feed their own horses illegal?

The government has pretty wide reaching powers.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @12:08PM (#28493084)
I still have not heard a realistic way these capabilities would be limited. Ordinary consumers and corporations will have this technology. It will continue to get cheaper. How would governments not have it?

The same people who sold browsing data to advertisers have this technology.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by rhn_mk1 on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:18AM (#28492660)
The problem of preventing the transfer of uncomfortable data has already been tackled by copyright.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:22AM (#28492703)
Please elaborate. There are many markets for buying and selling photos and other data.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by rhn_mk1 on Sunday September 12, 2021 @02:30AM (#28499047)
Copyright is a law that by design prevents the selling or buying or other transfer of some data, and it even sometimes works (black markets notwithstanding).

If your goal is to restrict the transfer of some other kind of data, copyright is already a legal and practical framework that had tackled the same problems, and offers solutions.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Sunday September 12, 2021 @04:22PM (#28504540)
Copyright protects intellectual property. It does not protect those captured in photos taken by others. Trademark law maybe would work here. Is that what you meant?
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by matheusmoreira on Saturday September 11, 2021 @02:16PM (#28494357)
NSA cares about laws?
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by only_as_i_fall on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:32PM (#28493892)
Many states have two party consent laws that make it illegal to record private conversations without consent even in a public place. I fail to see how the same thing couldn't be done with video.

Of course finding the political will to restrict things like security cameras is a different matter, but I don't think it'd it'd case that we couldn't write effective laws to prevent this.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:49PM (#28494056)
As I wrote, we are already seeing this. Tow truck companies sell ALPR data to aggregators. Ring and Amazon are collecting security camera data. Please explain what legislation you would propose.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by colechristensen on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:28PM (#28495071)
Write data privacy laws which apply to surveillance cameras which require commercial entities to disclose what information is being collected, how it is being shared with provisions banning certain kinds of collecting, sharing, and storage with regulatory fines, criminal penalties, and provisions enabling class action lawsuits for misuse or other banned disclosures.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:47PM (#28495224)
Disclosure is insufficient to prevent aggregation. The same kind of people who sold browsing data to advertisers are selling this data. If you do not want to be tracked, you have to get those around you to not provide the data.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by colechristensen on Saturday September 11, 2021 @04:11PM (#28495449)
That would be why i listed many things more than disclosure.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @04:23PM (#28495561)
I misunderstood. Would you eliminate Facebook and the existing ALPR data aggregators? I am wondering how such restrictions would be possible.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by colechristensen on Saturday September 11, 2021 @06:29PM (#28496685)
You would come up with a decent legal definition of a surveillance camera with a distinction from a person taking pictures. You would add disclosure provisions, if an observed person could reasonably be expected to see and make a choice (say entering a business) there would be one set of rules, when a person couldn’t see a notice or make a choice (say a camera on a vehicle) there would be much more restrictive rules.

You would make it a crime to violate the rules but administered like and possible to sue in civil court for victims. The crime would be on the owner/operator of the camera and special provisions would be added for storage providers.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Sunday September 12, 2021 @04:21PM (#28504531)
Would that prevent Facebook from doing recognition on photos of strangers taken by users? Would that make existing ALPR aggregators illegal?

Yes, we can imagine some set of laws that would make the aggregation impossible. I don't see how they could be effectively created and enforced.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by MeinBlutIstBlau on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:01AM (#28492505)
>could easily be made illegal or extremely restricted.

What bunker do you live in?

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by colechristensen on Saturday September 11, 2021 @03:24PM (#28495042)
This is an inappropriate comment for HN.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by humanistbot on Saturday September 11, 2021 @09:32AM (#28491833)
> Governments that are prohibited by law from tracking faces and locations/times will just buy it from private companies, like has happened with automated license plate readers on tow trucks.

Because of this, the current battles that many anti-surveillance activists are fighting is in procurement and vendor/contractor policies, mostly at the city and county levels. Lots of West Coast cities and counties (Santa Clara, Oakland, Seattle, San Diego) have enacted all kinds of new bureaucratic hurdles on any public funds used to pay for surveillance. These include requiring RFPs with open competitive bidding, public hearings, testing and certification that it actually works with an acceptable false positive rate, and approval in a public vote by the city/county council.

The Nation has a good overview of this shift in tactics, which is also opposed by some progressives who take a more abolitionist stance to surveillance and say that they don't want it to be legitimized if it passes all the bureaucratic hurtles: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/mass-surveillance-...

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @09:53AM (#28491991)
I respect the intent behind these efforts. I just don't see how they will prevent ubiquitous surveillance.

Imagine this possible near future: Many property owners have installed smart doorbells and security systems with cameras. The data is being fed into aggregation systems and sold, just like clicks today. I can subscribe to an app on my phone for a few dollars a month (below the limit required to get formal approval in most organizations) that shows me where a face has been seen.

How will this not happen?

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by 542458 on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:00AM (#28492493)
I don’t see why we couldn’t pass a law that says that the government can’t use $technology_x, and that this applies to government contractors and services purchased by the government or used by government employees acting in their professional capacity.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:11AM (#28492590)
What technology would you prohibit?

If a police officer can look up a suspect on Facebook, why couldn't he use one of many other services that are aggregating data?

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by only_as_i_fall on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:38PM (#28493943)
Your attitude on this doesn't make any sense to me.

A single man can record videos yes, but they can't record millions of videos and aggregate them into a searchable database. For that you need larger groups of people and a significant amount of infrastructure. You could absolutely limit the ability to do this without having to outlaw cameras or social media or anything like that.

Are you making some blanket assumption that laws can't have an impact on private businesses? Because that's clearly not true.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:56PM (#28494131)
No, I am not making a blanket assumption that we cannot have laws. I don't see how we can make collection and aggregation of data illegal, at least in the United States. Maybe it is possible in more authoritarian cultures, but those are the ones who will use it the most.

Databases of aggregated ALPR data exist and have economic value. Facebook exists and aggregates data. Can you elaborate on what kind of law you think should exist to prevent that?

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by only_as_i_fall on Saturday September 11, 2021 @10:03PM (#28497978)
How about a law preventing you from tracking a person's location without their consent? What's wrong with that?

Most laws depend on the concept of intent already so its not like you would have to outlaw security cameras or anything to enforce.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Sunday September 12, 2021 @04:19PM (#28504514)
That would make current ALPR databases illegal. Do you think that is possible?
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by only_as_i_fall on Sunday September 12, 2021 @05:37PM (#28505234)
Yes.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by 542458 on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:21AM (#28492696)
I mean, you could ban “systems who’s primary purpose is to aggregate personal data on non-criminals” (please don’t nitpick the phrasing, I’m obviously not a lawyer) or something similar. I’m not sure why people are acting like this is an unsolvable problem - patent lawyers can write descriptions of fairly vague technological systems that hold up in court.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:42AM (#28492863)
I am genuinely interested how this can be prevented. I don't see how it can. We are not far away from people having eyeglasses that are able to upload photos and download aggregated data. Everyone in your field of vision will have a dossier. It won't just be governments using this. It won't require some prior written permission. The same people that sold browsing data to advertisers will have this technology.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by landemva on Saturday September 11, 2021 @12:05PM (#28493059)
Remove the funding.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @12:12PM (#28493114)
Please elaborate. What funding? Every cop can buy a smartphone.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by 542458 on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:29PM (#28493866)
Every school teacher can buy a baseball bat, but we don’t act like it’s a given that teachers will beat students with baseball bats.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:50PM (#28494066)
I don't see how that explains a way to prevent anyone from using facial recognition technology.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by landemva on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:02PM (#28493589)
Reduce your contributions to government. This thread is about government.

Anyone can personally purchase whatever they desire.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @01:18PM (#28493748)
That is exactly what I wrote. Any government official/employee will be able to use this technology. If you are proposing some kind of libertarian non-government, that would be consistent with my original statement that the only way to limit this is to limit government.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by alexashka on Saturday September 11, 2021 @02:40PM (#28494589)
> The only mitigation is to limit the overall power of governments and corporations.

Why is this the only mitigation?

By the way, who is going to limit the overall power and who is going to limit the power of those limiting the power and why? :)

At the end of the day it's people making decisions. The best way to have them making better decisions, is having more of them having a view of the world that reflects reality.

More reality, less bullshit -> better outcomes. Pretty simple.

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @02:52PM (#28494715)
I don't think anyone will successfully limit these systems. That is why it is inevitable.
Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by inspector-g on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:05AM (#28492537)
> like has happened with automated license plate readers on tow trucks.

Do you have any good links that provide more info on this?

Re:Facial recognition technology: How to opt out at the airport by mcculley on Saturday September 11, 2021 @11:08AM (#28492563)