[HN Gopher] Your face is not a bar code: arguments against autom...
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Your face is not a bar code: arguments against automatic face
recognition (2001)
Author : panic
Score : 96 points
Date : 2021-09-24 08:27 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pages.gseis.ucla.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (pages.gseis.ucla.edu)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Two things come to mind. The first is some old humorous TV
| commercial where they had barcodes on your forehead and one
| didn't want to scan properly and the bank clerk or cashier was
| running this person's face repeatedly over the scanner.
|
| The second is a historical incident that led to old "biometrics"
| being replaced with fingerprints as our default for
| identification. I've read about it previously and found this as
| the top result when doing a quick search (I will not vouch for
| its quality -- it is just evidence I am not making it up, plus
| enough info that you can go look for more if you find it
| interesting and want to know more).
|
| _How Look-Alike Leavenworth Prisoners Led To The Forensic Use Of
| Fingerprinting_
|
| https://www.kcur.org/show/central-standard/2015-12-15/how-lo...
|
| The early part of the article makes the distinction between
| "unobjectionable" uses -- such as for secure facilities -- and
| facial recognition in public. And it seems to me we are leaving
| out some important things when we discuss such things.
|
| We are not talking about how our historical social norms and laws
| were rooted in a social reality that no longer exists. The world
| has changed radically in a short period of time and there are
| both upsides and downsides.
|
| Historically, people lived in relatively small groups of close
| knit people. Tribes. Small towns. Etc.
|
| We mostly interacted with people we knew fairly well. This both
| provided some baseline security and also could be a prison from
| which you could not readily escape. Once labeled a "troublemaker"
| you would have a hard time living it down. People could easily
| frame you as the guilty party based on social expectation that it
| was typical behavior for you to do X.
|
| It was hard to leave your place of origin and go elsewhere but if
| you could, you could potentially start over. Butch Cassidy and
| the Sundance Kid might have successfully started over had they
| genuinely left their life of crime behind entirely after moving
| to South America. But they relapsed and it did not end well.
|
| https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-01-19-19970191...
|
| We have statutes of limitations on various crimes because we have
| this idea historically that if enough time passes, you should not
| be held responsible for stupid mistakes you made in your youth.
| People can change, if they are given the chance to change.
|
| It's complicated because it is human nature that if you make it
| too easy to get a pass for bad behavior, then you actively
| encourage bad behavior. But if you make it impossible to redeem
| yourself and start anew, then you give people no reason to bother
| to even try.
|
| One of the problems with trends like facial recognition is that
| we are veering increasingly towards a very unforgiving world
| where every little thing you do will haunt you forever and there
| will be records even if you might have forgotten the incident
| entirely.
|
| Yes, this is motivated in part by the fact that really terrible
| people like to look for the cracks in the system. They like to
| actively exploit loopholes. They will happily take the deal that
| they can get a free do-over without having to prove themselves
| only to keep doing terrible things because nothing is really
| stopping them.
|
| But hard cases make bad laws. Designing a world optimized to
| treat everyone like they are this worst case scenario causes a
| great many problems while solving relatively few.
|
| In a world with 8 billion people (roughly) and international
| passports required to go anywhere, etc. we are increasingly being
| painted into a corner individually and this will soon start to
| really come back to bite us, if it hasn't already. If nothing
| else, it makes it harder to migrate as one practical response to
| climate change making some areas less hospitable.
|
| We need to begin thinking more deeply and more broadly about the
| social context in which our laws and expectations developed, how
| the world has changed and how to find a path forward in this new
| reality that isn't overly paranoid, overly controlling, etc.
| dang wrote:
| One past thread:
|
| _Your Face Is Not a Bar Code (2003)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17939248 - Sept 2018 (29
| comments)
|
| Related from last month:
|
| _Phil Agre saw the dark side of the Internet 30 years ago_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28159708 - Aug 2021 (42
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28167703
| ftio wrote:
| Had my creepiest-ever encounter with face recognition recently.
|
| I was traveling home from our first international trip since The
| Before Times. The country we traveled from has a US Customs
| office in the airport. We walk up to the counter, look into the
| camera, and without having handed over my passport, the agent
| says my name.
|
| I know that I've given them my photo and that the search space
| for my match isn't huge (people on flights leaving in the next
| ~2-8 hours), but it absolutely freaked me out. I can't imagine it
| meaningfully makes us more secure, and it feels like the kind of
| thing that, to this article's point, could be trivially abused.
| gumby wrote:
| You weren't greeted as a convenience but as a form of
| intimidation.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Every point against facial recognition on the list is a point
| about how facial recognition systems materially relate to the
| individual or about particular technical faults of the system.
|
| All of which miss the point. The point of surveillance is the
| same as Bentham's original panopticon, that is to say discipline
| people by making them discipline themselves.
|
| surveillance isn't scary because of the literal cameras, it's
| scary because it makes people aware that they're being watched
| and thus it forces them to police themselves, _internally_.
|
| People would be better off to recognize and argue this very
| fundamental point about the psychological intent of surveillance,
| rather than having obscure discussions about the legality of
| consent or whether the system is 97% or 98% accurate or whatever.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I agree with this but it also misses the very material threats
| of surveillance. That is, citizen is actively monitored for
| behavior and besides the philosophical self policing aspect,
| they can face actual consequences. Surveillance is scary for
| both philosophical chilling effect as well as material
| consequences. Those who surveil can make up arbitrary laws to
| violate persons' right to liberty and pursuit of happiness.
| amelius wrote:
| > it's scary because it makes people aware that they're being
| watched and thus it forces them to police themselves,
| internally.
|
| People have been policing themselves since the invention of
| religion.
| moksly wrote:
| > The point of surveillance is the same as Bentham's original
| panopticon, that is to say discipline people by making them
| discipline themselves.
|
| If you want your opinion to change things, I recommend not
| going into the intend.
|
| I work in the public sector of Denmark, and we've increased our
| surveillance as much as everyone else. Often it happens after
| someone commits a crime. When a citizen assaulted on of our
| desk clerks, surveillance was stepped up to increase employee
| comfort. At no point during any of the pro-con discussions did
| anyone intentionally discuss or express any intent in terms of
| wanting to make our visiting citizens self-regulate. In fact
| the very opposite happened as it was brought up as a major
| concern, that we would deal with by hiding a of the additional
| cameras from view.
|
| I've been around the top decision makers for long enough to
| know exactly what would happen if they happened to read
| something along your thoughts. They would easily dismiss it,
| because they in fact had the exact opposite intend.
|
| If you want to make them listen, you need to focus much more on
| the result, which is exactly as you outline it. People start to
| self-regulate, and the negative consequences of this
| psychological response to being watched. Because that is the
| only way you'll get your message out without people dismissing
| you as a conspiracy theorist or fear monger.
| [deleted]
| black_13 wrote:
| But what about the children?
| mullingitover wrote:
| If we're going to outlaw automated facial recognition, which in
| general is better at recognizing faces than humans, we should
| release every person who is in prison because an eyewitness ID'd
| them.
| shapefrog wrote:
| All recognising people should be illegal
| kube-system wrote:
| As I understand, eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable.
| Although, it's valuable for convincing juries, because people
| _think_ it 's reliable.
| genewitch wrote:
| I was a witness to a crime that led to a short police chase
| and a police shooting, and I couldn't accurately describe
| which direction the car was facing when it passed me
| (reversing or forward).
|
| Up until that point I'd have thought I would be a reliable
| witness (I didn't, but this proved it definitively!)
| kube-system wrote:
| I actually have a very similar story. When I was younger, I
| was witness to a pretty bad car accident, and I gave them
| my information, and was later subpoenaed as a witness.
| Before going, I thought I had a pretty good recollection of
| the event -- it happened right in front of me. When I got
| there, I was also stumped by simple questions about which
| direction one of the cars was going.
|
| It was really eye-opening for me. Thinking about it is
| still kind of eerie. I remember the accident. I can see it
| in my head. But apparently the memory is not exactly
| correct.
| eric_h wrote:
| > which in general is better at recognizing faces than humans
|
| Big citation needed there...
|
| > we should release every person who is in prison because an
| eyewitness ID'd them.
|
| in spite of my previous statement this is not wrong if an
| eyewitness ID (from a stranger to the defendant) was the only
| thing that led to conviction
| IshKebab wrote:
| He's probably referring to the fact that AI is better than
| humans at telling if two photos are of the same person. But I
| agree that doesn't translate to being better at recognising
| faces in general.
|
| People might still be better at recognising faces they have
| learnt, and they might be worse in terms of percentage
| correctness, but have less bad failure modes.
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(page generated 2021-09-24 23:00 UTC)