[HN Gopher] European Parliament calls for ban on facial recognition
___________________________________________________________________
European Parliament calls for ban on facial recognition
Author : maxwell
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-04-24 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| xapata wrote:
| How would banning facial recognition databases work? Would there
| be a limit to the variety of photographs one can have? To the
| metadata one could associate with them? What would happen if a
| general image and video recognition module for a robot began to
| recognize different people? This seems like a slippery slope to
| me.
| hooverd wrote:
| Presumably, you couldn't sell them or offer third party facial
| recognition services or deploy facial recognition systems in
| your stores. You could probably try and be coy and "well,
| actually" your way out of it, but the courts generally don't
| like that.
| Daishiman wrote:
| It isn't. As with everything, intent, records and lawyers will
| sort it out.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| [flagged]
| powera wrote:
| (2021)
| retrocryptid wrote:
| It's nice to ban random facial recognition, but it's still a non-
| binding resolution. And I'm sure European cops would get around
| it the same way we get around it here in the states: just use a
| corporate / commercial entity as an intermediate.
| kolinko wrote:
| I may be wrong, but I think EU already has a soft ban on
| private entities doing facial recognition in public.
|
| Even if it hadn't, if a government entity is banned from doing
| something, it doesn't matter if it's hiring employees or
| contractors to do it - I think that is the spirit of the law in
| EU. In US it's obviously different.
| seydor wrote:
| It's a resolution aka thoughts and prayers.
|
| At the same time that the same parliament is outlawing encryption
|
| I wouldn't do that with a straight face
| jabradoodle wrote:
| I see almost no value in companies deploying facial recognition
| software at will, and lots of room for abuse. It's a shame that
| while the EU is considering banning facial recognition they are
| mandating it for non EU residents to enter the region.
|
| https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-...
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder how some cases work then. Like passport controls. That
| to my understanding look like biometrics and facial recognition.
| przemub wrote:
| Excluded from the ban.
| Animats wrote:
| Strange. The EU wants to prohibit facial recognition, which
| humans can still do, but wants backdoors into encryption. I'd
| rather allow facial recognition in public places but have
| communications privacy.
| hooverd wrote:
| We could prohibit facial recognition in public and backdoors
| into encryption. Also, humans can't do facial recognition at
| scale.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| And humans are error prone and their memories can fade very
| fast.
|
| But even a comparison really...
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Different players in the EU push for different things. Some
| people in the commission push for surveillance tools. Some
| people in the parliament push for privacy.
| type0 wrote:
| And the parlament is mostly toothless, it's usefull to
| provide us plebs a spectacle of democracy
| fwlr wrote:
| The article mentions the AI Act and claims it "restricts the use
| of remote biometric identification -- including facial
| recognition technology -- in public places unless it is to fight
| "serious" crime, such as kidnappings and terrorism", which I am
| afraid seems rather hollow as that is basically how it is already
| used.
|
| I'm not sure whether it's the reporting that's confused or the
| politicians, but this distinction between three different things
| ("facial recognition technology", "private facial recognition
| databases", and "predictive policing") is very strange. Modern
| facial recognition algorithms are just clustering vectors, and
| facial recognition databases are just lots of pictures of faces,
| neither seems well-defined enough to easily ban. And predictive
| policing is just plain bizarre - what relationship does that have
| with facial recognition _at all_?
| criddell wrote:
| Don't retail stores in Europe use in-store analytics? These
| often employ cameras to track shoppers when they are in the
| store. They use sentiment analysis to figure out what shoppers
| like, the cameras look for people lingering more than usual and
| alert security, they use it to track how people move through
| the store to optimize layout, and when you finally pull out
| your credit card and buy something, they can link up your real
| world identity with all the footage they've just captured.
|
| I think it's pretty gross, but without government actions like
| this it will not stop.
|
| > neither seems well-defined enough to easily ban
|
| Seems like it would be easy enough to define. If an image or
| any other kind of data generated from an image is used in the
| process to identify a person, then you are doing facial
| recognition.
| fwlr wrote:
| Some of the stuff you listed under "in-store analytics" is
| more like "in-store statistics", the kind of privacy problems
| addressed by this bill/proclamation don't seem related to
| analyzing CCTV footage to optimize store layout or determine
| which products are popular, and it doesn't seem like either
| the reporting or the politicking here is concerned with that.
| If they are _then_ taking that information and trying to tie
| it to an identity based on credit card purchases, I do agree
| that's gross and I wouldn't object very hard if governments
| tried to stop that from happening (though I'm skeptical that
| facial recognition is doing much of the work in this
| paradigm, and I'm also skeptical that it works at all - most
| of this "know your customer" stuff is compelled by regulatory
| compliance, and the other stuff that is sold as improving
| conversion tends to be vaporware that fails to materialize
| real benefit).
|
| >If an image ... is used in the process to identify a person,
| then you are doing facial recognition
|
| This is an easy definition of facial recognition that is very
| hard to ban! Police departments are doing facial recognition
| to catch criminals by this definition, and I don't mean this
| in some narrow technical "well actually" sense: I mean that
| e.g. detectives in metro cities are given large binders of
| face pictures of many pickpockets and other criminals, they
| study these faces and train to recognize them in a crowd, and
| they go out in public aiming to recognize them. But my point
| was not that facial recognition is hard to define, my point
| was that "facial recognition technology" and "private facial
| recognition databases" and "predictive policing" are weird
| categories or distinctions to make.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| A link would be useful: there are rumours eu shopping centers
| are tracking (anonymously!) cell-phone routes through
| shopping centers; some places have sensors outside there
| windows to track foot tracffic and window shoppers but I've
| never heard of actual tracking of customers via facials: I
| rather suspect that would be a PR disaster. Nb - I alwaysys
| turn off my phone when going into shopping centers.
| criddell wrote:
| https://www.cyberlink.com/faceme/insights/articles/363/smar
| t...
|
| If you search for "in store analytics" you will find a lot
| more. This article is a decent overview though and has a
| few links.
| a2800276 wrote:
| > what relationship does that have with facial recognition at
| all?
|
| It's not obvious? "If your face is detected to be dark and you
| have big lips, you're predicted to be a criminal..."
| counttheforks wrote:
| As always the law is about intent. It doesn't care about your
| technical arguments.
| pixl97 wrote:
| "Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can
| assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very
| commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is
| the law of Australia."
|
| Attempting to ignore physics and mathematics when making the
| law tends to not work out well....
| counttheforks wrote:
| If a company wants to do business abroad they'll have to
| conform to those laws. And the law cares about intent.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| At the same time a law can't narrowly target a specific
| technology, which then is bypassed easily by changing some
| technicality, but must be broad enough to cover different
| technical implications, while specific enough to catch the
| case you want to catch.
| [deleted]
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Perhaps facial recognition should merely be taxed
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-24 23:02 UTC)