[HN Gopher] Your face is not a bar code: arguments against autom... ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-09-24 23:00 UTC)