Slashdot Mirror
Your Face Is Not a Bar Code
Phil Agre has a solid essay opposing automatic face recognition systems in public areas. These uses are only going to increase, because the technology is cheap (enough) and appealing to authorities everywhere; it's good to have some arguments to hand for opposing the spread of the cameras.
These devices scan your face to determine bone structure, so facial hair, glasses, or anything else on the surface wont make a difference. The secret to defeating facial recognition systems is to either break your jaw and have it reset in a different position (not recommended) or to put things in your mouth (fill your cheeks and lips) that alter the structure of your face.
Reality has a liberal bias
The cameras are not going to be used as a definitive identification device. There is a margin of error with all forms of identification. Eyewitness accounts have been proven to be inaccurate numerous times in the past. The cameras are simply a tool to help law enforcement officers perform their job more effectively. They are NOT the judge, jury and excecutioner. They ARE an effective method of helping the police identify possible fugitives. I think anything that takes some of the strain off of law enforcement officers and increases police efficiency should be embraced with open arms.
The cameras aren't infringing upon anyone's rights. You ARE NOT entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are in a public place. You ARE entitled to privacy within the confines of your home or private property. But that's not the issue. I don't understand how you can possibly be upset about someone taking your picture in public. If you've done nothing wrong, you should have nothing to hide, and applaud this system for making the streets safer for our children.
Slashdot: Open Source, Closed Minds.
Totalitarianism in this century is going to be a lot easier because the government won't have to employ tons of informants and security service personell. They can just use face recognition to watch everybody and find out who the dangerous people are or who the leaders of insurgencies are and then locate them and eliminate them efficiently without disrupting the daily lives of everybody else. Running a good security service was possible in low tech times but was a tremendous economic drain on any totalitarian country and required executing a lot of uneccessary people just to keep people on their toes.
We are seeing this put into practice, for better or for worse, in Israel. Let's ignore completely who's right and who's wrong in the whole thing (I don't want to get off topic). The Palestinans are still low tech and have to rely on generalized terror of the old inefficent kind that brings a lot more condemnation on them then they would like because it often kills people who are not involved in the conflict per se. The Israelis on the other hand have very good intelligence, possibly even face recognition that lets them locate leaders of insurgency groups and meticulously pick them off.
So in the future the world will enter an era of permanent stablity, for worse no doubt, because if you get out of line you can be effciently eliminated.
The only solution I can see to this is to put this kind of technology into the hands of civilians. Put together a big network of civilian owned face recognition systems and feed into them the faces of politicians and then watch what they do.
things are really starting to get tight. All of these stories about traffic cameras, facial recognition and monitoring cameras just go together too well. It seems like you can believe in one of two things:
1. This gradually closing surveillance net that will be able to track you anytime you leave your house is a result of the unwitting acts of many legislatures/public officials which result in "skynet". or
2. This really is a "boil the frog" approach by government to keeping tabs on everything. IOW, they really *are* out to get you.
I think that it's probably the first but the end result is the same. More people need to make their voices heard on this type of stuff. We here in America, in general, seem to depend on the media to out this kind of stuff but we should not be so lackidasical (sp?) about it. This really is important. Oh, btw, the "traffic management" cameras are just stupid. A highway isn't like a train where you can divert trains onto extra tracks. There just aren't any extra 6-lane highways laying around. Sure, you might "divert" traffic from the highway to surrounding streets but what do you think will happen when 6 lanes of traffic gets "diverted" to a 2 or 4 land suburban avenue.......
You know in all of my days dealing with all kind of people, the people I fear the most is law enforcement.
Sure, you can say "you should have nothing to fear if you aren't doing anything wrong." but that is the problem. Sometime you have to fear when you haven't done anything wrong. In some places you will be hounded becuase you're a white man in the black part of town. Other time, you're get pulled over becuase you drive a red car. Then you get a gun pulled on you and your life treated becuase some pig "don't like your kind."
It's like i was saying the other day to a friend "you have nothing to fear but cops." Think about it, when someone robs you, you have to right to fight back. If you fight back to a cop, they can kill you. Oh sure, it not all that bad, until you had a gun pointed to you by the protector of the law knowing his buddy would go right long with the story that you resisted assest. And you might make news, and you know what? People are going to say "yeah he should've been shot." Then media pumps the crime like every person walking around is a rapist, like everybudy is just waiting to rob you blind, or jack you when ever they get a chance.
I know there is crime, and I think it's bad, but when the police turns to law abidders and make crimes, that is where I draw the line.
The journey is better then the end.