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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.
Just because law enforcement would like to use it for catching criminals doesn't mean it can't be used for good.
... :P
Think about it- Similiar to Gates's house- walk into a room, machine recognizes your face (instead of the pin) and changes your pictures on the wall to suit.
Authenticate your identity online to prevent fraud (although, some Celebs might have trouble with that... 3 million elvis's
Search your high school yearbook- search old newspaper clippings...
And.... catch some known pedophile that's broken parole.
It's a great technology for those who don't run afoul of the law... but... the power and lack of regulation are very worrying.
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.
A security guard recognises a criminal from a mug shot on one of his cameras. He might be right, or mistaken. He'll have to check to be sure.
A piece of software flags a person as a criminal. It might be right or mistaken. It will have to let the security guard check it out to be sure.
The only difference is now one guard can handle more cameras better. The same with finger print software. You can check more fingerprints faster. The crime labs have used those for years. A human eye must still be the ultimate authority, the computer narrows the field a bit.
-Bocaj
Or sure, you won't look suspicious wearing a Superman mask or covering your face the entire time you're talking to a salesperson. Seriously, if you came into my bank wearing a mask of any kind, I'm hitting the panic button before you can say anything.
Is anyone else struck by the similarity in argumentation for creating DMCA and that for limiting face recognition?
Parts of DMCA were written because those with the power to do so believed people couldn't be trusted with technology. In that case the technology to break copyrights and hence illegally spread copyrighted material.
Now we are sitting back and use the same arguments ourselves that we can't trust the people in charge to make reasonable use of facial recognition technology, or to limit the system in response to privacy and rights concerns.
Obviously both scenarios bring up rights issues which differ significantly, but the arguments for DMCA and against facial recognition rarely focus on these. As you might notice 5 of Arge's 7 main points against facial recognition rest on the potential for abuse or considerable privacy invasion (linking such systems to information about average people).
Perhaps this is the nature of society and we really can't trust enough people to be responsible when it comes to the oppurtunities new technology gives us. Frankly though if that's true, it says something sad about the state of the world we've made for ourselves.
Personally I feel that both DMCA and facial recognition software benefit legitimate concerns and can serve a useful purpose. If properly legislated in an enforcable way then it should be possible to strike a balance between the varying concerns. That's not to say that DMCA as currently constructed couldn't use revision or that facial recognition should grow unchecked.
Ultimately, if we are going to make arguments, then we need to be consistent. Either we accept or reject the argument that people will abuse new technologies on a wide scale. From there we decide how the issue plays out with respect to human rights concerns. Beware of people that will dismiss your concerns in one setting and then champion them in another setting. (For the record I don't know if Ager does this since I can't recall hearing arguments from him about DMCA, but I know some organizations certainly have put forth contradictory arguments when it serves their purpose.)
C'mon you geeks... Think past the base application.
There's a lot more that the system could do than
just perform spot identification. Say you are
walking down the street with another "face" on
the list, now -you- get the bit set that you are
associating with known criminals, even if that's
not known to you. Now, that you are on the list,
anybody that you're seen with is a possible
associate.
The system can also be used to watch a certain
place and track who goes there. Go to a pr0n shop
that sells materials that border on pedophilia,
data mine that against your M$ passport account
that shows your net activity and that you've
got a 10 year old that also uses the machine.
Guiliy by triangulation.
I'm sure your employer would want to know that
you head to the corner bar every day after
work and stay for 2.3 hours.
After all, they have the right to protect their
profits by eliminating those with potential
"problems".
Data mining against cameras watching a poling
place on election day, correlating against the
sequence of votes cast brings up all kinds of
intriguing possibilities for those eager to
manipulate the process and influence future
outcomes.
As the software gets more sophisticated, it
could not only track you but also look at how
your image varies from your template. Eyes seem
a little red? Gait is a little unsteady?
Better set that bit and flag them for a closer
look.
Say you are a congressman and one day your
girlfriend comes up missing...uh, forget that.
This shit is as dangerous as it is inevitable.
--
> rare
More than half of the prison population in America are there because of consensual crime laws. These are "crimes" that don't have victims. The victim's place at trial is empty. The accused is a fag, or Jew, or hippie, or crack addict, or nigger, or hacker, or terrorist, or communist, or atheist, or drug lord, etc. etc. etc. and the jury convicts him of being such. Or, the accused CONSPIRED with one or more of the following: fags, Jews, hippies, crack addicts, niggers, hackers, terrorists, communists, atheists, drug lords, etc. etc. which is even easier to be convicted of.
Every time you hear about the Drug War remember that each and every arrest involves a sting of some sort. The cops are the only ones involved who act deceitfully. Everyone else is quite honestly either selling or buying drugs, because they need to be sold and bought no matter what Jerry Falwell says. The cops are not the good guys when it comes to consensual crimes. Using force and deceit on people who have not themselves used force or deceit is a real crime.
> and extreme
Extreme describes the state of law enforcement in America precisely. They've been getting free training from the military for 10 years now, and it shows. They inflict mindless and hateful damage on the country at every turn, while it's just as easy to get away with murder or rape as it ever was. The money and glamor are all in underground drugs. You get promoted and paid off for punishing "sinners" not criminals.
The cops are the only ones involved who act deceitfully. Everyone else is quite honestly either selling or buying drugs...
Horsefeathers. There are plenty of drug-related violent crimes. Some people steal to get the cash for their next fix. In some of these crimes, innocent people are hurt or killed. Rival criminal organizations fight, and plenty of violent crime happens that way.
Doing drugs in your home seems harmless to society as a whole, but only if you take the narrow view. When you look at the whole supply chain there is a terrible cost. Don't make all drug crime out to be victimless. It isn't.
When gangs go to war and start blowing each other away over some drug-dealing dispute, I could care less... except when innocent people get caught in the crossfire. And it does happen.
Hear this: if you buy drugs you contribute to the economy of violent crime. That kid on the evening news, that was hit by a stray bullet during some gang fight? Well, if you buy drugs in that city, there's a chance that you helped to kill him. You contributed to the underground economy. You keep the pusher on the street, that brings in the gang muscle, that gives free tastes to the schoolkids.
You can go on and say that The Establishment is causing the harm too, by making drugs illegal. Fine. That is a point I am willing to discuss. I think that legalization is a worthy topic. But don't try to make yourself or other drug users look blameless. The Man isn't causing all the problems. Drug users cause their share too. Have the balls to admit it.
And if he resists... even if he used to be innocent, now he looking at some serious charges.
Never, ever resist! Only a moron fights with the cops. They are there to Take You In. Once you are Taken In, you can get things Cleared Up. Trying to expedite this in the field by attacking the police never helps. If you are in the right, it will come out. You can't rush that process with violence.
When was the last time you heard about a guy who got away from the cops by copping a big attitude, and yelling and being abusive? Never? Right, because it never happens that way. If you try it, you are apt to get a tune-up.
When the cops pick you up, just cooperate. Swallow your pride for a bit. I know it sucks, but it has to be that way. What if cops were pushovers, who let loud, angry people go? Things would be a hell of a lot worse. "Gee, Sarge, he SAID he didn't do it, and he was in a hurry... so I cut him loose."
You know how high schools teach kids about STDs and how to drive and all that? Part of that state-required class (well, it is state required in CA) should be Your Civil Rights and How To Deal With The Police. Those are both valuable things for people to know... most people will have a run-in with the law at some point, even if it's just a speeding ticket.