ACLU Demands DHS Disclose Its Use of Facial-Recognition Tech (cnet.com) 62
The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday called on the Department of Homeland Security to disclose its use of facial-recognition software. The nonprofit also again pushed for an end of law enforcement's use of the technology. From a report: The ACLU's statements follow reports Tuesday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials met this summer with Amazon. Around that time, the company pitched the agency on potentially using its facial-recognition software, called Rekognition, along with other Amazon products. A handful of US police agencies are already trying out Rekognition as part of their crime-fighting and investigative efforts. The ACLU since May has criticized Amazon's marketing of its facial-recognition software to law enforcement and has asked Congress and the public to debate whether the technology should be used. The nonprofit has argued that facial-recognition technology has the potential of being misused by policing agencies and misidentifying people.
Re:AGAINST Civil Liberties Union (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't be this obtuse. You just can't.
How many police officers stand 24x7 in one spot, remember EVERYONE that EVER passes, remember them for DECADES, and simultaneously is in constant communication with all other officers doing the same, *AND* a collection of other officers back at the police station -- combining, correlating, and ensuring that every citizen that they see, is logged and tracked between every officer.
On top of that?
Those notes + all correlated data is hacked by foreign powers, corporations use that data for their own ends (as they provide backend services), and used outside of the scope of any warrant or judicial oversight.
There's an IMMENSE, MASSIVE, HUGE difference.
Troll much?
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How many police officers stand 24x7 in one spot, remember EVERYONE that EVER passes,
I listen to the cops on the scanner to keep up with what is going on in my community. You would be amazed at the number of people that cops remember by sight. It is not unusual to hear one of them tell another that they've just seen Frank Smarkle someplace he was trespassed from, and the other one asks "isn't that the guy we dealt with six months ago ...". It's their JOB to remember people, especially criminals.
combining, correlating, and ensuring that every citizen that they see, is logged and tracked between every officer.
That's not a property inherent in facial recognition. It is debatably a misuse of a technology, b
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A cop remembered someone's face
Therefore it's OK to record everyone's faces in perpetuity
Okie dokie.
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Nope.
See it and respond to it? Yes. Record it for perpetuity? Nope.
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Humans don't do this because of biological rather than legal or ethical limitations. From the legal/ethical point of view, there is
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"An automatic speed-trap, for example, can not be suspected of racism, can it?"
What if a disproportionate number of said speed-traps are placed in minority neighborhoods?
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What if a disproportionate number of said speed-traps are placed in minority neighborhoods?
Are you SERIOUSLY trying to claim that a speed trap gets to decide where it is placed, or are you claiming that the speed trap is programmed to give tickets only to people of a certain race? That's the only way an automated speed-trap could be racist.
There would have to be an awful lot of determined racists involved if the photo of a white criminal was identified as a black person and nobody bothered to reject that potential match before someone was arrested or even questioned. If that were true, pointing
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The argument makes more sense if you assume that rates of criminal behavior are equally distributed across racial groups (which they are not). Then the fact that you placed 8 sensors in minority neighborhoods and only 2 in "white" neighborhoods means you're trying to target minorities because the whites break the law just as often (they don't).
The fact that minorities are more likely to engage in criminal behavior is explained away because they're being targeted! It's circular reasoning to support the o
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"the whites break the law just as often (they don't)"
I agree whites don't get caught as much as minorities when breaking the law. I would put money on it that speeding is a crime that nearly 99% of the population does at some point and its practice is not tied to a particular race.
And looking at crime rates , the ever reliable wikipedia says "Research shows that the overrepresentation of some minorities in the criminal justice system can be explained mostly by disproportionate rates of crime, but also by so
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What if a disproportionate number of said speed-traps are placed in minority neighborhoods?
That would tell me that a disproportionate number of minorities drive faster than the speed limit.
Why would you place speed-traps in places where people don't speed? Are you really suggesting that the same amount of resources be deployed to crime-free and crime-prone neighborhoods in some sort of twisted idea of fairness?
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So wait... you think that relying on human memory is okay because it's subjective and can make mistakes?
In other words, you prefer an environment where it is possible to freely lie and be able to get away with it on the grounds that memory isn't necessarily perfect.
Got it.
You sound like you sort of want to be a lawyer, if you aren't one already.
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Horsehead rating (Score:3, Insightful)
ACLU's stance is, law-enforcement endangers our civil liberties.
In this case anyway. That sneaky generalisation you snuck in there is sneaky, but not entirely honest.
Though it certainly might sometimes do that, criminals always do.
Eh? You're using that word, but it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Criminals break the law. They don't necessarily take pictures of you then store them for 99 years for possible later use against you, along with your complete identity, travel history, physical characteristics, and whatever else they can get their hands on. The TSA does, down to the book you've been reading on the plane.
And remember tha
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ACLU's stance is, law-enforcement endangers our civil liberties.
In this case anyway. That sneaky generalisation you snuck in there is sneaky, but not entirely honest.
POLICE: "We can use facial recognition technology to help up apprehend violent criminals faster, because we can run pictures of an unknown one from a security camera through the database of known felons and identify possible suspects. We can manually compare the hundred flagged possibilities much faster than the hundreds of thousands of images in our mug shot database. "
ACLU: "No you can't. You might misuse it."
Sounds like a fair assessment of the situation to me. The ACLU doesn't get involved unless it t
AC drivel (Score:2)
If nobody tells the police they can't then they'll give themselves the right to do it for this.
The only possible antecedent for "this" is my statement that they can use facial recognition to flag potential matches from their known-felon database much faster than doing it manually. Why don't they already have the right to do this? Why would you tell them they don't?
The Constitution already tells them they don't have the right to do a lot of abusive things with the technology, and there are already laws dealing with other criminal information. It's not like we're on new ground here.
Might as well argue that because I disagree with you I must be a looney
That's not what I s
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Cameras — and the face-recognition software behind them — are no different from a policeman on the corner.
Cameras are just the eyes for a central computer system. This central computer system can have thousands of eyes, never sleeps, it never blinks, it never forgets. It can track where every single person goes as it moves between the locations it can see, making a record of pace, stride and facial expressions used. It can search and recognize people out of a database of billions in a fraction of a second. It can then share all this information which is then processed in a master system that can track your
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It can track ...
If we reject every piece of technology that CAN be misused then I fear we'd be living in cave-man days. Actually, worse. We'd have rejected fire and caves because you can burn someone with fire or imprison them unjustly in a cave. The clubs we use to kill our food would be right out -- clubs can kill other humans as well as food.
I'd love to find some abuse for loin cloths but I can't really, so we do get to keep our clothes at least.
or systematically killing those deemed a threat to an oppressive agenda.
Yes, of course, the only reason police would like to be able to identify s
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If we reject every piece of technology that CAN be misused then I fear we'd be living in cave-man days.
Ah, the old false dilemma fallacy [wikipedia.org] where absolutes are falsely used. If we reject some dangerous technologies then we must reject all dangerous technologies, right? Except what reason is there for that? The correct answer is none.
Yes, of course, the only reason police would like to be able to identify suspects easily is so they can kill anyone who is a threat to an oppressive agenda. "Come see the violence inherent in the system..."
You act as if it's never happened in history. However, my point clearly was that unlike police officers, it is fundamentally incapable of questioning or objecting to how the data it collects will be used.
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If we reject some dangerous technologies then we must reject all dangerous technologies, right?
And what is the fancy term for defining something as a "dangerous technology" and then arguing is has to be rejected because it is dangerous? Facial recognition isn't dangerous just because it can be misused, just as screwdrivers aren't dangerous just because they can be misused, or clubs, or fire, or caves.
The actual argument is that if you use the potential for misuse as an argument to prevent the use of one technology, then the potential for misuse of every technology becomes an argument for it's rejec
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The actual argument is that if you use the potential for misuse as an argument to prevent the use of one technology, then the potential for misuse of every technology becomes an argument for it's rejection. You cannot limit what "abusable technologies" that argument is applied to without being a hypocrite.
The more power a technology gives an individual or small number of people, the more dangerous it becomes. There is a reason we try to keep a lid on dangerous technologies like nukes.
You act as if it's never happened in history.
You lack reading comprehension. I said that "the only reason they would like to be able to" use the technology, not that technology has never been abused.
So you were being serious when you wrote "the only reason police would like to be able to identify suspects easily is so they can kill anyone who is a threat to an oppressive agenda."? How is that supportive to your argument?
So what? A club is incapable of questioning or objecting to how it will be used. A syringe of propofol is incapable of questioning or objecting to how it will be used.
A club can only be used to hurt one person at a time. Explosives and drugs are tightly regulated for t
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Those are all very good things, yes.
Police could — and did — do these things to anyone they chose (for whatever reason). Now the computers let them do that to everyone.
But, if it was Ok bef
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It is obvious, there are neither legal nor even ethical differences.
Wow, straight up gaslighting. Interesting but not an argument, just a lie.
But, if it was Ok before, it must be Ok today.
I would have been very concerned if that were actually true but it's not. Also, what about slavery? You think slavery is okay because it was okay in the past?
You are just uncomfortable, that suddenly it may apply even to the lowly, mediocre, and insignificant you... Why?
Oh, so you are going with the "if you have nothing to hide..." whataboutism?
You need to work on forming a coherent argument because all of these fail basic logic.
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I explained, why there is no difference. Multiple times. To call me a liar, as a minimum, you need to rebut those explanations.
Of course, it was true. There was never privacy — nor expectation of privacy — outside, in public. A policeman could follow you everywhere — no warrant needed. That they didn't follow everyone was simply because it was t
Facial-recognition technology (Score:2)
People with fake ID.
People sharing ID.
Illegal migrants trying to get the gov tax payers to pay for their full education using fake ID.
A person supporting banned groups in other nations trying to get in and out of the USA.
People with a criminal biography trying to use a fake ID to hide their criminal past.
Criminals, illegal migrants and people who should not be in the USA long term accessing city/state and federal services.
Illeg
frc for saving kids (Score:1)