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It's Time To Ban All Government Use of Face Recognition, Says Digital Rights Group (fastcompany.com) 163

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
Fight for the Future, the digital rights advocacy group, is calling for a nationwide ban on government use of facial recognition. Fast Company reports: The group says the technology is just too dangerous to civil liberties to allow government agencies to use it, even with regulation. It launched a website where people can contact their legislators and urge them to support a ban. "Imagine if we could go back in time and prevent governments around the world from ever building nuclear or biological weapons. That's the moment in history we're in right now with facial recognition," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, in a statement. "This surveillance technology poses such a profound threat to the future of human society and basic liberty that its dangers far outweigh any potential benefits. We don't need to regulate it, we need to ban it entirely."
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It's Time To Ban All Government Use of Face Recognition, Says Digital Rights Group More

It's Time To Ban All Government Use of Face Recognition, Says Digital Rights Group

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  • Being for law and order and (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    not a criminal personally I'm all for FR pretty much everywhere in public. I want every criminal act captured and prosecuted. Maybe that's just me, but I don't think so.

    • Unconstitutional (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      4th Amendment:
      The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

      5th Amendment:
      No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases ari

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I note 4 doesn't mention being secure in public areas. Not sure why you even mention 5.

    • You are a criminal. Yes you are. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @08:46AM (#58900844)

      not a criminal personally I'm all for FR pretty much everywhere in public. I want every criminal act captured and prosecuted. Maybe that's just me, but I don't think so.

      Yes you are a criminal. So is everyone else including me. The laws are written that way on purpose. I absolutely guarantee you violate multiple laws every single day of your life. Some intentionally (speeding just a little bit) and some not intentionally. Many you aren't even aware they are a law. So no, you don't want every criminal act captured and prosecuted. That's not a world ANY of us want to live in. I want to live in a world where reason plays a role in the rule of law. There are very few laws that perfectly capture every possible contingency and situation. Many times they don't even matter at all.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        In the UK the police are supposed to use their discretion when enforcing the law. They can and regularly do ignore crimes in the interest of keeping the peace and the public good.

        The danger becomes that if everything is recorded and searchable by face, the moment law enforcement does decide to lean on you they have a huge archive of historic crimes to throw at you. I understand that this kind of "inflation" is common in the US, where they threaten you with decades in jail in order to encourage you to accept

        • In the UK the police are supposed to use their discretion when enforcing the law. They can and regularly do ignore crimes in the interest of keeping the peace and the public good.

          That's true everywhere. It would be physically, economically, and practically impossible for every law to be enforced to the letter of the law every time. In very practical terms, police and judiciary need a fair amount of discretion in when NOT to apply the law, particularly for minor offenses. Yes this is not an easy thing to do sometimes but they can only do a certain amount and so some "crimes" will necessarily need to be overlooked provided they aren't particularly serious. (yes this discretion can

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        I absolutely guarantee you violate multiple laws every single day of your life. Some intentionally (speeding just a little bit) and some not intentionally.

        Considering you only named a single law that many people might violate every day, but not everyone does (leaving aside that not everyone even drives every day), I'm calling complete bullshit on this claim.

        Yeah, you could probably name quite a number of laws that many people are guilty of at one time or another (such as speeding), but that's still quite

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjbe ( 173966 )

          Considering you only named a single law that many people might violate every day, but not everyone does (leaving aside that not everyone even drives every day), I'm calling complete bullshit on this claim.

          I only named a single law because it was an illustrative example and making a complete catalog of them is something you can easily do yourself. 20 seconds on google would have shown you that my claim is unquestionably true [businessinsider.com]. Here are just a few examples of laws routinely broken by a big percentage of the population (exact legality varies by jurisdiction). If you are driving you almost certainly have broken at least one traffic law every time you get behind the wheel.
          1) Connecting to an unsecured Wifi netw

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )

            If you are driving you almost certainly have broken at least one traffic law every time you get behind the wheel

            Moving the goalposts, are we?

            "almost certainly" is actually a far cry from "absolutely guarantee". Had you used those words in the first place, I don't think I would have said anything.it.

            But of course, Google is far from the font of all human wisdom, and many of the items you mentioned are not even actually illegal, or at least would vary greatly depending on jurisdiction.

            While it's quite

      • "no, you don't want every criminal act captured and prosecuted."

        Yes, I do. But I want them to start with the wealthiest people and work their way down, not start with the poorest people and then not bother to work their way up. If rich people were getting busted for things that shouldn't be crimes, then they'd exert their influence to eliminate those laws. But those laws aren't for them, they're for us. Instead of getting rid of bad laws, they just lobby for additional selective enforcement.

        That last is the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      not a criminal personally I'm all for FR pretty much everywhere in public. I want every criminal act captured and prosecuted. Maybe that's just me, but I don't think so.

      I fully agree -- an outright ban seems unreasonable as FR can be an awesome tool to help with the more unbiased identification of people and fair enforcement of laws. My recommendation would be establishing a baseline regulation on how the government is allowed to utilize facial recognition and data gained from the use of facial recogn

  • Hmmmm (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Trying to remember the last time technology was kicked to the side because of something silly like basic liberties. Nope, got nothing.

  • Not gonna happen (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mschuyler ( 197441 ) on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @09:51PM (#58899264) Homepage Journal

    Cat's out of the bag. Get over it.

    • Not because the cat's out, because equating facial recognition to nuclear or biological weapons sounds wacko. Making this argument makes the issue.

    • Good thing they did not have that same mentality in 1942.

    • Yes. As soon as it can be done, it will. I like the idea of making sure the “enforcers” have less privacy than the general public, but that is equally impractical.

      The problem that we have seen time and time again is selective enforcement of rules based on “enemies” doesn’t work, nor does perfect enforcement of the law (as it exists). You have to adapt the laws to ensure the fascist future is kept in check.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's happened before. When DNA evidence first became available the British police abused it a lot. In fact forensic evidence in general tends to be abused when it is new. Over time individual defendants find flaws in it and establish precedent, and the forensic evidence gets weaker and maybe some victims of the police get released.

      The police's DNA database is an on-going battle. At first it was impossible to get off it, now innocent people at least can have their records erased. At one point they were doing

  • Ban ALL Government Use???? (Score:3)

    by BitterOak ( 537666 ) on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @09:54PM (#58899282)
    Sure! Why not? And while we're at it, lets ban all government use of DNA, fingerprints, license plates, and lets also ban eyewitnesses from criminal trials.

    • It sounds unlikely, but most western governments have signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So yes, treating everybody like a criminal is already forbidden, and violates the right to privacy as well.

      As a side note, facial recognition also encourages corruption. The politicians pushing facial recognition naturally do not want the system to work against themselves. I really have a hard time believing that any government-mandated facial recognition system in use today abides the rule that everyone

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Or maybe take the sensible approach and allow limited, regulated use in line with the established science.

      Fingerprints, for example, are nothing like they are depicted on CSI. You don't get a perfect match where the two samples overlay perfectly on screen. You get a match probability, and in fact the ultimate decision is often subjective.

      The police used to get away with having their "expert" testify that the fingerprints matched, but eventually defendants realized they could pay their own expert to say that

  • How? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @10:06PM (#58899356)

    Do you really think your representatives at every level of government will pass something like that? They won't. And even if they did, we're a couple years away from facial recognition being so ubiquitous that even small children will be using it routinely. Government will just get someone else to use it for them and give them the answers.

    If you can pass a ban on facial recognition, you can reform the parts of the government you don't trust — so there will be no need to ban them from using facial recognition. If you can't reform or eliminate untrustworthy government, you won't be able to keep them from using facial recognition, ban or no ban.

  • Nah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @10:10PM (#58899366) Homepage

    You cannot stop progress. Especially the progress which allows to spy on us while staying in the shadows.

    Looks like wearing a mask or camouflage in public places will soon become a necessity. 1984 cannot come soon enough.

    • That's already illegal in many parts of the US. The KKK and Antifa ruined it for everyone.

      • That's already illegal in many parts of the US. The KKK and Antifa ruined it for everyone.

        It is illegal in Denmark too, but that is to harrass Muslim woman. Making a law that forbade all face covering, was the only way to make a constitutionally legal ban on Burqas.

  • What they fail to realize is that facial recognition is been in use by the U.S. government for literally decades. It's not a perfect tool but it is helpful.

    If they had come up with this proposal in the early '90s, it might have had a chance. Right now they will simply be laughed at.

  • Reasonable... (Score:3)

    by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Tuesday July 09, 2019 @10:45PM (#58899518)
    A complete ban will never happen. The government, and civil liberties groups, have a long history of haggling over the word "unreasonable" as found in the fourth amendment. Civil libertarians try to get the word to mean "any and all"; the government has been successful in dealing with the other side of that coin.

    An argument that calls for a complete ban will never fly. Trying to equate FR to nuclear weapons will result in claims of hyperbole and exaggeration, which will scuttle the demands from the start.

    The only place the argument will sound reasonable is when it is preached to the choir. If you have any other definition of "unreasonable" than "any and all", you're not going to be persuaded at all.

  • Governments are obligated to maintain the conditions necessary for physical security in the territory over which they are empowered to exercise authority.

    Knowing who's who is a requirement of maintaining the conditions necessary for physical security given that one out of every hundred or so people is batshit crazy and one out of every couple dozen of those are both crazy and violent. You want to keep tabs on the crazy and violent and you want the not-yet-violent crazies and borderline crazies to know that

    • Governments are obligated to maintain the conditions necessary for physical security in the territory over which they are empowered to exercise authority.

      Actually, no.
      It sounds good, and is the sort of thing that authority loves to hear, but the courts have decided that this is not actually the case. Authority would love you to believe this sort of thing, as this misconception is what elects country sherrifs, judges, mayors ect. AND allows the adoption of ever more creepy levels of invasive technology.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      In a 4-3 decision, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals affirmed the trial courts' dismissal of the complaints against th

  • A bit late for that (Score:3)

    by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @12:19AM (#58899808) Homepage

    Once it made it to the Super Bowl, it essentially became a permanent fixture in the U.S. It's not going anywhere. You might regulate it, but ban it outright? It's not gonna happen.

  • Pick your battles. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Wednesday July 10, 2019 @12:38AM (#58899868)

    Soon, the location of every police officer and government official in any given city will be publicly accessible with a smartphone.

    We will have this conversation again.

    • Soon, the location of every police officer and government official in any given city will be publicly accessible with a smartphone.

      So police will just start wearing helmets with darkened face shields all the time. You'll be able to tell where the police are, but not who they are, and their facelessness will create even more distance between law enforcement and the people, and more aggressive police behavior.

      That's a bad direction for this battle to take.

      • Your missing the point. Nobody cares what the cops name is, but where he (and all his little friends) happen to be, at any given time, is very valuable information.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sad_ ( 7868 )

        So police will just start wearing helmets with darkened face shields all the time.

        and while we're at it, they should make them also judge and excutioner all in one!

  • Pro (Score:2)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 )
    Catch criminals. Further gentrification to inner city areas.
    Better passport control.
    The ability to detect illegal immigrant using sanctuary city photo ID.

    Like finger prints, voice prints, IMSI-catcher tech, police malware, DNA - facial recognition will be a powerful new tool to track criminals and illegal immigrant.
    Need a job? Get a bank account. Want to set up a bank account/have a job pay into a bank account? Facial recognition time.
    Drive/bus/subway/port/rail in any part of the USA and total expe
  • Allow the government as well as individuals and companies to use it freely. Improving honesty in a society is a blessing. It only is wrong when some people are allowed to use such technology while others are exempt from it. Do not do things that hurt others including lying to your mate and the world will become a much better place.

  • At this point, banning facial recognition would be like banning encryption.... It's just not going to work. The technology has already been integrated into society, both in the public and private sectors.

    A much more realistic solution is state/federal regulation that requires a warrant prior to identifying someone with FR during an investigation. We also need regulation that clearly states when and where facial recognition can be used.

  • "Imagine if we could go back in time and prevent governments around the world from ever building nuclear or biological weapons."

    Then someone other than a government would do it, and either become the world's premier terrorist, or in effect, a government.

    "That's the moment in history we're in right now with facial recognition"

    No, kid. No we aren't. That cat not only came out of the bag already, it ripped the bag into tiny little shreds all over the living room. What a noob.

  • I think the issue is what facial recognition is going to be used for. As a replacement for policemen's and security guards' manual work: in most cases, I would say yes. To detect known criminals at sensitive places, such as sporting events, airports, government: absolutely, this is a valid use.

    But for authorities to identify and track everyone in public places: city streets and squares, public transit etc: Hell no!
    For corporations to identify and track everyone on shopping streets and malls, like a real-wo

  • There are lots of ways to identify someone passively. Do it from their face. Or gait analysis. Or their voice. Or their retina. With a telephoto lens you can get a picture of their fingerprints from across the street.

    The mistake here is focusing on the technology instead of the uses of the technology. They really should be trying to ban passive surveillance that identifies people in bulk who aren't suspected of any crime. If instead you ban one technology for doing that, they'll just move to another

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