Vermont DMV Caught Using Illegal Facial Recognition Program (vocativ.com) 109
schwit1 quotes a report from Vocativ: The Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles has been caught using facial recognition software -- despite a state law preventing it. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont describe such a program, which uses software to compare the DMV's database of names and driver's license photos with information with state and federal law enforcement. Vermont state law, however, specifically states that "The Department of Motor Vehicles shall not implement any procedures or processes that involve the use of biometric identifiers." The program, the ACLU says, invites state and federal agencies to submit photographs of persons of interest to the Vermont DMV, which it compares against its database of some 2.6 million Vermonters and shares potential matches. Since 2012, the agency has run at least 126 such searches on behalf of local police, the State Department, FBI, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
it's VERMONT (Score:4, Funny)
Re:it's VERMONT (Score:5, Informative)
The Dukes of Hazard had more black actors than Seinfeld or Friends. [thedailybanter.com]
It's not a show based up in the segregated North.
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2/4 of the Seinfeld main cast are jewish (and that's being generous -- George __Costanza__ is actually Italian). 5/6 of the Friends main cast are jewish
It's just so unfair and anti-semitic that people claim that Hollywood is run by jews. Clearly the facts don't support such hateful accusations. It's not like they are all Jewish after all, they let a few tokens in.
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The Dukes of Hazard had more black actors than Seinfeld or Friends. [thedailybanter.com]
It's not a show based up in the segregated North.
It's not surprising to anyone who actually lives in the South. It's not perfect down here, but there's way less hangup on race down here than up north. I think this guy accurately sums it up:
https://www.facebook.com/sylva... [facebook.com]
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Let me tell you my perspective on "race" and bigotry. IT starts and ends when (usually white) people make excuses as to why black people are different from white people, by calling anyone "racist" who expects people to be ... the same.
Wearing pants around their knees is a "racial trait".
Sucking at school is a "racial trait"
Being poor is a "racial trait"
And the worst ... voting democratic is a "racial trait"
You can see it in all sorts of political opinions and assumptions, that black people can't _______ bec
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Yeah, really chill down there...
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/... [cnn.com]
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You're a moron.
"Based in" or "set in" means the location within the show. "Filmed in" or "shot in" would mean the actual location it was filmed.
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Re: it's VERMONT (Score:2)
Fortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn; these are some good mushrooms...
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It's not out of the question that some actual retribution could follow. However, Vermonters tend to be absurdly nice, so we might forgive them. Could go either way. It's a small state, so it's not as easy for government to get away with shit here as elsewhere.
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At $20 a liter, we can't afford the stuff. It's all sold to tourists.
Re:Fortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
So law enforcement is looking to identify a specific person. Law enforcement only has a picture of the person the are looking for. They take the picture the DMV for help. The DMV takes the picture and runs it through facial recognition software to see if they can match the picture to anyone in it's database. How does this process harm anyone? The DMV already has your drivers license with your picture on it and is also considered a public record. If law enforcement only has the target picture and no other identifying information. How does this process harm anyone or violate anyone's rights?
it might stop people from getting a drivers license.
but how it harms peoples rights is that THEY GOT A FUCKING LAW THAT EXPLICITLY SAYS THAT THEY HAVE A RIGHT THAT THE DMV DATABASE IS NOT USED FOR THIS! for whatever reason they made that law and MADE IT A FUCKING RIGHT AND THE DMV AND FEDS JUST PISSED OVER THAT LAW.
and how it harms people is false positives. the more you put faces into the system the more it starts producing false positives(a true fact with automatic facial matching) - now if the operators are too stupid to understand possibility of false positives then they will order a swat strike even if the suspect could not have been anywhere near the crimes alleged. if they are stupid enough to break the law to make such a search they might be stupid enough to use it like that. furthermore just having that option in the database for facial recognition opens the system for abuse by dmv workers(look a face on facebook, get details) and so on - they explicitly made a law to not have such capabilities and then they just went on and did it anyways.
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and how it harms people is false positives. the more you put faces into the system the more it starts producing false positives(a true fact with automatic facial matching) - now if the operators are too stupid to understand possibility of false positives then they will order a swat strike even if the suspect could not have been anywhere near the crimes alleged.
I'd like to try to make the point that, since FR tech doesn't actually recognize faces, all results (including correct matches) are false positives.
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The issue is the law specifically forbids it, not that the search "harms" anyone.
This caught my eye:
Since 2012, the agency has run at least 126 such searches on behalf of local police, the State Department, FBI, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Why, that's just over 2 a month! It's an epidemic! These mad men must be stopped!
Re: Fortunately... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Obviously, the solution is more laws!
Re: Fortunately... (Score:2)
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So you saying its alright for government to break the law as long as they don't do it to much? What would be to much 10 a month, 100 a month, 1000?
This is exactly why the right apposes background checks and such for weapons. That produces a paper trail, that trail was not supposed to be retained. The FBI was caught doing so!
If you let government collect data it will at some point be used for a different purpose than advertised legal or otherwise. It should be plain to everyone that allowing government t
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Your argument is nonsensical.
The "law" on the books states -no- searches are to be done. None. Kinda like, "no murdering", or "no robbing", etc.
That means "none". "zero". "zip". "nada"
So...if the state has 626,000+ people as of 2015 and there are probably ~320,000 with a license, and there were 126 searches of ~320,000 people over 48 months that's equal to ~40,320,000 violations of the law which tells them not to do these searches. That's an average of ~840,000 violations per month
Yeah...They do need to be
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The law on the books says the DMV can't do the search, that is not the same as saying no one can do the search.
The issue is using Vermont DMV resources to perform searches using biometric data, not the search itself.
I'm not quite sure what harm caused to an individual when their picture is used to exclude them from consideration in an investigation, at worst, the folks mistakenly caught up in the investigation have a case to claim injury.
Re: Fortunately... (Score:2)
. Vermont state law, however, specifically states that "The Department of Motor Vehicles shall not implement any procedures or processes that involve the use of biometric identifiers."
The only issue is that the searches are being done on DMV computers by DMV staff. The article is silent on the ability of the Vermont DMV to share the database with the Vermont State Police who could then run the searches on their own computers.
This is a budget/resource issue, not a civil rights issue.
And by the way, there are over 2M photos in the database, not 300K.
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But your honor, I only robbed two liquor stores a month, it's not like I got greedy or anything!
Add teeth to the law (Score:2)
We are seeing many examples of where a bureaucrat is demonstrated to breach an explicit instruction and walks away. The answer lies in:
a) A general law that any legislation that instructs officers of the state to do something and which is then breached may allow their prosecution for abuse of power carrying a a maximum sentence of 20 years, and a MANDATORY loss of pension rights
b) Ensure that all laws with an instruction carry a similar penalty.
The person who makes the decision to implement the illegal acti
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We should be able to run over lawyers, too.
See how weird it is when someone says that doing illegal things is okay because reasons?
Just... weird. :)
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We should be able to run over lawyers, too.
See how weird it is when someone says that doing illegal things is okay because reasons?
Just... weird. :)
:)
I'm not saying it's okay to be breaking the law, just that the law is stupid if it prohibits the practice under certain conditions, and that if they are using it infrequently, the cost per use and tax burden are probably ridiculous. The law is sometimes stupid. When it is stupid, it should be changed.
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you fail to comprehend the "at least" qualifier... the count is more likely in the thousands. there's only 126 that they've been CAUGHT performing. this is power-tripping, warrant and constitution-ignoring, data hungry government entities doing this.. what do you think?
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Why should they be able to use your photo in the DMV database to compare it to the other image without your consent? If it was a blood drop was left at the scene of the crime then you would have to give them consent in order for them to take a sample (or they would have to convince a judge that it was likely enough to be you in order to get a warrant).
In this case you are freely letting them access another departments database without your permission. Yes, I realize that they could easily call you in and
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If they placed their own camera in public that did the face recognition in real-time with no storage of data then there wouldn't be a problem either.
I have a much bigger problem with government-owned public facing cameras performing 24/7 facial recognition than I do with the DMV doing some searches on a photo I knowingly gave them.
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If a blood drop was left at the scene of the crime the police would run it through various state and federal databases that store DNA from legally approved harvesting methods. Your comparison would apply only if they singled you out as the person of interest and your DNA was
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yeah, they probably stopped using DMV and switched to Facebook
Re:126? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you obviously flunked kindergarten math, you might want to change your claim once you learn that 126 doesn't equal 0.
Re:126? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, two dozen times a year - wow. And that number is spread across Federal, state, and local queries...
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Why, exactly, is anyone believing that they've come completely clean? I mean, they've been so trustworthy up until now, right?
Re: 126? (Score:2)
Prohibit, not prevent (Score:5, Insightful)
The state law probably prohibits facial recognition. It certainly doesn't prevent it.
It's not a law of nature, like gravity. It's one of those more petty laws of man.
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It doesn't prohibit facial recognition, it prohibits using DMV resources to do the police's job.
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Soooo the cops take over the program, they use police resources to extract the info from DMV. Is this a budgetary issue or a rights issue, because it's starting to sound like a budgetary issue - "prohibits using DMV resources to do the police's job."
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been saying this for many years.... it doesn't matter what laws say, the government (and big business) is going to do whatever they want with data they collect. Most certainly the 3-letter agencies will.
I love it how things are worded "this data can only be used for XXXXX" or "can't be used for YYYYY" or "won't be disclosed to ZZZZZZ". Bull crap. They will do whatever they want and even if they abide by it for the moment, computers don't "forget" and laws can change at any time.
If you don't think the agencies have access to (or WILL have access to) every fingerprint collected, every photo, every DNA sample run, etc, then you are living in a fantasy world.
The only safe data (or biometric) is that not given and not collected.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
"We'll only use your social security number for your retirement account. Honest injun. We swear." ...
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If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
There are no death panels.
Re: Yep (Score:1)
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Look, I know you are still upset that your doctor got arrested by the feds, but not only was he writing Oxycodone prescriptions like they were ging out of style, he wrote bad checks to buy a car.
There are no death panels.
And there never were. Until Trumpcare. Which will double the lack of coverage! And Texas is set on making it illegal fo your health insurance to even cover abortions if they want to do so.
But hey, at least private schools will now get federal tax money they can use to discriminate and indoctrinate! Just what T
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I love it how things are worded "this data can only be used for XXXXX" or "can't be used for YYYYY" or "won't be disclosed to ZZZZZZ". Bull crap. They will do whatever they want and even if they abide by it for the moment, computers don't "forget" and laws can change at any time.
The real issue is that laws like this are never constructed in the same manner as laws for little people.
If the law were for a non-governmental actor, it would say "This data can only be used for XXXXX. Failure to abide by this statute will be considered a _______ felony with a minimum penalty of ______ and a maximum penalty of ______."
They leave out the part that criminalizes the behavior that they're supposedly prohibiting, so there is literally no reason for anyone to follow this law. There's no penalt
The first of many. (Score:1)
There's no way this isn't happening everywhere. Camera detectors are actually a real thing now. I advise you all invest in them. Know when you're being filmed secretly as well as in plain sight. Make sure to ask the questions about where the data is going and what it's being used for and how well it's being secured. Be vigilant, people.
Not 2.6 million Vermonters... (Score:1)
There’s 2.6 million *photos*, not Vermonters. They must be keeping the photos from previous drivers licenses, too. That’s about 4 photos per Vermonter.
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Well, if they've been storing them since 2012 you'd expect some duplicates. But I agree that I would expect closer to 2-photos-per-Vermonter, given that time frame. It does bring up the question of whether they had actually been collecting photos for longer than reported, or if their servers were doubling as storage for some prior inherited database of also ill-gotten headshots.
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Perhaps they photograph every person that comes into the DMV. That would be even more egregious a violation of privacy.
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As an elected federal official, exactly what gives him the authority/ability/responsibility to clean up state issues? In the eyes of the State, he is just another citizen.
2.6 million pictures? (Score:4, Informative)
Might be of interest to investigate how a state with only 625,000 inhabitants comes by a data base of 2.6 million pictures.
BTW. Vermont didn't even put pictures on most driver's licenses until about 20 years ago. You had to drive to Montpelier if you wanted a picture license because the Montpelier office had the DMV's only camera.
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Most likely they simply kept & counted the pictures from the previous licence(s) whenever they took a new one for a license renewal. (although those would admittedly be less useful than the current pictures)
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Why is this not surprising? (Score:3)
1. Vermont has, for some time, been solidly Democrat. their last Republican Senator switched parties in 2001. Their last Republican Representative left office in 1991.
2. The populace has become majority Leftist.
Re: Why is this not surprising? (Score:2)
Of course. So how do we get to the alternative?
Government giving itself an exception?.. No!! (Score:2)
Like this is the first time government officials are giving themselves an exception... From cops exceeding speed limits and driving the wrong way on one-way streets, to Amtrak's WiFi blocking Apple-store and Playboy.com (screw net-neutrality), to this.
Maybe, it is time for a Constitutional amendment prescribing a minimum punishment for such violations — nothing less will do...
sadly this isn't news (Score:2)
this implies criminals will walk free (Score:1)
This strongly implies that Vermont is using parallel construction in the gathering of evidence and prosecution of suspects. Parallel construction denies people the right of due process by denying them their right to know the evidence used against them.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
A lot of criminals are going to walk in Vermont when they're lawyers start making use of this A lot. . Maybe even all three of them.