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Privacy United States Technology

New York Tenants Fight as Landlords Embrace Facial Recognition Cameras (theguardian.com) 117

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Tenants in a New York City apartment complex are fighting their landlord's effort to install a facial recognition system to access parts of the buildings, calling it an affront to their privacy rights. From a report: The row, which the tenants believe could become an important test case, comes as concern about the spread of facial recognition systems has grown across the US and globally, with law enforcement agencies increasingly relying on the tool. San Francisco this month became the first US city to ban city police and government agencies from using it. Private firms are also increasingly keen on the technology. At Atlantic Plaza Towers in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the landlord, Nelson Management Group, is moving to install a new system to control entry into the buildings. It would use facial recognition to open the front door for recognized tenants rather than traditional keys or electronic key fobs.

More than 130 tenants have, however, filed a formal complaint with the state seeking to block the application. "We do not want to be tagged like animals," said Icemae Downes, who has lived at Atlantic Plaza Towers since it opened 51 years ago. "We are not animals. We should be able to freely come in and out of our development without you tracking every movement." Some residents also fear the move reflects the spreading pressures of gentrification further into the east of Brooklyn, and a desire to attract white, higher-income residents in the buildings, whose tenants are mostly black. They say there is already a culture of surveillance and that if they are suspected of breaking one of the building's rules, they might find an image of themselves pushed under their doors.
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New York Tenants Fight as Landlords Embrace Facial Recognition Cameras More

New York Tenants Fight as Landlords Embrace Facial Recognition Cameras

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  • A friend's cat is "chipped" and the "cat cave" door automatically open for her.

    So this technology should also scale to cover people, right?

    I think our "Founding Fathers" would have been frightened to death over these new technological developments.

    If this stuff was available in 1776, the "The American Revolution" couldn't have happened.

    • I think our "Founding Fathers" would have been frightened to death over these new technological developments.

      If this stuff was available in 1776, the "The American Revolution" couldn't have happened.

      The perpetual police state. Computers monitor everything-except those in control and not yet suspected of "wrong doing" (being a threat to the system). Rebellion impossible.

    • Except in TFA, the tenants were complaining of being tagged (virtually) like animals with facial recognition. Being chipped (physically), the most obvious form of tagging, and would not help ease the tenants' concerns.

      • If only there was some sort of mechanical contrivance that required you to place it physically within a receptacle and push or pull or twist it in order to perform some action - like opening a door or strting a machine, to choose two crazy examples.

        You could even have a myriad of said contrivances - by shape or magnetism or something - for different receptacles. That way you need to have the right one, so i couldn't use the one for my garage to open the bank vault. Not that I would, of course.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      If this stuff was available in 1776, the "The American Revolution" couldn't have happened.

      "Fire when you see the whites of their ..... Damn! Musket trigger locks won't engage anything in red uniforms!"

    • This is something most people should be against.

      The last paragraph in the summary is a shame, though. I don't understand why the people against this want to alienate white or rich people. That whole second to the last sentence was not needed. Really, the whole paragraph should be removed. It hard to take seriously "moral outrage" from New York.

  • What's with the summary's racism? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is in the summary

    Some residents also fear the move reflects the spreading pressures of gentrification further into the east of Brooklyn, and a desire to attract white, higher-income residents in the buildings, whose tenants are mostly black.

    What's wrong with people with lighter skin living alongside people with darker skin? Why does the /. summary suggest that it's negative for such people to live together?

    Would these people be just as upset if dark-skinned higher-income residents were being attracted to these buildings, possibly pricing out earlier tenants? Or is it only a problem to them because the potential new tenants may have lighter colored skin?

    • I think the problem is more about income then race. the poor working class want somewhere to live and don't want to be shoved out on the streets because the landlord is able to double the rent and still find people to live there. Gentrification is not necessarily a racial term.

    • New York makes it very difficult to "price out" tenants. You need a good excuse to evict them. Maybe the existing tenants have a reason to think the facial recognition might reveal something that could get them evicted?

    • Re:What's with the summary's racism? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 31, 2019 @01:54PM (#58687170)
      When white people move to a predominantly black neighborhood, it's "gentrification" and bad.
      When black people move to a predominantly white neighborhood, it's "diversity" and good.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Some residents also claim that the move reflects the spreading pressures of gentrification

      FTFY. Because anything perceived as keeping colored people out can be demonized. Even though these same residents would never sublet THEIR unit to a low albedo family.

    • If you were a member of a race targeted by spurious enforcement of bullshit crimes, you might not want facial recognition identifying your similarly targeted visitors.

  • That was weird (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    one night in NYC I went home naked and drunk. for fun i walked in backwards with my ass at the camera and the computer said "welcome home Chris there is a box of powerbars from amazon in the lobby for you"
    i was very confused
    who the hell is chris

  • You're trying to steal what I've rightfully stolen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Friday May 31, 2019 @01:28PM (#58687002)

    I lived in NYC for a while. If I thought someone was trying to take my right to illegally sublet my rent controlled apartment, I'd also be pissed.

    Always envied friends who were subletting rent controlled apartments and paying submarket rates.

    • Is it really a big deal if they get away with it? The landlords lose? Who cares? Is it worth all this?

      That's the thing about police states. They virtually eliminate petty crime. At the cost of your freedom, of course. I think that's a terrible trade, but lots of people would make that trade in a heartbeat.

  • This will be an interesting case to watch. Cheap surveillance tech that basically anyone can buy makes the argument very different than it was even 10 years ago. The problem is that ever since social media became a thing, anyone who wants a relative degree of privacy is lumped in with the tinfoil hat crowd that think the CIA is monitoring their brain activity.

    I'm not a criminal and obey the law for the most part, but the idea that someday you'll never be able to avoid facial recognition if you go out in pub

  • So you come home at 3 am ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Insanity Defense ( 1232008 ) on Friday May 31, 2019 @01:45PM (#58687100)

    So you come home at 3 am. The computer has crashed or the camera is not functioning and you CAN"T ENTER YOUR home you are stuck outside in -20 degree temps as there is no PERSON on duty to recognize the problem until 9 am when he comes in. Unless its a weekend of course. But that is OK because its for your own good.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I see this as one potential problem.

      The other very likely scenario is the facial recognition cameras being used to record every person entering/exiting the building. Have your girlfriend stay over too many nights in a row? Well, you're only paying rent for one person. Time to renegotiate your rental agreement.

      Subletting? No longer possible without consent from the landlord.

      Not to mention any form of crime happening in the building means every face scanned entering/exiting during the relevant time would

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      So you come home at 3 am. The lock has broken or the buzzer is not functioning and you CAN"T ENTER YOUR home you are stuck outside in -20 degree temps as there is no PERSON on duty (because the vast majority of apartments in NYC do not have doormen) ... But that is OK because its for your own good.

      I don't like the facial recognition either, but you don't need to resort to hyperbole.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        In this case, you can make an emergency call to the locksmith to get you into your apartment,
        or failing that, you can forcibly open the door with the broken lock to gain entry to your property, and with a mechanical lock, the repair bill won't be thousands of $$$.

        The problem is you or your guest getting locked out of the building due to the use of electronics which
        are susceptible to much more frequent random failures than a commercial mechanical lockset.

  • Sadly people love to lie. They love false alibis. This is not about privacy. Obviously when you are in public anyone can see your face. The lobby and hallways of a building are not yours. They are public spaces and thus anyone can take pics of you as they wish including pics designed to aid building security. Imagine an apartment that has five known drug addicts at its door every day. That could make illegal drug selling much easier to detect. How about known burglars? Don't you think your homes and

    • Sadly people love to lie.

      Bullshit. Some people just don't think they should have every moment of their lives documented. It is none of your business where I am or what I'm doing or who with UNLESS you can show that I've been engaged in criminal acts at specific times. I have a right to privacy. 1984 is not a how to book no matter how much authoritarian idiots and other fools like yourself think otherwise.

  • Problem doesn't seem to be facial recognition (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday May 31, 2019 @02:12PM (#58687282)
    This is no different from giving each tenant an individually coded key-card which lets them buzz the door open. It would also let the landlord ID each tenant and track when they entered the same as facial recognition.

    I assume they do want the entrance door security system to be able to ID them as authorized to enter the building (that is, they're not OK with anyone and everyone being allowed into their building). So their problem isn't with the security system, it's with the logging. In that respect there is no difference between a system which uses facial recognition, key cards, or a doorman who writes down the name and time of everyone who enters. The only thing you need to do to address their concerns is to come up with a system which doesn't log entry IDs and times. (Or which overwrites log entries after x hours, so there's a temporary record in case something happens requiring police to obtain entry times, although any secure building will have security cameras recording this as well.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      This is no different from giving each tenant an individually coded key-card which lets them buzz the door open.

      A keycard or electronic key does not identify who is holding it, however --- for example,
      the tenant can supply their keycard to a friend to go get something from or do something in their unit while they are away.

      The tenant that rents a unit is likely to also not be satisfied with a single keycard -
      the tenant who owns the right to occupy a residence also has a right to invite other people to come

  • I guess none of those people use smartphones. Or they don't realize how much they are being tracked by their phone manufacturer or cell provider.

  • Designed to create dissent, outrage, controversy.
    Presumably more /. people are renters than landlords- of course this summary appeals to their anger. It's easy for renters to assume that landlords are evil and 'out to get them'. Slashdot gives no other option.

    Parts of New York have rent control. If you ever saw the Seinfeld TV show you know that. There are rules. It's hard for a landlord to kick people out. It's hard to raise the rent beyond a certain amount. And renters who are established in a very low re

  • You're tenants. It would seem reasonable that you have no property rights as it's not your property.

  • If there was a person involved in checking IDs and recognizing faces and writing down people they opened the door for, folks wouldn't complain. Make a computer do it and people get upset.

  • Yes, we want to be tracked by our old electronic key fob, like God intended, instead of our face.
    We're afraid we won't get back in when we are shit-faced.

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