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Privacy Technology

Portland Plans To Propose the Strictest Facial Recognition Ban in the Country (fastcompany.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
harrymcc writes: As the federal government plods along on developing privacy laws, some cities are taking matters into their own hands -- with facial recognition technology at the top of the list. Now, Portland, Oregon, has plans to ban the use of facial recognition for both the government and private businesses in the city, a move that could make Portland's ban the most restrictive in the United States. The proposed ban comes after cities including San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley in California, and Somerville in Massachusetts, have already banned the use of facial recognition by their city government agencies, including police departments. But Portland's ban goes a step further by expanding to private businesses -- if it makes it into law and takes effect in spring 2020, as planned. It could be a preview of what to expect across the country. "I think we're going to start to see more and more [private sector bans]," says ACLU of Northern California attorney Matt Cagle, who helped draft the San Francisco legislation that later served as the model for Oakland and Berkeley. "People are really concerned about facial recognition use and the tracking of their innate features by governments and private corporations."
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Portland Plans To Propose the Strictest Facial Recognition Ban in the Country More

Portland Plans To Propose the Strictest Facial Recognition Ban in the Country

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  • Until the federal government decides they want to use it, then makes them go to federal court and overturns it.

    • Until the federal government decides they want to use it, then makes them go to federal court and overturns it.

      Well, I guess they could amend it, to track NON-facial feature, look only for those wearing black masks/hoods and the like, to help track antifa, which I believe has already been listed as a terrorist type entity?

      Seems to be a lot of them causing trouble in the Portland area if YouTube videos are to be believed at all.

    • That's why cities are establishing the precedent that mass unwarranted facial recognition is "unreasonable search and seizure" now rather than later.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Nope, it is all because the corrupt at the top what to hide their location and nothing to do with the rest of us. They are finding it real tricky to stick it to us whilst keeping their corrupt secrets. Funny changes to law being tested but you wont stop us from doing it as a shared track the corrupt fuckers at the top open source program. Lets, track the politicians, corporate executives and lobbyists, watch them and track them where ever they go, never a moments privacy behind which to hide corruption ;DDD

    • Until the federal government decides they want to use it, then makes them go to federal court and overturns it.

      The Feds don't have to go to Court to overturn it. They're not bound by State or Local laws in any case. Way it works is Federal Law trumps everything lower. Then State Law trumps everything lower. Then Local law do what Federal & State Laws allow them to do....

  • Really, now people are concerned? (Score:3)

    by misnohmer ( 1636461 ) on Monday December 02, 2019 @02:35PM (#59477682)

    So people are concerned about businesses tracking their faces, but those same people have no problems giving Facebook, Google, and other companies intimate details of their lives (including many pictures of their faces, and more)? If you have a smartphone, there are multiple companies which know exactly where and when you've been, with whom, and more than likely why (based on your conversations via messaging apps or using "free" email).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      Believe it or not, reasonable people have been opposed to eroding standards of privacy regardless of what Facebook etc say, think, or do or what popular trends and fads have come and gone over the years. People choose to not use or limit their use of these services, awaiting the just recognition that universal human rights as recognized by the United Nations declaration exist in all places regardless of borders or the involvement of general purpose digital computers and telecommunications.

      • Of course, I get it. Personally I've never had a Facebook account, nor do I use gmail, hotmail or any other free email services which come at a price of snooping through my emails, and generally I keep a much lower digital fingerprint than most. However, AFAIK a decent majority of people use Facebook, Google and other services, and we live in a democracy which by definition is a majority rule system, hence my surprise that people would vote for limiting facial recognition while being fine with giving away

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Chromal ( 56550 )
          Details matter. We live in a liberal democracy, which by definition a system that represents people while also defending the principles of liberty, equality, and rule-of-law as part of the base infrastructure of government. It is not sufficient to convince a majority in a district to betray those principles because such principles are the highest authority in the land with even more power than an entire army of brainwashed confused masses tap dancing to the raucous illiberal noises of hard-right ideology, x

          • I thought it was a constitutional (democratic) republic, but I'm not a pol-sci major. Eugene Volokh seems to agree, for whatever that's worth.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Chromal ( 56550 )
              I'm sympathetic to the reasonable argument that constitutional republics and liberal democracies are functionally the same thing when it comes to lawfully protecting equality and human rights.

        • and we live in a democracy which by definition is a majority rule system

          Err, ok, since this is a US centric site, I'm going to assume you are in the US.

          We are not a democracy.

          We are a constitutional republic. We are certainly not majority/mob rule...at least, not yet.

    • So people are concerned about businesses tracking their faces, but those same people have no problems giving Facebook, Google, and other companies intimate details of their lives (including many pictures of their faces, and more)? If you have a smartphone, there are multiple companies which know exactly where and when you've been, with whom, and more than likely why (based on your conversations via messaging apps or using "free" email).

      And of course, hand in hand with that cognitive dissonance is that many

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The privacy of criminals and illegal migrants...
      • "illegal migrants", that's the new euphemism for "brown people who speak spanish" - What do we need AI facial recognition for? We already know if they're white or not. Guess we could use it to keep track of "the gays" too.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          The AI facial recognition stops banking, driving outside a sanctuary city, moving outside a sanctuary city, working outside a sanctuary city, getting free city services outside a sanctuary city...
          The ID provided has to match the wider in use facial recognition.
          Slowly fake/shared/created 1970's, 1980's city/state ID wont work as it will have not links back into any other US database.
          No tax? No work photo ID? No telco? No billing? Permit? No rent? No other datasets match? Education? SS number share
    • You know, I can leave the phone in my home when I go out for a walk; can't say the same for my face.

      • You know, you can also put on a ski-mask, or clothing design to confuse graphics (lots of faces on the T-shirt), or makeup designed to hide your face. Put on a president head mask and have the face tracking show that it was Obama or Trump taking that walk ;-P

  • Why? Antifa is masked regardless.
    • Exactly, next come the mask bans.

    • Facial recognition gives the cops another excuse to violate your rights and send innocent people to jail, same as with "drug dogs" that always alert to make their trainers happy.

  • "Hardesty is unswayed by arguments that the technology can be improved enough. “Rather than going back to fix something we already know is flawed to begin with, we should stop it from taking root in the first place,” she says."
     
    Now THERE is some infallible logic. Why fix anything? Just ban it.

  • All bans on technology do, is ensure your city will be a future backwater where no-one wants to be.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chromal ( 56550 )
      By "no-one," I suppose you mean "nobody who values the essential and sacrosanct founding principles of the west's liberal democratic way of life." Whereas the enlightened people who are actually loyal to the enshrined rights within US Constitution and who recognize the UN's declaration of Universal Human Rights can stay and build a more progressive more utopian system and bright shining beacons on hills.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Who for? Criminals and illegal migrants?
        Why is a state and city so against tech that will ducted criminals and illegal migrants?
        The 'UN's declaration of Universal Human Rights "is not going to protect people as many nations using the tech are fully part of the UN...

        The "US Constitution" is not a way of escape for criminals and illegal migrants from US law enforcement...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )
      You mean like how prohibition made people who wanted to drink leave the country?

      • You mean like how prohibition made people who wanted to drink leave the country?

        An interesting comparison that I don't think works.

        In prohibition, when the government banned alcohol you could simply consume it illegally, pretty much everywhere had speak-easies and stills.

        When the local government bans facial recognition, there is no way for you to obtain the second-order benefits lost. No way to use facial recognition as a way to reduce crime. No way for businesses to add facial recognition to help improv

        • plagued by increasing crime

          A world without facial recognition already exists, and crime continues to go down over time, not up.

          Up, down, can you hear me now? Fuck an A.

          What if facial recognition systems increase crime? It all depends on what it is used for, and who hacks the system. You simply lack enough imagination to understand the range of risks. You wave your hands and declare not only your opinion, but you even declare the future as a fact. Internet Prognosticator Man. Say, do you have a geocities home page I could visit?

    • Pretty sure that's what it is already. The only people who want to live there a psychopathic antifa sjw cucks who think beating up on "Nazis" (anyone who disagrees with their woke opinion) is going to get them laid/famous/more woke.

    • All bans on technology do, is ensure your city will be a future backwater where no-one wants to be.

      Dude. Portland does not seek your approval.

      You don't have enough internets to affect Portland's status.

  • Why are the giant Alaskan King Crabs that scuttle back and forth on the power lines by my house only snatching Canadian aircraft out of the sky?
  • Portland can enact all the bans on facial recognition that they want. As long as they have licensing for facial jewelry , everybody's gonna get busted anyway.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Feds and US mil will just set up detection on every road, bus and rail system in and out of the city/state...
      Every face into and out of the city/state.
      Every face near any federal building.
      The more a city/state protects criminals and illegal migrants, the more the feds will get interested.

  • Plans to propose a ban

    Well you just let me know when you get around to proposing one.

  • Surprised Portland would do this as their favourites, Antifa thugs, wear masks all the time...

    • They don't actually wear masks all the time.

      You can read their names and see their faces in the local newspapers.

      They're not scared of you.

  • Cops have to wear eye patches, 2 of them.
    Can't have them remembering who went where.

  • Of course they are... antifa wants to stay anonymous
  • You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy... (antifa)

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