Government Privacy Watchdog Under Pressure To Recommend Facial Recognition Ban (thehill.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent agency, is coming under increasing pressure to recommend the federal government stop using facial recognition. Forty groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sent a letter Monday to the agency calling for the suspension of facial recognition systems "pending further review." "The rapid and unregulated deployment of facial recognition poses a direct threat to 'the precious liberties that are vital to our way of life,'" the advocacy groups wrote.
The PCLOB "has a unique responsibility, set out in statute, to assess technologies and polices that impact the privacy of Americans after 9-11 and to make recommendations to the President and executive branch," they wrote. The agency, created in 2004, advises the administration on privacy issues. The letter cited a recent New York Times report about Clearview AI, a company which claims to have a database of more than 3 billion photos and is reportedly collaborating with hundreds of police departments. It also mentioned a study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Commerce Department, which found that the majority of facial recognition systems have "demographic differentials" that can worsen their accuracy based on a person's age, gender or race.
The PCLOB "has a unique responsibility, set out in statute, to assess technologies and polices that impact the privacy of Americans after 9-11 and to make recommendations to the President and executive branch," they wrote. The agency, created in 2004, advises the administration on privacy issues. The letter cited a recent New York Times report about Clearview AI, a company which claims to have a database of more than 3 billion photos and is reportedly collaborating with hundreds of police departments. It also mentioned a study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the Commerce Department, which found that the majority of facial recognition systems have "demographic differentials" that can worsen their accuracy based on a person's age, gender or race.
Oh great (Score:3)
So now if I see someone I know on the street I have to pretend I don't know them? Damn Government.
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Nah, you are still allowed to recognize her by her legs, the bottom of her back, breast, the way she walks, etc. Oh wait! I forgot I was on Slashdot for a moment, sorry...
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem isn't the technology, but how it's used. If a face flags as a "suspected match" that's how it should be treated. But instead everyone seems to think that a suspected match is an absolute match and it can't possibly be a false positive.
It should be thought of as "person X might have been here at this time because his face was recognized by the system".
Having cops show up and talk to a guy is acceptable. Having the swat team rain down and tackle a guy is not.
Facial recognition is not at the poi
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Is that so? I'm yet to meet a person, who's expressed this view in earnest. Do you have evidence to support this claim of yours?
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I agree that the problem isn't necessarily the technology, but how it is used; my example differs from yours, though. Using it to find a wanted person in crowds is one thing (possibly a good thing). Using it like license plate readers to build up a database of every place every recognizable person is spotted, which then turns into a giant tracking system a la the TV show "Person of Interest" is what bothers me. Like what has happened with "license plate readers." Given the path blazed by the license pla
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I how see this (Score:3)
How dare you train a computer to recognize people IN PUBLIC!!1!!eleven!!1! That is a violation of their PRIVACY which they really don't have IN PUBLIC.
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It is ineffective.
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Even in public you have some expectation of privacy. You are mostly anonymous except to a small number of people you encounter who happen to know you, for example.
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If you do, your expectation is baseless and otherwise misguided.
Such as a police officer, right?
Police have always been able to track anyone — it was sheer numbers, that kept them from tracking everyone. The technology is changing that equation.
Whether these advances are something to lament or celebrate depends purely on whether you trust you
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Actually in the UK you don't have to give the police your name or show them any ID (in fact the UK doesn't have a national ID document anyway) unless they have reason to suspect you are involved in a crime. If they do have reason they have to give it to you and put it in writing if requested so lying risks you being able to sue for harassment.
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You do realize, this is irrelevant to both the topic at large, and to the subthread you started (expectation of privacy in public), do you not?
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Not being identified is an aspect of privacy. Anonymity enhances privacy.
By the way, there are climate protests in China. You might want to update your sig.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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Once again, irrelevant. That police cannot demand your papers, does not prevent them from recognizing your face.
Maybe, they have them, but there is no need for them...
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The ban ship has sailed (Score:4, Interesting)
Instituting a ban, while attractive, would be nearly impossible to enforce, because the largest group of current users (by far) are governments. Add in the explosion in non-government usage, and the opposition to a ban would be too strident, well financed and powerful to overcome.
Given how widespread the technology has already become, and the growing demand for cheaper and better to "enhance security" for everything from schools to retailers to transit to private properties, discussion may be fruitful, but, the resulting legislation will likely will be very weak, and largely ineffective.
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This cat is not going back in the bag.
Even if installation by governments is somehow banned they're still allowed to purchase the data stream from private companies, the same as they do for other data.
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Pointness ban (Score:3)
As far as I am aware, the techniques used for facial recognition are quite "generic" is tuned in specific applications for facial recognition.
So while this stops government, it would be difficult if nigh on impossible to stop private uses of facial recognition, including in public. Might as well ban all CCTV because all the ban achieves is to make it expensive to identify people recorded on CCTV cheaply.
I guess there is an argument that the presence of a cheap method of identifying individuals may encourage even more proliferation of CCTV, particularly by the government. However, I don't think this will be enforceable on private individuals / organisations, and therefore is probably a bad idea,
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"(License Plate Scanners could also detect drivers who did not pay fines/fees/insurance etc.)"
No they do not and could not. License plate scanners, if 100% accurate, could detect LICENSE PLATES which have a database entry indicating unpaid fines/fees/insurance etc. License Plate Scanners cannot detect drivers nor anything else other than the license plate number. That license plate number is then used as a search key into a database containing information which may or may not be accurate.
License Plate Sc
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Why do you spam this exact same copy/pasta every time an even vaguely related topic shows up? Utter lack of imagination?
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By the way, IMHO, electronic license plates should/must never be allowed to be legal anywhere, because they can be easily reprogrammed later, to defeat License Plate Scanners, by displaying fake license plates!
I'm still waiting for news on the first viable hack of an e-plate. Theoretically it's possible. But the description of most implementations of these seem to include some sort of RF comms. Law enforcement will just skip the character recognition and read the unique h/w ID.
I had a chance to speak with someone in law enforcement about plate scanners. He says that the proliferation of our electronic toll system (Good To Go) is so great that they often skip the plate and just read transponder ID.