Massachusetts Lawmakers Vote To Pass a Statewide Police Ban On Facial Recognition (techcrunch.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Massachusetts lawmakers have voted to pass a new police reform bill that will ban police departments and public agencies from using facial recognition technology across the state. The bill was passed by both the state's House and Senate on Tuesday, a day after senior lawmakers announced an agreement that ended months of deadlock.
The police reform bill also bans the use of chokeholds and rubber bullets, and limits the use of chemical agents like tear gas, and also allows police officers to intervene to prevent the use of excessive and unreasonable force. But the bill does not remove qualified immunity for police, a controversial measure that shields serving police from legal action for misconduct, following objections from police groups. Critics have for years complained that facial recognition technology is flawed, biased and disproportionately misidentifies people and communities of color. But the bill grants police an exception to run facial recognition searches against the state's driver license database with a warrant. In granting that exception, the state will have to publish annual transparency figures on the number of searches made by officers. "The Massachusetts Senate voted 28-12 to pass, and the House voted 92-67," notes the report. "The bill will now be sent to Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker for his signature."
The police reform bill also bans the use of chokeholds and rubber bullets, and limits the use of chemical agents like tear gas, and also allows police officers to intervene to prevent the use of excessive and unreasonable force. But the bill does not remove qualified immunity for police, a controversial measure that shields serving police from legal action for misconduct, following objections from police groups. Critics have for years complained that facial recognition technology is flawed, biased and disproportionately misidentifies people and communities of color. But the bill grants police an exception to run facial recognition searches against the state's driver license database with a warrant. In granting that exception, the state will have to publish annual transparency figures on the number of searches made by officers. "The Massachusetts Senate voted 28-12 to pass, and the House voted 92-67," notes the report. "The bill will now be sent to Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker for his signature."
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I wish I was that flexible.
Faces No Feces Yes! (Score:2)
Faces may be covered, but the fecal recognition feature is still in service to stop masked dog owners from anonymously refusing to fondle canine poop in restricted "single use" plastic bags.
Technically this is a dog butt sniffer app.
Re: No loss. (Score:2)
Facial recognition is highly focused on the ears and eyebrows. The reason is those are areas that don't change as rapidly as you age.
So, who's the outsourced vendor then? (Score:1)
"a new police reform bill that will ban police departments and public agencies from using facial recognition technology across the state"
That's great and all, but what exactly prevents those same police departments from outsourcing the shit out of this, doing the usual-and-expected run-around of the Constitution, for Greeds sake?
Oh, you got your annual transparency report instead?
* golf clap *
You privacy advocates can stop patting yourselves on the back now, calling this some kind of "victory". The Facial Genie is out of the bottle, and Greed fucking loves it. Cue yet another Amazon law enforcement partnership in 3...2...
Re:So, who's the outsourced vendor then? (Score:5, Interesting)
Scanning through the text [malegislature.gov] it looks like they have banned the use of facial recognition as evidence as well. Obviously there is parallel construction but it makes using it to harass people much more difficult because any action that needs to be justified by probable cause becomes illegal if facial recognition was used to identify the victim. At least that's my layman's interpretation of it.
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I think you meant "to identify the suspect" but I can understand the Freudian slip.
Perhaps its not a Freudian Slip... (Score:2)
The problem may be this technology works so well we can't tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.
That's a much bigger problem for society. It may require years of oedipal therapy.
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Yeah, that horse has left the barn a long time ago. People think that the FBI can't monitor your online communications without cause any more, but all they have to do is buy the info from your telecom provider (probably cheaper and better than doing it themselves anyway) and it's all perfectly legal.
Really, the complaints about bias and false positives in facial recognition software are close to invalid now anyway. The advances made the last couple of years are amazing, both in speed and accuracy. Proper
How is that even defined? (Score:3)
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I'll do you one better, WHY is Keyser Soze?
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Well, I guess it is time for us to all develop Silly Walks [youtube.com] in order to stay anonymous..
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If you recognize the tatoo on someone's neck, is that facial recognizion?
I'm pretty sure tattoos have always been used for identifiction. I'm also pretty sure the neck isn't the face so it'll still be fine probably. Asking for a friend?
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I think it's helpful to approach difference between facial recognition and tattoo recognition by a roundabout path, asking a somewhat different question: What's the difference between a *machine* doing facial recognition and an officer searching through a book of mug shots?
The big difference between human and machine surveillance is the cost to scale. Combine machine pattern matching, databases, and surveillance cameras and you can build an ubiquitous, universal, and inescapable surveillance system that t
All the more reason to work on it (Score:3)
Now, wouldn't it make more sense to create a layer of automated protection for "communities of color?" We can train out the biases from AI, we can't do the same so easily for humans because we are a tribal species and in-group preference is as innate to us as it is for other primates, dogs, etc.
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Now, wouldn't it make more sense to create a layer of automated protection for "communities of color?" We can train out the biases from AI
Sure, that would make a compelling argument if the technology were there, but it's not there yet. They're passing legislation today because the technology is not ready today. Legislation does not have to be forever set in stone, however.
I personally don't feel like living in a surveillance state and don't personally know anyone else that really wants that. Improving the technology doesn't make automated surveillance any more attractive to me.
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Flawed technology + MA is wealthy/safe (Score:2)
We can train out the biases from AI, we can't do the same so easily for humans because we are a tribal species and in-group preference is as innate to us as it is for other primates, dogs, etc.
Can you, really? I normally hate laws that seem to fear modern technology. I am a masshole and am ambivalent about this law, but I recognize that facial recognition technology is shit currently and shouldn't be used for convicting someone. The error rate is just too high.
Imagine you get flagged for fleeing a crime scene..the only problem is you were home alone sleeping when it happened. Do you want the police saying...hmm, this automated system flagged you at a murder scene, you need to come down to
chokehold (Score:2)
The Problem Is It Works Too Well (Score:2)
Right.
I think the real problem is it works too well.
The technology is so accurate that humans are unable to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. ....And that's an even bigger problem!
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Unfortunately police forces prefer to hire military veterans, especially those who have spent time in combat. You can give as many seminars as you want about de-escalation, but those guys spent 4 or more years having the concept that resistance should be met with overwhelming violence drummed into them and that's what is going to come to the fore under stress.
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Interesting. All the military vets I know are well trained in de-escalation. It all goes back to the tenet that the greatest victories are the battles you don't have to fight.
When there is no possibility of de-escalation (when you're being fired upon), then the vets carry experience in minimal collateral damage, and also controlling the situation as well as it can be using well established tactics.
So they're _exactly_ the kind of people you'd want in the police force as long as they pass the usual psychol
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Interesting. All the military vets I know are well trained in de-escalation. It all goes back to the tenet that the greatest victories are the battles you don't have to fight. When there is no possibility of de-escalation (when you're being fired upon), then the vets carry experience in minimal collateral damage, and also controlling the situation as well as it can be using well established tactics.
So they're _exactly_ the kind of people you'd want in the police force as long as they pass the usual psychological, physical and other tests that are required. Professionals who know exactly what they're doing under pressure.
Exactly this.
There's more than one valid reason that military vets are basically targeted for that job. And it sure as hell ain't liability.
Outlawing software - good luck with that (Score:2)
(sarcasm)Given all the successful attempts to outlaw software in the past (e.g. file sharing), I'm sure this law will have no unforeseen consequences.(/sarcasm)
Five years from now, build-in facial recognition is going to be a standard feature on practically every security camera sold under $200. Businesses and homeowners will routinely use it, and they'll simply funnel their "hits" directly to the local police without saying where it came from, e.g. "My camera recorded this guy, and I recognized him from t
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Yes, I'm quite sure those repositories will be every bit as secure as our credit report databases, our law enforcement fusion center databases, and the FBI employee directory database.
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"but I doubt they will come with the repositories of faces and ids to check against"
They could have or subscribe to hashes of key biometrics of the top 10k wanted individuals. That could be distances between pupils, skintone, nose/mouth shape, hair color, etc. I doubt that list changes much and could likely be compressed down to a few MB which would be easy to download/update.
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"Five years from now, build-in facial recognition is going to be a standard feature on practically every security camera sold under $200. Businesses and homeowners will routinely use it, and they'll simply funnel their "hits" directly to the local police"
This is easy to mess with. Just get printouts of the 10 most wanted people and hold them in front of a camera at your local coffeeshop and watch the police chase go on endless goose chases. I can see people doing this to film the results. Perhaps they could
Why not just declare a chokehold deadly force? (Score:2, Insightful)
A blanket ban on chokeholds as defined by the bill is stupid (ie. any time the neck is touched with the intent or result of injury).
If the police is trying to pull someone with a knife off me I'd rather not they'd have to worry about not touching their neck ... if they choke them to death, so fucking be it.
Fights are messy and they won't always have the option to retreat. If they are allowed to shoot him they should be allowed to choke him.
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Banning chokeholds, rubber bullets and tear gas is designed to force more dangerous conflicts. Surprised they didn't throw in a taser ban. More "unarmed" (but still dangerous) people will be shot dead by police, triggering more rioting, but more importantly another round of fundraising the politicians in power can use on their re-election campaigns.
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Rubber bullets and tear gas fired into crowds are actually far **MORE** likely to turn a peaceful or unruly crowd violent, police have known that since at least the 1990s and still insist on using the very same tactic. It seems to me as though they prefer the peaceful protest turn into a riot because then they've got something exciting to do and they can bully people all they want.
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Rubber bullets and tear gas fired into crowds are actually far **MORE** likely to turn a peaceful or unruly crowd violent, police have known that since at least the 1990s and still insist on using the very same tactic.
Yes, perhaps you're right. We should forget all that non-lethal bullshit and just take the approach of Tiananmen Square instead. I mean, it should only take one or two crushed skulls under tank treads to calm those non-violent "anti" fascists down, right?
It seems to me as though they prefer the peaceful protest turn into a riot because then they've got something exciting to do and they can bully people all they want.
It seems to me that you feel all cops are racist violent-loving thugs who only joined the force to bully people all they want. Believe it or not, 99% of police officers are sensible, respectable human beings just earning a paycheck to support themselves
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All? No. Many? Absolutely. Most? Probably, but I've only worked with a couple dozen so can't really speak authoritatively. My former coworker, who retired from the detective squad, was of the same opinion. She was the one who identified one of the provocateurs of the Seattle WTO riot as an off-duty cop rather than one of the Portland anarchists (who were 8 blocks away at the time), and was forced to retire afterwards.
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All? No. Many? Absolutely. Most? Probably, but I've only worked with a couple dozen so can't really speak authoritatively.
But you have no issues at all speaking with biased conviction here, based on a "couple dozen" interactions. Most is a sizeable assumption across any large group of humans, unless you are being really generic. Racist violent-loving thugs who only joined the force to bully, isn't generic.
And if "most" are indeed that way, then that's a much larger problem centered around proper recruiting and training. Assholes are everywhere in society. It's on employers to weed them out.
My former coworker, who retired from the detective squad, was of the same opinion. She was the one who identified one of the provocateurs of the Seattle WTO riot as an off-duty cop rather than one of the Portland anarchists (who were 8 blocks away at the time), and was forced to retire afterwards.
Apparently a singular example is
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A couple dozen interactions? No, I work in physical security, I've had extended dealings with a couple dozen cops in several departments. Overbearing testosterone-fueled aggression is very much the norm, it was my least-favorite customer set to work with.
Look at my original statement, "Rubber bullets and tear gas fired into crowds are actually far **MORE** likely to turn a peaceful or unruly crowd violent, police have known that since at least the 1990s". If you know that beating a dog will make it likel
Next step... (Score:2)
The next step is to get rid of pictures on drives licenses.
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And passports. Fingerprints too, and DNA tests, as they have error bars as well.
There's specifically no ban on civilian use, which means people targeting police can use it to identify them as much as they like (organised crime and so on).
Instead of doing the sensible thing (Facial recognition which is passed on to a human operator as a "possibility" which can then be checked by a human, with the human determining whether or not a match is sufficient to progress, with the current tech being treated with sce
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Makin' it easier on criminals. (Score:1)
These people are fucking idiots.
In the immortal words of Frost... (Score:3)
"What the hell are we supposed to use? Harsh language?"
Wishful thinking (Score:2)