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Crime AI Privacy

New Site Extracts and Posts Every Face from Parler's Capitol Hill Insurrection Videos (arstechnica.com) 433

"Late last week, a website called Faces of the Riot appeared online, showing nothing but a vast grid of more than 6,000 images of faces, each one tagged only with a string of characters associated with the Parler video in which it appeared," reports WIRED, saying the site raises clear privacy concerns: The site's creator tells WIRED that he used simple, open source machine-learning and facial recognition software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face from the 827 videos that were posted to Parler from inside and outside the Capitol building on January 6, the day when radicalized Trump supporters stormed the building in a riot that resulted in five people's deaths. The creator of Faces of the Riot says his goal is to allow anyone to easily sort through the faces pulled from those videos to identify someone they may know, or recognize who took part in the mob, or even to reference the collected faces against FBI wanted posters and send a tip to law enforcement if they spot someone... "It's entirely possible that a lot of people who were on this website now will face real-life consequences for their actions...."

A recent upgrade to the site adds hyperlinks from faces to the video source, so that visitors can click on any face and see what the person was filmed doing on Parler. The Faces of the Riot creator, who says he's a college student in the "greater DC area," intends that added feature to help contextualize every face's inclusion on the site and differentiate between bystanders, peaceful protesters, and violent insurrectionists. He concedes that he and a co-creator are still working to scrub "non-rioter" faces, including those of police and press who were present. A message at the top of the site also warns against vigilante investigations, instead suggesting users report those they recognize to the FBI, with a link to an FBI tip page....

McDonald has previously both criticized the power of facial recognition technology and himself implemented facial recognition projects like ICEspy, a tool he launched in 2018 for identifying agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency... He sees Faces of the Riot as "playing it really safe" compared even to his own facial recognition experiments, given that it doesn't seek to link faces with named identities. "And I think it's a good call because I don't think that we need to legitimize this technology any more than it already is and has been falsely legitimized," McDonald says.

But McDonald also points out that Faces of the Riot demonstrates just how accessible facial recognition technologies have become. "It shows how this tool that has been restricted only to people who have the most education, the most power, the most privilege is now in this more democratized state," McDonald says.

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New Site Extracts and Posts Every Face from Parler's Capitol Hill Insurrection Videos

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    People have no right to privacy in public spaces. Anyone can film you out in public and use that video for anything they want except for commercial use. I'm a amatuer photographer and some people get upset when I take pictures of them in the streets. Some of them threaten to call the cops on me and I just laugh.
    • Why can't they use it for commercial use?
      • Why can't they use it for commercial use?

        To protect the income of those (such as actors and models) who derive income from selling the right to use their images for commercial purposes (such as movies and advertisements).

        Commercial news outlets (and others discussing factual aspects of political issues in situations that incidentally provide revenue) get a pass when using the images (especially of political public figures) for reportage, editorializing, etc. They're constitutionally protected under the fir

    • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:05AM (#60984508)

      *laugs im GDPR*

      The purpose of privacy in public, which, yes, does exist, is to prevent people from halfway around the globe coming to murder you because they disagreed with something you did 20 years ago when you were a very different person.
      Let's say some islamic terrorists, in your case. Or hell, just you not getting that job.

      It's called forgiveness. It's what developed countries do. Look it up.

      Yes, I'm being the devil's advocate right now.
      Because even though they were obviously harmful morons, I have hopes that that will change, and for most of them, already started to improve. Don't prevent that, please.

      • They said trump had learned his lesson too. He hadn't.

        These tools won't either unless there are consequences.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        GDPR did not impose privacy in public.

        It is perfectly possible under GDPR to photograph someone in public and use that photograph for non-commercial or news reporting purposes.

        You do not need their permission.

        (Some countries that have implemented GDPR do also have other laws that constrain use of photographs, but those laws predate GDPR and are not a result of it)

    • The name of the site itself implies that the people on there were rioters, even though the vast majority of people who were there that day did not riot, did not invade the capitol, and were just standing or walking around outside.

      this becomes increasingly apparent when you dig into the parler data dump, it is from areas all around Washington DC city for the whole day. A lot of these people had nothing at all to do with the attack on the Capitol.

      So yes, the name of the site is by itself a problem, and the si

  • Um ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:12AM (#60984396)

    ... saying the site raises clear privacy concerns: ...

    What's that thing conservatives say about privacy and law enforcement... If you haven't done anything wrong, you don't have anything to hide?

    Besides, and more importantly, these photos / videos are of people in very a public space (storming The Capital Building), where there's no presumption.of privacy.

  • by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @01:41AM (#60984462)
    The Wired article, the Ars article and the Slashdot summary don't link the URL for this alleged site, *anywhere* -- and I haven't seen a single person question this either, either here on on Ars.

    Hint: It's customary on the web to link to the original content the discussion is referring to.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:34AM (#60984572)

      The Wired article, the Ars article and the Slashdot summary don't link the URL for this alleged site, *anywhere*

      It's at the end of a simple google search using the term "faces of the riot".

      https://facesoftheriot.com/ [facesoftheriot.com]

      One possible reason it's not linked; maybe the reporter thinks that making it one step removed from their article protects their ethics when some lunatic turns into a vigilante and heads off to kill someone.

      Personally, as an outsider, I think, the USA should draw a line under this period of their history, build a bridge, and get over it. Move on, time for a new chapter rather than keeping the old one burning.

      • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @07:05AM (#60984956)
        You get over criminal murder by prosecuting and locking up those responsible so they cannot reoffend, then moving on. Letting seditionists and murders go free is not going to move anything forward, it’s going to show that sedition and murder have no punishment and will simply incite more of the same behavior.
  • Hi there, my name is Roger.

    And I say: Let the witch hunt begin!
    Let us all keep those people exactly in that role for the entire rest of their lives! Let's never give them the chance to change or move on! And let's give them justificstion for acting like that, by leading by example: Let's treat them just like they treated others, because treating people like that is wrong!

    Because here in the United States of Horton,
    we are humans.
    And we are *fucking morons*!

    -- If Slashdot commenters were honest [youtube.com].

  • On the one hand, justice right so yay?

    This podcast with Daphne Keller was the best backgrounder I've run across on the intersection of anti-trust, free speech, privacy, and just plain having healthy spaces online (so that people aren't stewardable into such an idiotic action as the DC mob undertook). https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/recodedecode?selected=VMP3501099770

    Re the privacy angle, I keep going back to David Brin's The Transparent Society and it's many tough questions.

    And here's one with Daphne Kelle

  • LOCK 'EM UP!!! (... screamed in righteous fury)

    • LOCK 'EM UP!!!

      Yes, this is frequently what one does in response to crimes, especially serious ones. Are republicans now against locking up violent offenders too?

  • by LeeLynx ( 6219816 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @08:02AM (#60985108)
    We just spent four years with a president going out of his way to portray any dissent from his administration as treason. I realize that siccing the online mob on the very, very misguided people who went along with what was, in the end, the entirely foreseeable climax of this behavior, feels like some sort of poetic justice. However, and I feel like I am saying this far too often lately, no one is holding a "break society in half" contest. There are no prizes being offered, no titles being awarded. All this does is reinforce every paranoid belief these people hold by, well, making it clear that people really *are* out to get them.

    So, good work I guess, Mr. Subject-of-the-posted-story. You've managed to *actually* marginalize these people, something that was only previously happening in their delusions.
  • by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @08:31AM (#60985204) Homepage

    McDonald has previously both criticized the power of facial recognition technology and himself implemented facial recognition projects like ICEspy, a tool he launched in 2018 for identifying agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency... He sees Faces of the Riot as "playing it really safe" compared even to his own facial recognition experiments, given that it doesn't seek to link faces with named identities. "And I think it's a good call because I don't think that we need to legitimize this technology any more than it already is and has been falsely legitimized," McDonald says.

    He recognizes the slippery slope, then shoves us all collectively down it by suggesting we narc on our neighbors like in Stalinist Russia because he doesn't like this particular group of people. Well, neither do I. And some of them broke some laws. Cool beans.

    It's still a fucking stupid idea. This will be used against people he agrees with, his neighbors, his family, and his friends. Maybe not today, but you don't get to set limits to "only people I don't like" when you open Pandora's box.

    There are many things that can be done, but should not. With great power comes great responsibility, and he just abdicated all responsibility while exercising great power.

  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday January 24, 2021 @09:34AM (#60985334)

    These people were in public, committing crimes.

    There's no privacy expectation in public or when committing a crime or being on the FBI's most wanted list.

    • Uh huh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by martynhare ( 7125343 ) on Sunday January 24, 2021 @10:31AM (#60985516)
      How about if these people were:

      * Hong Kong demonstrators?
      * Animal rights activists?
      * Gay/trans rights activists?
      * Anti/pro abortion campaigners?
      * Mens rights activists or feminists?

      I just want to make sure you're happy with the idea that demonstrators are fine to dox using public information. I'm fine with that since I'm a nerd who never leaves the house anyway but having seen the late 90s and 00s happen, I'm fairly sure a lot of the above folks won't agree.

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