Maine Passes the Strongest State Facial Recognition Ban Yet (theverge.com) 46
The state of Maine now has the most stringent laws regulating government use of facial recognition in the country. The Verge reports: The new law prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention. Since Maine police will not have access to facial recognition, they will be able to ask the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to run these searches.
Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records. The only other state-wide facial recognition law was enacted by Washington in 2020, but many privacy advocates were dissatisfied with the specifics of the law. Maine's new law also gives citizens the ability to sue the state if they've been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition, which was notably absent from Washington's regulation. If facial recognition searches are performed illegally, they must be deleted and cannot be used as evidence. In response to this new law, the ACLU said: "Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties, not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government use of face surveillance technology."
Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records. The only other state-wide facial recognition law was enacted by Washington in 2020, but many privacy advocates were dissatisfied with the specifics of the law. Maine's new law also gives citizens the ability to sue the state if they've been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition, which was notably absent from Washington's regulation. If facial recognition searches are performed illegally, they must be deleted and cannot be used as evidence. In response to this new law, the ACLU said: "Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties, not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government use of face surveillance technology."
What difference does it make? (Score:3, Interesting)
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When you have the president of the United States wearing a mask on a Zoom call with other world leaders, things just start to get really stupid.
The president wasn't alone in the room, wasn't the only world leader wearing a mask, and it appears that the mask was only worn during the parts where he wasn't able to distance from others.
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Jesus christ. The president is rarely ever alone and has been documented countless times not wearing a mask. He's fully vaccinated as well as anyone who comes close to him.
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Nobody who is getting the variant who is vaccinated is ending up in the hospital or dead. That's the key.
Your rationale is no different than wearing a safety helmet everywhere you go. And for someone as fragile as Joe, he probably should before he takes another tumble off a airplane staircase.
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But that's about the level of intellectual honesty I'd expect from somebody who wants to pretend the President wasn't in a room full of people and only wearing the mask when they're close by, and lie to m
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Well, it's been repeated ad nauseam that none of the vaccines is 100% effective. A vaxxed person can still be infected.
And here I'm looking at the instructions on my bottle of antibiotics which says "complete full course even if you feel better". Because as we all know else you just select for antibiotic-resistant bugs.
So I'm still holding out for an e
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Not to mention the vaccine doesn't not prevent you from catching and transmitting the virus to those that got the AZ jab which is maybe 10% effective against delta+ variant, and those that have not gotten vaccinated yet you know the kids and adults that throw tantrums like kids.
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ding ding ding - the data is clear break thru infections are pretty common; and its also evident that no it does not stop people from spreading it either. Cases where there have been pretty strict vaccine / isolation requirements like the MLB have proved that out.
Which of course to a thinking person means COVID-19 and its variants are not going away. It will continue to mutate in hosts and propagate even in populations where vaccination is nearly 100%. Why do think CDC was so quick to stop testing vaccinate
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If enough people get vaccinated it's like finishing the full course of antibiotics.
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That's because of all the idiots who have not gotten their shots but are willing to lie about it and go maskless combined with GOP politicians who are doing their best to make it illegal to even ask about vaccination, much less ask to see proof.
Those same idiots are why the delta variant found an easy foothold in the U.S. and is now re-populating ICUs, especially in places with a low vaccination rate.
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And by the time you take your mask off, you'll have 24 months of beard growth, which facial recognition will probably find every bit as enjoyable.
(This is presuming you're in Maine.)
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I don't remember his name being Daryl as well, just his 2 brothers.
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That was Larry, his brother Daryl, and his other brother Daryl.
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Between the tinfoil hat and the mask plus sunglasses i feel pretty safe :)
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We already are from the virus! I am.
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Will they ban ... (Score:2)
If I see someone I know robbing a bank, will I have to plead my 5th Amendment rights not to testify that I recognized them?
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Someone visually recognizing an individual is not the same as using a facial surveillance system to match an unknown face to a biometric database.
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How is that different?
Scale.
There are a lot of things that it is OK for the State to do on a small scale to help solve or prevent crime, but not a large scale. Intercepting mail, listening in on telephone calls, evesdropping on conversations, tracking where people go, etc.
In the past these have been naturally limited by cost - it takes a lot of money to have someone followed 24/7, or run around a telephone exchange tracing where a phone call came from, or watch a premises to see who comes and goes. It would have been prohibitiv
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Of course, nothing in this law will prevent the use of facial recognition software by individuals or businesses. Human figure and vehicle recognition are already standard in sub-$200 cameras from China. In five years, facial recognition will also be built in.
I
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According to the summary, the headline is horribly written and Maine only banned itself from using facial recognition. You, Me, and MegaCorp are still allowed to pay attention to what we see.
And yet⦠(Score:1)
Facefirst Troll Army Unite! (Score:1)
How does this change things? (Score:2)
The broad exemption of using FR to identify a person in an image that is suspected of a serious crime seems like it would be the most common usage. Are Maine PDs regularly going through the effort to use FR for other purposes? The new law would of course prevent them from identifying potential witnesses or collaborators to a crime using FR.
I'm all for the legislation, I'm just trying to understand whether it's a response to existing excessive use of FR or if it is proactive to set clear boundaries as FR b
Love the Spin (Score:2)
Maine's new law also gives citizens the ability to sue the state if they've been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition, which was notably absent from Washington's regulation.
You don't need a law allowing you to sue them, a law would only be necessary to amend an existing law which prohibited it. So no, it's not "notably absent" it's simply unnecessary.
Priming the pump (Score:2)
Police cannot use facial recognition EXCEPT...
If there are exceptions, they must collect the data to make use of it when an exception comes up.
"We'll just collect the FR data and train the software like we have been. We'll just set it aside for now. Don't worry about it, it's all legal!"
In response, the ACLU said (Score:1)
People recognize faces too,.. (Score:2)
Looking at this purely from a logical perspective, if they are going to ban facial recognition, then they need to render everyone in the state blind.
Laws which prohibit using a computer to do something that the human brain does are idiotic. What happens when technology is used to augment what the brain does? For example what will happen when a person who has a chip implanted in his brain to offset alzheimers recognizes people by sight? Are such procedures going to be illegal?
The only difference be
Exceptions (Score:2)
Re: Exceptions (Score:2)
Right?
What sorts of miniscule facial gestures will eventually trigger the "fraud alert"?