
Facial Recognition Is the Perfect Tool for Oppression - janemanos
https://medium.com/s/story/facial-recognition-is-the-perfect-tool-for-oppression-bc2a08f0fe66
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PeterisP
The argument to ban or regulate "facial recognition technology" seems futile.
It's not (necessarily) some highly complicated secret software available to a
limited number of organizations that could keep it under wraps - currently,
any decent CS undergraduate student could make a passable facial recognition
system as a study project if they really wanted to, using only generic, freely
available image processing / machine learning resources (i.e. nothing specific
to facial recognition that could be regulated or restricted). Sure, it won't
be as good as state-of-art systems, and it will take enough time so they
likely won't bother unless someone wants it bad enough to pay for a bunch of
weeks of work, but it'll be sufficient for all the bad outcomes described in
the article.

The barrier of entry is just too low. If a few pictures of your face are
floating online, many people can make a system that will somewhat accurately
try to detect your face; the best the regulation can do is to specify that
organizations will not _use_ facial recognition even if they trivially could.

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zimablue
There's a difference between being able to recognize your ten friends and
having a database of millions of people's faces.

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PeterisP
Regulating the storage and processing of private biometric data might be a
more realistic approach than regulating technology - that database of millions
of people's faces is pretty much the only boundary between recognizing your
ten friends and mass surveillance; the tech is quite similar but the data
matters a lot.

~~~
zimablue
Yeah but this seems like a kind of pointless side-channel. Let's just assume
that by the time this hits legislation the restriction will be on applying
facial recognition and storing data on people's faces. Yeah we know you can
implement it, we all did the coursera course on convnets.

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crocal
There is another problem with such technology that is missing from this long
article. Facial recognition et al. also excludes those with physical
disabilities. For example, some people have facial injuries that make it
impossible and/or painful for them to look “straight” in a mirror. A reason
why, for instance, I abhorre the 3D movies is that I can’t take my wife in
movies because she lost binocular vision. We are creating a society where
technology is used to filter out people that can’t conform to a given physical
standard. I find it revolting and we hackers should fight to our last breath
against it. Edit: typo

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emiliobumachar
Please excuse my ignorance. Is 3D a worse experience for people with monocular
vision, beyond having to wear the glasses for no benefit? I would imagine it
just automatically degrades to 2D.

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crocal
I will try to convey what only disabled people can convey to the best of my
abilities. First, with one image you lose a lot of luminosity with the glasses
on. Without the glasses, off course, it is unwatchable. Furthermore, and more
subtle, many people like my partner have /partial/ paralysis, so they have
trained their brain in a certain way to compensate for the fact that they have
partial binocular vision. The 3D effect don’t tolerate that since they rely on
two images precisely engineered to trick your binocular vision « brain
algorithm ». All this put together make 3D movies a «no-go » for people with
monocular or partial binocular vision.

Edit: Typo and better explanation of the « trick »

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Majestic121
I don't really get your point, a lot of existing things are "no-go" for people
with disabilities. Skiing is impossible if you can't use your legs. Going to
the movie is pretty much a no-go if you're blind (I know audiodescription
exists for some movies)

There should be options for people with disabilities of course, and AFAIK 2D
movies still exists and are not going to die anytime soon. But what are you
debating for ? Do you want a global ban on 3D because it can not be enjoyed by
everyone ?

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crocal
I believe this technology should be put under control because it is not only a
tool of mass control, but also a discriminatory tool. I gave example of this
trend taking a personal example. Having to choose to go to a different theater
because there is no 2D at the chosen time is discriminatory.

I must also kindly reject your example. You can ski without legs. Ski slopes
are actually a very good counter example: everybody who can pay a lift can go.

It’s a different question that I do not addressed, but I do not believe a ban
will work. It’s better to regulate and put checks and balances in place. At
least IMHO.

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self_awareness
I don't get this "we must ban something" approach. In the group of 100 people,
even if 99 people will ban something, 1 person will still use it.

Isn't it better to find how you can defend against something (face recognition
in this example) instead of convincing the people to "ban it"?

I mean, let's ban all wars, ban low income and ban evil. What sort of thinking
is this?

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inanutshellus
Well. We're governed by laws. At least... theoretically. So if we make it
illegal to scan peoples' faces then, theoretically, an oppressive government
can't use it against its populace.

On the flip side, you have the "good guy problem" that we normal "good" people
will happily give up our rights in order to help catch bad guys.

But really... it's not a MAC address or an IP address. It's your face. What
"defense" is there to facial recognition software? Even if you stay off of
facebook, your friends and family will still post photos of you there and
reference you and talk about you. "No man is an island" has never been more
apparent.

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self_awareness
Theory is good for books, but for life we need practical solutions.

An automated system that scans friends galleries to find my face in their
galleries maybe would be helpful. Then I would see who uses my face in what
context, so I can react; maybe send a polite request to remove me from the
picture, set it as private, or simply remove the picture from the gallery?

Or maybe an approach based on spreading disinformation would be enough, so I
could produce fake photos of my face with other randomly chosen faces from all
over the internet, so that face-gathering systems will store fake relations
between me and some random people?

There are lots of methods we can use to defend ourselves.

The "ban something" approach works only for parties that are willing to
cooperate. But it's not the cooperative parties that we should be afraid of,
it's the uncooperative ones.

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fixermark
It ultimately boils down to who owns the signal.

You would love to have a system that scanned the world's photos and notified
you automatically about people commenting on you. You don't necessarily want
the government to have that same system.

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tonysdg
I'd also add that this begs a serious question: who _do_ you trust to own the
signal? A multinational corporation? A government? No one? Everyone?

Furthermore, how do you rectify disagreements over that trust? I may trust a
multinational corporation (especially if I own stock in it and can vote on its
directors), but you may trust your government, and our neighbor may not trust
anyone.

Both of those questions need to be "solved" (if such a thing is even
possible), but that's (obviously) a lot easier said than done.

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dostres
I built a face recognition algorithm to sell to police, immigration and pretty
much who ever wants it. It took 6 months and is state of the art. Which is to
say, not as good as a human, but getting close.

If you’re worried about privacy then maybe you should take the tracking device
out of your pocket.

The concept of using the power of the state to limit the power of the state
seems flawed to me. Especially an oppressive state.

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jankotek
90% of people already walk around with phone that broadcasts their unique ID
(wifi MAC).

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pitt1980
text recognition is a better tool,

in this age, physical location isn't that important

text recognition, lets the oppressor know who is thinking what, and who
they're trying to communicate it with

or makes nearly all communication impossible

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swirepe
> in this age, physical location isn't that important

Everyone else seems to think that information is important. What's your
address?

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falcolas
Don't forget to figure out where they go to eat, where they work, where their
lover(s) lives, where their children go school, where they go shopping, where
they get a haircut, and whether they jaywalk. All for the last 12 months. I'm
sure we can find something in there to persecute them for.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I
will find something in them which will hang him."

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amelius
See also China's social credit system.

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vinceguidry
Oppression always fails in the long run because the conditions that spawn the
oppression always eventually pass, and oppressive regime has to keep
justifying itself.

For instance, slavery was long on the way out of the US by the time of the
Civil War. As we kept expanding west-ward, the new states had exactly zero
economic incentive to turn people into livestock. The South could get away
with political shenanigans only as long as it could maintain its voting bloc.
Expansion made that impossible, and the only solution became a war.

If the war hadn't happened though, we would have seen a managed transition.
Legislation tailored at reining in slavery would have slowly made the practice
increasingly untenable and the economic aspect would have gotten managed out
over time. In fact, it was already happening.

To generalize, oppression seeks out a local maximum, eventually society finds
a higher peak, and the oppression only lasts as long as it takes for the rest
of society to build a wide enough bridge so that people on the lower hill can
just walk over to the bigger hill. Or, you know, a war.

~~~
maxxxxx
It's true that oppression fails in the long run but it's also true that we all
die in the long run. There are plenty of examples where oppression lasted long
enough to make the lives of generations of people miserable. So we shouldn't
just say "This too shall pass"

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vinceguidry
If the alternative is fighting a war, there's a good case to be made for
managed transition.

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maxxxxx
I may not sure how this comment helps with the current situation where people
think that tools like facial recognition will lead into oppression.

Are you saying we shouldn't worry because that oppression will fail in another
50-100 years? Let's just make sure the end of that oppression is well managed
?

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vinceguidry
I'm saying that if you want to actually solve a problem, a more sober outlook
on the reasons why that problem is even a thing is going to be far more useful
than impassioned, but undirected action.

The author of the piece is calling for a ban on facial recognition tech. At
what level should this ban be placed? Just the US? The Anglo world? Anglo-
Europe? Worldwide? China seems to be leading the push here, and they don't
seem to be all that interested in human rights arguments originating from the
West.

I know that nobody here really wants to deal with China's focus on
collectivism over individualism, but it really does deserve a discussion.
China has been grappling with the task of governing its immense population for
thousands of years. How do you draw the line between governance and
oppression?

Even if we restrict our ban to the Anglo world or just the US, A ban on facial
recognition tech can have the same kind of effect that banning psychedelics
did back in the 70s. A ban means that we can't run social experiments. When we
can't run social experiments, we can't actually know the effects.

To implement a ban, a war must be fought. Even if it doesn't result in
physical violence, you're still telling a lot of people they can't have what
they want. If facial recognition tech results in oppression, we need to
understand how.

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maxxxxx
I get your point.

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bsenftner
This article is a masterpiece of misdirection. It says it's top highlight is
"We believe facial recognition technology is the most uniquely dangerous
surveillance mechanism ever invented." And then they wave their fear hands
around non-facial recognition technologies and discuss their real fear:
feature creep of surveillance technologies.

The article is a masterpiece of misdirection because we are very aware that
the written word in the form of explainer articles for the uninformed IS
ACTUALLY THE PERFECT TOOL FOR OPPRESSION. Unless you're one of the emotionally
manipulated, you realize we live in a new age where the ignorant and
intellectually lazy are "farmed and harvested" for their ignorant votes, to
control the laws and economies of entire nation states. This article is one
such ignorance embedding article putting fear into people's heads so they can
be controlled.

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auslander
New trends in fashion: Hoodies, sunglasses, camouflage face paint.

Second option, can a camera sensor be damaged by laser pointer?

I have no hope for legal restrictions, it will always be defeated by
'security' arguments.

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fixermark
It's what humans have used throughout human history.

"Oh, _that_ guy? Don't trade with _that_ guy; he's an asshole." ;)

Now we're just scaling it up with fast-communicating hardware.

~~~
mc32
The issue is scale and inability to escape. So, while your group would know
about “thief”, another group would not, allowing this “thief” to decide to
reform with this group, or just as likely to yet burn another bridge. But at
least this “thief” had an opportunity to reform.

You will see this in history when say a lawyer or whoever else from that time
got recorded in history, moves to a new town to escape a bad rep., often
unfairly cast due to personal dispute.

