
San Francisco bans facial recognition technology by municipal agencies - dcschelt
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/facial-recognition-ban-san-francisco.html
======
jasaloo
seeing plenty of comments along the lines of "don't they have better things to
do?"

please remember that there are coalitions of activists advocating multiple
issues for civil rights simultaneously, and that a victory in one area (e.g.
fighting the surveillance state) is neither mutually exclusive nor to the
detriment of another equal or greater social ill (e.g. homelessness).

In the meantime, enjoy these videos of what they're doing with facial
recognition in China:

(Social credit system)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkw15LkZ_Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkw15LkZ_Kw)

(broad piece on facial recognition):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH2gMNrUuEY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH2gMNrUuEY)

------
tuxxy
I'm happy to see this, but it's not really going to stop the inevitable rise
of the police state. They _will_ find other methods that aren't using facial
recognition technology. I hear that gait recognition is quite accurate.

~~~
toephu2
There is no police state in SF. It is quite the opposite. Crime is rampant and
criminals know the police don't bother going after non-life threatening crimes
(e.g., car break-ins are rampant all over the Bay Area now).

I for one prefer the rise of the police state. Have you been to China lately?
Amazingly safe. Never once seen a broken car window anywhere there. There is
no such thing as smash-and-grab there anymore and carjackings are unheard of.
Used to be a lot of petty crime, not anymore. Cameras are everywhere in big
cities. It is safe for any attractive young female to walk out on the streets
at midnight there.

They use face-recognition technology heavily and catch criminals with the help
of it.

I dream of the day law enforcement in the U.S. can link up to Facebook and
find the real identities of criminals caught on video. Sadly I don't think
that day will ever come. Or maybe in other states but definitely not in
California. Crime fighting in California is still stuck in the 80s.

CHP actively scanning the highways for stolen plates using OCR readers?
Technically possible but not happening (not sure why).

Police departments linking up to facebook to find thieves caught on 1080p
video? Possible but not happening (not legally allowed?).

~~~
jrochkind1
San Francisco crime rate per 100,000 people: 715.00

Phoenix: 760.93

Houston: 1095.23

New Orleans: 1121.41

Stockton CA: 1414.56

Milwaukee: 1597.36

Baltimore: 2027.01

Detroit: 2056.67

St Louis: 2082.29

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate)

~~~
topmonk
That's only _violent_ crime. From your very link, for property crime, it's the
4th highest of all the US.

This goes along with what the parent was saying. Cops don't go after non-life
threatening crimes.

~~~
jrochkind1
I would expect property crime to correlate with wealth generally, ie, where
there's... more property.

It's also not generally the kind of crime people are thinking about when they
say they are worried about their safety.

And guess what, property crime has less impact on the rich too. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
topmonk
> I would expect property crime to correlate with wealth generally, ie, where
> there's... more property.

This is obviously not true. Wealthy neighborhoods have far less crime.

The point is that because of the policies of SF to go easy on theft, but go
hard on violence, causes a lot of theft.

This doesn't just hurt wealthy people, but anyone who owns anything worth
stealing, which in turn hurts any poor people trying to make their way out of
the gutter.

If they had their police enforce against both types of crime, SF wouldn't look
as third worldish as it now does, with lawless shanty towns surrounding ultra
rich, well protected areas. You've probably never lived in a very poor
neighborhood, but I have. In my experience those that aren't involved in
criminal activity, and are trying to get into a better situation _want_ police
presence. They want crackdown on crime, because people just trying to live
their lives in these neighborhoods these are the ones that these crimes hurt
the most.

This blindeye'd activism which prevents the rule of law in poor areas causes
the very same hopeless conditions they are rallying against.

------
megous
Meanwhile other countries are already fining people for avoiding camera's gaze
and forcing them to be photographed. And it's just a pilot project.

[https://twitter.com/JamieJBartlett/status/112865736509036134...](https://twitter.com/JamieJBartlett/status/1128657365090361344)

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MagicPropmaker
Gait recognition is pretty effective, too!
[https://nypost.com/2018/11/06/chinas-latest-recognition-
tech...](https://nypost.com/2018/11/06/chinas-latest-recognition-technology-
can-id-people-by-how-they-walk/)

And that's perfectly OK according to the SF City Council.

~~~
ultrarunner
These people are politicans. You can’t possibly expect them to keep up with
every new technological advancement.

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arjo129
I know that my opinion is going to be unpopular but I strongly disagree with
this move. I can understand not allowing facial recognition to be run in real
time, or for instance to ban corporates from tracking me and using my face for
advertisement data, but to ban the police seems extremely dumb. Facial
recognition can be used to significantly cut down investigation times and
costs and thus reduce the stress on police.

~~~
jasaloo
I can understand that viewpoint. But if we look at the track record of how
authorities actually use surveillance technology, it is aggressively used to
squash dissent, rather than prevent/investigate crimes.

Yes, facial recognition could help cops identify a robber more quickly and yes
surveillance has been used to expedite investigations, but what we've seen is
that cops across the board will disproportionately abuse this sort of
technology to track and monitor (and sometimes later harass) protesters,
activists, ethnic/religious minorities and the undocumented.

Here's one instance at the federal level, but abuse happens at the state and
local level constantly.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/standing-
roc...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/10/standing-rock-fbi-
investigation-dakota-access)

~~~
philwelch
I wouldn’t be surprised if accurate facial recognition technology actually cut
down on things like overt racial profiling.

~~~
jasaloo
yeah, maybe... but the question is always 'at what cost?'

There are ways of cutting down on racial profiling that don't require turning
our city into a panopticon.

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GarrisonPrime
Don't worry. They'll just hire private contractors to do it.

~~~
BlackRing
That loophole of govt getting things from third parties without due process
needs to be plugged.

------
narrator
I think the idea behind opposition to facial recognition is it makes law
enforcement too efficient.

Facial recognition is a threat to administrative bloat because it improves the
efficiency of the police and would actually reduce all those crises that are
leading to higher salaries for administrators tasked with solving those oh so
lucrative problems that are created by gaps in law enforcement.

------
arcticbull
This really feels like attacking the symptoms not the problem. Shouldn't the
city, state and federal government develop guidelines on what can and can't be
done with this information and ensure lack of abuse? You're in public, you
have no expectation of privacy -- whether the video is assessed by computers
or an army of humans, does it matter? Don't human viewers have 'facial
recognition technology'?

Progress can't be stuffed back into the bottle, but it does need to be guided
and controlled. It feels very SF these days, sad to say, to long for the good
old days by placing the collective head into the collective sand (as with
allowing new/taller buildings to be built).

Technology is neutral, what matters is what we do with it.

~~~
jasaloo
the point is to prevent the capture of such data to begin with. As a privacy
activist, we've seen that simply developing a 'use-policy,' while effective,
can only go so far. Once local/state/fed authorities possess this data, it's a
matter of when, not if, it will be abused (or sold off to private interests).

Your second question: there's a massive difference between being observed by
an individual officer and being perpetually tracked by an apparatus of
ubiquitous cameras that cross-reference your face with your background
information, possible criminal record, citizenship status, etc. It also opens
the flood gates for horrific scenarios like the 'social credit system' that
they've implemented in China. Go look that one up and tell me you're still ok
with facial recognition.

~~~
arcticbull
I spent a lot of time researching the social credit system and yeah, not a fan
-- it's basically gameified totalitarianism.

However, again, I think that's about what you do with the ability and not the
ability itself. You don't need facial recognition to implement the social
credit system: a simple plastic card would do. Your first name, middle initial
and last name as a triple are enough to uniquely identify you on the Texas
voting registry 80% of the time [1]. This ship has long sailed. That's again
why I'm in favor of regulating the problematic uses of information and
technology and not addressing the specific technology or method of
implementation.

[1]
[https://www.eitanhersh.com/uploads/7/9/7/5/7975685/agdn_v1_4...](https://www.eitanhersh.com/uploads/7/9/7/5/7975685/agdn_v1_4.pdf)

~~~
jasaloo
"That's again why I'm in favor of regulating the problematic uses of
information and technology..."

We agree on this in principle. But again, once authorities have _any_ of this
data in their possession, abuse always happens. Literally always.

IMO the root problem is not "oh, the cops are just using all my PII and
biometric data inappropriately" the root problem is that "the cops have
possession of all my PII and biometric data to begin with."

You have the symptom and disease reversed here, IMO.

~~~
vatueil
I am wary of facial recognition, and I avoid the use of it. But I'm not
convinced by this line of reasoning either, so let me play devil's advocate.

> _But again, once authorities have any of this data in their possession,
> abuse always happens. Literally always._

Well, before something can be abused it must first be available to use.
Conversely, once a tool is available to use some may abuse it.

For example, if collecting fingerprints or DNA were completely forbidden then
that might prevent abuse of such data (such as false matches). But it would
also prevent any beneficial uses as well.

Banning facial recognition prevents not only abuse but also any potential good
uses, such as locating victims of abduction or trafficking, and perhaps other
uses we cannot foresee.

Killing it in its infancy may be easier than doing so after it takes root, but
it also gives society less opportunity to learn what the consequences of the
technology may be, intended and unintended, good or ill.

We know it can be abused, especially in the hands of an authoritarian
government, but does that mean it cannot be used responsibly? Anything that
gives the state power could be turned against the people, as libertarians
might warn, but social progress also requires that we learn to work together
rather than reject anything which might do us harm.

Perhaps a better argument for an early and complete local ban might be that it
allows other regions to be the test subjects. Or that by taking a less
compromising stance the anti-facial recognition side gains a stronger
bargaining position at the table. But those arguments are not as attractive,
maybe.

~~~
jasaloo
"Perhaps a better argument for an early and complete local ban might be that
it allows other regions to be the test subjects."

It's a valid thought, honestly. Though seeing how tightly the police hold onto
this tech once they have it makes it extremely difficult to just test the
waters (and also requires vigilant public oversight, which the sheriffs'
associations will fight tooth and nail).

Also having cops test this tech out, knowing they're going to be deliberately
monitored to how often they use it for good reasons (e.g. child abductions) vs
abuse it, would probably produce incredibly biased results. Think about it--
the experiment would be entirely self-serving: cops get to trumpet that it
helped them for the legit crime here and there (and sitting through public
safety committees, believe me, they will TRUMPET it), while showing that zero
cases of misuse happened.

Ultimately, we have to think in systems: sure, ubiquitous surveillance would
undoubtedly solve the horrific crime here and there, but at what cost to who
we are as people? At what cost to how we protect minorities and the
undocumented? At what cost to our already eroding public trust?

~~~
vatueil
> _Also having cops test this tech out, knowing they 're going to be
> deliberately monitored to how often they use it for good reasons (e.g. child
> abductions) vs abuse it, would probably produce incredibly biased results.
> Think about it-- the experiment would be entirely self-serving: cops get to
> trumpet that it helped them for the legit crime here and there (and sitting
> through public safety committees, believe me, they will TRUMPET it), while
> showing that zero cases of misuse happened._

To be fair, wouldn't that suggest strong oversight might work then? True, any
test might differ from real-world conditions, but theories need to be tested
one way or another and it would provide some evidence.

While caution during early testing might lead to less misuse, one could also
imagine countervailing factors. For example, lack of familiarity with a new
technology might lead to might lead to mistakes. Regulations are written in
blood, as they say, and the development of new ethical guidelines may take
time.

Which, as we've noted, could be a pragmatic reason to let others be the test
subjects. I'm not eager to open the can of worms myself, though it might feel
a bit selfish to put it that way.

~~~
jasaloo
"To be fair, wouldn't that suggest strong oversight might work then?"

Fair point, that might work if: 1. a public safety/citizens oversight
committee does its job consistently, 2. _isn 't_ loaded with police-friendly
stooges 3. and _isn 't_ gradually de-fanged over time in terms of its power.

All three things, with time, can be manipulated by any given city hall, which
is often lock-step with the police force.

"...but theories need to be tested one way or another and it would provide
some evidence"

Agreed. And I say let's look at how they've deployed facial recognition in
China to put those theories to bed.

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toephu2
"San Francisco bans facial recognition technology by municipal agencies"

They weren't even using it in the first place. I wish they were. More
criminals could be caught.

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MagicPropmaker
...by the Police and municipalities. Amazon, etc, can still use it in their
"grab and go" stores.

~~~
paxy
IN their stores, not outside on the streets.

~~~
gojomo
I don't think this legislation bans use of face-recognition by individuals &
private entities in public. Only by the city agencies themselves.

------
dqpb
I think it' useful to divide this into two separate issues:

\- information

\- information asymmetry

------
Klonoar
Removed comment, because child comment has a good point that I somehow 100%
missed~

~~~
caprese
> ban on the use of facial recognition technology by police and all other
> municipal agencies

I'm not even sure if the article is what you responded to

Private sector and their partners can all still use it

~~~
thwythwy
Really sad the Times is just an outlet for what amounts to a symbolic
nothingburger.

------
ztratar
Were citizens having trouble with this in SF? I live in SF and have never seen
police use facial recognition, nor have I seen anyone have a problem with it's
use at a Governmental level.

Could that happen? Sure.

But SF Board of Supervisors have SO MANY REALLY BAD PROBLEMS they need to be
solving.

Instead they are choosing to be pro-active legislating against tech (because
they hate tech, let's admit it). Pro-active legislation is something that
should be higher level -- state senate, federal, etc. Local politicians should
be listening to their constituents to determine their priorities.

They need to get off their butts and solve our homelessness problem with the
$50k per homeless individual they now have in their yearly budget. Why do I
still see crap all over the streets? Why do I feel like I'm going to be
attacked when I'm in the streets?

Some guy stabbed himself with a knife right buy the Caltrain station last
year. If that was an isolated event, I wouldn't have a problem.

Their priorities are so out of whack.

~~~
almost_usual
I grew up in a pretty dangerous city and have been robbed at gunpoint. San
Francisco is _not_ a dangerous city and the problems it has pales in
comparison to many cities in the United States, especially in the rust belt.
Are there homeless people? Yeah. Is the city trying to address it? I honestly
think so, it's not a simple problem to solve.

I don't understand how this post caused so many knee jerk reactions to
homelessness and housing etc. I swear you bring up _anything_ related to San
Francisco and it triggers people. If you hate the city so much how can you
stand living there?

~~~
ztratar
My roommate was stabbed on 6th and Folsom at 8PM.

He was in the hospital for quite some time.

Another guy I know was shot 3 times when someone tried to rob him & he ran. He
almost lost his ability to walk.

It's a dangerous city.

~~~
almost_usual
Compare homicides with San Francisco and any major metro of similar size and
San Francisco will show it's not that dangerous. It might appear dangerous
because the middle class and upper-middle class are not sheltered from
everything here but it isn't that dangerous compared to most other cities.

There were 42 homicides in San Francisco (2018).

[https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/09/bay-area-
homicides-20...](https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/01/09/bay-area-
homicides-2018/)

There were 184 homicides in Memphis last year (2018), Memphis has roughly
200,000 less people than San Francisco

[https://dailymemphian.com/article/2253/Memphis-homicides-
up-...](https://dailymemphian.com/article/2253/Memphis-homicides-up-5-percent-
in-2018)

There were 156 homicides in Indianapolis last year (2018), Indianapolis has
roughly the same population as San Francisco

[https://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-
news/indianapolis/...](https://www.theindychannel.com/news/local-
news/indianapolis/indianapolis-sets-all-time-homicide-record-for-fourth-year-
in-a-row)

There were 200 homicides in Kansas City (2018), Kansas City is roughly 1/2 the
population of San Francisco

[https://www.kcur.org/post/kansas-city-
homicides-2018#stream/...](https://www.kcur.org/post/kansas-city-
homicides-2018#stream/0)

If you look at St. Louis and Baltimore you'll realize there are places of
similar or smaller population with much more crime

There were 186 homicides in St. Louis (2018), St. Louis is roughly 1/3 the
population of San Francisco

[https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/crime/homicides-in-the-
cit...](https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/crime/homicides-in-the-city-of-st-
louis-strikes-186-in-2018/63-41609c96-2fe9-4632-a6eb-b48cc3166e8d)

San Francisco compared to the rest of the United States is relatively safe and
the entire Bay Area is actually getting safer including San Francisco (58
homicides in 2016).

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Homicides-fall-
acr...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Homicides-fall-across-Bay-
Area-in-2018-posting-a-13510327.php)

~~~
psychomugs
Because there are no other crimes than homicides...

------
prepend
Perhaps this will help with the piles of human excrement.

