

FBI uses facial recognition to compare subjects with driver's license photos - teawithcarl
http://epic.org/2013/06/fbi-performs-massive-virtual-l.html

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coenhyde
Of course the FBI has been doing this and I don't actually have a problem with
it. Matching data between established government agency databases seems like a
smart thing to do.

This is VERY different from what the NSA has been doing. No privacy has been
compromised here.

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wavefunction
I guess I wonder why they need it? Why are they entitled to it? As others have
noted, we have pictures on our driver's licenses so that our person can be
connected with our certification to drive in the event we are detained by
police. There are state IDs with pictures that connect our person with our
official identity if detained by police.

This just sounds like some preemptive evidence gathering or perhaps at its
most innocuous a free source of "data" to refine their recognition systems. I
don't recall that anywhere in the enumerated list of powers of the government.

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jamesaguilar
Why shouldn't they? There is no issue of search or seizure here. Unless you
never step outside your home, you should have no expectation that your face's
features are private.

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mistercow
There's no clear Constitutional objection here. But there is the prosecutor's
fallacy:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy)

Basically, it's the same problem as with "cold hits" and DNA testing.

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mjn
There is also an issue of things that are individually expected turning into
an unexpected, and possibly undesired, result through technologically enabled
cross-referencing.

For example, if you combine face-recognition, driver's license databases, and
feeds from public security cameras, you can (albeit currently with quite a bit
of error) track someone's movements around town. All of the individual
components are reasonably expected. But people traditionally don't expect the
result: the state having a map of everywhere they went today, without having
to get a warrant to attach a tracking device or to subpoena mobile-phone
records.

Whether this should matter legally seems a bit up in the air. The position
that it should is sometimes called the "mosaic theory" of the 4th amendment:
[http://www.michiganlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/111/3/Kerr.pdf](http://www.michiganlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/111/3/Kerr.pdf)

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jamesaguilar
I do not like that theory of the fourth amendment. I am neither lawyer nor
historian, but what I remember of the purpose was to prevent the state using
the police as a means of harassment, as the British did before our
independence. (Hence why seizure was highlighted.) Some of the other
amendments, like the third, were also to remedy specific, recent abuses. Which
is not to dispute the fourth's broader (and good) applicability, but I would
wonder what the justification is for broadening it that much.

The purpose of the amendment is not to give criminals a certain minimum chance
of avoiding detection by making it hard to collect evidence. That is just an
incidental result. So long as such monitoring is not used as a means to stifle
legal dissent, I have no objection to it.

My 2c. That said, I'm not a strict constitutionalist. The law should reflect
the good of the people now, not just what guys thought a long time ago. If it
does more harm than good, the mosaic theory maybe should prevail.

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AnthonyMouse
>what I remember of the purpose was to prevent the state using the police as a
means of harassment, as the British did before our independence.

The problem in this case is that allowing this type of surveillance allows the
state to use the prosecutor's office as a means of harassment. It allows the
state to choose who to prosecute first and then go through the intended
defendant's recorded life history in order to find the offense. And since no
one is a saint (and no one knows all of the laws), the result is that whether
anyone goes to prison or not becomes solely a matter of prosecutorial
discretion, since everyone is guilty of something and now they can prove it.

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jamesaguilar
There are plenty of things that the state could use to make a person's life
miserable if it was malicious. To me, that some capability _could_ be used
that way is insufficient reason to restrict the state from the capability.

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AnthonyMouse
>To me, that some capability _could_ be used that way is insufficient reason
to restrict the state from the capability.

Forgive me for thinking that sounds a little naive. That argument could be
used to support the repeal of the entire bill of rights and the separation of
powers.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The whole idea of a constitution is to
place restrictions on government power in order to limit as much as possible
the amount of damage that can occur when the government is corrupt or
incompetent. There are comparatively huge advantages to a government run by a
competent Benevolent Dictator. The problem is that in practice dictators tend
to be not so benevolent.

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jamesaguilar
I think you have misread me. The protections in the bill of rights protect
against actions which inherently overreach, because their violation had a
people directly. Passive tracking of people only overreaches if it is used to
harm.

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AnthonyMouse
>The protections in the bill of rights protect against actions which
inherently overreach, because their violation harms people directly.

Do they? Suppose we pass a law that says the police don't need any probable
cause to record all your phone calls, bug your home and office and come into
your house and read or copy all your personal documents, as long as they don't
inconvenience you or deprive you of your papers. Pretty sure that would
violate the Fourth Amendment, even though the harm there is substantially
identical to the harm here. Which is theoretically none, assuming the police
only target evildoers and never do anything nefarious with the information,
etc.

Likewise the First Amendment protection for anonymous speech. Having to
disclose your identity to the government before you can communicate with
anyone will only cause harm if the government does something untoward with the
information, right? But the First Amendment doesn't allow them to require it,
because the government _could_ be doing something wrong. We even go so far as
to say that the government can't demand the information because people may
fear the government doing something wrong (chilling effects), and be afraid to
say certain things as a result, even if the government never actually does
anything with the information.

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jamesaguilar
Agreed, it would violate the fourth amendment. At the time it was written,
though, there was no non-invasive way to search someone's effects. The purpose
at the time was to prevent searches as a means of harassment, and they did not
guess that there would someday be a mechanism by which you could search
without imposing. In any case, there is also a component of the probability of
misuse (at least, in the way I judge these sorts of things).

Your example of the first amendment is less compelling. The mere requirement
to convey your identity _is_ an imposition.

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Pxtl
This is why laws against wearing masks at a protest are really bad.

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nsp
I thought this was public knowledge, iirc certain states (NJ And possibly
others) ask you not is mile because it ostensibly makes recognition easier.

A Source: rt.com/usa/license-jersey-recognition-face-956/

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pacomerh
Doesn't surprise me. If they didn't have access to this information they would
not be the FBI.

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locacorten
I would've really like to know more about the case uses of this technology. I
think FR is way too inaccurate to pick up people from a crowd based on the
driver's license photo database. I think they probably use it for some sort of
offline comparison of two pictures.

