
Singapore to test facial recognition on lampposts, stoking privacy fears - doppp
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-surveillance/singapore-to-test-facial-recognition-on-lampposts-stoking-privacy-fears-idUSKBN1HK0RV
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sveme
Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition, either
because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able to do
that. There might be a race between the recognition software and the
circumvention technology, but a dedicated individual will always be able to
avoid that. Normal people without any criminal, terrorist or activist
intentions will be victims of this massive surveillance. I would actually
hazard the guess that it will be easier for a dedicated individual to
circumvent automated surveillance than the current status quo, being observed
by individuals. A smart circumvention device will not be identified as such by
a surveillance system, however, a human observer will.

Regardless of circumvention possibilities, the ultimate aim of these
ubiquitous surveillance systems isn't really reducing crime, but social
engineering: create a panopticon, an all-observing system, and the population
that knows this will avoid potentially incriminating behavior in the first
place. A system designed to make people censor themselves and self-reduce
their social degrees of freedom.

~~~
dmos62
> Someone that does not want to be tracked by facial or gait recognition,
> either because he's a criminal or a political activist, will always be able
> to do that

I wouldn't be so sure. How well can you control your stance or manner of
walking for example?

Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can often
still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently.

I think ML is great for comparing these highly subtle traits.

~~~
F_r_k
> how to control your stance or manner

Quite "easy". Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin.
You'll behave differently

> Someone (human) trained to differentiate authors of handwritten text can
> often still do so even if an author is actively trying to write differently.

That was never proven. Please cite a (good) source or I'll take it to be false

~~~
dmos62
> Please cite a source.

I can't, though I think you could argue about it deductively.

> That was never proven.

I guess you can't provide a source either :)

> Put a pebble in your shoe, or some scotch tape on your skin.

If someone you know well did that, would you be able to differentiate his limp
from someone else's? I am sure you could. I think it's intuitive that our
"limp" betrays features of our normal behaviour.

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zhte415
"Yes we can so this", technically, facial recognition is now there.

"Why are we doing this?" Singapore is an already incredibly safe place with
pride in the effectiveness of the rule of law.

The screenshot, as captioned:

> SenseTime surveillance software identifying details about people and
> vehicles runs as a demonstration at the company's office in Beijing, China,
> October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo

Improve people's lives how?

> plan to use cutting-edge technology to improve people’s lives and has
> pledged to be sensitive to privacy

All of this is possible without using personally identifiable information.

> The government also hopes to use other sensors on the lamp posts to monitor
> air quality and water levels, count electric scooters in public places, and
> collect footfall data to aid urban and transport planning, GovTech said.

Should a European citizen visit Singapore, would this be GDPR compliant?

~~~
AmericanChopper
>Should a European citizen visit Singapore, would this be GDPR compliant?

I’m sure Singapore doesn’t care. The truth about Singapore is that it pretty
much is a police state, which has pretty extensive restrictions on individual
freedoms. But... they do actually deliver on the supposed benefits of
organising a society in that manner. Singapore is safe, clean and orderly. I
wouldn’t say that’s the best way to run a country, but Singapore does mostly
make it work.

~~~
anoncoward111
And yet crime still does occur, and lifestyle choices are severely punished by
jail, death, loss of career and loss of residency.

And by lifestyle choices I mean being gay, smoking weed, or being Malay.

I would quite literally live in any Chinese city before chosing Singapore. At
least China would be cheaper.

~~~
philliphaydon
There are many openly gay people in Singapore. I'm glad weed is banned, as is
every other drug. Malay people are not stigmatized in Singapore.

I would quite literally live in any Asian country before choosing any Western
country.

But hey, each to their own right?

~~~
isostatic
> I would quite literally live in any Asian country before choosing any
> Western country.

You'd choose North Korea over Sweden?

~~~
philliphaydon
Oh hell yes!

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Maybe your government can work out some deal where NK gets you and they get
some North Korean who doesn't want to live in NK.

~~~
philliphaydon
Lol. I live in Singapore. But my statement still stands. I would pick any
country in Asia over a country in the west. I like Swedish people but the
country isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, it’s not somewhere I would want
to live.

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sbhn
It doesn’t matter if it works or not. What matters is that the presence of
surveillance creates an impression that you are in some sort of danger, and
the syphoning of public money in the name of security is justified and can
continue to happen with minimal scrutiny

~~~
liftbigweights
Also it creates an overbearing psychological impact on people like big
brother's telescreens in 1984. Slavery is freedom.

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Zarath
Worst part is, you can't just go and destroy them because they will know who
did it.

~~~
goatsi
Wear a mask?

~~~
mikejb
Depending on coverage, this might not be enough. People with masks can be
tracked as well. E.g.: At some point, persons A, B and C enter an area without
surveillance; Person B and C come out, A remains unseen but new person X comes
out, wearing a mask. Even if they all don't leave during the period when X is
out destroying government property, the problem is reduced from finding the
needle in a haystack to identifying a ~1.75m lean person with a brisk walk,
blue Sneakers and specific political views out of a relatively small set of
individuals.

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greendestiny_re
Black-box attacks using specially crafted glasses that can mess up the facial
recognition software already exist, leading to invisibility and/or
misclassification.

[https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-
ccs16.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf)

"In this work, we show how to perform invisibility attacks while attempting to
maintain plausible deniability through the use of facial accessories. We defer
the examination of the physical realizability of these attacks to future
work."

"In this paper, we demonstrated techniques for generating accessories in the
form of eyeglass frames that, when printed and worn, can effectively fool
state-of-the-art face-recognition systems."

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dawhizkid
I see an opportunity to create an apparel or accessory line to hide you from
being recognized by facial recognition software

~~~
baddestpoet
[https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/) has got you covered.

~~~
ericdykstra
Other research has that covered
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063065/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4063065/)

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lfx
I'm wondering if the system can track people with face masks (like one in the
article picture)? And if they can track people who were recognized and later
put on the mask and vice versa. That would be really scary.

~~~
RavlaAvlar
They might not be able to recognise, but they can definitely track you.

~~~
blackstrips
Assuming the network has no blind spots people could hide into change their
appearance.

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nine_k
Sensors on lamp posts is straight from Deus Ex (game of the year 1999).

We live in an increasingly cyberpunk future; I wonder how many other
predictions will turn true soon.

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lifeisstillgood
Well that won't work, lampposts don't have faces...

(sorry could not resist)

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bitwize
Singapore's government is one of, more or less, benign authoritarianism.
_Should_ we expect privacy in such a place?

