
San Francisco Considers Ban on Government's Use of Facial Recognition Technology - smohnot
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723193785/san-francisco-considers-ban-on-governments-use-of-facial-recognition-technology
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smohnot
This seems like a bad decision to me. We have a crime epidemic and it seems to
me like facial recognition can help. My house has been broken into several
times and I've been assaulted in areas of SF with clear video footage; why
wouldn't we want to use tech to solve this problem? Forgetting my own
situations, why wouldn't we want it for sex traffickers or terrorists? I don't
understand why the tech issues should prevent it from being used- it isn't as
if people are being locked up solely based on what the technology sees, there
are humans involved too, and I think we should enable the humans with better
tech. What are some good counter arguments?

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RickS
The potential for abuse and false positives is just too high, and that class
of failure mode is invited by the very mechanism that makes facial recognition
effective: broadness of coverage.

IMO what SF needs is beat cops. What I want is a city where it feels like your
actions might have consequences. Like there are actually police who are there
to help citizens and intercept criminals – fast, and non-apathetically. That's
what SF doesn't have.

Everything between broadway and townsend on the Y axis and the embarcadero and
van ness on the X axis should have, at minimum, a beat cop per 4x4 block area.
Doing laps all day, meeting and integrating with the community, and enforcing
the law – lowering the time and variance between violation and consequence,
instead of promoting the perception that you can mess around and 9 out of 10
times the cops are going to be too distracted to care.

Ditto for the mission.

When I lived in SOMA, just under the loin, the liquor store guys knew who all
the baddies were. They knew their faces, their MOs, where they hung out...
nobody cared. The police presence in SF is so ethereal and abstract. It was so
disappointing. The people on the street have the answers, and they're not
exactly a sophisticated group. But it seems like the system just doesn't want
to interface with the population at that level.

I want old fashioned preventative community policing, not high-tech post-crime
people monitoring.

There's a court system component, as well. My understanding is that the courts
just don't have the bandwidth to enforce the law in all cases, so they have to
let the small stuff slide, which just creates a system with no consequences
for petty crime. SF's situation is very unsurprising when viewed through that
lens.

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fosk
This a hundred times. Why is police in SF so bad at dealing with criminality?
I am actually looking for a real answer.

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pound
because we, as progressive city, shouldn't hurt criminal's feelings, they are
people too. Also what's with this gestapo idea of telling other people what
they cannot do at their wish in public? /s

Sarcasm aside - only that much can be done by the police if there is no point
in doing it. Let's not forget about DA office with revolving door, making sure
anyone apprehended will be released and at the same place tomorrow without any
consequences to their actions.

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sickcodebruh
Critics quoted in this article and many others I’ve read argue that the
technology is deeply flawed, highly inaccurate. Does anyone have actual stats
on this? Furthermore, does anyone working in the field have any facts or
opinions about the rate at which the technology is improving? Left unchecked,
how far off is the day when a city could implement widespread facial
recognition that has terrifying accuracy?

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sdinsn
From my understanding, the technology is not deeply flawed. It just has
accuracy problems when dealing with edge cases.

Facial recognition is not a 100% independent solution, but instead should aid
other systems, including human-run systems. I think this is the concept that
critics fail to grasp.

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sickcodebruh
Do you think there will come a time where it is a 100% independent solution?
I'm sure that is the goal for some companies and organizations.

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leshokunin
I’m sure the usual fearmongering arguments will be used to promote the
technology. But I have to ask: what’s the upside of this tech? It needs to
scan everyone’s face at all times to get a match. What are the applications
and what’s the upside? How does it compare with a CCTV system like in London
or Singapore? I’d like to understand the trade off.

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grayed-down
While I have a very high disregard for San Franseptic, I do applaud this
decision if it comes to pass.

I think the broad use of facial recognition by governments will lead to
nothing but disaster for its non-violent citizens.

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eanzenberg
Look up Singapore, and how disastrous it is.

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Rebelgecko
The google results for 'Singapore facial recognition' are fairly useless,
would you mind elaborating on their program?

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eanzenberg
I get a bunch of results.

[https://govinsider.asia/connected-gov/singapore-to-use-
facia...](https://govinsider.asia/connected-gov/singapore-to-use-facial-
recognition-for-national-digital-identity/)

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Rebelgecko
All of the results I got were related to your link or a different program to
put 100,000 cameras into street lamps. It looks like neither of these has
happened yet, so I think it is too early to judge the consequences.

