"Privacy fears" is a bold description. You can't hide from the government in Moscow.
They have all data from mobile operators – they know where your phone is at all times. They've installed cameras on almost every single house entrance. They've been using facial recognition for a few years now, with little to no information on sources of data they used for this.
It's not about tracking people anymore, it's about improving the accuracy of said tracking.
IIRC they (Rosnano) even developed their own AI chips dedicated to image recognition to be incorporated in street CCTV cameras. Stuff that Hikvision is also doing but in China.
Scary stuff but I can imagine western governments salivating at these capabilities and doing metal gymnastics on what justification to spin for the introduction of such systems here, as "terrorists" and "think of the children" have been used already.
What makes you think western government aren't already doing so - UK was, I believe, one of the first countries to be fully covered with camera and they use it extensively in policing the country.
Whether or not you think current contract tracing implementations are benign, it's clear that with covid governments have found a magic wand, more powerful than children or terrorism, that can be used to wave away dissent or constitutional rights "for our safety". Covid has been a huge boon to western promoters of the kind of privacy invasion your talking about
Could you give federal level US examples to this that aren’t opt-in contact tracing? (Genuine question because perhaps I’m missing a major news event)
If anything I’ve felt my privacy increase. Masks are finally normalized. What’s more private then covering half your face and not being weird for being the only person doing it? Ive walked by people I know and don’t even recognize them. If you look back at the Capitol Rioters think of how many were identified by not covering their face. I also recall the Hong Kong protestors years ago using masks & face paint to obscure themselves from facial recognition systems.
Unfortunately, I can't give you a privacy-related example. In this case, I think that's because there have genuinely been few (if any) infringements on the privacy rights of US citizens due to this specific crisis (unlike the terrorism and CP issues).
However, there have been federal-level incursions on "dissent or constitutional rights" that was mentioned in the GP post - in particular, freedom of assembly, and the sovereignty of one's own body, with what has effectively been a federal vaccine mandate (as there's little effective difference between "companies with 100 companies or more must force their employees to get vaccinated" and "every citizen must get vaccinated").
And, I'd like to point out, that yes COVID-19 is a real issue that has killed many people - as are terrorism and CP. But you know what? There's still an infringement of rights that threatens our freedom, and like both of those issues, I strongly suspect that after we get past our emotional fear of the virus, we'll realize that, even given the number of people that died, it wasn't really worth giving up our rights for (as the "temporary" powers meant to be used to fight terrorism were never given up, for instance).
I encourage you to really think about the comparison between COVID-19 and 9/11 - how a real tragedy could be abused to advance the powers of a government that does not have your best interests in mind.
This. I recall reading some articles in WSJ and NYT that were nearly openly wondering how we could transplant level of control exerted in China over population to US. I absolutely agree that there are power centers in US that would absolutely love to copy what Russia is doing.
In a sense, it is happening already, but in a distributed way via Ring spreading like wildfire.
>You mean smart cameras? These exist in the western sphere as well.
What exactly is "smart cameras"? Today, every widget that has existed for the last 50+ years is prefixed with the word "smart" when it's been added internet access or wi-fi control (smart power plugs, smart lights, smart doorbells, etc). But from that to being able to host and run a real-time NN based image recognition is a long way.
>Your city traffic dept is probably prototyping or rolling out this tech already.
LOL, yeah, if only. I think my city is still running the trafic control on some Siemens SCADA system from the '80s.
Traffic control and monitoring are two different things. They probably have sensors tracking movements, but use state of the art 80s relay cards to control the system.
"Smart cameras" in this case would be devices with edge NN classification built in. But there's always products like briefcam / good vision if they only have the regular camera feeds.
This reminds me how I was noticing similar in Monaco, a constitutional monarchy. My conclusion was that if it had poor people, then it would be seen as an authoritarian despot. But because it does not house poor people or let unhoused stick around outside, it is seen as a wealthy place where anything goes. It just doesn't encounter strife, but if it did it would be seen as authoritarian.
Just an interesting inequality about how jurisdictions are perceived.
It's too late for Moscow to care about privacy. It has already been eliminated. Lack of option to pay with your face doesn't mean the system doesn't watch your face already. I'd be welcoming the face pay if I were them because it's just a convenience being built on top of the surveillance system already working. Let it serve at least one good purpose besides it's actual orwellian function they've built.
I think this is a bad idea. Welcoming a convenient feature of a sinister system just helps justify the system's existence.
This is true of lots of things. Card payments are more convenient than cash, sure, but there's a hidden cost behind that convenience - your spending is easily traced and tied to your individual bank account.
Better to let people see orwellian tech for what it is!
I think it was inevitable that any form progress made in computer vision will more or less be applied to perfecting facial recognition.
Yes, incredible amount of progress has been made in using computer vision to identify diseases but the authoritarian and workplace use case of computer vision is absolutely effective at present time.
Orwellian tech isn't sudden, it is a creep, it is comfort, it is an acceptable cost of convenience.
I agree but I feel pessimistic about the possibility of the surveillance being reversed. When you are tied really well and being fucked the only constructive option left is to try to relax and enjoy that...
Luckily you are allowed and required to wear masks now. But workarounds for this are already arriving - you can be recognized by your shape and walking habit, 5G (AFAIK, or is this a myth?) also makes possible to read your heartbeat and veins pattern.
It's not fears, it's the fact that the system is used for tracking people and the Facepay capability looks like a simple cover for the true purpose of the system: massive scale surveillance. The authorities claim that they have apprehended more than 900 suspected criminals since the last September with the system help. You can imagine how easy it would be to add additional "features", if they are not in operation already.
> how easy it would be to add additional "features"
I suspect the next big milestone planned is to link it to a "social credit" score, i.e. an opaque system of extra-judicial punishment where the government can hide behind an official excuse of "the AI decided" every time a wrong-thinker complains about their oppression.
> the next big milestone planned is to link it to a "social credit" score, i.e. an opaque system of extra-judicial punishment where the government can hide behind an official excuse of "the AI decided" every time a wrong-thinker complains about their oppression
Moscow has no qualms about overtly oppressing its opposition. What advantage does the ambiguity of such a system bring to the table? If anything, Putin's flamboyant campaign of pursuing dissidents puts as much emphasis on messaging as physical outcome. Softening the message--if you oppose the Kremlin, it will hurt you--is counterproductive.
Every system of overt oppression has its limits, no matter how seemly compliant the population is or how iron fisted the current regime may be.
The displays you mention are just that, displays. For population scale control you really do need to be more subtle and pervasive. Which is what makes this type of surveillance so much more insidious.
It would be quite expensive for the Russian government to poison everyone who ever went to a protest, or who socialised with the wrong sort of people.
Also, if it's cheap enough, the government can apply low-level incentives/nudges at the top of the dissent "recruitment funnel" as well as high-level high-profile actions against the few brave people who make it all the way to becoming leaders of these groups.
If the government wants to apprehend you, a face recognition system in the metro is the least of your concerns. They will get you anyway, sooner or later. It can only make the life of FSB easier, so they can learn about your habits for blackmail etc. by just looking at some footage downloaded from a server, instead of actually putting some effort
Aside from privacy concerns, which are serious, is anyone else surprised that they think it can work efficiently?
I mean, how often will this thing get the facial recognition wrong? Will people just end up with metro charges from their "lookalikes" (I almost said doppelganger).
Or has the state of the art in facial recognition recently zoomed ahead to where this is feasible for such a high throughput process?
They are definitely not doing identification (1:whole_database) for payment, that would be ridiculous.
I'm sure they are matching against very small subset. Most likely they are getting data from mobile phone operators on who's currently around the entrance
I'm also skeptical it would work decently without something else like your cell phone signal to reduce the number of possible faces.
I think the real value of this system is the intimidation factor. It really pushes the idea that the state can identify anyone anywhere is Moscow. It's useful to discourage both terrorism and political activism.
I wonder about the guy at the Houston Astros game recently. The FBI got a tip that a long-vanished white collar criminal (John Ruffo) was at the game. They located the ticket holder and interviewed him to determine he was not the guy after all.
He was reasonably close in appearance, allowing for age progression.
So I have to wonder: Was the tip a high probability hit in a facial recognition database?
I found out the other day that it isn't uncommon in some countries (China, India) for metro systems to have security lines, which to me just sounds like a great reason to drive instead.
People have already been arrested after this winter's protests with the help of facial recognition, so these fears are a bit late. Also, just a couple of days ago it's been announced that local Moscow officials turned over all photos uploaded to the city's portal to law enforcement to be used for this.
It was never about surveillance (you already can't escape from cameras in Moscow).
They can (and will) use this system to restrict movement for "uncomfortable" persons — turnstile will not open for you if government do not like what you said in Twitter.
With hyperinflation in the late 80ies the costs quickly went up by lots of powers of 10 to first roubles, then tens, hundreds and eventually thousands of roubles. For a while the entry fee was paid via tokens that you bought with money at kiosks, and the tokens were identical in weight and size to 5 kopecks, so same old machines could be used. Some people who had old soviet coin stashes could and did ride for free.
Machines that didn't like the coins would slam you sideways hard. I still am instinctively afraid of those that look like one that smashed me when I was about 5.
Fast forward to late 90ies and early 2000s, there were single use magnetic stripe and rfid tag tickets that were discarded by people all over the ground, really messy and likely unenvironmental.
Haven't been there in a while but seems like an Oyster (London)/Opal (Sydney)/Ventra (Chicago) payment cards would likely be what I'd want to use, just as much tracking but without the creepy factor of face recognition
Wait... if the system identifies you as someone else, you get a free ride while some other random person is billed for it? How is this going to be handled?
Why are they afraid of this one? Smartphones are already implementing this feature as a way to unlock the screen. It doesn't make sense that they're not batting an eye to that one.
They feel (incorrectly) like they control their smartphones.
As far as their fears about this being used for privacy violations and/or mass surveillance, they are 100% justified. The Snowden leaks, as well as what we know from leaks about pretty much every major and a lot of minor tech companies, have shown that if it can be abused, it will be abused. By the state, tech companies, or both.
> Why are they afraid of this one? Smartphones are already implementing this feature as a way to unlock the screen.
Now not only your phone knows your location, you're also being filmed all the time with a tag attached and could be traced anywhere. This is extremely scary, especially that Kremlin persecutes its population into submission. Not only is the Kremlin regime anchored deeply (no possible fair elections), now this makes it even more impossible to have an alternative. Let's say you and a segment of the population wants a different leader. Let's say you as dissenters amount to even 70% of the population. Your voice won't matter as elections are highly rigged. Back in the day you could take out to the street to protest and if numbers are too great it sends a clear message. But this type of surveillance makes you think twice about it, you can go to an unauthorized protest (no authorization would be ever given for a dissenting protest) in the morning and be arrested in the evening.
They have all data from mobile operators – they know where your phone is at all times. They've installed cameras on almost every single house entrance. They've been using facial recognition for a few years now, with little to no information on sources of data they used for this.
It's not about tracking people anymore, it's about improving the accuracy of said tracking.