We've been solving crime for decades without the assistance of facial recognition camera technology. Sure this may speed up the search for criminals faster, but ultimately successful crime solving is dependent on smart and committed investigators.
A ticklish issue. A great (but not foolproof) way to fight crime, incredible invasion of privacy, and at this point, technology rather fraught with error. I am a lot less worried of how it will be used in America than how it is already used in other countries with totalitarian regimes, like China. The Chinese have been monitoring the Uighur people for years now. In addition to facial recognition, they are using iris recognition technology. The Uighurs serve as guinea pigs for the Chinese to recover global dominance, or at least create a database of anyone and everyone their cameras can record, just in case (Mind that when you go to China). When the Chinese get a picture of you, never mind their own citizens, there is no accounting of what they can do and will do. Neither moral decency nor rule of law is an obstacle to them. They must be snickering at the idiots in the San Francisco Police department for voluntarily handcuffing themselves in the "fight against crime".
1
Put it on hold? No way.
Technology has made it easier to do bad on this world. Encrypted chats, untraceable bitcoin, iPhones that are like vaults.
Society must have tools to counter, or get ready for more Wild West.
2
When I weigh my priorities, the real prospect of saving lives by catching violent criminals, tracking missing family members, and maybe even preventing some crime outweighs the hypothetical worry about misuse. I understand your concerns for the future, but I want real lives saved in the here-and-now.
2
Big Brother thanks you for your support.
While it horrifies me that not only does my smart phone track me everywhere I go, and then it's matched up with the facial recognition, the strange guy that snapped a picture of me the other day horrifies me more. We need privacy laws and we need them now, Prince Harry is having to move out of his new home because the helicopter flying over his home took pictures of the living room and bedroom . If I ever see drones in my yard I'm going to swat it with a baseball bat. This is not acceptable for a free country, the same as Trump is not acceptable for a free country.
1
Will it help people identify bad/corrupt police officers?
If only the British had this technology prior to 1765.
One American city banning facial recognition technologies after years of living in a surveillance state is way too little and much too late. Any hopes of privacy went out the window with Facebook and smartphones.
1
I’m getting tired of these alarmist articles that spread fear about imagined potential harms of new law enforcement technologies without discussing the tangible benefits, such as an enhanced ability for police to identify and apprehend fugitives and violent criminals.
Here’s a hypothetical: suppose a serial rapist is on the loose. Police have a suspect, but they can’t find him, so they station surveillance teams near a bar he has been known to frequent, and after a couple days, they find and arrest him. We can agree that is permissible police activity, even though many innocent people were also under surveillance as they patronized the bar.
Now suppose that, rather than a team of officers, police station a camera there and employ facial recognition technology. The suspect walks in, police receive an alert, and minutes later he’s in custody. Meanwhile, the detectives who otherwise would’ve spent days staking out the bar were free to do other police work.
Imagine if the next time a child was abducted, rather than just sending out an “amber alert,” police could use facial recognition technology to find that child? What if, rather than spending precious man hours chasing down parole violators, police could use technology to quickly locate and apprehend them before they reoffend? How many violent crimes could be prevented?
Before we start imaging the "Orwellian" civil liberties scenarios, let's talk a little about the potential to improve people's lives by reducing crime.
3
Its enough for me to know that San Francisco is against it to get me to support it. Plus there lots of criminals out there who are probably against it too. Lets move forward on this technology- it doesn't mean that someone is going to be executed based on facial recognition.
3
Let's make sure this technology will help us target bad police officers and government officials as well. Especially in majority white neighborhoods; i.e., where the domestic terrorists reside.
All the references to China but nothing mentioned about the all pervasive cameras in London? Sure, the facial recognition in London are "manual", not automated. But are there not just as many, if not more, and for far longer in London? Any bias here?
2
no bias... The UK hasn't set up re-education camps up yet like China has for Uighers.
I have very little faith in our political system to ban these technologies once its out in the wild.
However and without being facetious, I hope some inventors and technologists find a way to defeat these cameras, such as wearing caps that shed a color spectrum which confuses the camera or some such wearable device that would misshape the facial structure, color or replace with selectable movie actor face etc. I have faith, its bound to happen.
1
Let's think about this another way: through the lens of the written word.
We live in a text drenched world where every hoarding, every shopfront, every house and every bus has words and numbers in front or on top. It creates a level of surveillance impossible to imagine in a pre-literate world.
Strangers can look at a house and a map and draw their own conclusions about who lives there. Companies decide who to employ based on their facility these squiggles.
There's nothing biological or natural about it - it's a technology of surveillance unprecedented in human history. Or put another way, it makes insurance, newspapers, science and democracy possible and is protected by free speech laws in many parts of the world.
We are at a stage where there isn't anything like the consensus about literacy for images and video. Only a few people are fluent in the technologies that go into making them. The challenge isn't only about big brother watching your every move, though surely that's a problem. It's to imagine a massive shift in culture as text is replaced - or supplemented - by images and video and the new forms of political and social life that a camera driven world will make possible.
I see a booming business in face masks for going about one's business in public, unless of course they are declared illegal. My own preference would be for one that looks like Mark Zuckerberg.
There is no way to stop the technology. The focus has to be on discouraging its improper use. City councils will exercise budget oversight over abusive police investigative systems if their constituents demand it. Strict civil liability for large punitive damages can be statutorily imposed for surveillance misbehavior.
Regardless of the underlying technology, law enforcement personnel exercise due care if they expect to be held accountable and engage in abuse when they think they can get away with it. Ultimately, it's simply another instance where democratic control needs to be imposed.
1
The technology is already there to scan what people are saying in real time matched to the person's face and personal data. Imagine a database where the government or police or anyone in authority could know everything about you, from your genetics to your education, background, interests, shopping, political beliefs, where you walk around town, where you travel, etc. We are so close to this--time to put regulations in place to stop it.
"stumbling" ?
You underestimate current authoritarian ideas...
3
The man arrested for stealing beer when the detectives used a photo of Woody Harrelson to help identify him-- was he the right guy?
Don't police also use partial fingerprints to generate a list of possible suspects that's large but manageable? How is use of facial recognition tech different? It's not as if people are being convicted of crimes solely on the basis of the matches, right?
If police show a pattern of racial discrimination in cracking down on speeding on the highways, we don't think that the solution is to deny police the use of radar guns to catch speeders. But that seems to be the logic of the case against use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement.
1
I agree that legal remedies are our best defense against the surveillance state. Outlaw facial recognition and make unauthorized private data collection and sharing illegal, period.
I don't want the private details of my life intruded upon at all. It is a false dilemma that such intrusion is a technological inevitability. It's the result of design and it's an ongoing form of theft. Too bad the cops are too busy getting their in on the root to do their job.
2
What this means is that we need new legal protections in the form of laws. It does not mean we ban cameras or stop the progress of technology. Let the cameras get better, let the software for facial recognition get better. Then let's make sure they're used properly, fairly, and with respect to the rights of the general citizen.
AG Barr would welcome this new facial recognition technology as he could use it to monitor the faces of Americans failing to applaud loudly when Trump appears on our TV screens which could be 24 /7. Trump's role models Kim and Putin keep a tight control on their populations and Trump would like to have the same situation he has said he loves the way North Koreans stand up and pay attention when he speaks and they love him. They have to or wind up in gulags or worse so Trump's dream is to have 300 million people applauding him 24 /7 out of fear it does not matter pretense is part of his nature he's a fraud and he knows it.
2
"James E. Craig, Detroit’s police chief and unintentional ironist, disputed any 'Orwellian activities,' adding that he took 'great umbrage' at the suggestion that the police would 'violate the rights of law-abiding citizens.'
That statement stops-and-frisks my funnybone.
I'd love to ask Chief Craig about the "Eyes on Detroit" graphic caption, which states that businesses that provide video monitoring feeds to the police receive "special police attention." What about businesses that don't participate? Do they receive "special police inattention"? When somebody else does this, don't police call it a protection racket?
4
I take umbrage with the police taking umbrage. There's more than enough evidence from other devices, tech-based and otherwise, that they'll use them improperly.
6
"The most troubling thing about all of this is that there are almost no rules governing its use."
The word I like to use is 'concert'.
The Federal Government is working daily, in concert with Big Tech and our 0.01% to insure that no rules exist.
The EU recognized years ago that regs were imperative and their in the process now of refining them. Google, Facebook and Amazon want a 'free market' for themselves and as predators the need prey. We pay the price for their free market.
There is a reason why our Congress is stone cold silent on the mater. The wheels of subjugation of the United States move slowly and inexorably toward the same path as China and Russia.
2
This is all about use by police and "the authorities", but I wonder about another "axiom of tech": expensive software becomes downloadable app becomes "everybody has it": facial recognition for everyone, right on your phone.
I imagine such an app service would come with a giant database of faces with known names (from Facebook?) and would provide, from a phone photograph, a ranked list of possible matches.
I'm slightly surprised we're not there already. Or maybe we are, and I just missed it.
2
Anyone who has gone on vacation overseas and been processed upon return to US has likely used the current system that captures your face when you present your passport TO A MACHINE. It is totally expected and no privacy issue because the photo is already on our passport and in the Immigration system base. However, the upshot nowadays is that no longer does a human officer take a look at hard look at your passport and your photo any longer. The machine has verified your identity. In another country I visit, there is NO human interaction at Immigration or Customs at all. I just pass through via facial and finger scan.
1
Luddites still exist. They mostly live in California.
We have a few here in Texas. The state just outlawed red light cameras as being unacceptable; one cannot cross-examine a camera. I mean, really!
When you are in public, you don't have privacy. Public :: Private.
I doubt anybody will ever be brought to trial, let alone convicted, because the facial recognition software erred. Suspected, questioned? Sure. But that's it.
It’s just a method of reducing the suspect pool. I expect it errs less than the positive IDs made by eyewitnesses.
3
Has any innocent person ever been included in a police suspect lineup ? Then been incorrectly chosen ? Then been tried and convicted ? Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.
3
As a driver in Texas, I have to laugh at the “increased” accidents, cited by legislators, supposedly caused by red light cameras: the driver in front actually stops at the red light instead of driving through it, surprising the driver behind him, resulting in a rear ender. Yes, government officials in TX and SF are very similar in a personal ability to reason, as hard as that is to believe.
This quote sounds like what the villain in a TV show says to protest his innocence, "...he took “great umbrage” at the suggestion that the police would “violate the rights of law-abiding citizens.” "
As a person who all too often is mistaken for other people, I am concerned about this technology. For that matter, eye witnesses and lineups would frighten me as well. I have had people insist I was someone else when I was traveling. Sometimes it is funny. Sometimes not.
2
The really scary issue with this technology isn't facial recognition to find and arrest a relatively small number of known criminals, but rather the potential for government or private sector identification, tracking, and recording the movements of law-abiding people going about their lawful business. The capability is there even if it isn't being used at present.
As to those who say that you have no right to privacy in public, you're wrong. Kyllo v. United States and Carpenter v. United States both speak towards this matter.
Sounds like a wonderful business opportunity here. Masks, lots of masks. Handsome ones, pretty ones, funny ones, some that look like that guy you don't like (you wear it when you walk out without paying the bill). Some that look like someone you'd like to pretend to be for a day. Some that can be made to order, for yourself or for giving as gifts. Partial faces, full faces, whole head masks. Then, maybe even expand to full-body covers. Someone get to it, please.
4
@Rea Tarr
I see the hat coming back into fashion!
Wide brims! Yes, those always did look rakish and suave in the 40s and 50s.
4
Until they are branded as ‘obstructing justice’.
1
@Homer
Yeah, love those hats!
As the world fills up with people, especially mega cities, and we are forced into closer and closer proximity to each other, more rules and regs are going to be needed. From pollution laws to speed limits to health regs are going to be needed to keep a lid on what will become an increasingly less free life. In our rush to value quantity over quality we will be required to give up more and more personal and public freedoms. How could it be otherwise? We've chosen to live packed in like rats and should not be surprised that we will be treated like them. The founding fathers never envisioned a country (or planet for that matter) as crowded and over run with people. It should not come as a surprise then that the freedoms they placed into the constitution may come under threat.
Like Ben said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (In case this hasn't already been posted).
But then again, I think it is a little too late for us now.
5
All valid worries, but you're urging their consideration in a society that allowed an illegal immigrant, Jose Zarate, deported five times, to reenter the United States until he picked up a gun and murdered Kate Steinle. I don't have any doubt that facial recognition would have picked him up before Ms. Steinle was killed. I don't think you have any doubts about that either, not when he was deported five times, so how about recognizing that use of techology by the police requires some standards, but cannot be rejected totally without alienating the public that wishes to stay alive and unharmed.
3
@Mary
One person commits a crime, so millions of us have to have our faces on file with police and, no doubt, a host of civil servants and governmental agencies? And who will guarantee that somewhat bent on committing a crime won't think of wearing a mask?
7
We need a Miranda rule for this surveillance state.
13
@Brad Why try to solve crimes when it is so much more politically correct not to? The column is absurd. So an armed robber, rapist, murderer doesn't have to worry about facial recognition AI. Great. I understand the opposition to mass untargeted collection. But that's not what we are talking about. Banning cops from using it as a tool to pursue criminals is stupid. If it helps catch criminals, I'm all for it. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not useful. The main reason that career criminals get away with so many crimes is that they simply move to another state & change their name. They often have many aliases. Facial recognition technology would go a long way towards making that much more difficult for them. San Francisco announcing this is like a big advertisement for criminals to move here. And they will show up in droves over the next couple of years. Property crimes have become a huge problem in this city. FBI data shows SF has one of the highest per-capita rate of property crimes in the U.S. tallying 6,168 crimes per 100,000 people. That’s about 148 burglaries, larcenies, car thefts & arsons per day. Per Day! There’s a small group of people affecting the vast majority of those numbers. The police are working with prosecutors to zero in on the most prolific offenders. And this columnists brilliant idea: lets make it harder to catch these thieves. I don't know which is worse anymore. The criminals or the leftist fanatics who make it harder to catch them.
1
I'm bemused by people who seem to believe there should be an expectation of privacy in public spaces, which by their very definition are not private. We have long been expected to understand that we may be accountable for what we do in public places, and comport ourselves accordingly. Facial recognition software is nothing more than a refinement and an automation of the omnipresent human observer standing in a public place, or the observer in a public with a camera, itself a refinement of human observation. The misapplication of the notion of privacy by a citizenry that increasingly chooses to live their lives in public creates the paradox that the guardians of public safety are expected to try to protect us, but not too effectively.
2
If a technology for power and control comes into existence the state will try to acquire it and manipulate the legal system so that it can increase its power. They will use the 'crime' justification as a Trojan Horse and then they will come into businesses and homes on the back of Alexa, Siri et.al
I do believe the game is over ...we already are a surveillance state, but we are just at the tip of the iceberg...as we used to say in the 60's....(with a slight modification) turn off, turn on and drop out....it's the only way to go.
1
Governments have been monitoring as best they can since it was invented. Did you miss the news that everything on the Internet is swept up by the NSA? Have you not noticed that each crime results in more cameras, more security guards or police, more physical searches when entering schools and the like? And a lack of facial recognition tech doesn't mean a lack of cameras, or that private parties will take over where government is not allowed (like how some towns hire private security forces).
1
I'm pretty certain that most criminals would like to see surveillance cameras prohibited; that's reason enough for me to support them.
15
How would you react if you got a ticket due to a camera capturing your image in action ? Walking across the street outside of the pedestrian stripe or double parking for a moment in front of the pharmacy.
17
@Will Eigo
Blocking a fire engine on its way to a fire "for a moment".
If you don't like traffic laws, ask your representatives to repeal them.
10
@Will Eigo Don't do the crime if you can't do the time--or pay the penalty.
6
To everyone who says they have nothing to hide, I want to offer some recommended reading:
1. 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy, by Daniel J. Solove
2. 'Why privacy matters' - TED Talk, by Glenn Greenwald
Personally while I know I might always be seen by a passerby, there's plenty I do in my life that is not illegal or even suspicious yet I'd prefer that was not recorded for eternity and searchable at the whim of law enforcement.
And if you value a surveillance state over your privacy and everyone you know, there's dictatorships who would love to have you as a willing citizen.
58
@Ian "if you value a surveillance state over your privacy and everyone you know, there's dictatorships who would love to have you as a willing citizen" - bravo! I'd use it as a quote, if you don't mind.
4
@Ian
What you are ignoring is that the fact that while vast amounts of raw data may be captured, the sheer volume makes limits its interpretation and implementation in anything but a highly focused way. Data capture is a much different thing than knowing.
1
Was a reach in the past, is not a stretch now. Given the way big data can sift through META info to derive specifics, it does not take a leap of imagination to conceive of computation which will sort granular and assemble a great deal PER individual.
3
I have news for you Farhad.
The US military has been conducting covert satellite surveillance of civilian populations for more than fifty years.
And yes, it is illegal.
10
Genie is already out of the bottle. Even if the government is barred from using these cameras, they can still take the information from private sources. Plus, we (all US citizens) have volunteered to video monitoring our fellow citizens through phones, apps, Facebook, etc. which all work closely with our government. The only difference between China and USA is that China government told its citizens they are doing it. The USA just tricked us through entertainment and games.
1
@Pilot This is just San Fran government, not the Feds, not the NSA, not foreign governments, not any state, and not any other city. So aside from that, you are "safe"?!?
The race to use facial recognition software is troubling, due of the lack of clear rules, and also because we have belatedly learned that there were many problems in utilizing earlier technology. And on top of that, there are constantly reports from around the country that prosecutors are not always providing defendants with open access to evidence gathered. Plus, with any new tech, it is also important not just that a lawyer is appointed to represent the indigent, but that defendants have access to experts in the new tech.
And because t
1
@cheryl Why? If it's legal to take my picture, how can it be illegal to try to determine what the pictures is about? That's a bit like saying you can require my signature, but you can't check that it's really mine.
1
I don’t think face app meets the standard of evidence against a defendant. It is part of the investigation and describes how the police later obtained the evidence that does meet trial standards. Police get an anonymous tip about someone and follow it up. Is the tip evidence? No.
1
"This sort of sketchy search is routine in the face business."
the face business
and the body factory
with the toe boutique
"...If you put a camera in it, it will sell."
This is how you know you're wrong. We are not "stumbling" into a surveillance state, we're being dragged kicking and screaming, in the name of profit.
And in the name of cover-my-butt for individuals and agencies charged with keeping public order.
Just as its easier to sit in a highly secure bunker just of the California beach and lob drones and those we like to call enemies, its easier to sit in some strip mall security office and mind the monitor than to create the environment, the social conditions, the awareness that decrease crime.
So many bold assertions here that "If it catches criminals I'm all for it. I got nothing to hide." Assertions from people who keep themselves unaware, who arrogantly believe they would never, ever suffer from being caught out of context on camera or online and made to suffer.
You describe this as a surveillance state. What it really is, is an uncontrolled corporate state based on greed, paranoia, prejudice and arrogance.
@oogada Untrue. Most surveillance is the result of crimes, including the vast majority of the federal surveillance programs Snowden brought to light. The demand for security runs this much more than any desire to make a profit. It's government that has all the power, not corporations that you can choose to deal with or not.
If you present a group of humans with a dark hole, some over-confident dope will go right ahead and stick his hand in it.
You can't just push the geniee back into the bottle. The world doesn't work that way. You can improve the geniee, to the point where it's benefits overcome it's drawbacks.
@Ron
You can regulate it though. We have a constitution that is supposed to protect us from government intrusion.
This is a bad time to be a quintuplet.
2
@stan continople Or a good time since you'll have plausible deniability. Maybe we'll all be wearing a burka...
2
What an easily predictable article without serious consideration of rising crime in SF.
1
Hello people! It's not about your privacy in public -- duh! It's about how your public exposure now lasts for all time and forever.
We expect to be seen and heard in public by others, that is sometimes even why we go out. But then we go back in to our private worlds after a little exposure. Surveillance in public extends that exposure in perpetuity and now you can't go back in anymore, you are forcibly stuck outside -- That sucks!
What makes this worse is now they know exactly who you are in every place at every time and then that lasts forever -- No Exit! All you elite types blabber about "existentialism" with your white whine and for once I agree with you!
Who ever agreed to be recorded in the present moment and then never let that moment pass into history? Hollywood and politicians! The rest of us want the past to go away one second at a time and be gone! Be done with it. Moving on!
It's time we all start wearing those groucho marx glasses around town.
17
Uncle Sam becomes Peeping Tom...not cool bro.
13
We’re already there. 5G networks listen to everything you say. Algorithms on Google catch key words you write - although pornography is acceptable. If religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, racism and sexual violence always does the trick.
1
Now, if I see people walking around with their mouths open, I'll assume they're trying to mess up the facial recognition software that might be observing them.
2
A very small percentage of people are involved in serious and violent crime. The cameras are turning out to be a very effective way to get these criminals off the street making life a lot better for the rest of us.
2
@osavus I’ll take my chances and my rights.
Imagine if you insulted a rude man you encountered on the street. It turns out that the man is a mob boss, easily takes offense, and has someone in local law enforcement who can track you down by searching to match your face against all the cameras streaming data.
Or a jealous and abusive husband who happens to be on the police force.
Or a powerful government official who does not want to be voted out of office and uses this data to track the people who work for his opponent.
6
@Lawrence Norbert
With any reasonable oversight, the "jealous husband" scenario would be caught and it would be stopped.
In the other cases, the present-day reality is hiring people to follow a target. At least with a public system, someone will be following the followers, they know it, and their harassment will be constrained by it.
@Alan
That’s a very trusting soul you have.
1
@Jimmy
Thank you. It's a gift, and a curse.
Orwell's 1984 centers on government totalitarianism and repressive regimentation and spying on all persons. Orwell got it wrong, its not government, it is the corporate behavior that is able to do that (UBER, GOOGLE, Facebook, Ancestry DNA collection, etc.) Unwitting users willing to surrender privacy for peanuts (lemmings) make them easy targets. Government (and foreign adversaries) can then either subpoena (or hack) the data on citizens that it does not collect themselves.
1
Sorry but as long as we collectively refuse to even question the many inaccuracies left from the events of 9/11 we are destroying our freedoms. We are doing this to ourselves.
We, including the New York Times, do not have the courage to look at a plethora of those events and question what really happened.
We deserve what we get!
1
“...Face recognition gives law enforcement a unique ability that they’ve never had before,” Ms. Garvie told me. “That’s the ability to conduct biometric surveillance — the ability to see not just what is happening on the ground but who is doing it. This has never been possible before...
I’m with Clare on this one...
Use time-proven practices – shoot first, and look to see who it was, later...
They could be carrying a loaded gun – the dead ones invariably were...
1
There's no appreciation in this article for the well-known overreach of law enforcement focused on the crime they are trying to prevent, or the city councils looking for political points while it's someone else's job to understand the technology. There's no appreciation for the legal community, or the legislators, and no penalty for corporations who regard any means necessary to make a buck their right.
Just possibly, the technology has fallen into the wrong hands. And how did that happen? If your company can get contracts for millions of dollars with governments, those are permanent cash cows. Advertising is why corporations surveil, advertising is why corporations sell surveillance.
Pattern recognition, including face recognition, is key in any humane future that includes any form of AI. That's a fact, not a belief. So authors like Mr. Manjoo, or even like Ms. Garvie, should either condemn the use of machine intelligence altogether, including the apps Mr. Manjoo enjoys and the search algorithms Ms. Garvie employs when she does research, or they should cease and desist demonizing the technology, and not the very usual suspects that are misusing it. It's always law enforcement/Justice/government that misuses surveillance and forensic powers. It's always corporate greed or law enforcement overreach or religious zealotry that is at the root of abuse of privacy. It's always been that way.
Face recognition as presented here is just a mirror for long recognized sins.
1
I see a great business opportunity in selling easy-to-use disguises, including hats, eye glasses, beards and clown noses.
2
Privacy also requires each person to take an active role in protecting their own privacy. That means don't do stupid things like buying a product that listens to everything you say, stores all of it on a server with unknown access and sells at least part of the info to others. Or buying a TV that records what you watch and also has a camera and a microphone. Or posting you entire life on an app along with tagging all of your friends who are in the pictures you post.
If you want privacy you have to help, don't buy products that violate your privacy, don't do stupid things on line. The world will not end if you get off social media.
Oh and by the way, face recognition software and phone tracking software is already being used in most of the stores you visit, its not just the police you have to regulate.
1
Stumbling? Hurtling, I think.
We’re already living in “Minority Report.”
3
In my 33 years of law practice, I am unfamiliar with the concept of “privacy in public places.” We have, since congregating in large cities several centuries ago, managed to avoid notice, relying on the anonymity of crowded places. But that does not guarantee anyone a right of privacy in public. If there is a warrant for your arrest & a cop happens to see you & is aware of the warrant, you will be arrested on the spot - not for public safety but because you have a warrant. Why would you expect to be entitled to be protected from being seen when you are in a public space?
4
@Cat Glickman
Thank you. This has always struck me as an imagined "right" used to block things like warrant-less vehicle tracking. Given that a vehicle on public roads can be tracked by it's license plate and a police camera, I do not understand why anyone needs a warrant to track a car on a road.
When you are in a public place you have no right to privacy. That is the reason it is called public.
The reason the police are using face recognition ,is to protect the public from miss behavior and also to catch people who committed those acts but were not arrested or punished.
Comparing that to “THE BRAVE NEW WORLD” is wrong since in that story the spying was done at non public places, which is not the case in SanFrancisco
The article didn’t make the case that you have the right to privacy in public. It made the case that police are altering photos and making other dubious investigative shortcuts using the technology to solve cases.
Another point is that much of our public exposure is limited by the ability of law enforcement and other private actors to follow your everyday activities. Unless there is someone dedicated enough to follow you around, much of what you do is unobserved and forgotten. With cameras, AI, and facial recognition available to not only the police but anyone who wants it, anyone can scrutinize your activities. This is especially a threat to anyone who has any sort of public recognition. Whether you’re a celebrity, a musician, a model, someone who did something crazy on a YouTube video 10 years ago, now you are thoroughly observed and documented for the amusement and utility of the masses.
Unfortunately, the U.S. is not "stumbling" toward a surveillance state. It's been made clear we are already there. What Edward Snowden revealed of our National Security State made that clear.
6
In 1967, as we were setting up the Electronic Battlefield, a program of sensors of sound and ground vibrations to follow the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War, I wondered aloud how long it would be before these were used on us, and was surprised to hear a chorus of agreement.
As long as we have incomplete little people like Stephen Miller in positions of power with these weapons we are doomed.
5
In a country where people can't get decent housing and are sometimes going hungry, THIS is what our cities are choosing to spend our money on?
18
"he took “great umbrage” at the suggestion that the police would “violate the rights of law-abiding citizens.”"
He'd only violate the rights of non-law abiding citizens, who are the ones he's looking for.
10
How is this technology any worse than human eyewitnesses? It is just a way to identify suspects in crimes. To my knowledge, the technology, absent human corroboration, is not sufficient for an arrest warrant and does not meet standard of evidence at trial. We have a lot of creeps running around that have actual human based, judge approved warrants when they should be behind bars. If we had police officers everywhere with 100 per cent cognition to spot them, then even Presidents James Madison and Thomas Jefferson would approve. This method is a lot better than stop and frisk. These perps are named in legal documents telling police to find, search and jail them. Cameras in public spaces and apps just tell the police where to find them.
5
Unlike China, which has a surveillance state run the government, in the US the biggest threat is what has been called surveillance capitalism, which not only invades privacy but more and more is involving behavior modification for commercial purposes on a mass the scale, the best example to date probably being Pokemon Go. But government surveillance is also growing in the US and facial recognition software is an obvious threat to privacy in public spaces. The action taken by the government in San Francisco to ban facial recognition software should be applauded and repeated throughout the US. It is going to take a lot of effort but I think both the digital utopian vision of Silicon Valley which threatens democracy and other important American values such as freedom and individuality and a government surveillance state which is much more limited than that in China but still very problematic can be stopped before it is too late.
4
Having the technological prowess to be able to add facial recognition, may not, in and by itself, be a bad thing, as it depends how it's used; for all we know, it may deter crimes to be committed; or if committed, to catch the criminal and avoid future similar misdeeds. Even 'free speech' is subject to abuse, witness Trump's hateful tweets perverting a basic right we take for granted. Again, without giving up a scientific or cultural advacement, what we need, always, is sensible regulation and public supervision to avoid abuse. Even capitalism, supposedly good to combat the violence of poverty, if uncontrolled and with no ethical basis, would give rise (as is occurring now) to greed and selfishness. Last though not least, if we appreciate living in a democracy, a reminder: we hold the power as we choose an administration to do our bidding...provided we participate and contribute in keeping it's equitable. And advancements in technology ought to serve us well, if prudent (doing what's right, however difficult).
1
Several years and a technological generation ago, a small upscale city in California installed traffic cameras to monitor car license plates. For safety of course. If a house was robbed they could check the cameras against their database to find the non-residents who drove in and out of the city around that time.
But what if the tables suddenly turn? What if an outside force decides the citizens should be monitored? The same traffic cameras can just be turned around and track city residents instead of outsiders.
The technology they installed for their safety turns into their jailor. Too late...
6
What if?
It seems that if eyewitness identification is an accepted form of evidence, FR can be also. It may also exculpate innocent people.
5
Facial recognition technology in and of itself does not sound admissible as evidence in a court of law because of all its inaccuracies. Most people carry cellphones which we all know have tracking technology built into them. So if facial recognition is matched to cellphone tracking does that establish proof of being the person there more definitively? Would this be a reasonable safeguard?
1
Stumbling? No, fueled by corporate demands for profit and governmental desire for what they describe as “security” I’d say we’re moving at flank speed.
8
"We're Stumbling into a Surveillance State."
Hardly. It has been a well funded and planned campaign, and it is already here. (With 9/11 as its pretext.) From total information awareness to persistent surveillance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_mass_surveillance_projects
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/darpa-logos-information-awareness-office/421635/
https://epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/
https://www.dhs.gov/publication/wide-area-persistent-surveillance-camera-systems
12
Alas, history shows us that people willingly accept anything that provides the illusion of safety, no matter what the cost.
A Benjamin Franklin quotation from 1738 often gets paraphrased thusly:
"They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
There must have been a reason for him to say this.
This clearly shows that people, as a whole, do not change.
Despots know this all too well.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
15
As one of the few non-ideologue liberals reading this paper, I assume, based on the choice not to provide the details and the presence of the actual suspect's photo in the article) that the Woody Harrelson look-alike ploy worked and the suspect pulled from the drivers records turned out (though other evidence) to be the perpetrator of the crime. How is that any different than a rape victim saying, he looked a lot like Woody Harrelson but with long hair and than distributing that poster throughout the state. If anything, the new tech solution has done less damage to the privacy of anyone looking similar and finding the drawn image splashed all over their grocery bulletin board.
4
I was working in an industrial engineering lab when ARPANET was first being used. Guys used it to communicate with their university profs, send in homework, whatever. Used a telephone modem. Quaint, clever - engineers love this sort of stuff whether is serves any real purpose or not. I didn't like what I saw. People are dazzled - loose sense of their human identity. Soon the whole lab was digitized . . . and the outside world was soon caught in the thrall as well. Big money maker for Gates, Jobs, et al. "Where do you want to go today" (we will tell you, show you; no need to ferrit this out for yourselves). Just use our
3
@badman
computer glitch (fittingly!) - Just use our standard package. It's sad - those born post digital cannot know what "normal" is . . . the most prominent characteristic of the human animal is the ability to ADAPT over all else. So people just go day-to-day . . . and here we are. Carrot and stick; blind, dazzled.
It's nice to know that the Police in NYC have so much time to apprehend, they think, a man who stole a 6 pack of beer. That they decided this was a crime major enough to go through all they did is more of a story than the story. Priorities, we've lost them.
8
@Paul Lief
Hey Paul - Yes, exactly. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's Pandora's Box. We've got the tools so we gotta use use 'em. People just don't know how all this works. A lot of technical "experts" have never done anything - ivory tower experts, etc. Unfortunate. So it goes. The clever human animal is his own worst enemy.
This is what people do unconsciously when making eyewitness identifications, and is why they are notoriously unreliable. This isn't any worse.
5
I like the idea of police operations being automatically recorded on video, it's the kind of deterrent to abuse many officers seem to need.
It's always interesting to hear from critics effectively defend the guilty. Tesla now deploys its car cameras to record criminals. "Ring" the electronic doorbell does the same thing socially posting images of would be or real criminals. The result is that houses with Ring have reduced crime. Assume that the technology improves to the point of low error rate (very likely within a short window), I see nothing wrong with the use of facial rec tech to identify criminals and thugs. BTW - if you worried about people tracking you, you should be more concerned about Apple and Google and your phone
2
It seems like every day brings a new quote in a NYT article that causes me to spit my coffee across the room. Today it's James E. Craig, Detroit's Police Chief, taking "great umbrage" at the suggestion that police would "violate the rights of law-abiding" citizens."
I suppose we could make a list that might persuade Chief Craig to re-think his outrage, but that's doubtful. The point is that here we have yet another law enforcement tool designed to further harvest the low-hanging fruit of criminal behavior, one with strong potential for misuse and misapplication. I'm puzzled as to why the Detroit police didn't arrest Woody Harrelson for stealing that beer from the CVS. More to the point, this is why the Detroit police need facial recognition, to protect CVS from beer theft?
Of course not! come the howls of protest. It's to.... hang on, I'm searching the article for the part where the police describe how they're going to use this system... nope, no explanation. Just Chief Craig's umbrage.
Law enforcement across the country has a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, most of it has nothing to do with enforcing the law. Until they address the reforms needed to assure that the civil rights of citizens are protected --- including those who have the misfortune of looking like Woody Harrelson --- asking for and implementing more tools under the guise of "serve and protect" will be viewed with warranted skepticism.
5
@Jim
Saying something general and absurd is a way to shut down a conversation or a line of inquiry. It is corporate-speak for "buzz off, conversation over".
Most forms of "investment" led by local government should be treated with extreme suspicion. While I think the theoretical debate about this tech is more complex and it could ultimately be very good to implement, places like airports, banks and pharmacies should be at the leading edge funding its refinement, not local taxpayers.
The best way to keep sheep under control is to keep them fearful. And Americans are defined by fear, we need to collectively fear something at all times - whether it be Russia, Osama bin laden, Saddam, North Korea, Nicaragua, Panama, ... The list goes on. Without fear, politicians cannot declare war. And we are a war loving people, no doubt about that!
8
Invest in companies that make hoodies, hats and caps with flip-down image distorters (yes, this technology already exists).
Or if you are not into high tech, buy a pair of those Groucho Marx glasses with big nose and moustache—fools facial recognition devices every time.
4
@Mon Ray
They could be marketed as a personal VPN!
Unfortunately, walking around like that will frequently draw attention, often to the point it is better to hide in plain sight.
1
Stumbling? China is the seed from which the Orwellian world will grow. The People's Republic is developing the technology to control its citizens in ways we might not even know yet. Who is helping them every step of the way? The multinational tech companies. Nearly 1.5 billion potential customers is too big a market to ignore. But to have access to these profits, you'll have to play the Communist Party's game. Once you develop your censored search engine, or surveillance tech, then it is already too late. Who's to stop the other oppressive regimes of the world saying, "Oh, you already made that censored engine for China, may we use it too?". Greed is the road to Two Thousand Eighty Four.
6
Why try to solve crimes when it is so much more politically correct not to? The column is absurd. So an armed robber, rapist, murderer doesn't have to worry about facial recognition AI. Great. I understand the opposition to mass untargeted collection. But that's not what we are talking about. Banning cops from using it as a tool to pursue criminals is stupid. If it helps catch criminals, I'm all for it. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not useful. The main reason that career criminals get away with so many crimes is that they simply move to another state & change their name. They often have many aliases. Facial recognition technology would go a long way towards making that much more difficult for them. San Francisco announcing this is like a big advertisement for criminals to move here. And they will show up in droves over the next couple of years. Property crimes have become a huge problem in this city. FBI data shows SF has one of the highest per-capita rate of property crimes in the U.S. tallying 6,168 crimes per 100,000 people. That’s about 148 burglaries, larcenies, car thefts & arsons per day. Per Day! There’s a small group of people affecting the vast majority of those numbers. The police are working with prosecutors to zero in on the most prolific offenders. And this columnists brilliant idea is lets make it harder to catch these thieves. I don't know which is worse anymore. The criminals or the progressive fanatics who make it harder to catch them.
9
If you’re not a terrorist, criminal or doing something else that the authorities are looking at you for you shouldn’t be worried, I feel the same way about the Internet or the phone, do you want to listen to my boss yell at me or what I’m picking up for dinner, go right ahead .
Do you want to scan my face in airports in around the city to be sure that I am not planning something the nefarious and possibly catch others that are doing so, I’m good with that too
Liberal cities like San Francisco are always afraid of things like this for no reason, not everything is an attack on your civil rights
3
@There
Are you also good with having your face scanned and then being arrested because you resemble a thug or criminal? Police don't just apologize for the mistake and let you go. They hold you as long as they can while trying to make the facts fit their mistaken catch. I'm not against facial recognition; I am against using it without safeguards in place.
3
Thanks, but I'll take my chances against criminals and killers rather than a surveillance state. At least I may have a chance to fight back. I have been alive for several decades and watched technology change a lot. I'm sure someone with less experience than I have will say "go back to your cave", but honestly, I don't believe technology has truly fulfilled most of its promise of making our lives better. Really, it has provided quite the opposite. Now instead of worrying about someone physically robbing a bank or my home, I have to worry that they'll do it from afar, possibly in some other country and never face consequences.
Almost everything emanating from Silicon Valley seems to have a twisted, perverse end-game, where they are gratified and you are victimized. Like a pedophile, Silicon Valley is grooming us to accept this kind of treatment as acceptable and normal. I believe we should start asserting our rights and change the status-quo, before we end up in a much worse state.
12
Can anyone name a new technology since 1800 that WASN'T adopted, even after initial moral condemnation and resistance?
When morally troubling technology comes along, society seems to change its moral foundations to accommodate it, and pretty quickly. Remember test tube babies? EOTWAWKI. Nuclear weapons? A very bad idea, adopted worldwide in short order. Genetic modification of embryos? I predict full societal acceptance by 2030.
The few communities that are resisting facial recognition technology (or trying, with weak legislation containing many exceptions and compromises) represent a tiny slice of Americans, and will be swept with the tide if history is any guide.
I don't defend the technological advances that degrade our experience as citizens, I object to them. But by acknowledging their inevitable nature, I adapt to the world as it is, not the world as I wish it would be. On this issue, when I choose to go out in public, I know what I am choosing. This philosophical stance keeps me smiling for the cameras. Hi, Mom!
5
Stumbling?
Looks to me like everyone is dancing in a balloon strewn parade to join up.
Every step the guy who blew up an explosive device on 23rd St. in Chelsea a couple of years ago was captured on camera. I know for a fact that from the moment he set foot on Manhattan Island (probably before) every step he made was captured on camera. I live on West 23rd right near the Selis House where the device went off. I always tell people there have got to be a thousand cameras on my block. Nobody blinks an eye.
The other day I was in a friend's new brownstone. The place is festooned with cameras. That way the the at work partner can watch every step.
Nobody is stumbling. Nobody is sacrificing a thing to ward this off. The police have approached me about my beach house. They've got only one line of prevention. Cameras, what's not to like?
Well, as Shoshana says, if you've got nothing inside you to hide, you've got nothing there worth a difference.
1
Just having a device that tracks you where ever you go is troubling enough, let alone one that recognizes your face every time you look at it...I long for the days when I left home my phone was attached to the wall...
2
Wow. I guess I'll have to start wearing a fake nose, hospital mask, big headphones and walking with a limp so I can leave the house in private.
For folks who think the police don't act with bias, enter into situations afraid and ready to shoot and ask questions later, I'm glad that you're in such a fantasyland. Wish I could join you.
5
Ah, the dream of virtual prisons! Reminds me of a visit last year to old (but not so old) Stasi headquarters in Lichtenberg, Berlin.
2
I bought a computer that used facial recognition to open the computer. My granddaughter wanted to use it. I told her it might not let her in. Well it let her in and blocked me? Wow I sure do not believe that facial recognition is accurate.
Another one. As a nurse, I saw a mother of a patient who, if I didn't know better, was my sister-in-law. She looked like her, but wasn't as tall as she was. nor did she speak like her. When I brought a picture of my sister-in-law to the patient, she not only thought she looked just like her mother, but the other woman in the picture looked like her mother's best friend.
Still another one. I was in the hospital with my 9 year old son. the woman visiting her son in the next bed kept staring at me. She told me I looked just like her sister-in-law. She only knew I was not because my son didn't look like her nephew.
Everyone out there has a nearly identical looking twin. Facial recognition is not accurate, especially if used in a court of law to convict an innocent person.
1
We've been in a police state for decades and ALL new tech is first offered to law enforcement to use against us not for us.
9
It's not just the government who should be banned from using this technology. Private companies are already using it in ways that are just as powerful and nefarious, yet more challenging to understand and regulate.
We all have a basic intuition for how law enforcement might abuse facial recognition. I have no doubt that we could devise appropriate regulations for that arena if we wanted to. What we struggle to even comprehend, much less regulate, are the ways in which private corporations use new technologies to exert control over the public. How we solve that problem (or don't) will define humanity for centuries to come.
4
We have the right to bear arms, and we've abused it to commit mass murder against schoolchildren. We have freedom of religion, and we've abused it to disbelieve facts and instead believe any dogma we choose.
Given our propensity to abuse any liberty given us, we're in a tough situation. Unregulated, law enforcement will abuse this new technology to its fullest extent. And if the technology is banned, society as a whole will abuse their privacy and continue to behave as if no one is watching.
5
I don't want to live in a world where I automatically get a ticket in the mail for jaywalking. But this goes beyond that small annoyance. For one, it's crucial to a functioning democracy that people follow the rules because they want to, not because of the certainty of punishment for transgressions. Social pressure to follow the rules lets us create a collective set of moral values that we can then use to govern democratically. If we outsource that socially generated moral fabric to police and private corporations, we relinquish our shared control over the conscience of the nation. It's a move toward totalitarianism on a very elemental level.
Second, this will undoubtedly have a disproportionate impact on poor communities (who are the victims of societal decay, not the perpetrators). This technology will lead to much more punishment for things like petty theft and drug possession. Things like tax evasion by billionaires and environmental destruction--the crimes that are actually destroying our society--will continue to go unpunished.
6
The Boston Marathon bombers were caught because they were idenified from video footage captured by security cameras at nearby businesses. I see that as a positive thing.
Perhaps what the discussion should be about regarding surveilance and facial recognition is how we insitute strict regulations on its usage and require full transparency on the part of law enforcement about how they obtained and interpreted images used in charging a suspect. The manipulation of images described in this article that were done to “find a match” for an otherwise uninterpretable image is outrageous, and there should be clear regulations against this sort of practice.
It seems like the same old story of our technology rapidly advancing beyond our ability to understand it and use it responsibly. It only took a few years after the Wright brother’s made their maiden flight before other people started using airplanes to drop bombs on perceived enemies.
24
Yet again the tech guru author is late to the party. The time to think and do something about regulating the tech industry was 15-20 years ago. But I welcome his voice now that the bloom is off the rose for him.
4
I received a traffic citation in the mail from the City of Boulder. Not only was my front and rear aspect of car with license plate captured and included in the notice/ invoice sent to my registered address ,,, there was a well defined, close up photo of my face behind the wheel also taken and provided. Certainly, every car and front seat passengers that passed the same stretch of road could easily have been captured just as directly and distinctly.
14
@Will Eigo, my child going to school in Boulder crossed a half dozen Boulder streets the day your image and hundreds of speeders were ticketed by the visual system....I am grateful that my daughter is alive and healthy and not one of the hundreds of Colorado victims of speeding cars prior to the start of the electronic ticketing system.
4
@Will Eigo When I received a no-turn-on-red violation ticket with such images a couple years ago, I paid it. I had not paid attention enough to notice the sign, because I was in a hurry. I haven't done that since.
This is why Snowden is a personal hero of mine, even though he revealed American secrets and is living in Russia.
I learned that the state of the technology is not in its infancy, it is full grown and working its dark magic.
But until we get rid of creatures like Mitch McConnell in the Senate we will never be able to get true privacy reform as proposed by Ron Wyden, senator from Oregon, and others.
Trust is a small word, but when it is gone, its loss is devastating. I no longer trust my government and really understand the need for checks and balances, and strong punishment for those who violate privacy needs.
I want a new Amendment to the Constitution, a privacy Bill of Rights, it is that important.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
21
@Hugh Massengill
Snowden a hero? So, he is in Russia, a country which hacks the major systems of other countries including the U.S.?
1
@Hugh Massengill
Snowden is a traitor. Full stop.
Even the darling of the Left, Obama, moved every applicable resource to intercept and capture him before he received asylum by Putin.
If he believes his actions were necessary and desirable: Let him return, and explain that to a Federal court.
1
OK, people. do this now: Type the phrase "how to defeat facial recognition" in to one of the popular search engines such as Google. No, wait, now you are on record searching for these techniques, and that is a future-crime.
OK, let's start over. Subscribe to a VPN service in a non-5Eyes country. Connect to that VPN and then use DuckDuckGo to search for facial recognition defeating techniques. If you want an added level of security and anonymity, boot your computer from a USB that has TAILS (Total Amnesiac Incognito Live System) installed.
Then throw your computer in the ocean and move to a deserted island...
32
@Disembodied Internet Voice
Of course your travel arrangements allow you to be tracked to that deserted island which is easily surveilled by satellite.....
10
I'm pretty certain that most criminals would like to see surveillance cameras prohibited; that's reason enough for me to support them.
5
This report is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to see the extent of our surveillance state and the unreliable approach of law enforcement to crime fighting ...you should see what they do in my community. First, the police go to the least reliable source of images available (human witnesses) and draw sketches based on the rape victim and other witness memories. Talk about invasion of privacy based on low reliability imagery.
I will not even raise the last century in which we have had to deal with uniformed officers roaming our streets using personal lens and optical nerves to surveil the public. What right do they have to look in to my lawn as they pass?? This is not legal and the false positives of human memory-based visual recognition has one of the highest failure rates possible. We need to pass legislation that outlaws sighted officers and bans the use of sketch pads and pencils in police stations!!!
I make these points, because not a single surveillance "expert" or commentator on this board can explain why a software program offering dozens of potential matches to a scanned photo image is any more of a threat than a sketch artist and traumatized witnesses that have dominated suspect visual identification for the last century.
1
@DoctorRPP, you're missing the point. The system of cameras is real-time, tracking everybody, everywhere they go, innocent or guilty. That alone is enough to have a chilling effect on free speech and democracy.
16
@__, I disagree. I ask you or anyone on this board to name one person, not wearing a tin hat, in the city of London who does not speak their mind on a topic because of their nearly universal public street cameras?? I was in Hyde Park not long ago, and there are three times as many public speakers going on about the next doomsday then there were two decades ago when I last was there. I am sorry but I see only fear and not facts to support the argument that my children should be less safe because you want armed and unformed police surveilling instead of civilian-run public cameras.
1
@DoctorRPP
It is not the software, it is what can be done with it by those who have access to it.
A sketch artist is working after the fact on a specific crime. 24/7 surveillance captures and stores information regardless of whether a crime has been committed and can be used retroactively for any purpose the owner of that data chooses.
Sighted police officers cannot do that. A written report on suspicious activity cannot retain the detail able to be electronically archived and retrieved with a simple search. An officer's description of a suspect - 5'11", dark hair wearing jeans and a t shirt isn't facial recognition technology.
The downside? What if Hitler would have had access to this technology? He wouldn't have needed the Hitler youth to tattle on their parents or a massive spy network to infiltrate suspected resistors. Just go to the data center and see who enters and exits Jewish shops - they are possible sympathizers. The same group regularly meets at the pub - possible resistance organizers. Facial recognition says those characteristics are of a Jewish or Romany ethnicity - arrest, interrogate and incarcerate. He would have been so much more efficient, yes?
Technology is neither good nor bad. But with recent examples such as TSA officials retaining body scans of women or FBI agents using government data to keep tabs on ex-girlfriends, we have no right to expect technology to be used benignly. Substantial regulation is the only answer.
"This sort of sketchy search is routine in the face business. Face-scanning software sold to the police allows for easy editing of input photos. To increase the hits they get on a photo, the police are advised to replace people’s mouths, eyes and other facial features with model images pulled from Google."
Why not just edit the photo to look like your favorite suspect and have done with it?
1
This is why I always walk through public spaces wearing a cap and looking down.
2
@ABT
If actually doing that you're already on a watch list.
In the face of ever expanding methods of "providing safety and security", the following refrains are much too common: (1) "If I have nothing to hide, and I am not doing anything wrong, I do not mind surveillance." (2) "If it can save one life, it is worth it."
In a free society, bad things will happen, and we should not want to live in one where ever crime is either prevented, or the perpetrators of every crime are caught.
But we can go from a society where bad things happen to one where worse things happen. I am afraid that with the growing deployment of instruments of safety ad security, we are moving towards the worse column.
30
@Steve Brown Actually the overwhelming majority of Americans prefer a society where all the murders, robberies, and rapes are prevented or where the perpetrators of these crimes is caught. Be honest. How much rat poison do we have to have in our peanut butter for you to feel secure. Attitudes like yours are one reason progressives will never gain political traction in this country. I understand the opposition to mass untargeted collection. But that's not what we are talking about. Banning cops from using it as a tool to pursue criminals is stupid. The main reason that career criminals get away with so many crimes is that they move to another state & change their name. Facial recognition technology would go a long way towards making that much more harder for them. San Francisco announcing this is like a big ad for law breakers to move here. And they will show up. Property crimes have become a scary issue in this city. FBI data shows SF has one of the highest per-capita rate of property crimes in the U.S. tallying 6,168 crimes per 100,000 people. That’s about 148 burglaries, larcenies, car thefts & arsons per day. Per Day! There’s a small group of people affecting the vast majority of those numbers. The police are working with prosecutors to zero in on the most prolific offenders. And this columnists brilliant idea is lets make it harder to catch these thieves. I don't know which is worse anymore. The criminals or the progressive fanatics who make it harder to catch them.
1
What would you rather have? If you are innocent of a crime, the police making arrests on the basis of facial recognition software or on the basis of eyewitnesses.There is no question in my mind that I'd go with the new technology. Eyewitness accounts have been proven over and over again to be unreliable.
Take the famous case of the Central Park Five. They convicted on the basis of the victim's sincere eyewitness recognition. The five later were cleared on the basis of DNA evidence - the new technology.
The correct fear is not of new tech - I'm much more comfortable in an area that has lots of cameras than one that does not - but who controls it. If you are worried about a totalitarian state, then work to make sure we never have one. Because if we do, and we don't have cameras/ facial recognition, we will very shortly.
6
@Thucydides
You're right that it would help cut down on false arrests, however I still think we should be concerned about the applications of total surveillance for evil. We've seen that the government is not to be trusted when it is responsible for protecting the rights of citizens (consider Alabama's new abortion law).
When the government has the power to surveil all citizens at once they also have the power to selectively enforce laws when it becomes convenient. Not to mention the power to easily hound people critical of the government or place them under unnecessary scrutiny.
There are benefits to be had but this is certainly a piece of new technology which we should approach with caution. I would not be comfortable with it being used without very strong restrictions placed on its usage.
7
A few months ago, all over Facebook and Instagram, there was this "10 year challenge" where people would post photos of themselves 10 years ago and today. At first I thought it was a harmless game. Then realisation set in: it will go towards helping facial recognition algorithms become better and smarter. I feel stupid having fallen for this and contributed to it.
It feels too late to stop it - SF has the right idea.
I don't think we'll ever be able to reverse course though.
51
@Tamara I'm always stunned by what my friends give up on a FB to play a stupid game. They proudly proclaim that they look like some celebrity or another after having given up their mother's birthday and maiden name. Duhr?
1
Probable cause always ended your privacy. However facial recognition type of technology, as it has grown unregulated, will mean end of privacy as we know. Only the the rich like NFL’s Patriots owner will be able to suppress video evidence by using the best available legal mind. For the rest of us it is Orwellian state.
19
One of the problems in raising the alarm of a surveillance state or of "surveillance capitalism" is that most of us are unaware what's happening moment to moment. Google scans our emails and search inquiries; Facebook reads our messages, and notes our "likes" and who our friends are; and cities take pictures of us going everywhere in public spaces. We don't immediately feel that surveillance, so it doesn't feel like something important to address, let alone an emergency.
The situation is like high blood pressure. People don't notice it until they have a stroke. In both private and public spaces, we need to understand the dangers of the surveillance to which we unthinkingly acquiesce.
37
Until we have much greater insight into how the AI algorithms make their decisions--and we can figure out a way to intersperse a human monitoring and judgment aspect into those decisions--we definitely should not be rolling this out in any widespread way.
We should be testing it under rigorous, controlled conditions, in government and university laboratories, in the same way we would test new pharmaceuticals (or at least in the way we're SUPPOSED to test new pharmaceuticals).
Because a technology that still identifies a substantial portion of African Americans as "gorillas" is absolutely not ready for prime time.
15
What makes you think we're "stumbling" towards a surveillance state? China isn't stumbling towards a surveillance state. They're deliberately and openly implementing the cybertotalitarian dystopia of our nightmares through their social credit system.
In the west our elite are not so obvious about it. But they are arguably just as deliberate.
72
Correct! In China, the state makes no pretense at being other than authoritarian. In the US, the state goes to great lengths in establishing that pretense. We have, for example, a "managed" democracy where two parties primarily obligated to major donors and abetted by a corporate MSM, engage in elections where all of the ideas and arguments take place in a very narrow spectrum of the left and a larger spectrum of the center and the right - much as if a football game were played on a 45 yard field. Hence, outstanding candidates like Tulsi Gabbard who are critical of our violent and absurdly expensive albeit ineffective military policy and foreign policy etc are ignored or outright demonized while candidates who preach the neocon/neoliberal line irrespective of the overwhelming evidence are swooned over. The same is true of other issues such as healthcare, minimum wage and of course the 800 lb. gorilla of the climate crisis etc. (Of course, we still should vote - those who stayed home in 2016 because they didn't like HRC or some of her policies have given us the Don Trump. We just need clear eyes about the system we have have. ) Likewise, as we have long since learned, the government has been spying on us extensively since at least 2002 under the guise of keeping us safe but without letting us know . Other examples of these unspoken modes of control abound but you get the picture ... or maybe you don't . In any event, kudos to the author of this article.
13
@Steve L The elites are deliberate, the general public is stumbling.
6
We're not stumbling towards it, the peasants have embraced it in their fear of the Muslim horde.
Look up John Poindexter and TIA. Poindexter, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. These are 1970s holdovers of the Nixon era. They could never get the taste of their being thrown out of power by long haired , maggot infested, left wing, bell bottom wearing hippies. They were determined to never let the people run rough shod over their tribal leaders again.
All of the so called 'gubmint haters' love it because it was their tribal elders who thought it up. They will rue the day it was allowed, but they will blame the wrong people because that's how peasants think.
Like all new technology, it is not the hardware that is the problem, but the software around it, or the state mishandling it within the justice system. ( it was the same with fingerprinting as it was/is with DNA advancements )
If as a state, we are still going to implement the highest penalty one can give (taking away a person's life), and live with the percentages (around 5%) that some are innocent, then how can we justify arguing against intrusion of privacy ?
The short answer - we can't.
Therefore, we must take our Democracy seriously, our laws seriously, our justice system seriously, and all of the foundations of a free society seriously , by deeply looking at all of these issues and voting to strengthen them.
Or we can end up like a police state, and have everything dismantled, while our leaders call anyone that resists (especially the press), as an ''enemy of the people''
Our choice.
43
@FunkyIrishman
Our choice? Um, think it’s too late for that. Legislators don’t listen to the people. They know what’s best for us.
My fear is that we are a few high-profile wins away from the majority of people accepting this technology. A few school shooter or pedophile arrests might go a long way to having everyone give up the liberty we have grown to accept. We need the continued pressure of news and research showing us the downside and dark side of these technologies—I for one do not want to put this much power into the hands of the government (or Google, for that matter).
80
@Matt
"Give up liberties"?
You do not have the right to be ignored in public. A police officer who remembers seeing a suspicious person standing outside a store that was robbed five minutes later is not violating that person's rights when they see that person afterwards and detain them for questioning. Facial recognition cameras are a tool that works BETTER than an officer's memory.
Camera tech is not replacing trial by jury. It is assisting police in identifying suspects, and building a court case that eliminates reasonable doubt.
3
@Matt
"Give up liberties"?
You do not have the right to be ignored in public. A police officer who remembers seeing a suspicious person standing outside a store that was robbed five minutes later is not violating that person's rights when they see that person afterwards and detain them for questioning. Facial recognition cameras are a tool that works BETTER than an officer's memory.
Camera tech is not replacing trial by jury. It is assisting police in identifying suspects, and building a court case that eliminates reasonable doubt.
"I for one do not want to put this much power into the hands of the government..."
You do realize that is the exact same argument used by pro-gun paranoiacs who think having a couple of AR-15s in the house will prevent a military coup?
What protects us is respect for trial by jury and the high standard of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Cameras are a tool used by the police and DA to build a case to present to the jury that will clear the threshold of guilt.
@Len Arends
Matt's argument is sound and so is the parallel gun rights argument. When in doubt erring on the side of freedom and self-reliance is wise.
3
We shouldn’t deploy it. Period.
There has never been and will never be such a thing as privacy protection
37
Some parts of California will ban the technology; most of the country will not, especially where crime is a problem and the police are under-resourced. So just like the homeless, some criminals will prefer to ply their trade in California. This needs to be regulated at the Federal level and subject to the same laws that govern fingerprints. In the meantime let’s collect sufficient data, not just anecdotes, on the pros and cons. Arresting people with arrest warrants is not bad if done correctly; the US has many more than any advanced European country and a much, much higher crime rate. Let’s also consider the families of the many US crime victims.
17