San Francisco Banned Facial Recognition. New York Isn’t Even Close.

Robots and artificial intelligence: how can we govern them? Can they be ethical? Should we tax them? And, beyond that… what is the ugly question on which much AI work and progress will depend, which we, like it or not, must ask and resolve? Find out at http://worksnewage.blogspot.com/2019/03/artificial-intelligence-governance.html.

"Seattle and California’s Oakland, Berkeley and Davis have all barred municipal police from deploying new surveillance technology without approval from the local government." Isn't one of the main benefits of this technology is that it can help monitor what local government is doing?

I've seen facial recognition compared to fingerprints. But, that is a grossly mistaken analogy. Fingerprints are taken when a person is arrested and are SUPPOSED to be destroyed if the person is not convicted, though this is rarely done in real life. They are taken for several other reasons - but always voluntarily. A bank or pawnshop may require a thumbprint- but you are under no obligation to use that bank or pawnshop & can refuse to give your prints. The military takes prints (primarily for identifying casualties), but you don't have to join the military. I had to give my fingerprints to the FBI when I got a security clearance to do a software contract for Homeland Security - but I could have accepted a different offer & not given them. Facial recognition has no restrictions on it & profiles can be taken, encoded, & stored in massive databases of every single person in the country - without our knowledge or permission. Facial recognition is not as accurate (currently) as fingerprints & can produce false positive & negative results. It is also relatively easy to defeat by criminals who know how to disguise the contours of their faces with prostheses or even some cotton in cheeks & gums to change the relationship of the identifying markers. A database of facial recognition records is the ultimate in big-brother technology, capable of being used by governments for far more than just tracking criminals. Political dissidents can be tracked, for example.

Can we at least use FR technology for our service dogs? I know my dog would feel better and sleep better with the extra security.

I am amazed at the total trust in the corrupt criminal justice system expressed in this comments section. 1984 surveillance state is finally here and Yes - it needs to be regulated because as anyone who does not live with their head in the sand knows - all new supposedly miraculous forensic technology - be it finger printing, DNA and now facial recognition systems are not 100% foolproof methods are are prone to mistakes - that can ruin innocent people's lives. I just read that Google made a deal with NYC to use the new info/wifi kiosks everywhere that have several cameras inside recording NYC citizens 24/7 - for testing its new facial recognition system. Hmmm, I wonder what Google will do with this data - maybe sell it to the highest bidder? Europe is ahead of in right to privacy issues and real legislation and penalties for those creepy corporations and or Government institutions that disregard our hard earned rights and freedoms in pursuit of profits and control/power. Like Ben Franklin said "Those willing to sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" WAKE UP SHEEPLE! Crime has been steadily going down for 40 years in NYC & nationally-way before all this camera surveillance was put into our cities/country! Do your research and don't believe the hype and live in false fear! Regulate & break up the surveillance and internet social media corporate monopolies NOW! Let's keep our cherished liberties in tact & make the free market truly free for all to pursue their dreams!

This technology will be a boon to find disability cheaters who claim injury yet do heavy work especially in civil service disabilities where there is fraud and SSA. I guess we have to live with this and 1984 should be re written in 2014.

Really New York? I won’t be visiting until you respect my civil rights by banning facial recognition tech. I grew up in LA, white, middle-class and under para-military LAPD. The abuses this tech allows will definitely come to fruition. More people will be killed by the abuse of this tech than might lose their lives without it. STOP IT NOW.

The Times is afraid of what, exactly, with facial recognition? SF might have been able to accurately identify who was pooping on the sidewalk at the corner of Turk and Hyde, but not now. Nope, the city government has turned it's back on technology because they don't want to admit that the great social experiment of tolerating urban camping and open drug dealing and use has transformed SF into a cesspit. Everyone who has has a job and a cell phone and a credit card is constantly tracked anyways. It's only those who live outside of society who would be affected by facial recognition; those who steal, those who deal drugs, those who defecate in the streets. SF crime rates are soaring. Please don't advocate dragging NYC back to the crime rates of the late 70's, just to grandstand about personal liberties that only help those who would do harm to themselves and others.

Why would anyone not want this technology available to help catch criminals ? Do you live in a Gated Community and only go to the safest places ?

I totally support the police use of facial recognition technology. it will hopefully assist them in finding perpetrators of crimes. We see more and more criminals located in the city on account of the ubiquitous use of surveillance cameras. To me, it's all good. If you don't want to share information on yourself, abstain from using the grid or move someplace off the grid.

Facial recognition should be illegal without a court order. Facebook and Twitter should be prohibited from selling information about anybody. We must stop becoming a '1984' society.

If you use a credit card that company has a ridiculous amount of info on you. If you use a cell phone, what the carrier knows about you is just the tip of the iceberg. The operating system providers (Google or Apple) know everything you do on the phone and everyplace you go. Just about the same applies to most of the app vendors for the apps you have on your phone. Got an EZPass in your car... they know something about your travel habits. What about travel and traffic telemetry your car provides to Sirius/XM even if you don't subscribe? What about vehicle information that some vehicles communicate back to the manufacturer? What about all of the credit rating agencies? Lets not even begin to think about what FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest know about you... just in case you use any of those wastes of time. The point is that for most people, facial recognition, while intrusive, is nothing new. The data being collected on you is already enormous. I would be all for rolling a lot of the surveillance back, but lets not pretend that facial recognition is something new. We have been under surveillance by private firms and government for years.

The use of this technology by local law enforcement is almost entirely positive. The abuses come at the federal level, where there is the money and the incentive to create massive databases of faces and profiles, and engage in data-mining. It would be ironic if the area that benefits citizens was abandoned while the area that is actually of concern went on behind security-agency doors.

Question: What do normal law-abiding people have to fear from this technology? Being falsely identified? So what??

I don't have a problem with it being used to track known felons at all. Once someone has committed a violent crime -they ought to be in that database and show up everywhere they go. I also don't have a problem with suspected felons with the approval of a warrant to "follow" - no different than having police "follow" physically. We're never going to totally ban the technology - we need to regulate it like we would with anything that can be abused and when it IS abused - we need to not flinch in holding the violators accountable - and publically so that the public can have trust and confidence in it's use. The technology itself is no different than actually having police and having rules for policing. The "see no evil" approach to it is in a word - dumb.

If privacy no longer exists, perhaps it is time to take a look at the validity of our moral visions. Moderates all end up being condemned by either the PC police or the fundamentalist right. At our cores we are the "third chimpanzee".

San Francisco is hardly a poster child from which NYC should emulate or gain progressive insight. 16,000 reports of feces on the streets and sidewalks in a one week period ought to flash a warning sign. Shameful. No wonder San Francisco outlawed facial recognition.

This kind of nonsense is why I'm not a liberal anymore.

NYC is controlled by a thuggish police force that has cultivated a brutish culture for generations. If they want facial recognition they will get it. Who's going to take them on?

SF is the city where an illegal alien can be picked up, released by the city, go kill a citizen, and be found not guilty.

Are you SURE you want to hold San Francisco up as an example to New York City? SF is a mess. The streets glitter with shattered auto glass from smash & grabs, just one type of property crime that plagues SF. Injection drug use is open, used syringes litter the street and that dog poop you stepped in is actually human feces. Teams of thieves swarm stores and take what they want. Tourists are frequently targeted. San Francisco should be at the forefront of using technology to help law enforcement address crime. Instead, its leaders are focused on hobbling the police.

The problem is not so much the technology of facial recognition - particularly when it’s using cameras in the public space where it’s essentially a digitized version of see something say something. The problem is the increased policing of speech and thought, where an impolitic comment can be cause for doxing and calls for loss of a job, etc.

We lose our freedoms in the name of efficiencies and reduced crime. Politicians and the police are involved in a disinformation campaign to alter our belief system so we will buy into the need for 24/7 surveillance for our "protection". Oligarchs, despots and tyrants engage in such behavior, and our kept in power by the police and prosecutors. Politicians and their media outlets divide us so we will not band together to challenge their oppressions of our rights. Governments do not grant rights. Our rights are inalienable beginning at birth. The state is the oppressor and the police are their enforcers. Just because we live in the USA, we are not immune to the oppressors.

Yes, facial recognition technology can indeed be useful in solving crimes; it's hard to deny that it is a very effective tool, and losing it may have an impact on solving high level crimes. Two points - first, not all crimes are on the same level. I don't think most people really worry if it is used in a terrorist attack, a bombing, someone running over crowds in the street. But technology creep exists in police departments too, and it can and will be used for everything else, however minor. In order to do that, a vast database must be amassed and maintained. The temptation to use or misuse it already exists, and history shows it WILL be misused to the detriment of our civill liberties. Which leads to the... Second point - we know nothing about and have zero gurantee as to what really happens with the millions+ images stored in government data bases (and that is emphatically not the same as an "evil" corporation seeing me walk into Starbucks). How long will it be kept, who can access it, for what purposes, with whom will it be shared, what policies and laws can be put in place to control/limit it all? Alas, history also shows us that odds are high the public will be lied to about these issues, with claims about the need for secrecy. We need to make some careful choices moving forward, and we cannot afford to throw out even more of our freedoms from a police state. Hopefully it's not too late already.

I believe SF made a big mistake banning facial recognition technology. I that privacy advocates are off base. Those people would feel differently if a perpetrator, say a thief holding them up, was caught because of the use of facial recognition. NYC is safer than it was. Let's keep it that way.

I just heard an NPR lengthy report on the overall question of multiple high tech issues like facial recognition, AI, etc. and was pleased to hear that the majority of the best H/W and S/W people are highly ethical regarding misuse of technology. Which gives me hope that they have inherited what I would call the Norbert Weiner gene as described in his “God and Golem, Inc.” of not doing research for the weapons industry (AKA the “Merchants of Death”).

Like the ranting and raving over the "Star Wars" missile defense defense that President Reagan proposed, stopping or negating the use of facial recognition as a tool to fight crime is foolish. DNA advances have led to solving of crimes and exoneration of some wrongly accused , advances in less than lethal force ( tasers) have led to a drop in police uses of lethal force. Lastly I wouldn't trust much of anything that Seattle , Oakland or Berkeley do as an example crime fighting or quality of life. Look at your NYC streets, subways now as compared to Bloomberg and Guiliani's time and starting singing "California here I come" with all the pillow biting, panty twisting and angst over another advance in crime fighting you're close to getting there.

Keep working at it break down search/frisk laws, heighten the angst amongs your poplulation of readers on where new technologies could possibly take us and you will go a long way in helping New York get back to the crime rates of 1990-1997. Your 24 to 35 year old readership and probably many of you on the Board were 9 years old to 21. A very few of you, more often none of you realize the streets you walk today in pursuit of business or night life back then offered the prospect of being robbed, raped and in the process murdered. It all sounds great . . . Until a gun is stuck in your face or your dragged behind a dumpster. Then, its not so great.

You can literally make a list of thousands of proven cases of false convictions based on the most insidious and unreliable of all surveillance technologies....the human witness. Meanwhile, facial recognition software, as stated in a recent Times article, has passed the 10,000 mark in number of cases using it as one piece of evidence, has yet to have a single example of a false conviction! Moreover, human eye-witnesses are no less biased in leading to more minority convictions than the demographics of the city would support as equitable. When is the NY Times and San Francisco going to call for a ban on human eye-witnesses.

I wonder if San Francisco's move is driven by an actual concern about personal privacy or whether as a sanctuary city it wants to make it difficult to identify illegal aliens. I, for one, have little trust in any government or any politician of any party as implementing personal and political agendas is their sole point of fixation.

Please, take my picture, study my spending and travel and use my DNA to get violent criminals off the street. I can’t understand why there is any debate.

Dear Board, I have been saying it for a while but you ignored us. As co-founder of NYC Privacy, you preferred to ignore our stories and listen to the Mayor’s PR machine. https://twitter.com/theochino/status/1126525461956374531?s=20 Also, NYC has a body who’s job is to do that and the chair of that body is the Public Advocate. Regards, Theo Chino

There's way too much going on in the Trump Administration slamming the door in the face of Congressional subpoena's denying American citizens transparency. Democracy demands it and by Trump denying it only leaves a clear doubt that thers's something to hide and a need to be buried. What we don't need in our backyard here in NYC is more of it by the NYPD and the support from the Mayor de Blasio. I agree 100% with THE NEW YORK TIMES Editorial = "It’s time for the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, to move the POST Act forward. Transparency is the least that New Yorkers deserve. This bill would help provide it.'

Does this histrionic opposition to facial recognition really protect the public? I understand the resistance to mass untargeted collection. But that's not what we are talking about. Banning cops from using it as a tool to pursue felons is stupid. If it helps catch criminals, we should be all for it. Just because it's not perfect doesn't mean it's not useful. FR is getting better & better. Truthfully there's no way to stop it's wide spread adoption. 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's recent opposition to facial recognition 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. We shouldn't 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 arrest them. What is the alternative?

When cameras first came out the libs and ACLU were all against it just like now with facial recognition. Let fraud and crime prevail is the message from the left. Do not catch the criminals and when we do let them out of jail for good behavior. They are putting the rest of the population at risk; remember that when you vote.

Wrongdoers of all types and persons in the US illegally should head to San Francisco and feel secure that they won’t be easily detected.

Stop this now before it becomes so embedded into our society that it will never go away.

If only the police could have access to technology that helped them find these perpetrators who likely would be caught on camera on their way to and from mayhem: https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/nypd-investigating-violent-child-mugger-in-morningside-park/

"When the American Civil Liberties Union tested the Amazon facial recognition tool against members of Congress, 28 legislators were falsely matched with people in a mug shot database." Why did this illustration of the point crack me up so much?

Surveillance tech should at least be marked “NYPD”. The LinkNyc kiosks have outward facing cameras. The data they collect is primarily for police to find suspects. While they dont use facial recognition (yet?) they are still an expansion of the police without any additions to Nypd budget. Tech is making the police bigger, covertly, and thereby making the police even less accountable.

I remember having a conversation in the early 1980s about miniature camera technology and computerized face-recognition. My friends all worried "our precious privacy will be taken away! Big Brother will be watching us! Eek!" But today crime in NYC is way down, the subways and the streets are much much safer than back in the day. (remember what motivated Bernie Goetz, the "subway vigilante"? He was mugged and savaged by small ensembles of criminal yewts several times before he gave up on the "rule of law" and started shooting.) Sociologists seem to spill lots of ink speculating on why NYC is so much safer now, but the answer seems quite obvious to me: with the hidden cameras and the bystanders with cameras in their cell-phones, it's almost impossible to get away with a street-crime. If you try, you'll end up like Anna Lushchinskaya, with your movie going viral. Frankly, if NYC ever puts a face-recognition ban on the ballot, I'll be voting for the face-recognition and against the ban.

The SF ban basically means that the Police Department is the only local agency or organization, public or private, barred from using the technology. The ban doesn't protect privacy; it simply impedes the identification and apprehension of suspected criminals.

Adopting technologies, especially surveillance technologies, by law enforcement needs to be done with an open and public conversation. Technologies like facial recognition or license plate readers are profoundly attractive, new "shiny objects". Beyond the devices others like COMPAS which is software used to evaluate risks for potential probationers as part of pre-sentence investigations, their internal algorithms and data are held as proprietary trade secrets. Issues that must be addressed are core privacy ones. The license plate readers collect and store data and a GPS location of every plate scanned - how long is that data kept and how can it be used? Can our movements be tracked without a warrant? Keeping that data materially changes LE's ability to know people's movements. Any yes, technology can now process and store that volume of data too. Facial recognition is the same issue, it can be used to acquire and stored data as people pass cameras and, like the license plate readers, store that data. AI based tools like COMPAS and pure data based technologies like facial recognition or license plate readers need to be part of a larger conversation on the appropriate use of technologies by government in the civil law enforcement arena that has not yet happened.

Not to worry. Law enforcement authorities around the country are working with the College Board, which administers the SAT, to develop an adversity score that will be incorporated into facial recognition to ensure that it does not unduly target people of color and other poor or disadvantaged folks.

Of course New York isn't going to ban facial recognition. Not as long as the NYPD is around. The NYPD calls the shots in New York City. Not the mayor, not Wall Street, the police. Doubt it? How many times has the NYPD been held accountable for anything? Rape, murder, corruption. They run the show. And a surveillance state is what they want, so a surveillance state is what they'll get. When you live in a police state that's how it goes.

I agree that tech, especially tech deployed to make things cheaper to take away the rights of people, are a hazard--and undermine the social acuity we expect and need (human discretion, being key, with all of its caveats). Fear is the primary motivator, I believe, behind all of this facial recognition being applied in this manner, and, yes, it will yield more cost borne by the poorer class, and, per social-science & psychology by people of color (the people we imprison and who also disproportionately pay taxes on goods because the wealthy don't want to pay). But, these technologies pose a risk that is existential...if you don't own your property, rather, rent...you have no say even in your own "home". Safety vs security and privacy) is an essential debate that should and must be done in the open first. I'd challenge anyone who says that ad hoc rules are the best way of dealing with this tech, as we've been dealing with it this way since AOL first came online, and now is, what? Not even a shell of itself. Monopolizing power this way deserves consent. Consent that I don't think many people, given time and understanding as to its risks and precedents, would be willing to give...unless they are terrified or ignorant of what they are doing.

Thank goodness? The police are sending around all these imploring Twitter messages asking the public for help to identify various miscreants caught on camera jumping turnstiles, assaulting bus drivers, stealing, killing, taking and vandalizing. If only there was technology to help us find them and take them off the street....