To be uncomfortable with facial recognition technology...

[RosaWaiting]

Across such a wide area?

amp.ft.com/content/8cbcb3ae-babd-11e9-8a88-aa6628ac896c?segmentId=635a35f9-12b4-dbf5-9fe6-6b8e6ffb143e&__twitter_impression=true

Individual venues, making you aware before you enter, that I think I’m okay with, because there’s a choice. But this covers a broad area where many people work, and live, and can’t avoid it. Seems unnecessary and I haven’t given consent etc. What do others think?

just me then.....

The article is behind a paywall

What’s the gist of it?

that's so weird

I thought the FT had a paywall, was it temporarily down when I accessed it - I can't now!

BBC article

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49333352

Gist is - London King's Cross area, the regenerated bit, has facial recognition across the area, not just for individual premises who could ask permission. Apparently they plan to do the same in the Docklands.

I totally understand individual businesses might want it, but it seems a bit much to be watched so closely across entire areas when workers, residents, randoms visiting etc haven't been informed. I was there the other day and there's no signs up or anything.

PS I know they've had issues with this in San Francisco and something else I heard was that it was quite poor and often made errors, especially with non-white people. I'm having visions of being connected to someone who looks like me but isn't me!!!

I'd be fine with things like official ID cards but this....something doesn't sit well with me, they are collecting information for no reason at all?

Casinos do this and share it worldwide

yes araiwa I know they do and I don't mind

as I say, individual businesses - I get it. But really, across whole areas? So next step is just....everywhere?

I think it is a huge invasion of privacy with an unknowable number of applications which could affect people in ways they don’t currently foresee.

Honestly, it doesn't really bother me. What's the difference between a facial recognition camera and a couple of police stood on a corner looking for people who match a certain picture or description? And realistically, what are they going to do with the information?

Monitor crime? Fine by me, I'm not committing any and I'd like them to catch those that do.

Use it to advertise to me in a similar vein to internet cookies? Don't really care. I ignore what Facebook tries to sell me and I'm sure I'll ignore that too.

Blackmail me? With what exactly? Being in a public area?

Track my movements? Well they'd quickly become very bored watching my daily commute and besides, my phone already tracks that anyway since it knows (without my telling it) where 'home' and 'work' is.

I'm just not interesting enough for the government to want to watch, and in any case if I was that paranoid about the government watching me I'd have moved to Orkney a long time since!

And realistically, what are they going to do with the information?

Raise your life insurance premiums on the basis that you go to KFC twice a week?

Make you pay for healthcare on the basis that you’ve been in and out of the Gardener’s Arms more than the average person?

Make gambling retrospectively illegal and put you in prison?

You have no idea what people in twenty or thirty years might choose to do with a minute-by-minute log of your movements.

Lockheart I guess the majority of people will feel as you do.

Here's an example of what worries me

www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Facial-recognition-misidentified-26-California-14301190.php

and as you say, what are they using the data for? I don't know, but how long before they fake it to look like certain people were in places that they weren't in?

hercule "You have no idea what people in twenty or thirty years might choose to do with a minute-by-minute log of your movements."

yes. you have to have a lot of trust in our overlords to think it's okay to do this. I don't have an ounce of faith in them so.....

interesting point re the pub. I'm in pubs a fair bit I guess, but I mostly have soft drinks. Though no doubt they will be monitored for sugar...

@herculepoirot2 you're right, I don't. But if I spent my life worrying about every single outcome that could possibly materialise over the next 30 years I'd never get anything done. They wouldn't need facial recognition imaging to track if I've been eating unhealthy food or spending time in the pub, they could just look at my bank statements (I'm assuming that if in this hypothetical scenario insurance companies are powerful enough to gain access to government CCTV data then they're almost certainly powerful enough to access my credit card records).

@RosaWaiting it's already possible to make very convincing fakes of people saying or doing things they haven't. They're called Deep Fakes and they're very impressive. Facial recognition technology is neither here nor there when it comes to this.

Lockheart I know they can already do it - so why feed an endless bunch of images to.....well in this case it looks like a large business group - why feed out an endless stream of images which would assist this?

Viewed another way, what do we lose if we don't have it across public spaces? We already have CCTV and isn't better lighting shown to be a much bigger deterrent against crime anyway?

It massively bothers me. Why is it necessary? It seems highly disproportionate. I used to take my kids to that part of Kings X all the time to play int he fountains. I won't be doing so again.

I've seen this topic in a thread before.

I initially thought "what's the problem- I'm not doing anything wrong? " However I discovered that it's not very accurate at all- especially with non-white faces so it's premature to use this technology for policing.

I think it's fine to photograph people's faces when they are speeding though.

I don’t trust the facial recognition technology either. I agree with the article that it is a form of biometrics and should not be collected due to privacy rights.

YANBU. I’m uncomfortable with this.

@RosaWaiting I have no idea how well this would deter crime compared to other methods (such as lighting) - the technology is too new.

We probably don't lose anything by not having it, but the presence of it doesn't really bother me any more than regular CCTV or ANPR cameras tracking where I'm going.

I think that the low accuracy (especially with non-white faces) will mean a lot of people suing the police. It takes long enough for court cases to come to trial- I don't want the wheels of justice to turn even slower because of more legal action against the police.

CCTV quality is already poor. How many crimes aren't solved because of the famously grainy images that they produce?

But if I spent my life worrying about every single outcome that could possibly materialise over the next 30 years I'd never get anything done. They wouldn't need facial recognition imaging to track if I've been eating unhealthy food or spending time in the pub, they could just look at my bank statements (I'm assuming that if in this hypothetical scenario insurance companies are powerful enough to gain access to government CCTV data then they're almost certainly powerful enough to access my credit card records).

True. I don’t spend my life worrying either. But if you ask me whether this is a good idea or a bad one, that’s where I am on it.

There is a reason to be worried about facial recognition, and the "Iv'e nothing to hide I've nothing to fear" is an argument from the side of ignorance.

Problem is facial recognition has come on leaps and bounds by a shiny new feature on phones and filters, it is here already and will be used.

The people who say they have nothing to fear will in the future start campaigning against some injustice and government interference, just as the slippery slope goes, echos of the hate speech laws and the trans activists scenario.

No one thinks long term.

It’s not that I don’t trust the government to use it for policing, or corporations for advertising, it’s the fact that all this info will be stored in a database. And there are tons of people that can hack into that database and download and sell my identity, my daily movements, my home, where I walk, where I shop, my kids, where my kids go to school...anyone who wants to target a victim would be able to buy a full package of surveillance material on the black market to make it easy to rob, kidnap, murder a person.
Say, I’m an activist against sex trafficking...for £10k a sex trafficking ring leader could buy all that data from a hacker and put out a hit on me.
Say, I’m wealthy and a thief with one of the facial recognition cameras sees me leave my house and then gets a ping from the cameras at the airport seeing me flying away in holiday....house robbed.
Technology never stays in the hands of a few trusted organisations...it always leaks out and is used for nefarious purposes.

If someone wants to commit a crime they wear a hoodie it always seems to me.

I agree OP, it's very concerning. Look at how it's being used in a totalitarian state like China where citizens are spied on and monitored 24/7 and have no civil rights or liberties. Anyone who thinks 'that could never happen here' is a fool. Look at the recent history of former Communist countries like East Germany. People has no freedom or privacy and the government made sure it controlled every aspect of their lives. How much more could a regime do this with modern technology like facial recognition.

Read Orwell's 1984. Technology like this has literally make his distopian world real possibility. To fail to recognise this is fatal.