The argument to ban or regulate "facial recognition technology" seems futile. It's not (necessarily) some highly complicated secret software available to a limited number of organizations that could keep it under wraps - currently, any decent CS undergraduate student could make a passable facial recognition system as a study project if they really wanted to, using only generic, freely available image processing / machine learning resources (i.e. nothing specific to facial recognition that could be regulated or restricted). Sure, it won't be as good as state-of-art systems, and it will take enough time so they likely won't bother unless someone wants it bad enough to pay for a bunch of weeks of work, but it'll be sufficient for all the bad outcomes described in the article.<p>The barrier of entry is just too low. If a few pictures of your face are floating online, many people can make a system that will somewhat accurately try to detect your face; the best the regulation can do is to specify that organizations will not <i>use</i> facial recognition even if they trivially could.
There is another problem with such technology that is missing from this long article. Facial recognition et al. also excludes those with physical disabilities. For example, some people have facial injuries that make it impossible and/or painful for them to look “straight” in a mirror. A reason why, for instance, I abhorre the 3D movies is that I can’t take my wife in movies because she lost binocular vision. We are creating a society where technology is used to filter out people that can’t conform to a given physical standard. I find it revolting and we hackers should fight to our last breath against it.
Edit: typo
I don't get this "we must ban something" approach. In the group of 100 people, even if 99 people will ban something, 1 person will still use it.<p>Isn't it better to find how you can defend against something (face recognition in this example) instead of convincing the people to "ban it"?<p>I mean, let's ban all wars, ban low income and ban evil. What sort of thinking is this?
I built a face recognition algorithm to sell to police, immigration and pretty much who ever wants it. It took 6 months and is state of the art. Which is to say, not as good as a human, but getting close.<p>If you’re worried about privacy then maybe you should take the tracking device out of your pocket.<p>The concept of using the power of the state to limit the power of the state seems flawed to me. Especially an oppressive state.
text recognition is a better tool,<p>in this age, physical location isn't that important<p>text recognition, lets the oppressor know who is thinking what, and who they're trying to communicate it with<p>or makes nearly all communication impossible
Oppression always fails in the long run because the conditions that spawn the oppression always eventually pass, and oppressive regime has to keep justifying itself.<p>For instance, slavery was long on the way out of the US by the time of the Civil War. As we kept expanding west-ward, the new states had exactly zero economic incentive to turn people into livestock. The South could get away with political shenanigans only as long as it could maintain its voting bloc. Expansion made that impossible, and the only solution became a war.<p>If the war hadn't happened though, we would have seen a managed transition. Legislation tailored at reining in slavery would have slowly made the practice increasingly untenable and the economic aspect would have gotten managed out over time. In fact, it was already happening.<p>To generalize, oppression seeks out a local maximum, eventually society finds a higher peak, and the oppression only lasts as long as it takes for the rest of society to build a wide enough bridge so that people on the lower hill can just walk over to the bigger hill. Or, you know, a war.
This article is a masterpiece of misdirection. It says it's top highlight is "We believe facial recognition technology is the most uniquely dangerous surveillance mechanism ever invented." And then they wave their fear hands around non-facial recognition technologies and discuss their real fear: feature creep of surveillance technologies.<p>The article is a masterpiece of misdirection because we are very aware that the written word in the form of explainer articles for the uninformed IS ACTUALLY THE PERFECT TOOL FOR OPPRESSION. Unless you're one of the emotionally manipulated, you realize we live in a new age where the ignorant and intellectually lazy are "farmed and harvested" for their ignorant votes, to control the laws and economies of entire nation states. This article is one such ignorance embedding article putting fear into people's heads so they can be controlled.
New trends in fashion: Hoodies, sunglasses, camouflage face paint.<p>Second option, can a camera sensor be damaged by laser pointer?<p>I have no hope for legal restrictions, it will always be defeated by 'security' arguments.
It's what humans have used throughout human history.<p>"Oh, <i>that</i> guy? Don't trade with <i>that</i> guy; he's an asshole." ;)<p>Now we're just scaling it up with fast-communicating hardware.