Face recognition technoloy is "out of control"

[Skybird]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/27/us-facial-recognition-database-fbi-drivers-licenses-passports


"Facial recognition technology is a powerful tool law enforcement can use to protect people, their property, our borders, and our nation,” said the committee chair, Jason Chaffetz, adding that in the private sector it can be used to protect financial transactions and prevent fraud or identity theft.

“But it can also be used by bad actors to harass or stalk individuals. It can be used in a way that chills free speech and free association by targeting people attending certain political meetings, protests, churches, or other types of places in the public.”
(...)
“No federal law controls this technology, no court decision limits it. This technology is not under control,” said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the center on privacy and technology at Georgetown Law.
States, govenrments and politicians have proven that the more power they are being given, the more they loose any scruples to abuse it, making it the norm by mere ammount of ordinary usage. In the land of the mad men, insanity is defined as normality and the sane man is who gets called the ill man.

[ikalugin]

There are technical problems with implimenting this technology in practice.

About a decade ago in Moscow we were considering installing a 24/7 total, city wide facial recognition system but found out that there isn't enough datacenter capacity to do it, so today it works only at select locations (plus private systems, but they keep their findings unless there is a court order).

With the new laws and state programs there, despite the growth of data-center capacity in Russia, there is still not enough free capacity to make this viable.

p.s. I am talking about state and state affiliated datacenter capacity, because state wont outsource for obvious reasons.

[Skybird]

"Ten years". "Russia". Translates into: "Ten aeons". "Not Silicon Valley".

Russia ten years ago probabaly has zero relevance for assessing what is possible today for Western companies where all the money flows, or the NSA and GCHQ. Crowd control, and commercial advertising - that are the names of the two dominant games. And both lead to power over people by knowing about their potential vulnerabilities.

The Stasi had wet dreams about this. But today it is not even only in state'S hands, but in non-legitimated private hands (private business) as well. All the dystopic scenarios from science fiction movies and novels seem to come true. I cannot see that human civilization is ripe to handle it well.

[ikalugin]

The Russian experience is relevant because telecom companies (ie Rostelecom that I was affiliated with) refused to share the burden and thus through leaks and press statements there are valid open source figures regarding costs. Rostech (and to lesser extend some parties in the FSB) wet dreams did not come true.

Currently it is very expensive to conduct total live facial recognition, even for the CIA/NSA/GCHQ. Outsourcing that to non state entity is even harder in the west than it is in Russia, because as a rule the western domestic IT giants are not state owned and transfering such sensitive task would both invalidate any secrecy measures and endanger personal data (in the sense that those companies sell it).

The only way to do it that I see is to make street wide facial recognition comercial, for example by subsidising enhanced reality set ups or something and then piggyback it.

[Catfish]

[...] Currently it is very expensive to conduct total live facial recognition, even for the CIA/NSA/GCHQ. [...]
The only way to do it that I see is to make street wide facial recognition comercial, for example by subsidising enhanced reality set ups or something and then piggyback it.

Aye, this piggyback is exactly what is happening, while the people embrace and love all of that new stuff, blind to the consequences. :hmmm:

[ikalugin]

troll spin mode on
Russian state is actually very liberal, not only do we try protect our citizens from foreighn data and metadata collection, we also do not conduct blanker data or metadata collection ourselves.
troll spon mode off

stuff actually on topic:
To give some context for my posts above. In 1996 we introduced SORM-1 (SORM is survailance standard) for selective data and metadata collection, in 2000 we introduced SORM-2 for improve selective data and metadata collection, in 2014 we introduced SORM-3 for broader (but not blanker) data and metadata collection with partial temporal storage.
SORM equipment (as well as connection to the competent organs) is procured and maintained by the telecom provider (but licensed and checked by the competent organs) out of his own pocket. Access to the collected data was only through court warrant (not that the courts are reluctant to supply them).

After SORM-3 happened (in my opinion) the bright minds of Rostech decided to milk that security spending cow (as they are the domestic electronics manufacturer) by pushing forward legislation which would force the operators not only conduct blanket data and metadata collection (that they did not do previously) but store it for 3 years and provide decrypto capabilities.

The later is important - for blanket immage recognition you dont need to just conduct blanket data collection and storage op (that noone does) but also process all of it.
Thankfully that legislation, despite passing the parlament, died out.


On related note, Russian state got very serious on cyber defense (in 2010-2015 timeline). Not only do we try to limit data and metadata collection by foreighn companies (which would be piggy backed by the foreighn intel) by sanctioning those who do not store and process personal data (with the deffenition of said data being broadened regularly) on physical Russian soil (that legislation indirectly subsidised Russian IT and telecom sectors), we also invest in hardening of critical infrastructure and services (ie e-goverment, various public services, telecom services) against attacks.

[Platapus]

On many of the photography forums, there is a common belief that if a person is out in public, they have no expectation of privacy.

Not sure I agree with that as an absolute, but evidently many do agree with that.

[Skybird]

If a photographer gets signal that a person does not want to get photographed, he has to respect that.

Photographers not respecting that can run into serious trouble with me. Happened twice. Being part of background clutter in somebody's pic, is one thing, but being shot at closer ranges with kind of a "portrait en passant", is something very different as long as you do not obviously exposing yourself, being part of a show on stage, for example. But today, many people think their wishes already gives them claim for you. Then only rudeness helps, else they do not learn to leave you alone.

[Eichhörnchen]

http://i.imgur.com/U0mOF93.jpg