[TallGuyShort]

A while ago Google got bad press because some image-tagging service identified some people as "gorillas", and IIRC it was blamed on not having enough diversity of skin color in the training data. So... it sounds like at least the "instructed them to target people of color" part of this is them trying to correct that. But in isolation that sounds even worse than the first instance. I guess you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[JohnFen]

> I guess you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This is not a case of that.

Google (or its contractor) could easily have done this in a way that was not objectionable. They simply decided not to.

[kapuasuite]

What would make it “not objectionable?”

[kevingadd]

For starters, telling the people what you're actually doing and maybe paying them more than 5 bucks.

[TallGuyShort]

Okay my point was that the article very early calls out "targeting people of color" and only addresses that much later, clearly trying to get attention on that aspect. Telling people what you're doing and how much you pay them is completely unrelated to Google telling them to target people of color, though I agree lying is scummy.

But since you brought it up, how much money could they have paid to make you not feel like they're exploiting the homeless? You could have everyone read and sign complicated legalese consent forms and really just end up not giving a bunch of homeless people some money.

edit: Presumably this is happening on public property, so they have a right to take people's pictures anyway. I don't know what the laws are regarding rights to use people's "likenesses" the way many entertainment venues tell you they can, but I'd expect using it for model training is going to have a pretty low bar. If they weren't lying they're paying someone to look at a camera for 5 seconds. Hell, I'd agree to that and I'm not even concerned about how I'm going to pay for my dinner tonight.

[kapuasuite]

You can argue that lying would be objectionable, but we’re talking about something with essentially no consequences here. As for the fee, how much are their faces worth beyond a fee they were obviously already willing to accept?

[autoexec]

> but we’re talking about something with essentially no consequences here.

Just because it's difficult to identify the harms caused by someone stealing your biometric data that doesn't mean there are no harms. Gaining access to someone's biometric data clearly opens them up to certain types of risks ranging from identify theft to surveillance. Fraudulently gaining access to someone's biometric data is wrong even if the data is never abused or exploited.

[JohnFen]

Obtaining actual informed consent.

[kapuasuite]

There’s not even an expectation of privacy in a public setting, realistically what harm is being prevented by obtaining “informed consent?”

[JohnFen]

This isn't about being in a public setting, this is about taking photos of people with the intention of including them in a database for later use. It can't be that simply being in public means that you give up all such rights, since it's impossible to avoid being in public.

That informed consent should be obtained seems obvious -- perhaps some of those people wouldn't want their faces to be used in that way. Are their desires without meaning? From the report, it also sounds like the images were being obtains in a plainly deceptive manner.

Whether or not there is "harm" is beside the point. The point is whether or not people are being deceived, and whether or not we as a society value meaningful autonomy.

[kapuasuite]

But it simply can be. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy walking down a public street. I can walk down the street taking high definition photos and video of everyone I encounter and they would have no recourse to stop me, nor should they in a free society.

[TallGuyShort]

You are aware that just because you think something, doesn't mean it can't be any other way and that your view is obvious to everyone, right?