[mindgam3]

“In countries like the United States, it's being built by corporations in order to influence our buying behavior, and is incidentally used by the government.”

No, he’s not right about it being “incidental”. The use of facial recognition by police is widespread and widely reported (0). Unlike other forms of digital surveillance, this one has serious and potentially deadly consequences when misused. Banning it at least temporarily is a major win for civil liberties and I would wager that anyone thinking this is a step backward is privileged enough to never have experienced police brutality.

0. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-priv...

[kenjackson]

Facial recognition for Black people has been in play for decades. Generally if you’re Black you fit the description. Cameras actually are a huge net positive for this group.

[WA]

I think nobody says that banning facial recognition is a step backwards. It just doesn’t solve the underlying issue and might even distract from the real problems.

Now politicians can say "but we banned facial recognition, isn’t that good enough?".

[TeMPOraL]

But this would be "perfect is the enemy of the good" situation. Banning things piece by piece is easier than trying to ban everything at once.

I mean, we could curtail most of the surveillance tech development overnight if we banned most forms of advertising and burned the adtech industry to the ground. But good luck pushing that through politics.

[markdown]

> Now politicians can say "but we banned facial recognition, isn’t that good enough?".

And we answer "No!" and continue to push them further.