[jakear]

Xolo does feature vector extraction on face regions. Extracting those regions from larger images is something else’s job.

Zolo does feature vector similarity analysis on facial feature vectors. Extracting those vectors is something else’s job.

Oh look, now every authoritarian government has free access to never before seen levels of data harvesting. But nobody has to feel any guilt because they only contributed a third of the machine. Hooray!

[tenuousemphasis]

If open source models aren't developed, and even if they are, governments are going to develop their own. At least this way everyone else is on equal footing and not at a strict disadvantage. This tech could be used to identify police when they are in riot gear and cover their identification, for instance.

[jakear]

No, it couldn’t. We can’t see their face. We could maybe do it with gait analysis. But I haven’t seen public models for that (a good thing!)

[anigbrowl]

Well, you often can see police officers' faces through their visors, just as you can sometimes recognize people through fabric masks. Police don't wear gas masks all the time, only when they're about to or immediately after deploying gas.

[jakear]

The police I saw at Seattle protests did indeed wear de-identification equipment even when not actively deploying chemical weapons against the civilians. I have photos.

[zo1]

The future is coming, and the tech that can enable authoritarian behavior will come no matter what we do as they're just tools. It's been here and around us in ever-increasing forms for decades and yet we haven't necessarily devolved into a big brother state.

What we should be worrying is actual usages of grand scale citizen-control and monitoring projects that are enabled by technology. Think China, not UK or US.

[longtom]

> and yet we haven't necessarily devolved into a big brother state.

Well this is damn close. It just needs an executive apparatus which is where drones surely come in handy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosure...

[8fingerlouie]

And yet, a $0.50 facemask will completely destroy the surveillance.

[eunos]

Nah, gait based subject recognition might come in the future.

[anigbrowl]

Gait based recognition is way overrated, plus it's a lot harder to sell to a jury.

[jakear]

Already in use in places like China. And we know the US govt has secret courts to authorize wiretaps. We’re on the brink.

[gsich]

Why use hypothetical stuff as an argument?

[HPsquared]

Maybe wear high heels?

[bonestamp2]

We have to worry about it in the US and the UK too. I mean, monitoring is already widespread in the US, UK, Canada, etc. Filtering, and therefore control, was almost reality in the UK last year, albeit limited to pornography. But it's a slippery slope in both cases.