[rychco]

I realize that this is one of those situations where I'm supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition, but I'm still uncomfortable. Facial recognition seems like an all or nothing deal to me, and even after the capitol has been raided... I still opt for 'nothing'.

[throwaway346434]

This event is highly comparable to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

- Attempted coup - Radicalized and misinformed supporters (majority) with an extremist, armed element (minority) - Extremely dangerous moment for free and fair elections in the west

What would the world have looked like if in 1923, the disaffected germans who took part in that were identified en masse; and serious efforts were made to re-integrate them to society while addressing the systemic issues they faced?

Instead, we ended up doing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification several years later after a lot of death.

I think there is a very good argument for identification and holding people to account. There also needs to be very, very robust adherence to due process - AI identification is not proof, and a suitable alibi should be step 1 in invalidating it.

[zozbot234]

The sad thing is precisely that no-one cares about "re-integrating" proponents of right-leaning views "to society". Everyone is talking about forcibly deplatforming them all out of society which, even if successful, will only make them far more marginalized and far more open to dangerous, violent extremism. Is this really what we need? We've had enough divisiveness already, so why not try a more constructive approach?

[ianai]

That is decidedly opposite of how I see the immediate political inertia. It might help to revisit previous times the democrats took over all three legislative branches. They’re not unified ever and dissent is assured. Meaning there are conservative wings which will welcome and work with the far right even after this. If you’re referencing the deplatforming going on from corporate entities that’s a whole another phenomenon and legally forced.

Edit-if you’re referencing just how people treat one another 1-1 in culture, well, the forever trumpers just need to learn to treat people like people again. Apologizing helps, but simply being friendly and polite goes a long way.

[scsilver]

They can start by not spreading covid to our grandparents.

[avl999]

> The sad thing is precisely that no-one cares about "re-integrating" proponents of right-leaning views "to society".

Are you arguing violent extremism and trying to overthrow the government is synonymous with "right-leaning views"?

No one is deplatforming Mitch McConnell, Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, John Thune and many others all of whom with "right leaning views", even further to the right the president.

Your argument is a strawman. It's like when twitter bans jihadist leaders, going out and saying "why are muslims being deplatformed?". Which is not true.

[itronitron]

I think a lot of people care about re-integrating those with right-leaning views to society. It is important for them to express their own concerns in their own words instead of just joining in various egomaniacs' power fantasies.

As much as they hate the far left, I believe that progressives such as Bernie and AOC are actually far better for them, and everyone they know, than the current GOP leadership.

[salawat]

>I think a lot of people care about re-integrating those with right-leaning views to society.

Ah, so right-leaning views disqualify you from society now? You have to be re-integrated?

Have you spoken what you wrote out loud? Do you not understand the message that sends?

>It is important for them to express their own concerns in their own words instead of just joining in various egomaniacs' power fantasies.

>As much as they hate the far left, I believe that progressives such as Bernie and AOC are actually far better for them, and everyone they know, than the current GOP leadership.

Wow. The self-referential inconsistency is strong with this one. If you truly don't grok that what you're asserting the right needs re-education to address, and the same devotion you're putting into Bernie and AOC are two sides of the same coin, you seriously need to reflect.

1) Causes. Not people. 2) Just because they don't like the stuff your team or tribe likes doesn't make them any less of a human being. 3) You win no friends and convince no one by demonizing that which they look up to, then copy pasting in what you like and telling them they're sick for liking what they like. Yes, society is full of people who spend a great deal of energy doing just that; but it doesn't mean everyone knows what they are doing when they are doing it. The beauty is that things just generally work out in spite of it because people don't build up enough momentum to destabilize the overarching social structure. It's like Brownian motion writ large. In the case when you're doing it correctly, you must have put in the effort to understand what it is you're replacing first, why it ended up there, then making your entire pitch readily communicable, and being willing to live and let live genuinely. 4) It has taken really immersing myself in both liberal and conservative communities to realize how insane most people are, and how little work the average person puts into thinking out the consequences of policy direction. I'm amazed anything manages to stay working at all.

[zo1]

Are you saying people with "right-leaning view" need to be "re-integrated" into society? What are they, crazy serial killers or something?

Here's a crazy thought. How about we do nothing and just arrest anyone that breaks laws, right or left.

[michaelt]

Obviously, the vast majority of people with right-leaning views weren't even at the Capitol.

But if you believe the rioters were part of an attempted coup, trying to overthrow democracy and install Trump as a dictator while setting bombs to kill their opponents, that seems pretty crazy to me.

Of course, some people might argue it wasn't an attempted coup, just a mob of high-spirited protesters. Much like sports fans or anti-globalisation protesters will sometimes set a cop car on fire or smash up a starbucks, just in this case it was the capitol building instead of a starbucks. (personally I think this is dangerously naive; my impression is 'stop the steal' people are sincere and unironic in their beliefs)

[jaspax]

The actual behavior of the protesters seems to match your third paragraph much more than your second paragraph. They got into the capitol building and then... just kind of wandered around. Took some selfies. Stole some memorabilia. Nothing about their behavior suggests that there was an organized plan to actually take over the USG, or that they protesters themselves had any idea what to do after they broke in.

[itronitron]

They didn't just wander around the capitol building...

https://youtu.be/lhjRXO72v1s

[colejohnson66]

Some have suggested that they wanted to burn the ballot boxes in an attempt to prevent counting them. The problem is that, even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. The counting is just a formality and they can declare a winner without them. They already know who won.

[cforrester]

It seems misguided to suggest that deplatforming is not a constructive approach. Platforms which are tolerant of extremism enable extremists to more-easily connect with each other, develop more-unified messaging, and reach non-radicalized people at much lower social and financial costs. In effect, providing a platform for extremism is a divisive act.

[shuntress]

>Everyone is talking about forcibly deplatforming them

Expulsion can be appropriate for dealing with people who harm society.

It should be used with caution but does have its place.

De-integrating (so to speak) may sometimes be a required first step before effective "re-integrating" can occur.

[rebuilder]

I don't see a way for expulsion to happen. Segregation in some sense, maybe. But that usually runs into the anti-insurrection problem where suppression becomes repression and breeds contempt, strengthening the factions being suppressed.

[wpietri]

I don't think anybody has proposed forcibly deplatforming everybody with "right-leaning views", so that sounds like a straw man. If, as you seem to suggest, divisiveness is your primary concern, it would seem to make a lot of sense to deplatform the small number of people very eager to create it through lies, organized violence, and overthrow of the government.

[anovikov]

Maybe the assumption is that they can't be integrated or valuable in any way, goal is to neutralise them. I'm a bit split on this but it doesn't sound all to wrong to me.

In any case, mass democracy is on the way out, everywhere. It is just not compatible with the post-industrial society and will be progressively less so in the future. Question is about a particular way in which it will happen (anything from outright dictatorship to some form of democracy with prequalification)...

[pvarangot]

The argument from the other side is that this proponents of right-leaning views wouldn't be violent except because they are being exalted by fascist propaganda from right wing leaders. I myself think it's a good move from Amazon but I don't think it's not polically motivated. The Capitol being stormed is not good for business because of many reasons, it was a line in the sand.

[zo1]

Thank you for the info, I never knew about those two events!

> "From 1945 to 1950, the Allied powers detained over 400,000 Germans in internment camps in extrajudicial fashion in the name of denazification."

[willyt]

Also political scientists from eminent universities in the US and Britain were heavily involved in the renewal of democracy in Germany. With the Germans they designed a system that is more democratic than those that existed in their own countries. The system is designed to operate as a coalition government. No one party can dominate, but because of the coalition system mainstream centrist views get properly represented while extremists get some presence in the Bundestag but are unlikely to be needed to form a coalition and will never be in a position to dominate it, like they have done in the US.

It’s worked out pretty well for the Germans, wouldn’t you say?

The US is a two party state. So extremists just need to infiltrate one party to corrupt the system, especially if the other party is not providing competent opposition.

Currently the security of democracy in the US, and therefore the balance of power between Russia, China and the US which is the basis of world peace in so much as it exists today, rests in the constitutional procedures of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party as much as it does in the US constitution, who sets those rules? Do Americans memorise them in school?

[LatteLazy]

Is it that different to wanted posters or publishing cctv of a crime? I get why people don't want facial recognition cameras on every street corner but using it to identify people from pics is a different activity...

Edit: I completely agree there is nothing special about this case. No exigent circumstances.

[Barrin92]

I'm more concerned with the data being in the hand of an unaccountable private company than with the facial recognition itself to be honest. I remember that Clearview AI itself was associated with far-right individuals last year, so having them police a far-right insurrection from their personal black box system is more than suspect.

If it happens, it should be done by an institution that is under the supervision of congress and staffed by public servants. This emerging, largely unaccountable surveillance industrial complex with ties to extremist political figures worries me more.

[VBprogrammer]

Personally, I'm not really comfortable with the existence of a database of people from which to compare faces against.

However, I think it's perhaps more worrying that one day this evidence will be presented in court and the jury will trust the accuracy of "AI" over their own judgment.

To clarify, the situation I'm thinking of is where a grainy CCTV image is shown to the jury. The AI expert comes in and talks about all of the technical details of their algorithm and how it determines that the grainy image is of defendant A with 96% probably.

[colejohnson66]

Juries already have a tendency to believe the police even when presented with massive evidence to the contrary. Throw in some “expert” testimony from an AI company and we’re in for an even worse situation.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Is it that different to wanted posters or publishing cctv of a crime?

I think so. That mechanism is judicially auditable. The AI is not. We should not be arresting people based on the output of an unauditable mechanism.

[dragonwriter]

> That mechanism is judicially auditable. The AI is not. We should not be arresting people based on the output of an unauditable mechanism.

Are we, though? If “ClearView AI gave us a hit” is being treated as probable cause sufficient for an arrest warrant, that's a problem.

If it's being used as a tool to generate leads to investigate and traditional evidence is gathered and presented, I don't see a big problem.

[colejohnson66]

Police have demonstrated multiple times that “a hit” is enough for them to railroad an innocent person

[ianai]

It’s not auditable and scale can make it a substantially different problem altogether. But, if you’re in a restricted area or a public building I think it makes sense.

[detaro]

I don't think you "should" be supportive, for exactly those reasons.

[rychco]

You're right, I think a better phrasing would be "supposed to".

Edited the original.

[jonas21]

Out of curiosity, why do you feel like you're supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition in this case?

[walls]

Identifying terrorists is a positive outcome.

[Steltek]

I love the back and forth of terminology ("rioter" vs "terrorist" vs "attacker") because I think that's the key to this discussion. The military is given access to dramatically more advanced weapons and technology than police. When the US has suffered such an obviously violent and direct attack (vs planning or "alleged"), is that not a reason to loosen the restraints?

However, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with technology. Like we've seen this summer with local police using military hardware, there will always be the urge to inappropriately deploy military-grade technologies in a civilian setting.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I love the back and forth of terminology ("rioter" vs "terrorist" vs "attacker")

There was a mix of terrorists, insurrectionists, rioters, hooligans and protesters in the crowd. Those who entered the Capitol were no longer protesters. Those damaging or stealing property were more than hooligans. Those aiming to disrupt the election count were more than rioters. And those with aims on harming members of Congress were more than incompetent insurrectionists.

[ineedasername]

I think those are useful distinctions. Not everyone in that crowd was rioting. This was an important distinction I feel was lost during the BLM protests as well: Any given media narrative wanted to paint the people involved as all one thing or another.

The truth is it's all mixed. I look at this also as a failure for a movement to generate leaders with a clear strategic vision that in turn guides participants with consistent boundaries. When, instead, the feeling is simply "anger" without a specific plan for channeling it usefully, you get people doing their own thing, others following along, etc.

[j8hn]

I agree that we shouldn't paint all the people in attendance with a broad brush.

What would you call the people who entered the Capital building and stayed inside the red velvet ropes, who took selfies and made videos like they were on a tour?

[qqqwerty]

I guess it depends. Did they enter the building via the security line and get properly checked in as is normally required of visitors, or did they waltz in through one of the many broken windows and doors? If the later, they likely broke the law [1] and entered a restricted space, so maybe 'rioter' is an appropriate term for them.

Also worth mentioning, if that same person had a social media history filled with "stop the steal" rhetoric, I don't see why sedition charges couldn't be levied [2]. Even if they were relatively well behaved during the riot, their mere presence was disrupting a central function of government. So I think a well behaved rioter with a proclivity for 'revolutionary' social media discourse can probably be classified as an incompetent insurrectionist.

It will be interesting to see how hard the prosecutors go after these folks. On one hand, a large chunk of the protestors probably got a bit swept up in the moment and likely did not intend to break any laws. But on the other hand, nearly the entire presidential line of succession was in that building performing one of the more important functions of our government. A strong case can be made for showing no leniency.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1752 [2] https://time.com/5928270/capitol-domestic-terrorism/

[JumpCrisscross]

> What would you call the people who entered the Capital building and stayed inside the red velvet ropes, who took selfies and made videos like they were on a tour?

Hooligans. To be criminally charged but allowed to avoid jail time. If they, I don’t know, refrain from breaking into federal property for a few years and pass a community college civics course, the record is sealed.

What they did was serious. Little different from people who jump the White House fence. But many of us on this forum can look to their youth and remember when being in a crowd doing something feloniously mischevious was something they would have gone along with. I can. We have enough of a problem with mass incarceration to not add to it.

[croes]

Terrorism or child abuse are always the reason to legitimize surveillance software. But once installed the purpose of use changes.

[uniqueid]

Is this technology going to identify anyone Twitter won't? I mean, correctly identify because it'll probably belch up a lot of false positives, too.

[jonas21]

Identifying terrorists and violent criminals is always the argument in favor of using facial recognition for law enforcement.

[pvaldes]

Identifying cover agents infiltrated into the mob, for example would be a not so positive one. Once this cat is out of the box, is out. Can't be entered again. All that you need is money to buy the product, and narcos have a lot of it.

[remarkEon]

This statement in the abstract is correct. The context in which it’s applied ... well I’m sure many actually believe Trump supporters are “literally” terrorists.

This technology was of course also used to identify those laying siege to various federal buildings over the summer, but I guess it’s okay now. This is to say that the context in which this technology is used obviously matters a lot and is directly related to who holds the reigns of cultural power. Yay.

[klyrs]

I'm not really accustomed to thinking about what others want me to think, but if you're like many who are trying to guess what progressives want you to think; facial recognition bad, clearview extra bad.

[paganel]

These were not “terrorists”, you can call them insurrectionists, mob, angry horde or anything of the sorts, but “terror” was no-where to be found among their motives. Or maybe I’m wrong and they did want to terrorize people (like ISIS set out to do), in which case some sources will help.

[vntok]

Yes, you are wrong and any video of the event will show you that they were chanting "Hang Mike Pence", that they built hanging knots that they left for everyone to see, that they ran after senators and that they trampled police officers.

[paganel]

> Hang Mike Pence

Somewhere on an older hard-disk I have a copy of all the terrorist incidents starting from the 1960s up to 2006 or so (web-scrapped at the time when that data was still partially open), no-where in there had I seen this type of events, there were mostly bombings, airplane kidnapping and the like. What you are describing falls though under the "insurrection" label, heck, we were saying the same thing about Ceausescu in December 1989 and thankfully no-one branded us as terrorists (I'm from Romania).

[vntok]

An insurrection is when "The People" rebel against their Government. Participants in that specific (failed) coup were not "The People". For a very close example, you can read about the failed 1981 Spanish coup d'Etat attempt here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

It's uncanny how similar these events were:

> Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero led 200 armed Civil Guard officers into the Congress of Deputies during the vote to elect a President of the Government. The officers held the parliamentarians and ministers hostage for 18 hours, during which time King Juan Carlos I denounced the coup in a televised address, calling for rule of law and the democratic government to continue. Though shots were fired, the hostage-takers surrendered the next morning without killing anyone.

[siruncledrew]

With Clearview's history in mind, would people rather live in world with or without facial recognition being used in public?

What are the bounds for such technology and/or companies like Clearview?

Are there quality of life differences in places where facial recognition crime technology is used vs not used?

[tastroder]

Still without honestly. Relative OSINT laypersons on different social media seem to have little problem identifying terrorists without facial recognition. The fact that they publicised their own multi-angle, high resolution video surveillance in real time seems to help.

[newguy1234]

Agree. This is a huge slippery slope.

[idiocrat]

Hopefully there will be an AI Judge soon, so we do not need to worry about the ethics.

[eznzt]

>I realize that this is one of those situations where I'm supposed to be supportive of the use of facial recognition

???

[uniqueid]

  one of those situations where I'm supposed to be 
  supportive of the use of facial recognition

No, it's not. This is the Hoan Ton-That supposedly protecting us from the crazies...

  "Founder Hoan Ton-That’s has links to the far-right movement that move right past suspicious into obvious, according to HuffPo. He reportedly attended a 2016 dinner with white supremacist Richard Spencer and organised by alt-right financier Jeff Giesea, an associate of Palantir founder and Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel. (Thiel secretly bankrolled a lawsuit that bankrupted Gizmodo’s former parent company, Gawker Media.) Ton-That was also a member of a Slack channel run by professional troll Chuck Johnson for his now-defunct WeSearchr, a crowdfunding platform primarily used by white supremacists; that channel included people like the webmaster of neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, Andrew Auernheimer, and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich"

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/04/creepy-face-recognition-f...