[throwaway1959]

My instinct for self-preservation tells me that this is not a good thing. I understand the need for privacy, but what happens if somebody puts a gun (or a knife) to your face? I think that the need for privacy could be solved through the legislation: we can have very severe restrictions on who could look at this data and why. Also, we can have severe restrictions on the admissibility of such data in court. Unfortunately, I have not seen any credible efforts from politicians, right or left, to introduce privacy protections from the surveillance abuses.

[diamond_hands]

We have survived as a society for long time without the need for this.

You could say the same thing about the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. "what about the children"

[throwaway1959]

You may be right. The facial recognition does seem to interact with the 4th amendment, at least. But then it happens in the public place? I don't know the answer to that one. I fear that in the age of social media and Antifa, the protections that we had before are no longer enough. Now we have additional actors on the streets who may turn to physical violence on a dime. I feel that the streets should be free from physical violence.

[dang]

This account has been using HN primarily if not exclusively for ideological battle. That is destructive of what HN is supposed to be for, and we ban accounts that do that, regardless of which ideology they're battling for or against. I've banned this one. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with; doing that will eventually get your main account banned as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[geephroh]

Well, there's another amendment to the US constitution that is a substantial contributor to the level and severity of physical violence on our streets. But we won't talk about that...

[tick_tock_tick]

Ok I'm at a loss what amendment don't we talk about that leads to violence on the streets. Are you just being trying to be cute and talk about the 13th?

[geephroh]

I guess I shouldn't have been so coy: SECOND AMENDMENT.

I don't care if you're a Proud Boy or a John Brown Society member. More guns == more violence.

[akomtu]

You mean the rampant hate speech and misinformation enabled by 1A?

[tkzed49]

> what happens if somebody puts a gun (or a knife) to your face?

Nothing. Either they mug you and leave or you get injured (or they didn't see the cop standing behind them.) Facial recognition is not going to solve that problem.

I'm not informed on the issue, but I'd imagine that preventing them from buying the technology is easier than tightly controlling its use.

[cryptoz]

The article and discussion is not about privacy. The people against facial recognition are against it, at least in this case, because it is racist - or at least, it produces racist outcomes.

Removing bias from facial recognition is the problem you would have to solve to appease the concerns right now, not privacy.

When innocent minorities are getting locked up because the software running it was trained with poor data, the outcomes of using the software is a racism-entrenched legal and justice system.

Which is why people are fighting against it.

[lawnchair_larry]

Someone should let these people know that nobody gets put in jail based on the facial recognition’s decision, so their “concerns” are impossible. Not only that, but if anything, it’s less likely to find darker skin tones at all, so it will favor minorities, not hurt them.

It’s a shortcut for manually digging through databases to identify people. Any identification is followed up with investigation, just as it would be if a human matched it. No decision is made by the machine.

So, no, it’s not racist at all.

[loeg]

> Someone should let these people know that nobody gets put in jail based on the facial recognition’s decision, so their “concerns” are impossible. Not only that, but if anything, it’s less likely to find darker skin tones at all, so it will favor minorities, not hurt them.

The article directly contradicts both of your claims:

> "Facial recognition technology is still incredibly biased and absolutely creates harm in the real world," said Jennifer Lee with ACLU Washington. "We now know of three black men who have been wrongfully arrested and jailed due to biased facial recognition technology.

[throwawaysea]

The article provides no details on those cases, and I am not willing to trust the ACLU at their word, given how politically biased they are these days (https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/347375-a...). I would like to know whether those incidents involved a human in the loop. It's also worth considering the benefits of facial recognition. Just like policing as a whole, I am willing to accept a small number of incorrectly handled incidents against a much larger body of good policing.

[IncRnd]

I don't think you read the article, which contains examples to support their claims that are the opposite of yours, which do not have any supporting evidence.