I have read in the privacy community that facial recognition done in public places is considered problematic. Not knowing what is considered the crux of the matter, I have to ask about some facial and behavioral recognition use cases here, and whether they are a problem or not
- Digital signage on roads, cameras in stores, etc. read pedestrians’ faces, movements, etc. and infer attributes for marketing purposes (sometimes the inferred attributes are stored as is, sometimes they are stored as statistics and the attributes themselves are removed)
- Public transit agencies can share police databases to identify and track individuals with arrest records
- Public agencies use facial and behavioral recognition to determine and track suspicious persons. The information read is stored.
For example, by estimating who visited the location, to do what, and how many times, they are able to determine if there is any suspicious behavior (although the criteria are unknown). This is, of course, also used for marketing purposes, as in how many times a customer with what attributes has used the service.
If there is an alert that there is suspicious activity, the police or employees will monitor, track or question the person in question, and the system will mark that suspicious person as one of the people on the suspicious person list in the future.
Also, there are many instances where companies and governments have built facial recognition systems, saying that they are doing person detection. It is difficult for the public to be sure that companies and governments have not built and abused such systems.
Yes, privacy is a very low priority right in my country. For this reason, people often adopt the idea of sacrificing privacy to protect the rights of citizens or to make them healthier and happier.
Your response raises a lot of questions and potential red flags.
Who is developing the algorithms that determines suspicious behavior? Who is reviewing those algorithms to determine if any bias is in the algorithms, regardless of whether the bias is intentional or not? Are changes to the algorithms retroactive (eg - does a person who stood in a place for 11 mins last month get an infraction when the algorithm is updated from <=15 mins in that location is OK to >=10 mins is not OK)? How long are the infractions held for? Are immediate actions taken when an infraction occurs (eg - guard dogs are released when a criminal gets too close to an expensive item)? Are people made aware of any infractions they may have or receive? Are people made aware of what causes any/all infractions? Are people made aware that they’re being recorded or the level of recording (eg - facial recognition vs person detection)?
The point I’m trying to make here is that there are so many things to consider to make sure this is done correctly. I don’t think we even understand all of the scenarios to think through. Its one thing to do things wrong on a small scale, but when you’re talking about surveiling an entire city or country, then this needs to be done extremely thoughtfully and cautiously.
This goes back to the point I was making previously - it’s really hard to leave gihr home and not be recorded already. You’ll likely never know where you’re being recorded, who is recording you, or what will be done with your recordings. We’re losing the little privacy we do have left outside our homes and there’s not much we can do about it.
Since most of these digital privacy invasive technologies are innocuous and people are told of the benefits without understanding the drawbacks, its easy to think this technology is good. However, as people start to understand the scale and capability of these technologies, they will likely become less happy about them. They may get frustrated at not only themselves for not opposing the technologies originally, but at the government, retail store, tech companies, etc. for promoting the technologies and exploiting them.
Also, being monitored and tracked all the time is not a healthy thing. People behave and think differently when they’re watched. People need alone time. People need privacy. Having it allows people to explore, be curious, experiment, learn, and so much more. Having facial recognition cameras may not seem too repressive, but when it starts to change their behavior because they don’t want to be identified at a certain park/store/corner/etc., then that mental/emotional barrier to entry is just as hard to overcome as a physical wall/gate.
Only companies and developers would know the details. Of course they are auditing, and if you ask, you will probably get some kind of response. On the other hand, they may not tell you for security reasons.
That is put up as a poster, but some people may not know. If you want to use that service, you have no choice but to accept it.
If we’re going to lose them sooner or later, wouldn’t it be better to make use of them in order to achieve a more prosperous society?
The state also justifies the arbitrary harvesting and storage of biometric information by claiming in court that "it is the natural authority of the state to store information about its citizens. If this is followed, there is already no privacy at all in the public sphere. And large corporations will follow the state’s argument and say that it is their natural right to supplement their customers’ information.
I guess my country is trying to figure out how to enrich our society in the future by acknowledging that privacy does not exist. And shouldn’t we?
This is a statement I heard from an acquaintance of mine, but I’d like to ask it here as well:
Do you know for sure the algorithms are audited? Has a verified 3rd party publicly reported their findings? A government or company saying “we were audited - trust us” holds as much credibility as them saying “we’re the best government/company in the world - trust us”. The purpose of having auditors is to provide assurance to a group of people (eg - shareholders, potential investors, citizens, etc.) without publicly exposing trade secrets, security details, or other sensitive data. If a government/company takes transparency and ethics among other things seriously, they would regularly have their algorithms audited and the findings would be made available ins relevant way.
No - absolutely not. If we had this mindset for every social issue, we would never have progressed as a society. If the government were to come and take each citizens possessions every few weeks, would you just say “well, I trust they’re making better use of my possessions than I would have. It’s surely going to benefit my society better if they have it than if I did. I might as well might head down to the townhall each week and give them whatever I acquired that week to make it easier for them.” I’m sure it may sound a bit silly or hyperbolic, so maybe think of a people who feel their taxes/garnishments/tithes/etc. may be a little too high - same principal. Now re-read that but replace “possessions” with “privacy” because that is exactly what we’re doing. People may be OK with things because they don’t understand what is going on. Following this analogy, as soon as people find out that their possessions are being misused, people are going to be very upset. Likewise, once they realize their privacy is being abused, they’ll be very upset. It may not be this year or this decade, but continuing down the “well privacy doesn’t exist, so let’s keep abusing people’s privacy further” path will eventually lead to a very upset population.
Just because the government is doing/has been doing this doesn’t make it right. However, your government must have restrictions to this, right? For example, they’re likely not doing annual home inspections to look for signs oof"resistance". If they are, do you genuinely think people are OK with this? If they’re not doing that, do you think people would openly and willingly allow and encourage that behavior?
Same for the Disney comment. Find me a privacy rights activist who is OK with Disney checking fingerprint, but not small businesses doing something similar. I imagine you’ll have a very hard time doing so. I hope this is outlawed and/or Disney (and any other company that unnecessarily collects biometric information) stops this behavior because Disney most certainly does NOT need anyone’s fongerpirnts in order to operate their theme park.