House Democrats Debut New Bill To Limit US Police Use of Facial Recognition (techcrunch.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Dubbed the Facial Recognition Act, the bill would compel law enforcement to obtain a judge-authorized warrant before using facial recognition. By adding the warrant requirement, law enforcement would first have to show a court it has probable cause that a person has committed a serious crime, rather than allowing largely unrestricted use of facial recognition under the existing legal regime. The bill also puts other limits on what law enforcement can use facial recognition for, such as immigration enforcement or peaceful protests, or using a facial recognition match as the sole basis for establishing probable cause for someone's arrest.
If passed, the bill would also require law enforcement to annually test and audit their facial recognition systems, and provide detailed reports of how facial recognition systems are used in prosecutions. It would also require police departments and agencies to purge databases of photos of children who were subsequently released without charge, whose charges were dismissed or were acquitted. [...] The bill has so far received glowing support from privacy advocates, rights groups and law enforcement-adjacent groups and organizations alike. Woodrow Hartzog, a law professor at Boston University, praised the bill for strengthening baseline rules and protections across the U.S. "without preempting more stringent limitations elsewhere."
If passed, the bill would also require law enforcement to annually test and audit their facial recognition systems, and provide detailed reports of how facial recognition systems are used in prosecutions. It would also require police departments and agencies to purge databases of photos of children who were subsequently released without charge, whose charges were dismissed or were acquitted. [...] The bill has so far received glowing support from privacy advocates, rights groups and law enforcement-adjacent groups and organizations alike. Woodrow Hartzog, a law professor at Boston University, praised the bill for strengthening baseline rules and protections across the U.S. "without preempting more stringent limitations elsewhere."
Come on (Score:1)
Smooth brain conservatives, explain why this is bad.
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Because the real problem is the collection of the data, not how it is used once it is in the government's database.
Should it be ok for the government to put cameras on every corner but illegal to use the recordings to solve crimes?
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It's bad because they'll use it anyway when they really feel like it. You'll have no recourse because they'll have parallel construction and won't be able to prove they did. They'll enforce the laws on those they want to catch and not those they don't.
That's a little much (Score:1)
I'm not a fan of unrestricted law enforcement, but if machine facial recognition isn't good enough for probable cause, how is "witness states he saw Billy-Bob in the vicinity of the crime from across the street" any better?
Siccing cops on innocent people is obviously not good, but the adult in me says some level of that is unavoidable unless we also are willing to live with almost no law enforcement. Google what a ROC curve is to see what I mean.
Re:That's a little much (Score:4, Insightful)
One word, well, two words: "False Positives"
And that goes in 2 directions. There have already been cases where someone got arrested because they got signaled as being someone else.
And all facial recognition software currently has a problem that is hard to solve, in that they're very racially and gender biased, increasing the chance of false positives.
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Have you seen camera footage? Its not like this is all HD clear video. 99% of the time its blurry, fuzzy crap.
Honestly, if there's a conservative that's against this, then they're not very conservative.
Re: That's a little much (Score:1)
Some cameras are crap. Others aren't. A blanket prohibition predicated on the assumption that all video data is unusably noisy/garbled/unresolved is just as stupid as arresting a guy on a zoomed and enhanced pixel.
Re:That's a little much (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, if there's a conservative that's against this, then they're not very conservative.
It's a democrat sponsored bill. Conservatives will vote against it for that very reason. The we love the military party voted against providing food stamps and for veterans who are struggling financially. https://www.newsweek.com/49-re... [newsweek.com]
I away the standard response of "That bill was also going to provide abortions for every blue haired feminist lesbian..."
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Have you seen camera footage? Its not like this is all HD clear video. 99% of the time its blurry, fuzzy crap.
Don't worry. The official government cameras will be crystal clear 8k video.
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So it's fine if the NSA slurps up everyones emails and metadata because they'll never search it without a proper reason. Something like that would never happen.
Re:That's a little much (Score:5, Informative)
There have already been cases where someone got arrested because they got signaled as being someone else.
Lazy ass cops arrest 25 year old black guy thinking he's really a 49 year old white guy. https://www.8newsnow.com/inves... [8newsnow.com] Made it all the way to a judge before they admitted he wasn't right person. We let these people carry guns...
Re: That's a little much (Score:2, Informative)
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Let? Lots of democrats will insist they be the only people carrying guns.
Hi... where I live, most of the cops don't even carry guns (mainly because they don't need to).
I can go out in the dodgiest part of town without fear of being murdered.
Maybe it's time to admit your attitude on firearms is horribly broken.
Re: That's a little much (Score:2)
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if machine facial recognition isn't good enough for probable cause, how is "witness states he saw Billy-Bob in the vicinity of the crime from across the street" any better?
Neither should be enough to arrest someone on its own. But, either is enough to investigate further.
If Billy-Bob has no apparent ties to the victim, no known motive, and no other evidence he was in the vicinity, then a single witness saying the perp looked kinda like him shouldn't be enough to arrest him.
Likewise, if a facial recognition system flags some guy in a nearby town, the police might want to look for more evidence tying him to the crime. But if he is the murder victim's ex-boyfriend and had a rest
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It's called "police work" and it was done before facial recognition tech. This isn't saying cops can't use camera footage in investigations. If a crime goes unsolved because of this then it would not have been solved 10 years ago either, hardly a high bar to jump.
Overall this is a good thing. If Rand Paul or another Republican was presenting it conservatives would applaud it up and down but alas it is not. The libs many are so quick to own actually have something that protects civil liberties here. Ma
That worked soooo well (Score:4, Insightful)
Dont get me wrong. I’d like to live in a world where we arent scrutinized 24/7/365. But that ship sailed when we put an internet-enabled hd camera packed with sensors in every person’s pocket.
Let me put it another way - we all realize that Facebook scans and IDs every single face of every single image they can get their hands on, right? Well, if we let Zuckerberg do that (and we do) I see no reason to deny the same thing to the cops.
Again, I dont like this, but I see no way back to strong privacy protections.
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What about a different interpretation of your logic? If we deny the cops who at least have a flimsy reason to do so, why would a targetted advertising peddler be allowed to run face scans?
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So, if we’ve decided to let every internet company do it, we might as well let the cops as well. While I believe in strong limits on police power, I’m not sure we should be deliberately hamstringing them while we let all the companies get away with wholes
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The answer to privacy violations isn't more privacy violations + goons and guns. That's insanity.
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Yeah but the democrats put this bill through which means half of the people here will support as much facial recognition as possible just to trigger the libs or whatever. If their side sponsored it instead they'd be banging on about the relevant constitutional amendment.
It's no longer about what but who to about half the population.
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If they were banning the facial recognition and the cameras and the collection of data that would be something, but they will be collecting the data and just promising not to peek. And they can change their mind and decide to look at any time later. This just gives people a false sense of security. Let people know they're under the Evil Eye of Sauron.
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Beyond that, I think the concept o
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Both the US and China are shit in this respect. The US literally jails a larger percentage of its population than 99% of other countries.
"If a law isn't being broken" isn't good enough, when a lot of the laws concern victimless crimes or crimes of poverty (being unable to pay Draconian fines for comparatively minor crimes). The US injustice system is rotten to its corrupt core.
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We make up about 4% of the worlds population, yet house about 25% of the world's prisoners. Something is very wrong.
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But as for the violent half - we’re better off coughing up the tax dollars to keep them separated fro
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Yet the US (mostly on the state/local level) is one of the largest incarcerators in the world -- we keep a higher % of our adult population in cages than 99% of other countries. It's a national disgrace.
"... if there are laws being broken" isn't good enough, when the laws concern victimless crimes or crimes of poverty (being unable to pay Draconian fines for other minor infractions). The US injustice system is designed to keep people paying and in the system -- it's big business after all, and the US is c
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Facebook does not (yet) have the ability to arrest me, try me, and throw me in jail.
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Let me put it another way - we all realize that Facebook scans and IDs every single face of every single image they can get their hands on, right? Well, if we let Zuckerberg do that (and we do) I see no reason to deny the same thing to the cops.
How about we ban Facebook from doing that instead of extending the "right" to more people?
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First, Zuck isn't going to sent the goon squad to shot my dog.
Second, I'm okay with not letting him scan and ID the faces every image people upload to his internet website.
I see no way back to strong privacy protections.
Well, you could vote for people proposing legislation like this that at least attempts to claw back a bit little of the privacy you've lost, as opposed to the "tough on crime" guys who would happily put a camera in your bathroom.
Just another reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
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The moment you believe one party's lies more than the other party's lies, you have drunk the kool-aid.
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Yes, the Democrats also want to make sure that these fascist, jackbooted, completely unaccountable thugs are the only ones who are armed and capable of defending themselves. Of course, where "defending themselves" extends to "murdering with impunity" for the police.
These Democrats are the same people who want to take guns away from normal American citizens, including the marginalized poor and people of color, while maintaining their own armed security guards and even carrying special handgun permits that ar
No mention of the private sector (Score:2)
at least in the summary, which is how law enforcement / TLAs are side stepping the 4th amendment already.
the bill would also require law enforcement to annually test and audit their facial recognition systems, and provide detailed reports of how facial recognition systems are used in prosecutions
And if it's not THEIR system then what?
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Annual test needed (Score:2)
Would this limit LE's use of Amazon's Ring? (Score:2)
Bans push us back to a worse system: people (Score:2)
The problem with all the concern over the dangers and bias in technologies like facial recognition is that the technology it is replacing is even worse. People are incredibly biased and error prone when trying to recognize faces and there is plenty of research about the problems with cross racial IDs and the problems that result from unblinded identification.
At least using facial recognition means we can get a much better handle on any bias/limits the system has and moderate our usage accordingly and impro
No mo pics (Score:2)
I assume they will also do away with pictures on drivers licenses and passports, since those also enable face recognition.
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