Facial recognition is here to stay. And we should all probably accept it

guest · Jul 9, 2019

Advocacy group launches national campaign to ban facial-recognition technology from government use
July 9, 2019
https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...l-recognition-technology-from-government-use/

As some cities and states crack down on government use of facial-recognition software, a national advocacy group is going a step further by calling for an outright federal ban on the technology.

On Tuesday, the Worcester, Mass.-based nonprofit Fight for the Future launched what it calls the first national campaign calling for a federal prohibition on all uses of facial recognition technology by governments.
The online launch of BanFacialRecognition.com enables constituents to directly contact their Congressional and local representatives, urging them to ban surveillance technology [...]

“This isn’t preventing a dystopian future – it’s something that’s happening right now,” Fight for the Future Deputy Director Evan Greer said in an interview.
Fight for the Future will also launch a digital map that showcases cities and states considering regulations or bans of facial recognition technology.
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guest · Jul 10, 2019

hawki said: ↑

"Trump Administration Could Blacklist Chinese Surveillance Technology Firm

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering limits to a Chinese video surveillance giant’s ability to buy American technology, people familiar with the matter said, the latest attempt to counter Beijing’s global economic ambitions.

The move would effectively place the company, Hikvision, on a United States blacklist... [...]
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/us/politics/hikvision-trump.html
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Banned Chinese Security Cameras Are Almost Impossible to Remove
An August deadline to remove them from federal agencies likely won’t be met as many departments don’t even know what cameras they’re using
July 10, 2019
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...urity-cameras-are-almost-impossible-to-remove

U.S. federal agencies have five weeks to rip out Chinese-made surveillance cameras in order to comply with a ban imposed by Congress last year in an effort to thwart the threat of spying from Beijing.

Despite the looming deadline to satisfy the NDAA, at least 1,700 Hikvision and Dahua cameras are still operating in places where they’ve been banned, according to Washington-based Forescout Technologies, which has been hired by some federal agencies to determine what systems are running on their networks.

The agencies that use software to track devices connected to their networks should be able to comply with the law and remove the cameras in time, Gronberg said. “The real issue is for organizations that don’t have the tools in place to detect the banned devices,” she added.
[...] most U.S. federal agencies still don’t know how many or what type of devices are connected to their networks and are now left trying to identify the cameras manually, one by one.
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If someone is routinely tapping into cameras to spy on federal agencies, they could easily determine the identities of those who work in government departments and even CIA operatives, said Stephen Bryen, former deputy under-secretary of defense for trade security policy. “This is extremely dangerous,” he said.
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Related:
Ban of Dahua and Hikvision Is Now US Gov Law
August 13, 2018
https://ipvm.com/reports/ban-law

The US President has signed the 2019 NDAA into law, banning the use of Dahua and Hikvision (and their OEMs) for the US government, for US government-funded contracts and possibly for 'critical infrastructure' and 'national security' usage.
Direct Impact - Stop Purchasing and Removals
The ban technically starts one year after signing into law, which will be August 13, 2019. However, since the ban includes both purchasing and using existing equipment, it effectively starts immediately since it would make little practical sense to buy equipment today to have to remove it in 12 months.
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guest · Jul 11, 2019

Customs and Border Protection Tells Congress It's Totally Legal to Use Face Recognition on Americans
July 10, 2019
https://gizmodo.com/customs-and-border-protection-tells-congress-its-totall-1836244944

U.S. Homeland Security officials faced a barrage of questions on Wednesday from House lawmakers frustrated—as several put it—over the alleged lack transparency exhibited by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) when it comes to the legally murky use of face recognition tools at U.S. ports of entry.

Experts widely agree the technology is prone to error, especially when applied to women and people of color, as studies have repeatedly shown.
“Before the government deploys these technologies further, they must be scrutinized and the American public needs to be given a chance to weigh in,” [...] called on Congress to “push the pause button” on face recognition and its largely unregulated use by federal and state law enforcement agencies.

“U.S. citizens are clearly outside the scope of the biometric entry-exit tracking. The technology we’re using for the entry-exit program we’re also using to validate the identity of the U.S. citizen,” Wagner said. “Someone has to do that.”
“Using data that travelers voluntarily provide, we are simply automating the manual identity verification process done today,” Wagner said.
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guest · Jul 11, 2019

Air France To Test Biometric Boarding At Houston And JFK
July 11, 2019
https://www.ubergizmo.com/2019/07/air-france-to-test-biometric-boarding-at-houston-and-jfk/

Air France-KLM will be swapping boarding passes for facial recognition on Air France flights flying out of the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City and the George Bush International Airport in Houston. This will be done on a trial basis initially as Air France-KLM sets about to bring facial recognition to all gateways in the United States by next year.

Biometric boarding is also being used overseas, by Qantas in Australia for example, while the Dubai International Airport has been scanning passengers’ faces when they pass through a tunnel that has 80 facial recognition and iris scanning cameras.
The initial Air France-KLM trial will see more than 2,200 passengers using biometric boarding daily.

“We are excited to embrace an innovation that has the potential to make the travel experience less stressful and more secure for our passengers,” said Stephane Ormand, Air France-KLM USA vice president, adding that the company’s goal is to have biometric boarding in place at 93 percent of all U.S. airports by the end of this year and 100 percent by 2020.
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ronjor · Jul 12, 2019

The Window to Rein In Facial Recognition Is Closing

Lily Hay Newman 07.10.19
In the wake of jarring revelations about how United States law enforcement agencies have deployed facial recognition, Congress seemed, for a moment, galvanized to act. Based on a Homeland Security Committee hearing in the House Wednesday, that moment appears to be fading—as hundreds of local, state, and federal law enforcement officials continue to amass and access the controversial data every day.
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guest · Jul 12, 2019

Government backs police facial recognition, Orwell says “told you so”
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has backed the police forces around the UK who are experimenting with automated facial recognition technology
July 12, 2019
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/government-backs-police-facial-recognition-tech-tories-3912143

We’ve seen it used particularly at football matches, to help spot known troublemakers, but also at festivals and parades. However, the use of the tech has drawn severe criticism from civil liberties campaigners who claim inaccuracies and unfair targeting of minorities. Javid though, is on board.

He said (via BBC): “I back the police in looking at technology and trialling it and… different types of facial recognition technology is being trialled especially by the Met at the moment and I think it’s right they look at that.”
While trials are ongoing at a number of police forces, they are not yet permitted to be used as a permanent solution. Javid says that would require new legislation to pass.
“If they want to take it further it’s also right that they come to government, we look at it carefully and we set out through Parliament how that can work,” he added.
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guest · Jul 14, 2019

mood said: ↑

Facial Recognition Coming To Delta Gates At MSP
June 20, 2019
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2019/06/20/facial-recognition-delta-msp/
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On Delta, facial recognition boarding doesn't sound optional
He didn't mention they could opt out. This is how technology forces itself upon you
July 13, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/on-delta-facial-recognition-boarding-doesnt-sound-optional/

I asked Delta whether the fact that the technology is optional should have been part of the gate agent's announcement.
Well, all I can tell you is that I heard no announcement that it was optional. Actually, I can also tell you I'm not alone.

Not everyone is delighted by the prospect of what looks like a surveillance state, even if airports in Europe regularly use facial recognition at one stage or another.
In Funk's case, opting out wasn't easy: "I had to leave the boarding line, speak with a Delta representative at their information desk, get back in line, then request a passport scan when it was my turn to board."

This is, however, supposed to be an opt-in service. Why can't you walk up to the scanner, tell the gate agent thanks but no thanks, hand them your passport and boarding pass and board?
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guest · Jul 16, 2019

What Frequent Fliers Need to Know About Airport Facial Recognition
July 16, 2019
https://readwrite.com/2019/07/16/what-frequent-fliers-need-to-know-about-airport-facial-recognition/

You spend so much time in airports that the security agents and coffee shop clerks know your face. How would you feel if the computers and cameras knew you just as well?
Frequent fliers deserve to know their rights regarding airport facial recognition. If you spend more than a few days a year in the sky, keep this in mind:
1. You can opt out of facial recognition.
If you prefer to keep your facial information to yourself, you can opt out of voluntary scans. Zach Whittaker, security editor at TechCrunch, detailed how travelers can retain most of their privacy. [...]
2. Facial recognition technology remains imperfect.
“Someone’s profile stored on an unknown number of systems with unknown data attached to it can lead to some worrying, albeit rare, scenarios where you could be mistakenly identified as a criminal,” says Patrick Hunter, director at One Identity. [...]
3. No one knows for sure what data the airlines keep.
While airlines all claim to treat traveler data with the utmost care, however, previous issues with large companies cast doubt over airlines’ sincerity and ability to protect private information.
Frequent fliers will expose themselves to more facial recognition opportunities than almost any other demographic over the next few years.
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guest · Jul 17, 2019

Oakland city council votes to ban government use of facial recognition
Becomes the third city to make the move
July 17, 2019
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/17/...l-recogntiion-ban-vote-governement-california

Under the ordinance, which passed unanimously, municipal agencies, including city police, will be banned from obtaining or using the controversial technology. The city joins neighboring San Francisco, as well as Somerville, Massachusetts, which both passed similar legislation earlier this year.

The legislation has been pressed by civil rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union. In a statement, Matt Cagle, technology and civil liberties attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, described the vote as a win for city accountability.

“These decisions should be made as Somerville, San Francisco, and now Oakland just made: by the public, including the communities that will be most impacted, through an affirmative vote by their elected representatives,” Cagle said.
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ACLU: Oakland Approves Face Recognition Surveillance Ban as Congress Moves To Require Government Transparency

guest · Jul 17, 2019

Such a shame, let see what people will say when a known pedophile was lurking near a school, raped and killed a kid in total impunity because his face wasn't recognized by cams because of some foolish privacy advocates.

ronjor · Jul 18, 2019

MPs call for halt to police's use of live facial recognition

By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor
The police and other authorities should suspend use of automatic facial recognition technologies, according to an influential group of MPs.
The House of Commons Science and Technology committee added there should be no further trials of the tech until relevant regulations were in place.
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ronjor · Jul 19, 2019

Orlando police once again ditch Amazon’s facial recognition software

By Nick Statt@nickstatt Jul 18, 2019
Amazon’s controversial Rekognition platform, its artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition software, is no longer being used by Orlando law enforcement, ending the second attempt to use the technology in a pilot phase in central Florida. The reason: the city didn’t have the necessary equipment or bandwidth to get it properly running and never once was able to test it live.
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guest · Jul 22, 2019

Facial recognition may be banned from public housing thanks to proposed law
It’s the first time federal legislation has addressed limits on technology and tenants
July 22, 2019
https://www.cnet.com/news/facial-re...d-from-public-housing-thanks-to-proposed-law/

Facial recognition doesn't belong in the home, lawmakers will propose in landmark legislation this week. As landlords across the country continue to install smart home technology and tenants worry about unchecked surveillance, there has been growing concern about facial recognition arriving at people's doorsteps.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, are expected to introduce the No Biometric Barriers to Housing Act this week.
The proposed bill would prohibit all public housing units that receive funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development from using technology like facial recognition, according to a person familiar with the legislation.

This would be the first federal bill that looks at what technology landlords can impose on its tenants.
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Krusty · Jul 25, 2019

Improving facial recognition software requires thousands of faces. But did they consent?

In Australian universities and around the world, researchers are building algorithms to spot a face in a crowd or track a person's movements.

The task requires training data — and lots of it — but the ethical origins of some of the vast image collections that such systems are tested on have been called into question.

American researcher Adam Harvey is concerned they're "contributing to the growing crisis of biometric surveillance technologies", and in some cases, were collected without explicit consent.

He has investigated various face recognition training datasets as part of his MegaPixels project.

One popular dataset known as Duke MTMC, for example, contains more than 2 million frames of 2,000 students on campus at the US university and was built to analyse the motion of objects in video.

While the research team put up posters notifying passers-by they were being captured, Duke University professor Carlo Tomasi apologised in June for a number of lapses, and for "making the data available without protections", he wrote in the college newspaper.

That last point is key for Mr Harvey. In many cases, such datasets have been freely available for anyone to download online, until recent awareness and protest caused them to be taken down.

While Duke MTMC was not created as a facial recognition dataset, versions of it have been used for research supported by commercial surveillance companies and governments, Mr Harvey found, including the US Department of Homeland Security and National University of Defense Technology in China.
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"Nevertheless, Dr Rubenstein believes academics should question where their data comes from.

"Don't use a dataset that's been collected in an unethical way, or, if it had been collected in Australia, it would have been collected illegally," he said."

guest · Jul 26, 2019

mood said: ↑

Experimental AI lie detector will help screen EU travelers
A virtual border agent will improve screening accuracy
October 31, 2018
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/31/ai-lie-detector-helps-screen-eu-travelers/
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We Tested Europe’s New Lie Detector for Travelers — and Immediately Triggered a False Positive
July 26, 2019
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/26/europe-border-control-ai-lie-detector/

It is a virtual policeman designed to strengthen Europe’s borders, subjecting travelers to a lie detector test before they are allowed to pass through customs.

“What is your surname?” he asks. “What is your citizenship and the purpose of your trip?” You provide your answers verbally to those and other questions, and the virtual policeman uses your webcam to scan your face and eye movements for signs of lying.
In an academic paper published in June 2018, they stated that avatars like their virtual policeman “will be suitable for detecting deception in border crossing interviews, as they are effective extractors of information from humans.”

He told The Intercept that the iBorderCtrl project was “not credible” because there is no evidence that monitoring microgestures on people’s faces is an accurate way to measure lying.
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guest · Jul 28, 2019

Why we should be very scared by the intrusive menace of facial recognition
When even Microsoft starts calling for government regulation, you know the technology is a problem
July 28, 2019
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...red-by-intrusive-menace-of-facial-recognition

Several forces have been conducting live trials of the technology in public places. Commenting on these, the Commons report says that “there is growing evidence from respected, independent bodies that the ‘regulatory lacuna’ [ie legislative vacuum] surrounding the use of automatic facial recognition has called the legal basis of the trials into question. The government, however, seems to not realise or to concede that there is a problem.”

There are, however, some problems with this corporate and authoritarian tool. One is that the technology itself is flaky, prone to errors, false positives and bias. More importantly, it is a pathologically intrusive, privacy-eroding technology that can be used for general surveillance in combination with public video cameras.
It can – and will – be used to create general, suspicionless surveillance systems: Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon on steroids.

We now have two options for controlling this runaway technology. One is to treat it like plutonium and ban its use for civilian purposes. The other is to treat it like a radioactive isotope – which has important uses in medicine – and regulate it accordingly. Oddly enough, this is what Microsoft suggests, arguing for “a government initiative to regulate the proper use of facial-recognition technology, informed first by a bipartisan and expert commission”.
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On 18 July, the House of Commons select committee on science and technology published an assessment of the work of the biometrics commissioner and the forensic science regulator. My guess is that most citizens have never heard of these two public servants, which is a pity because what they do is important for the maintenance of justice and the protection of liberty and human rights.
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Commons report (PDF - 429 KB): https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/1970/1970.pdf

Krusty · Jul 28, 2019

Western spy agencies being outgunned by 'bad actors', ex-CIA operative James Olson warns

[...]
Professor Olson says the ubiquitous nature of facial recognition and advanced tracking technology poses the greatest threat.

He says China has invested massively in new surveillance hardware, calling into question the continuing effectiveness of traditional "tradecraft".

"It's killing us," Professor Olson says.

"When I was on active duty I could travel internationally. I could go to airport control with false documentation and a bored passport clerk would take a quick look at me and then stamp my passport and I'm in the country.

"Now even small third world countries have access to scanners and databases. It's killing us. It's awful."
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guest · Jul 28, 2019

Facial recognition is the way to go, you can't hide your face forever, and if you know that you can be recognized at every corner, you will be less encline to wrongdo.

Minimalist · Jul 29, 2019

What is facial recognition - and how sinister is it?

Facial recognition technology has spread prodigiously. It’s there on Facebook, tagging photos from the class reunion, your cousin’s wedding and the office summer party. Google, Microsoft, Apple and others have built it into apps to compile albums of people who hang out together.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/29/what-is-facial-recognition-and-how-sinister-is-it

guest · Jul 29, 2019

Improving facial recognition software [...]
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Google’s ‘field research’ offered people $5 to scan their faces for the Pixel 4
It’s ensuring that the Pixel 4 will work on a wide range of faces
July 29, 2019
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/29/8934804/google-pixel-4-face-scanning-data-collection

Google just announced a face unlock feature for the upcoming Pixel 4, which claims to be just as accurate and fast as the iPhone’s Face ID. There have been hardware and code leaks that suggested this feature was coming to the Pixel 4, but there was also another big hint: Google has been publicly gathering data to improve it.

As first revealed by ZDNet and Android Police, Google employees have been roving the streets of American cities, offering $5 gift certificates in exchange for a facial scan. Reached by The Verge, Google confirmed that it has been conducting what it calls “field research” to collect face-scanning data in order to improve its algorithms and thereby improve the Pixel 4’s accuracy.

A company spokesperson confirmed that the purpose of the scans is to ensure that the Pixel 4 works with a diverse set of faces.
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Here’s how Google is handling the data it’s collecting, according to their spokesperson:

“Although face samples inherently can’t be anonymous, each participant is assigned an abstract identity number. We separately keep each participant’s email address, in order to remove data upon request.” The last part is important: anybody who participated in Google’s field research can request to have their face data deleted.
The face data will be kept for 18 months (though, originally, the first consent forms for the field research said five years). Google says the faces are never associated with a Google ID and that the face samples are “encrypted and access restricted.”

I guess if you’re going to collect facial recognition data, there are creepier ways to go about it than walking up to somebody, giving them a consent form, and straight up saying you’re from Google and that the data will be used for a “future Google product.”
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guest · Aug 1, 2019

Another U.S. City Moves to Ban Face Recognition, Citing Threats to Free Speech and Civil Rights
July 31, 2019
https://gizmodo.com/fourth-u-s-city-bans-facial-recognition-citing-threat-1836858623

On Tuesday, the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts moved one step closer to prohibiting local government from using facial recognition. Three other cities in the country have already instituted such bans over concerns that the technology is biased and violates basic human rights.

The order was passed on Tuesday by the council and will next be sent to the Public Safety Committee, Mayor Marc McGovern and Councillor Sumbul Siddiqui both confirmed to Gizmodo in an email. This marks one step closer to banning the city’s use of the tech altogether.
McGovern couldn’t comment on a timeline but said, at the longest, “it will be done by the end of the year.”

Cambridge would join San Francisco, Oakland, and Somerville in banning this specific type of surveillance tech.
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guest · Aug 1, 2019

This 'A.I. Bar' uses facial recognition to ensure customers get served in the right order
August 1, 2019
https://www.techspot.com/news/81250-ai-bar-uses-facial-recognition-ensure-customers-get.html

Forward-looking: A data science company in the UK has come up with what could be one of the best and most practical uses of facial recognition tech: making sure people queuing for drinks at a bar get served in the correct order.

The A.I. Bar uses facial recognition to place drinkers in a “dynamically intelligent queue.” It works by displaying a live video of everyone waiting to be served on a screen above the bar. This shows a number above each person’s head, representing their place in the queue, and it even displays an estimated time until they’ll be able to order their drinks.

In addition to checking the screen to see who’s next in line, bar staff will have an iPad that tells them who to serve. The AI can also identify customers who look under-age, informing the staff if they need to ask for ID or if they’ve already been checked.
It requires a standard webcam, display screen, and internet connection, and will cost landlords £199 ($240) per month.
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hawki · Aug 1, 2019

"She Was Arrested at 14. Then Her Photo Went to a Facial Recognition Database.

With little oversight, the N.Y.P.D. has been using powerful surveillance technology on photos of children and teenagers.

The New York Police Department has been loading thousands of arrest photos of children and teenagers into a facial recognition database despite evidence the technology has a higher risk of false matches in younger faces.

For about four years, internal records show, the department has used the technology to compare crime scene images with its collection of juvenile mug shots, the photos that are taken at an arrest. Most of the photos are of teenagers, largely 13 to 16 years old, but children as young as 11 have been included...

Elected officials and civil rights groups said the disclosure that the city was deploying a powerful surveillance tool on adolescents — whose privacy seems sacrosanct and whose status is protected in the criminal justice system — was a striking example of the Police Department’s ability to adopt advancing technology with little public scrutiny..."

(Can not be read in Private Mode)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/01/nyregion/nypd-facial-recognition-children-teenagers.html

Krusty · Aug 1, 2019

hawki said: ↑

(Can not be read in Private Mode)
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Can be read with NoScript blocking JavaScript.

guest · Aug 2, 2019

ronjor said: ↑

Some US Cities Are Moving Into Real-Time Facial Surveillance
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Detroit cops revise proposed facial recognition policy, remove real-time provision
July 31, 2019
https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/ne...ovision-facial-recognition-policy/1882278001/

Police officials have revised the proposed policy governing the use of facial recognition software, removing one of its most contentious provisions: The ability to use the technology to scan faces in real time if there's a terror threat.
The revised policy also lays out punishment for officers who may abuse the system, police chief James Craig said.

Craig said he's aware some algorithms are prone to false hits with photos of people with darker skin, but said that's mitigated by requiring two analysts and a supervisor to agree on whether photos picked by the computer match the person photographed committing a crime.
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