<story><title>Boston bans use of facial recognition technology</title><url>https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/06/23/boston-facial-recognition-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mc32</author><text>Historically speaking, when the world was small towns and rural, “surveillance” was a fact of life.  Everyone knew someone who knew someone else.&lt;p&gt;The big difference is that surveillance was localized and didn’t follow the person.&lt;p&gt;If someone did a crime or did something against local mores and got ostracized they could skip town and settle somewhere else to begin anew.  Now, of course being the new person in a new place you were under scrutiny, but as long as you followed local practices your old peccadilloes or even crimes didn’t follow you.</text></item><item><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>&amp;gt;So much attention is always paid to accuracy when facial recognition comes up.&lt;p&gt;Because many people are ok with mass-survielince as long as long as it&amp;#x27;s used fairly. The problem they see with this tech isn&amp;#x27;t that it&amp;#x27;s going to create the kind of world we don&amp;#x27;t want to live in but that it unfairly targets minorities and&amp;#x2F;or the poors more than other people.  They don&amp;#x27;t understand that it can never be fair because the institutions that run it can never be fair because there will always be out-groups because that&amp;#x27;s how human nature works and they will get disproportionately screwed unless we  limit the ability of the majority to screw them.</text></item><item><author>kbos87</author><text>So much attention is always paid to accuracy when facial recognition comes up. Even if it was 100% accurate, it’s a technology that makes mass surveillance too efficient. Prohibitions need to also extend to the private sector, with the exception of, say, facial recognition for personal use (eg FaceID.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brlewis</author><text>&amp;gt; The big difference is that surveillance was localized and didn’t follow the person&lt;p&gt;That is &lt;i&gt;a&lt;/i&gt; big difference. But &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; big difference is how one-sided the new surveillance is. In a small town, they knew everything about you, but you also knew everything about them.&lt;p&gt;Today, parking regulations in my town are enforced by cars that circle around scanning every license plate parked on every street. I could probably find out who has access to that data if it were a priority for me. But what&amp;#x27;s stopping a private entity from doing the same thing? I&amp;#x27;d never know it happened. Cell carriers selling my location data? I could easily have never known about this. Ad tracking companies having a record of most sites I visit? I don&amp;#x27;t even know who they are other than a few major ones.</text></comment>
<story><title>Boston bans use of facial recognition technology</title><url>https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/06/23/boston-facial-recognition-ban</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mc32</author><text>Historically speaking, when the world was small towns and rural, “surveillance” was a fact of life.  Everyone knew someone who knew someone else.&lt;p&gt;The big difference is that surveillance was localized and didn’t follow the person.&lt;p&gt;If someone did a crime or did something against local mores and got ostracized they could skip town and settle somewhere else to begin anew.  Now, of course being the new person in a new place you were under scrutiny, but as long as you followed local practices your old peccadilloes or even crimes didn’t follow you.</text></item><item><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>&amp;gt;So much attention is always paid to accuracy when facial recognition comes up.&lt;p&gt;Because many people are ok with mass-survielince as long as long as it&amp;#x27;s used fairly. The problem they see with this tech isn&amp;#x27;t that it&amp;#x27;s going to create the kind of world we don&amp;#x27;t want to live in but that it unfairly targets minorities and&amp;#x2F;or the poors more than other people.  They don&amp;#x27;t understand that it can never be fair because the institutions that run it can never be fair because there will always be out-groups because that&amp;#x27;s how human nature works and they will get disproportionately screwed unless we  limit the ability of the majority to screw them.</text></item><item><author>kbos87</author><text>So much attention is always paid to accuracy when facial recognition comes up. Even if it was 100% accurate, it’s a technology that makes mass surveillance too efficient. Prohibitions need to also extend to the private sector, with the exception of, say, facial recognition for personal use (eg FaceID.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>deepakhj</author><text>I think it’s a big problem because many people do crime because they are poor or don’t have a solid family unit. Once they get into the system we don’t provide resources to rehab them but basically train them to become criminals. Or when they get out even if they satisfy what society asks of them, we make it really hard to recover with a felony on their record. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;felon-attorney-crime-yale-law.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;16&amp;#x2F;magazine&amp;#x2F;felon-attorney-c...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>