Ban Facial Recognition at Festivals

[anilakar]

Why are most of the tweets mentioning deportation? Surveillance aside, since when has it been a human right to attend a festival in a country you are not allowed to reside in?

[empath75]

Someone always makes this comment every time illegal immigration is mentioned as if the law is the final word on what is just. And then they’ll complain about someone going to prison for being a whistleblower or pirating movies or cheer on the protestors in Hong Kong.

[mc32]

Because it’s the cause celebre today. The causes are often cultivated by different loose organizations like influential people, moneyed people, media and eventually elementary schools. Sometimes the issues are leftist, sometimes rightist. Today leftist ideas are in ascension, ten years from now, who knows.

Ten years ago it wouldn’t have been a thing. There were other issues. These things come and go like fashion. Twenty thirty years ago it was self determination of nations, today its “there should be no borders” which is the opposite of self determination of nations.

[pgcj_poster]

The people mentioning deportation probably believe that the rules determining who is or is not allowed in a country are unfair and should be circumvented in at least some cases.

You might disagree, but perhaps you can think of some other law that you wouldn't want festivals to assist in enforcing. If you can't, do you trust that the government will never pass such a law? If not, you might not want to normalize having facial recognition tech everywhere.

[modriano]

On the topic of deportation, has anyone seen anyone arrested for deportation at a music festival? Do we have any data that this is actually happening? I'm a crime analyst in Chicago and I can't imagine officers doing event management would ever spend time on nonviolent undocumented residents.

[jstanley]

It should be a human right to exist at a public place/event anywhere on Earth, regardless of which country you were born in.

[fnordfnordfnord]

>Surveillance aside, since when has it been a human right to attend a festival in a country you are not allowed to reside in?

Forgetting about illegal immigrants for a moment, are you saying that visitors to some country shouldn't be allowed at festivals? What have you got against tourism?

There's no right to visit attractions, but there ought to be a right to privacy, and I'd personally prefer a few illegals get to unjustly enjoy themselves over the invasive panopticon required to prevent that.

[mattlondon]

Because the computer might say you are someone else.

Do not underestimate the power of "computer said so"

[logicchains]

Since when was it a human right to tell other people where they're allowed to live?

[eeZah7Ux]

> Surveillance aside, since when has it been a human right to attend a festival in a country you are not allowed to reside in?

This is a pure strawman.

The efforts and the social impact of chasing people doing something illegal must be balanced with the seriousness of the crime.

[sneak]

The right to go about your business without your location being tracked automatically and in bulk is recognized regardless of one’s immigration status.

[glenda]

Festivals should just start inviting bounty hunters instead of using facial recognition.

Or maybe they could just put shock collars on every attendee in case they begin to act in an unacceptable manner.

In fact, once it's proven to work at festivals we can extend this to schools!

[user9572]

It will probably be proven to work in schools first as most parents don't think children should have privacy anyway

[habosa]

There are people debating a lot of big issues in this thread.

I just don't want a facially-tagged database of me doing my shitty drunk dance moves at shows ... is that too much to ask?

[user9572]

At least with implants we could opt-out

[duckqlz]

Ironic how they want your name and address and phone number for a petition to protect your privacy.

[kcdev]

I always thought of festivals as an escape with like minded people. Privacy should be upheld.

[dbg31415]

Burning Man wants to use facial recognition? Uh... guess it's time we all got gas masks.

[julienreszka]

What is the original intent of the use of facial recognition at festivals? Is it drug trafficking tracking? Terrorism tracking? Satisfaction tracking?

[xfitm3]

It starts off with obvious and socially acceptable uses of technology, such as stopping terrorism. Over time, though, the application of technology like this will be used to target people for lesser offenses. Unpaid parking tickets, for example.

[mc32]

Probably to avoid liability ala Mandalay Bay.

[bsenftner]

People make threats against the hosts, the venue, the fans, the choice of location... you name it. Any simple displeasure gets elevated today with irrational anger and threats of violence. When one's festival receives threats of violence, and you know who made them, FR is a natural...

[NoblePublius]

The arguments here are that the tech doesn’t work as well with people with dark skin and maybe it will be used to deport visa overstays or undocumented / illegal immigrants? Is that it?

[new_realist]

Do undocumented workers avoid Las Vegas casinos because of all the cameras? This seems like a solution to a problem nobody has.

[jakemal]

They are very clear this is to prevent future problems. It's a problem that (most) people don't have yet.

[peterwwillis]

Does anyone see any evidence for this website's claims? It literally just says "big companies are investing in this". No sources quoted, no evidence of how many groups, to what extent, or for what actual purposes.

Basically, this looks like a FUD campaign to work the outrage machine to get more followers and donations (and e-mail addresses)

[new_realist]

Should festivals ban facial recognition, I imagine pickpockets would be a lot more into them.

[user9572]

For obvious reasons, people didn't like microchip implants so we just invented face recognition

[caconym_]

I want to be surveilled everywhere I go, because I trust corporations and the government to safeguard that information and never abuse it. After all, corporations and governments have never acted against the best interests of the people in the past, so there is no risk in them having a live-updating data set on the locations, activities, companions, and sentiments of every American.

Is that what people think? We are letting this shit run wild on us, and if the future is anything other than a bonafide utopia (spoilers: it's not going to be that), people are going to pay for our present naivete.

[nojvek]

Playing the devil’s advocate here. Suppose in the perfect world we got to design ideal surveillance, how would it work?

You could track every person and item in public space and automatically fine a percentage of net income for violations. Think in terms of enhanced red light and speed cameras.

The system would store everything encrypted in a distributed system. Data would automatically get wiped out after 30 days. The public would be able to verify this (open source code and public access logs)

Any humans accessing the feeds would need a court order specifying time span + place + item being searched for and a good reason why. The court orders would be also be publicly accessible. May be a blockchain which is append only and distributed. Some form of hard mechanisms to prevent anyone being above the law. If anyone abuses access, they’d stand a trial too)

Access would would blur out all other faces other than person being investigated.

Basically what I’m saying is let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Good Surveillance may offer the means to quickly find violators and deter crime. A car got stolen. Boom, easily identified. A kid got lost/kidnapped. Instant search. Some asshole didn’t cleanup after their dog pooped. They think twice. Littering in public space. Nay nay.

Whether we like it or not, with the advance of cheap cameras, cheap processing power and advanced computer vision algorithms/neural nets. Surveillance is coming. It’s a god like power.

I believe we should at-least be having conversations on safe and trust worthy surveillance.

Facebook/Google already know what everyone is doing. We don’t know what they are doing with our data. The information asymmetry is a problem.

[jmpman]

I’ve always used the number of Spanish speaking radio stations on the dial as a litmus test for how much illegal immigration exists in my city. First generation and second generation don’t typically listen to to the Spanish speaking stations, so the demand is being driven by the initial immigrants, the majority of whom are illegal (in my city).

No matter how much I hear about illegal immigration being cracked down upon, the Spanish speaking radio stations aren’t being converted to another format, so there’s still enough advertiser demand to pay for the station. That can only happen if the advertisers are finding a large enough customer base to justify their costs.

If these radio stations then sponsor concerts, it’s likely that the attendees will have a high illegal immigrant percentage.

Should the government be able to mass survey the Spanish speaking population attending these concerts, looking for immigrants who have not turned up to their deportation hearings?

I applaud the government for being that efficient with my tax dollars (I expect this method is much cheaper than others), but should they be doing it? Probably not.

Now what about facial recognition for known terrorists at large sporting events in order to prevent an attack? Maybe?? At music festivals? I can see the argument there too.

[otterley]

You’re dismissing the possibility that the first-generation immigrants who listen to these radio stations were admitted legally.

[paganel]

Known terrorists shouldn’t be free in the first place, least of all in an Western country. And if they are free I suppose that are actively on the run (hence the “known” part) so I don’t think they’re in the mood for a concert or a Ligue 1 match. As such whenever the powers that be use the terrorists line for stuff like this I call them bullshitters, because that’s what they are.

[Hnrobert42]

Source?

[whatawaste]

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve read on the internet this week, congratulations. Have you also considered listening to the local hip hop stations, you might ‘uncover’ the number people illegally smoking weed and stealing all the white women.

[sergiotapia]

>which puts music fans at risk of being unjustly detained, harassed, judged, or even deported.

Lost me at deported. Why is this hypothetical music fan in this country illegally? And why is it so important to allow him to stay?

[matz1]

Trying to ban FR seems to be a solving the privacy problem in the wrong way. Instead of banning FR, what should be fixed is the misidentification problem or the issue that come out when the FR become public.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

Facial recognition is just math. Why are people trying to classify certain matrices as illegal?

It seems this was a convincing argument for a lot of people in regards to encryption. Facial recognition is math just as much as encryption is.

[nexuist]

>Why are people trying to classify certain matrices as illegal?

Certain encryption algorithms, which are at their core applied math, are still illegal to export to this day to certain countries such as Iran. They are regulated and banned under the same treaties that apply to nuclear weapons.

If you publish an app to Apple's App Store, for example, you have to sign a waiver explaining if your app uses encryption (such as for SSL/TLS) before being allowed to publish in international markets.

Not saying it is right, but there is definitely legal precedent to ban mathematical knowledge at the international level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

[otterley]

Facial recognition is “just math” in the same sense as being punched in the face is “just physics.” It’s not the natural properties that concern people; it’s the societal effects, political effects, and impacts on liberty that concern people.

[amelius]

It's not the math that is illegal, but the application of it.

And even in some cases math itself can be illegal. For example digital images can be written as large integers, and we know that in some jurisdictions, it is illegal to have some types of images in one's possession.