The State of California may ban facial recognition for law enforcement.

[DrMacintosh]

Various cities in California have already banned the use of facial recognition by law enforcement, but the California State Senate has passed a new law that will ban the use of this technology by local law enforcement across the state. 

Quote

A.B. 1215, authored by Assemblymember Phil Ting, prohibits the use of face recognition, or other forms of biometric technology, on a camera worn or carried by a police officer in California for three years. The Assembly passed an earlier version of the bill with a 45-17 vote on May 9. Today’s vote of the Senate was 22-15. We are pleased that the Senate has listened to the growing number of voices who oppose the way government agencies use face surveillance.

 This bill also targets other forms of biometric technologies that have been abused by police. Technologies such as:

Quote

(1) “Biometric data” means a physiological, biological, or behavioral characteristic that can be used, singly or in combination with each other or with other information, to establish individual identity.

(2) “Biometric surveillance system” means any computer software or application that performs facial recognition or other biometric surveillance.

(3) “Facial recognition or other biometric surveillance” means either of the following, alone or in combination:

(A) An automated or semiautomated process that captures or analyzes biometric data of an individual to identify or assist in identifying an individual.

(B) An automated or semiautomated process that generates, or assists in generating, surveillance information about an individual based on biometric data.

This bill bans California law enforcement agencies from deploying these technologies and prevents out of state actors from setting up these technologies for their behalf. 

 

The bill still has to be signed into law by Gavin Newson, the Governor of California. If the bill is signed into law, (it mostly likely will be) California will be the first state in the Union to ban the use of these technologies by law enforcement. 

 

The authors of the Bill claim their intent behind the bill is as follows:

Quote

The use of facial recognition and other biometric surveillance is the functional equivalent of requiring every person to show a personal photo identification card at all times in violation of recognized constitutional rights. This technology also allows people to be tracked without consent. It would also generate massive databases about law-abiding Californians, and may chill the exercise of free speech in public places.

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190913/12354542986/california-senate-passes-statewide-ban-facial-recognition-tech-use-law-enforcement.shtml

 

My comments are in the spoilers below:

Spoiler

I'm personally very pleased with this news. Having seen what police states like China have done with their "Social Credit" and use of facial recognition to target and arrest their citizens for expressing themselves. If more states can pass similar laws, or if a federal law could be passed, we could prevent the police from infringing on our rights in this way. 

 

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

So it wasn't known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects?

 

That might be a first for any kind of technology...

[Drak3]

The Shithole state doing something right is a sign of the end times. It was tolerable knowing you all.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

So it wasn't known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects?

 

That might be a first for any kind of technology...

Something something.....paper straws. 

[Shreyas1]

But federal authorities still can if they're investigating inside the state, correct? 

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

But federal authorities still can if they're investigating inside the state, correct? 

Yes. The State doesn’t have the authority to stop federal agents. Of course, not without the use of state troopers.... but let’s not get into that. 

[Taf the Ghost]

48 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

The Shithole state doing something right is a sign of the end times. It was tolerable knowing you all.

Unfortunately, knowing CA, they're doing the "right thing for all of the wrong reasons". I'm going to go with "prevents easy surveillance in prostitution cases". It's CA, it's either about the graft, corruption or covering the politicians own behinds. I'm going with the latter in this case.

[DrMacintosh]

6 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

I'm going to go with "prevents easy surveillance in prostitution cases"

 

1 hour ago, DrMacintosh said:

The use of facial recognition and other biometric surveillance is the functional equivalent of requiring every person to show a personal photo identification card at all times in violation of recognized constitutional rights. This technology also allows people to be tracked without consent. It would also generate massive databases about law-abiding Californians, and may chill the exercise of free speech in public places.

 

[williamcll]

Guess those police shows where they can analyse a hundred faces a second will never happen.

[JZStudios]

So I'm a bit... under-informed here. This seems like a terrible idea masquerading as "privacy" concerns. Ideally the only people they'd be doing facial recognition on is suspects. Seems like this will just make them go back to either completely not giving a shit about most cases, or doing it the old fashioned way. I get the abuse of Police power, but why would they just run footage through the computers to track random people?

I mean, I don't know if they share the same database as say, the DMV or whatever, but they already have databases with mugshots they compare against, facial recognition just makes that process faster. If you aren't in the database they don't have anything to put in, but again, why would they just scan for random people?

 

Why not ban Facebook from doing it where it is an invasion of privacy?

I'm pretty big on privacy, and it freaks me out that Facebook will automatically tag pictures locations, people involved, time, etc... but this just seems to side wrong.

[DrMacintosh]

15 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

but why would they just run footage through the computers to track random people?

Why would you allow them do that? That's the question you should be asking.

[JZStudios]

4 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Why would you allow them do that? That's the question you should be asking.

...but they can already do it manually... this just speeds up the process. And, okay, sure, I don't want them tracking random people, but that's a waste of everyone's time so it's highly unlikely they'll do so.

 

I'm thinking like, package thieves. You can get footage of these people coming up to your doorbell camera, get a clean shot of their face, steal your package. You can call the cops and turn in the footage, but they won't actually do anything since someone has to sit there and try to manually find this random asshats face. Just toss it in the computer and have it do it, and then maybe they might actually do something about it.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, JZStudios said:

I don't want them tracking random people, but that's a waste of everyone's time so it's highly unlikely they'll do so.

You should look at what happens in China before you stop caring about this stuff. 

[JZStudios]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

You should look at what happens in China before you stop caring about this stuff. 

China is a communist country led by a dictatorship. Not that Cali is that far behind, but it's not the same thing. And I have a huge mistrust of the government.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, JZStudios said:

Not that Cali is that far behind,

anddddd I'm done. 

[JZStudios]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

anddddd I'm done. 

...oookay.

[suicidalfranco]

but not the likes of facebook, why am i not impressed

[DrMacintosh]

8 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

but not the likes of facebook, why am i not impressed

I think it would be to the detriment of ML technologies to ban facial recognition by private companies. For example with iOS and Macs, they scan photos for indexing and user reference, but they don’t resell that data as it’s all stored locally. If facial recognition were to be simply outright banned, those features would have to be removed. I don’t think there’s a valid reason to take that away from consumers. 
 

However I do believe that there is room for regulation of private companies to prevent them from selling, or sending, facial recognition and other ML data without the users consent. 

[Drak3]

7 minutes ago, Kaloob said:

California's emmisions laws are (or were D:<) a good thing as well,

I wouldn't say that. The end result is more strain on engines, for nonexistant benefits that only work on paper.

[DrMacintosh]

3 hours ago, Kaloob said:

California's emmisions laws are (or were D:<)

They still are. We’re gonna fight in court for them. 

[Trik'Stari]

Even a broken clock is right every now and then.

 

I never thought I'd hear myself say "good job California".

[DrMacintosh]

5 hours ago, Drak3 said:

I wouldn't say that. The end result is more strain on engines, for nonexistant benefits that only work on paper.

L.A. and other California cities would have “smog days” because our air was so polluted that the sky would turn brown and kids wouldn’t be allowed to play outside because of how poor the air quality was. 
 

Ever since we enacted these regulations, those don’t happen anymore and our air is significantly cleaner. I like being able to breathe. 

[Drak3]

4 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Ever since we enacted these regulations, those don’t happen anymore

That's a load of shit. Your "smog days" were and are due to wild fires. The last significant (Bloomberg ran a 30 second warning on it) smog event was less than a year ago. There were fires so bad in Cali, that Idaho had issues last year with smog.

[DrMacintosh]

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

That's a load of shit. Your "smog days" were and are due to wild fires. The last significant (Bloomberg ran a 30 second warning on it) smog event was less than a year ago. There were fires so bad in Cali, that Idaho had issues last year with smog.

If you can’t stay on topic or distinguish the difference between smog and ash....I suggest you stop commenting. 

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

distinguish the difference between smog and ash

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/smog

 

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

I suggest you stop commenting. 

You should follow your own advice, as you're not aware the difference between ash and smog. Nor do you understand the point of my comments.

Here's a different wording:

California's government might overcome its own incompetence and write legislation that is actually beneficial to the citizens.