Portland implements facial-recognition tech ban that Amazon lobbied against, as former NSA chief behind PRISM joins Amazon

[Delicieuxz]

 

Portland is the latest US city to ban the use of face-tracking technology by law enforcement and government. But while many cities have banned government face-tracking, but Portland is the first to also ban private entity usage of the technology.

 

Portland passes unprecedented ban on facial recognition tech, despite $24,000 Amazon lobbying effort to kill initiative

Quote

Portland lawmakers unanimously passed a sweeping ban on facial recognition technology, becoming the first city to bar both public and private entities from the controversial software and defeating Amazon’s bid to kill the measure.

 

The Portland City Council adopted the ban in the form of two separate ordinances on Wednesday. The first will block all city agencies, including the police, from using the tech, while the other prohibits private organizations from deploying facial recognition devices in public places. Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler has hailed the move, saying it sets Portland apart from other cities.

 

“What makes Portland's legislation stand out from other cities is that we're prohibiting facial recognition technology use by private entities in public accommodations,” Wheeler said following Wednesday’s vote.

 

Amazon and some other groups had opposed Portland's planed face-recognition tech ban.

 

As to some possible hint of why Amazon, which collects telemetry and shares video data from their "smart" doorbell [2] and which refuses to say whether it's listening in on Echo devices and giving that data to the US government, might have opposed it, well, they also just appointed to their board of directors former US army general and former NSA chief, Keith Alexander. That's in addition to having long-been the CIA's biggest business partner and hosting an entire spy network for them.

 

Keith Alexander was head of the NSA when it built and ran the clandestine domestic mass-surveillance program known as PRISM, which was ruled to be illegal (that article incorrectly claims Snowden fled to Russia - he had his passport withdrawn while transiting through Russia and so was left stranded there) just last week, with the appeals court stating that those intel persons responsible for it had lied about it. He also opposed media reporting on PRISM and said something should be done to stop journalists from covering the topic. Perfect Amazon director material?

 

 

 

Naturally, I think that banning face-recognition tech, which, even if it worked properly, would open the door to all sorts of abuses, is a good thing. And I think Portland has the right idea in banning its usage for the private sector as well as both LEO and government. Just because we can make use of something to facilitate abuses of authority doesn't mean we should.

[Master Disaster]

I have a feeling that in years to come we will talk about Sir Tim Berners Lee in the same vein as Robert Oppenheimer. Someone who created something without really understanding how his creation would go on to shape the world and someone who ultimately would live to regret his creation.

[jaslion]

Face recognition technology is just something the world isn't ready for yet I feel. It could be wonderful for some applications but people can abuse it so much for way too many things. I'm glad that it is getting banned and hope it keeps getting banned everywhere.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, jaslion said:

Face recognition technology is just something the world isn't ready for yet I feel. It could be wonderful for some applications but people can abuse it so much for way too many things. I'm glad that it is getting banned and hope it keeps getting banned everywhere.

Unfortunately the same can be said about many of the things we currently use. Smart speakers & doorbells are perfect spy devices, phones are mobile tracking devices, computers are personal data collection devices etc.

 

We've already passed the point where restricting future devices will have any affect.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Unfortunately the same can be said about many of the things we currently use. Smart speakers & doorbells are perfect spy devices, phones are mobile tracking devices, computers are personal data collection devices etc.

 

We've already passed the point where restricting future devices will have any affect.

I would not say that restricting future devices will not have any effect. It will most likely cause the stream effect where more and more laws will start joining in on restricting devices which then goes into the waterfall effect of retroactively restricting older devices.

 

It's not impossible Europe is doing it and it's working. It will take a lot of time but I do hold out some hope that we can avoid a dystopian future.

[jagdtigger]

53 minutes ago, jaslion said:

It's not impossible Europe is doing it and it's working.

IDK about that, Google/FB/MS are still pretty much can do as they please in terms of data-mining.........

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

IDK about that, Google/FB/MS are still pretty much can do as they please in terms of data-mining.........

Germany is causing a cascade effect with their policies there are already a fair few countries where data collection is getting more and more limited. So hopefully it keeps going till we reach a point that is the bare minimum to deliver a functional service.

[Delicieuxz]

25 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Germany is causing a cascade effect with their policies there are already a fair few countries where data collection is getting more and more limited. So hopefully it keeps going till we reach a point that is the bare minimum to deliver a functional service.

 Do you have some links about Germany's data rules and what makes them stricter than other countries'?

 

Edit: I found this:

 

June 2020 - Facebook Loses Antitrust Decision in Germany Over Data Collection

Quote

The case had been closely watched after German regulators used a novel interpretation of competition law to rule against the social media giant last year. The authorities said Facebook broke competition laws by combining data it collected about users across its different platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as from outside websites and third-party apps.

 

In Germany, Facebook now must alter how it processes data about its users. It was ordered to allow people to block the company from combining their Facebook data with information about their activities on other apps and websites.

 

If Facebook can't combine use data from outside websites with data from Facebook, and other Facebook-owned platforms, that could be huge.

 

It's too bad that had to be argued on grounds of anti-competitiveness rather than grounds of user privacy and data-sovereignty.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

I would not say that restricting future devices will not have any effect. It will most likely cause the stream effect where more and more laws will start joining in on restricting devices which then goes into the waterfall effect of retroactively restricting older devices.

 

It's not impossible Europe is doing it and it's working. It will take a lot of time but I do hold out some hope that we can avoid a dystopian future.

The issue is that what society classes as dystopian is slowly being eroded by social conditioning. People are being conditioned to give up basic rights in the name of security and convenience and what was deemed unacceptable even 10 years ago is now considered normal and even desirable. If you read Orwell now you'll notice that many of the things he writes about in his dystopian future are reality right now.

 

One example I saw on Reddit was back in the late 80s/early 90s there was an episode of the TV show The Rockford Files that saw an entire town start a campaign against a local business that wanted to keep their personal information on a computer. This was a great social commentary from that period as people were genuinely worried what the computer age would mean for the storage of their personal information. Fast forward to the 2010s and people are not only willingly handing over that information for free but also agreeing to let the company store the data and pass it on to others. Within 30 years we were conditioned to accept the fact that companies using our information as currency is just a normal part of life.

 

The same thing is happening on a much more macroscopic level too. I remember when I was in my early teens our local town council and police joined forces to raise funds to get 3 CCTV cameras installed around the town centre and people were furious about it. There was a huge town meeting held, people got really mad, petitions were signed to stop it. Now there are 7 cameras in the town centre alone not to mention every shop you even walk past has one looking at you and its not uncommon for houses to have them pointing out to the streets as well. We also have speakers listening to our every words, doorbells that record everything they see on a millisecond scale, all our cars are now fitted with cameras, the list goes on and on.

 

We are being trained by the corporations to accept things that spy on us as normal in the name of protection and convenience, the reality is its all about gathering data because in the information age, data is power.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Germany is causing a cascade effect with their policies there are already a fair few countries where data collection is getting more and more limited. So hopefully it keeps going till we reach a point that is the bare minimum to deliver a functional service.

Its kind of ironic that the Germans are leading the fight against the erosion of our liberties.

[jaslion]

55 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

 Do you have some links about Germany's data rules and what makes them stricter than other countries'?

 

Edit: I found this:

 

June 2020 - Facebook Loses Antitrust Decision in Germany Over Data Collection

 

If Facebook can't combine use data from outside websites with data from Facebook, and other Facebook-owned platforms, that could be huge.

 

It's too bad that had to be argued on grounds of anti-competitiveness rather than grounds of user privacy and data-sovereignty.

It's one of the big ones. They cannot share any data between their platforms. Which is why they stopped selling the oculus there the moment they announced that a facebook account was necessary. Legal talks have already started and a possible new antitrust causing them to backpedal on the decision is probably going to happen.

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Unfortunately the same can be said about many of the things we currently use. Smart speakers & doorbells are perfect spy devices, phones are mobile tracking devices, computers are personal data collection devices etc.

 

We've already passed the point where restricting future devices will have any affect.

So because things are already bad we shouldn't try and make things better in the future because "we already passed that point" anyways?

 

 

[Master Disaster]

26 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

So because things are already bad we shouldn't try and make things better in the future because "we already passed that point" anyways?

Where did I say that?

[Zodiark1593]

Given that Amazon has some crack shot coders on hand and at least one former NSA employee (whose job generally involves keeping secrets) that can probably develop some highly secure systems and networks on a large scale, what exactly is stopping Amazon from disregarding the law and covertly implementing their facial recognition systems anyway?

 

Should Amazon do their security homework well, I can imagine proving wrongdoing in court to be a herculean task. 

[Mark Kaine]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Where did I say that?

 

4 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

We've already passed the point where restricting future devices will have any affect.

?

 

Just to be clear I 100% disagree it's never too late and the more future devices get restricted in their abilities to spy the better.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

?

 

Just to be clear I 100% disagree it's never too late and the more future devices get restricted in their abilities to spy the better.

Saying we've passed the point of no return isn't the same as saying we shouldn't try to fix things.

[Bombastinator]

Amazon is not a non-profit.  Non-profits frequently appoint prominent people with no direct connection to the company as board members.  For profit companies are much less likely to though there is no law against it.  The pay scale of the two types of position are also often completely different.  This appointment makes me curious.  Why did it happen?

[Master Disaster]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Amazon is not a non-profit.  Non-profits frequently appoint prominent people with no direct connection to the company as board members.  For profit companies are much less likely to though there is no law against it.  This appointment makes me curious.  Why did it happen?

When you pair this with that story from a few months ago where one of Amazons lead Ring engineers came out publicly and said the entire project is nothing more than mass public surveillance, is probably illegal and should be shut down it is pretty darn suspicious.

[JZStudios]

I just wonder if there's any relation between banning facial detection for law enforcement, Trump deputizing Portland officers for federal prosecution capability, and mass riots, I mean peaceful protesting for the past 3 months.

I'm as against facial detection as anyone, but the timing seems conspicuous.

[poochyena]

8 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Naturally, I think that banning face-recognition tech, which, even if it worked properly, would open the door to all sorts of abuses, is a good thing.

abuses such as?

[spartaman64]

20 minutes ago, poochyena said:

abuses such as?

someone already got falsely arrested because of facial recognition 

[Master Disaster]

26 minutes ago, poochyena said:

abuses such as?

The title of this topic contains the answer to your question.

[Delicieuxz]

1 hour ago, poochyena said:

such as?

Tracking and targeting individuals without justification, manipulating demographics, loss of privacy. Corrupt police and authoritarian governments could do lots of bad stuff with the technology. And things would gravitate towards authoritarianism as soon as someone who isn't against misusing the tech gets puts in charge - and I don't think it would take long before that happened.

 

Governments, police, gangs, and individuals can know where people are all the time, can gauge the disposition of a person, can know where and when people are vulnerable - and equally where people aren't at a given time, and the places a person isn't can likewise be made vulnerable by that information.

 

Dissent would likely be stifled as people won't feel as free to express themselves in public when they know they're tracked everywhere and can be targeted for what they say and do. With facial-recognition tech, a lot more dissidents would likely disappear without a trace. With facial recognition tech in airports, whistleblowers and leakers, and those helping them, might not be able to do what they do or to make it out of a country, and so not leak things at all.

 

Criminals with access to facial-tracking data could use the information for crime. Data could also be manipulated, or hacked, and used against someone for extortion, intimidation, kidnapping, killing.

 

And on top of all of that, facial-recognition technology has issues with accuracy.

 

https://www.digitaldesignjournal.com/dangers-of-facial-recognition-technology/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

 

[thechinchinsong]

Security vs Freedom will be debated until the end of time. Nowadays, a third factor Convenience should probably be added. I think the way you frame the current landscape is also pretty important. Most of Western society can still point out why these dystopian technologies are bad for personal freedom and at least try to reverse course. I think that for many people in China and other Eastern societies might subscribe to how these technologies are actually great for Security on a personal and societal level. It comes down to the historical differences between countries and their peoples. 

[poochyena]

2 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

someone already got falsely arrested because of facial recognition 

thats not a valid criticism though. People get arrested without the software too.

 

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Tracking and targeting individuals without justification, manipulating demographics, loss of privacy.

but thats already being done without cameras...

 

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Corrupt police and authoritarian governments could do lots of bad stuff with the technology

you keep saying that, and its fear mongering since it could be said about literally everything ever.

 

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Governments, police, gangs, and individuals can know where people are all the time, can gauge the disposition of a person, can know where and when people are vulnerable - and equally where people aren't at a given time, and the places a person isn't can likewise be made vulnerable by that information.

 

Dissent would likely be stifled as people won't feel as free to express themselves in public when they know they're tracked everywhere and can be targeted for what they say and do. With facial-recognition tech, a lot more dissidents would likely disappear without a trace. With facial recognition tech in airports, whistleblowers and leakers, and those helping them, might not be able to do what they do or to make it out of a country, and so not leak things at all.

 

every single thing you list is already true without this tech. Literally all this does is replace people IDing people with cameras, which reduces cost.