Facial Recognition: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
(you really don't have to like this show or him but if you can endure American format you should give this a try.)
(one of the only good comments i ever seen on youtube.)
This is a good STARTING point for the discussion. But you missed out on some things that would have REALLY added to the shock and awe effect.
1. Pretty much every area that has regulations on municipal use of facial recognition in the US have no such restrictions on private companies doing it. Which they absolutely do. And the police can just buy the data. Which they do.
2. This data is easily combined with other tracking databases. Which is the whole point. It may not seem TOO unreasonable to the average citizen that their face is sometimes tracked. But what about if you showed them just how easy it is to combine facial recognition databases with Automated Licence Plate Reader (ALPR) data? Now you have a database of who drives where, including passengers, and when it all happens. 'But that isn't really happening is it?'
Yup. _ _
https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-alpr
3. Holy SHIT you didn't mention doorbell cameras. 'But those are OBVIOUSLY private right? I mean, unless they have some security bug or something?'
Nope. _ _
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/amazon-ring-must-end-its-dangerous-partnerships-police
Yeah that's right. Those always on, high definition cameras that you and/or your neighbor have pointing at the street. The ones pointing into the front window of the house across the street. Yeah, law enforcement can pay for access to those. At least 1300 agencies already do when I last looked. And yes, this footage is used with facial recognition to track people.
Fun fact! That 4k 60fps doorbell camera is almost CERTAINLY good enough to allow lip reading. Even at a distance. And not the 'pay a professional only when it is important to an ongoing investigation' kind. More like the 'Computer Vision is SO cool! I wonder if we can use Machine Learning to do this?' kind.
All of these things (and more) really highlight the frank discussion we need to have as a society about privacy. What does it even mean? What do we WANT it to mean.
Our privacy laws were written in a totally different world.
They were written before your showering habits could be tracked based on your electronic water meter.
https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/McNabb/BH_US_11_McNabb_Wireless_Water_Meter_WP.pdf
They were written before facial recognition, ALPR, your cell phone, and even the sensors in your car that monitor your TIRE PRESSURE, made it possible to easily track the location, route, and passengers in a vehicle in bulk.
http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~gruteser/papers/xu_tpms10.pdf
Yeah thats right Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS). And they are required BY LAW (TREAD Act) which reached completion in 100% of new vehicles sold in the US in 2014.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire-pressure_monitoring_system#Firestone_recall_and_legal_mandates
They were written before your grocery store installed sensors along the isle that listen to the bluetooth data and Wifi network join requests that your phone sends, so that they can tell that you stood in front of the cold medicine for 38 seconds. And that you ended up purchasing [BRAND] because they know the exact path you took through the store and know which transaction you were, even if you didn't use a membership card and payed in cash. Oh, and you drove into the parking lot from the South entrance in a [YEAR] [MAKE] [MODEL] [COLOR] vehicle with the [PLATE] tags. And this is before you AGREE to give them your real time location 24/7 by installing their app. And yes, they sell this information. Because $$.
https://www.kiplinger.com/article/spending/T057-C000-S002-retailers-tracking-your-cell-phone-signals.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluetooth-wireless-tracking-privacy.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/how-retailers-can-track-your-movements-inside-their-stores.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/retailers-tracking-shoppers-locations-real-world/story?id=47825826
(Yeah. Some of the previous examples have a couple sources talking about the use of a particular system. But every major news outlet seems have done a piece on retail stores tracking customers in the last few years. It is literally everywhere. Probably every major store you use. But people don't seem to care as long as they get that $0.15 off their next coffee.)
But all of this data is getting anonymized so it isn't really a privacy problem anymore right?
It's not like they have your name and address or anything (Well, Law Enforcement Does. But they are TOTALLY trustworthy. Right?)
You are just an anonymous number in several databases. That can be correlated.
A totally anonymous [AGE] [GENDER] person.
Who wears [SIZE] jeans and drives a [YEAR] [MAKE] [MODEL] [COLOR] car.
A car that they drive along [ROUTE] and park at [GPS LOCATION] during business hours 5 days a week.
An anonymous person who spends every evening between 11:30pm and 07:30am at [GPS LOCATION]. (Is it your address? WHO KNOWS! It's ANONYMOUS!)
That walks their [BREED] dog along [ROUTE] every evening at [TIME].
But that 'anonymized' data could be describing ANYONE. Don't worry.