https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7036141/Police-fine-pedestrian-90-facial-recognition-camera-row.html

Bloke detained by police and fined for having the effrontery to not want to be filmed by police facial recognition van and arguing against it…

Just the other day…
San Francisco, long at the heart of the technology revolution, took a stand against potential abuse on Tuesday by banning the use of facial recognition software by the police and other agencies.

Does seem a bit OTT, although swearing at the police is not generally a good idea. What was the fine actually for, a public order offence?

I’m fine with facial recognition systems (full disclosure I work for a company involved in this, but not on the app side itself) the problem is it will take years to develop them and increase the accuracy before they’re truly useful (ANPR has proved it’s worth already) but a lot of that development can only be done in the field.

it will take years to develop them and increase the accuracy before they’re truly useful … but a lot of that development can only be done in the field.

the problem is that, like we’ve seen with autonomous vehicles the ‘this is new technology you can’t trust it’ message does not always get to the end users.

also, given how China is using this technology I can see a *lot* of moral issues around state monitoring of individuals and, frankly, the more the western democracies seem to elect authoritarian and right wing leaders the more there are opportunities for misuse of bulk data collection on individuals.

What was the fine actually for, a public order offence?

Of course. And no doubt likely to cause ‘alarm and distress’ to the delicate group of coppers surrounding this dangerous individual who walked past them with his jumper over his chin.

I’m fine with facial recognition systems

I had my degree level capped for refusing to work on this stuff back in the early 90s. It will screw our society in ways we haven’t even imagined yet.

‘The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.’

Even if you’re totally fine with the civil liberties infringements, you should still probably be a bit concerned about the fact that it doesn’t actually work.