Facial Recognition

sic0048 said:

This is a tough question, and one the courts will be struggling with for a while.  (All my comments are based on the fact that I'm in the US.  Laws are different from country to country). 
 
On the one hand you don't exactly have any sense of privacy when it comes to your face anywhere but your own private property.  Therefore it is not illegal to use cameras in public locations and recordings wouldn't be illegal either.  
 
On the other hand, police generally need a probable cause to conduct searches. 
 
So is running a legally obtained digital face through a criminal database legal or illegal?  
 
Personally I think that unless people are notified that facial recognition software is being used, then it is illegal.  However, if there are clearly visible and readable signs/notices that facial rec is being used (like at the Super Bowl, or other high profile events and secure locations) then it is OK.

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upstatemike said:

Police don't need a warrant to run the plate on your car if you drive past them because it is plainly visible. How is a face different except you have the legal option to cover your face if you want but not the right to obscure your license plate.

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LarrylLix said:

Facial recognition is scary!
 
Some testers report initial trials can detect sexual preference, criminal attitude thinking, and various other aspects with alarming accuracy in testing done by those involved.
 
Here come the "invasion of privacy" protests once the masses discover some of these capabilities.

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xlurkr said:

Another difference is that you can choose to own and register a car, or not.  If you choose to do so, you are subject to a whole bunch of additional laws that govern ownership and usage.
 
You can't choose not to look like how you look.  At any given time, that is.
 
-Tom

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RAL said:

One difference is that when the police get your plate number, there is a high probability of them reading it correctly.  With facial recognition, there is a high margin of error.  While facial recognition is pretty reliable under perfect conditions (e.g comparing a passport photo to a file picture), the accuracy drops off dramatically under less than perfect conditions, such as with images from surveillance cameras. 

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upstatemike said:

But if it is not accurate then the person who gets violated is the one who was incorrectly identified from my facial photo, not me from having my face analyzed without my permission. (Not supporting the police state, just exploring the obstacles in trying to challenge it.)

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RAL said:

I'm not sure I follow who is the bad guy and who is the innocent victim in your example, since you used my/me for both.

But how about the case where a surveillance camera that observes you walking down the street incorrectly identifies you as a criminal or terrorist, and the next thing you know you are being dragged off by the police?

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RAL said:

I'm not sure I follow who is the bad guy and who is the innocent victim in your example, since you used my/me for both.

But how about the case where a surveillance camera that observes you walking down the street incorrectly identifies you as a criminal or terrorist, and the next thing you know you are being dragged off by the police?

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upstatemike said:

My point was if I am incorrectly identified nobody is going to come to my house and arrest me, they will go arrest the person who's info incorrectly popped up on their screen from scanning my face. In your example there is a real time false positive as I go through a security checkpoint or something but this would point to the file of some terrorist, including a picture, which will not match my face so it will be immediately obvious that it was a false positive. I suppose there is some risk from doppleganger "look alikes" where they can't tell the difference between you and the bad guy even when they have you in custody but I'm having a hard time accepting this as a real risk. 

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ano said:

I'm not sure how state-of-the-art Apple's and Google's Facial Recognition is in their photo organization programs, but its more funny than anything else.  You basically start naming the people in your pictures, and the programs attempt to identify the remaining people. I say "people" lightly because both Google's and Apple's program often identify dogs in the picture as people. The programs identify some, but they are more wrong than correct.

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