Thanks to facial recognition technology, a sprawling, privacy-wrecking surveillance apparatus now surrounds us. LaneBrown reports on what's become a full-grown modern worry
Taylor Swift has used facial recognition at concerts to screen for stalkers. Photo: Gareth Cattermole/TAS18/Getty Images for TAS/2018 Gareth Cattermole/TAS18 On Friday, August 16, at around 7 a.m., a pair of suspicious appliances was found on a subway platform at the Fulton Street station in lower Manhattan and, an hour later, a third near a garbage can on West 16th Street.
We also heard that spooked lawmakers banned police use of facial recognition in Oakland; Berkeley; Somerville, Massachusetts; and San Francisco, of all places, where Orwellian tech products are the hometown industry. But we heard a lot about facial recognition’s unreliability, and that misidentifications are common, especially for people of color, and that the London Metropolitan Police’s system has an appalling failure rate, and that Amazon’s software once mistook a bunch of seemingly upstanding congresspeople for criminal suspects. Maybe that meant, we hoped, that the technology was still only half-baked and that our worries were premature, and that one big lawsuit could make it all go away.
Some companies asked you to upload your vacation photos and tag yourself in them. And others asked for a selfie in exchange for an autogenerated cartoon caricature of you or to tell you which celebrity or Renaissance painting you most resemble.
For facial-recognition software to recognize you in the wild, it needs to be connected to a database with your photo and identifying information in it. Unless you’re Elena Ferrante or a member of Daft Punk, and maybe even if you are them, there’s a good chance you’re in a database or two. All of this would be bothersome enough in a world with perfect data security or one in which you could get a new face as easily as your bank replaces a stolen debit card. But we live in neither of those worlds, and faces have already been hacked. In June, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that hackers had breached the servers of one of its subcontractors and stolen travelers’ face data, some of which reportedly turned up on the dark web.
Commercial facial recognition has been around for years, but since there aren’t any laws requiring anyone to disclose that they’re using it on you, it’s impossible to say how widespread it is. Which means any camera you pass could be recognizing your face. As visitors enter the building, the cameras scan their faces, and Face-Six’s software searches them against a database provided by the local sheriff’s office. According to Weil, the Warehouse had 72,000 visits in 2018, and facial recognition managed to keep out two sex offenders: “We just politely told them, ‘We’re a youth center. You’re not allowed to be here,’” he says. “I had one false ID, but the gentleman was very understanding of the situation.
Retailers don’t need to run facial-recognition software on their premises to benefit from it. Apple denies using the technology in its brick-and-mortar locations, but in one confusing incident last year, a New York teenager was arrested and charged with stealing from multiple Apple Stores when police said he was identified by facial recognition.
Dark skin isn’t the only thing facial recognition fails with. In NIST’s tests, it found that even top-performing algorithms had trouble identifying photos of the same person at different ages and were often unable to tell the difference between twins — not just identical twins but fraternal ones of the same sex, too. And performance depends on the clarity of the photos being used.
If Larry Griffin II’s story typifies a best-case use of facial recognition for law enforcement, Kaitlin Jackson, a public defense attorney with the Bronx Defenders, tells me one that exposes its drawbacks. Jackson represented a man who’d been arrested for the theft of socks from a T.J. Maxx store in February 2018, supposedly after brandishing a box cutter at a security guard.
Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and others claim their software can guess which emotion you’re feeling based on your facial expressions — or in some cases microexpressions, under the logic that even if you attempt to hide your feelings, certain facial muscles are beyond your control.
Indonesia Berita Terbaru, Indonesia Berita utama
Similar News:Anda juga dapat membaca berita serupa dengan ini yang kami kumpulkan dari sumber berita lain.
The Best Face Oils for a Gorgeous GlowBrowse through ET Style's favorite picks of the best facial oils for extra hydration and glow.
Baca lebih lajut »
L'Oreal, Nestle score big at Alibaba's Singles' Day shopping festL'Oreal, Nestle score big at Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's SinglesDay shopping fest by brendagoh_ horwitzjosh
Baca lebih lajut »
Dream Kardashian Celebrated Her 3rd Birthday With a Helicopter Ride From Aunt Kylie JennerBirthday gifts are different when you're a Kardashian. 🎂
Baca lebih lajut »
Reese LaFlare's Journey Has No End In SightSkater-turned-rapper REESElaflare is right where he needs to be. He talked to us about his debut album FinalFantasy, anime, and looking forward
Baca lebih lajut »