Facial recognition technology - good or not?

[razz]

When I read this article in the Christian Science Monitor https://www.csmonitor.com/Daily/2019...620&id=1091076 I was surprised at how advanced the technology had become.

Have to think about the need for a moratorium on its use. What do you think of it and its use?

Quotes:
Currently there are no federal laws governing how law enforcement may use facial recognition, nor is it clear how many of the country’s roughly 18,000 police departments are currently using it. But the technology is inexpensive and user-friendly: In April, The New York Times surveilled a park in midtown Manhattan for less than $100 and were able to successfully identify passersby...

Cities offer an ability to reinvent oneself, to break with the past to a certain extent, and the ability to do this might be crucial to some peoples’ mental well-being. In a paper published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Stanford University psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude argued that establishing a “modern privacy bill of rights” should be a public health priority.

“Privacy mediates some very important psychological processes,” he says. “When you look at mechanisms such as recovery after a setback for rejuvenation or catharsis … all have been shown to require privacy.”

Dr. Aboujaoude cited the positive public health implications of a European Union law that created in 2014 a “right to be forgotten” online.

[catherine]

I am starting to get a little alarmed how difficult it is to be truly anonymous in this culture, or to be able resist being seen everywhere, having our browsing history up for grabs, and having our preferences and proclivities tallied and used to direct our consumption.

I just read this article about Surveillance Capitalism.. very interesting read and totally believable:

For 19 years, private companies practicing an unprecedented economic logic that I call surveillance capitalism have hijacked the Internet and its digital technologies. Invented at Google beginning in 2000, this new economics covertly claims private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Some data are used to improve services, but the rest are turned into computational products that predict your behavior. These predictions are traded in a new futures market, where surveillance capitalists sell certainty to businesses determined to know what we will do next. This logic was first applied to finding which ads online will attract our interest, but similar practices now reside in nearly every sector — insurance, retail, health, education, finance and more — where personal experience is secretly captured and computed for behavioral predictions. By now it is no exaggeration to say that the Internet is owned and operated by private surveillance capital.

In the competition for certainty, surveillance capitalists learned that the most predictive data come not just from monitoring but also from modifying and directing behavior. For example, by 2013, Facebook had learned how to engineer subliminal cues on its pages to shape users’ real-world actions and feelings. Later, these methods were combined with real-time emotional analyses, allowing marketers to cue behavior at the moment of maximum vulnerability. These inventions were celebrated for being both effective and undetectable. Cambridge Analytica later demonstrated that the same methods could be employed to shape political rather than commercial behavior.

The application of facial recognition to be able to identify criminals is a double-edged sword. A lot of information can be caught on cameras, and may help avoid arresting innocent people. But the framework of the argument is much bigger... We are entering a whole new world.

As I read that article on surveillance capitalism, it freaked me out a little. I don't like being an open book for anyone who wants to "know" me without my permission.

[Ultralight]

I am starting to get a little alarmed how difficult it is to be truly anonymous in this culture, or to be able resist being seen everywhere, having our browsing history up for grabs, and having our preferences and proclivities tallied and used to direct our consumption.

Obviously you have something to hide.

[happystuff]

Obviously you have something to hide.

Or simply wants some privacy or anonymity. Believe it or not, not everyone wants "15 minutes of fame".

Myself, I'm tired of being "targeted" by companies for things they may think that I want but that I really don't want. As many times as I have said to remove my number from their call list, I am constantly asked if I want solar panels or to save 15% on my electric bill.

[Ultralight]

Or simply wants some privacy or anonymity

Exactly what someone with something to hide would say.

[catherine]

Obviously you have something to hide.

Absolutely not. I just don't like the idea of Big Brother or Big Other peering at me, or the collective "we," behind some lens like Ed Harris on the Truman Show.

[iris lilies]

Absolutely not. I just don't like the idea of Big Brother or Big Other peering at me, or the collective "we," behind some lens like Ed Harris on the Truman Show.

I took that as a smartassed joke.

[catherine]

I took that as a smartassed joke.

UL's comment or my response?

[Ultralight]

Absolutely not. I just don't like the idea of Big Brother or Big Other peering at me, or the collective "we," behind some lens like Ed Harris on the Truman Show.

You will certainly end up in Room 101.

[razz]

My concern is that an image can be captured and planted on another's body in a situation where I have never been or encountered. Images are evidence. Social media can destroy a life as a result. It is not so much that I have nothing to hide as what can be created. It is a lot more complex issue than simple privacy concerns and if I have nothing to hide, I have no problem.