There's probably a legal distinction, but personally I really don't want, say, my grocery store tracking how long I spent in which aisles to add to my advertising profile.

(Yes, I use rewards cards, but I have the option to not enter my phone number and pay cash if I want to exclude a particular purchase from that dataset.)

Not really, it's antisocial behavior either way. This is just splitting hairs anywhere but a courtroom.

Anyway, a mall is a public space in the context of recording without consent. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. The law needs to be updated to reflect the vastly more invasive technology we have now compared to when these statutes were written to reflect actual social mores.

I don't know anyone who has been affected by "traffic violence".

As big of a source of death it is, it's still an infinitesimally small one in he grand scheme of things.

Maybe because it's ignorant. The answer from salawat has some knowledge behind it.

Very well put. People use the word "right" in sloppy ways, basically just "I like this."

The government is protected for speech related to its duties, in clearly spelled out ways.

Exactly. If it's news to people then they clearly had some expectation. But I think it's easy to fool yourself into thinking this isn't true post hoc knowing and especially if you're someone who visits HN and is more keen on the details.

I think it's also worth noting that most people don't want this to happen even when they do know. Of course some people don't care but even they do when they learn how it's being used

>Rights are 'god given.'

I'm not religious anymore, but wasn't it Paul who made the argument that we should respect temporal authority and their temporal laws, because it was God Himself who allowed them to become an authority in the first place?

>fgc-9

Isn't it a bit too big to carry concealed for self-defense purposes?

That aside, don't 3d printed guns jam much more frequently than "real" guns?

So, for example, if you're in a life and death situation, and you live in a country that doesn't allow the concealed carrying of guns, and your opponent is a mafia member - who is, for all practical purposes, untouchable by the corrupt class of bureaucrats who are there to purportedly enforce and carry out the law (like the beauty of a country i find myself in) - and has a "real" gun pointed at you, and all you have is little better than a glorified plastic bb gun (because these days, unless you have a father or grandfather who had bought a gun 20 years ago to give to you today, buying a real gun is not as trivial as you make it sound, at least where I am), who wins nine times out of ten?

Like, sure, I've read articles about how there are resistant forces in some south east asian country (I forgot which one exactly and im too lazy to look it up right now, nor is it important to what im about to say) that are fighting a dictatorial military regime, and the resistant forces do use 3d printed guns; but the only reason they're doing so is because, one, before the conflict happened the citizenry didn't have a legal "right" to buy guns and so at the beginning of the conflict they had no real amount of "real" guns to use, and, two, they kill the oppressive military officers and take their "real" guns because they're just better.

But keep in mind, they're fighting an actual war, and don't have to conceal their guns (3d guns are too big to conceal in everyday settings), and two, even if someones 3d gun jams, there will be someone else with them to shoot at the opposite side trying to kill you (i.e not something likely to happen in a country that is not the US, where people aren't allowed to carry around guns for self-defense purposes)

I almost thought you were going to present an argument as to how the government could possibly have no speech "rights" in the first place

I too find the domestic TSA photo opt‐out to be quite painless. I recommend simply saying “I’d like to opt out of the photo” as soon as you walk to the platform, because saying so as soon as possible minimizes the chance of holding up the line and irritating the agent. The only observable difference in processing is that the agent takes my ID, holds it up, and compares it to my face.

CBP is another matter. When returning from abroad I find their agents to be more aggressive or snarky when I (politely) opt out, although I wouldn’t say it’s gone as far as retaliation. I often get asked why I’m opting out, and sometimes they follow that with additional questions. Several times I’ve received a standard spiel explaining that the photo is not stored permanently or transmitted; the vibe I get is that they’re trained to respond this way to “kooks.”

My comment was based on previous discussions like this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41052152

It is possible that people's experience vary. But unless we know opt out is something that is done quickly as a routine, and running into clueless TSA agent is a rare exception, I would not try that.

In Europe you might end up on the long queue with the non EU residents fighting about their place in the row if you opt not to go through biometrics check or you've got a non biometric ID. Some of the machines are also badly designed because 6'4" tall people have to bend their knees so that the scanner can level to their face.

I've had the same experience with the opt out in the pre-check line.

The TSA scanners use a hi res stereoscopic camera to take a 3D photo of your facial features. It's not the same as your passport photo

> An isolated individual opt-out has the uninspiring cost/risk-vs-benefit/principle tradeoff others have mentioned.

One way to shift the equation is to shift understanding of the tradeoff:

Some minor inconvenience - I think none in this case - for freedom and other human rights is hardly a tradeoff that needs much consideration. Honestly, I think it's people following the herd to the cultural trend of despair, powerlessness, and worship of strongmen - a incredible reversal from American individualism I'd read has dominated the culture for centuries.

More practically, a little courage and action has a large effect on others. Imagine you are in a meeting where something obviously morally wrong is likely to be approved, and there is pressure to go along:

Imagine nobody raises their hand to object. Imagine the despair and powerlessness everyone would feel, that it just passes without objection, that everyone is cowed.

Imagine one person raises their hand. Not only does it greatly reduce the feeling of despair and powerlessness, it heartens people, and even more it makes it far easier for a second person to raise their hand, or for others to object to this issue or to others later.

Imagine two raise their hand ...

I walked up to the window (into the view of the camera) he said "Welcome home $NAME" as put my passport on the counter!

The camera was right by the counter, not behind the officer.

Yes this seems variable based on point of entry. I had (have?) a flagged passport for awhile and I never got the oh shit face from CBP until they scanned my passport.

I have no idea and don't know the difference but I could say the same thing of the camera they used to take my passport photo or my state ID.

the ones i’ve seen claim they aren’t storing the data after verifying the identity

TSA Precheck lines are excessively long now, to say nothing about the normie lines which probably violate some population density laws of the universe. Meanwhile the Digital ID line is (at least for now) practically empty.

So that's an easy 10~20 minutes shaved off. Once I'm ushered through to screening I have the same convenience benefits as TSA Precheck since it's a prerequisite for Digital ID anyway.

Yeah I think this is kinda the danger of these types of systems, and why I don't want to work on them anymore. While I think there are a lot of good uses to this tech, it also has the power to do much more harm and the way I've seen it used even in democratic societies makes me uncomfortable about authoritarian overreach. I could not see a way this can be used in a privacy preserving manner, even for things as simple as counting number of patrons in a store[0]. Right now, I don't feel comfortable furthering this technology in the US, not to mention how I saw it being used elsewhere[1]. I'm sure if you take some time thinking about how the tech could be abused you would find a lot of ways. But it is up to you to decide if it is worth it after doing that exercise (your mind might even change later).

I think this is one of the difficult things about creating things. It is easy to get caught up in the benefits of a technology and how it can be used for good. But technology isn't good or bad, it is a tool. Like any tool, you need to consider how it will be used, and that means how it will be abused. My undergrad was in physics, and this lesson is often taught when you get to atomics (or maybe because my advisor worked at Los Alamos and with many of the people who built the atomic bombs). Physics tends to not hide the skeletons in the closet because atomic weapons. But I think CS still does and maybe we haven't caught up to how influential our work is in modern day. How software can (and does) kill people. Or maybe it is the abstraction of software, working at a high level it is easy to feel disconnected. Either way, I think we need to tread more carefully and just make sure we're concerned about ethics. It is a personal decision where the lines are drawn, but they can't be ignored. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? Unfortunately evil isn't only created by evil men, but often good men with good intentions.

FWIW, I'm all for the intent. But I question if there are other ways to solve these issues. But that may require a more complex and nuanced approach[2]. But if enforcement is already a problem, then I think there are bigger problems at play that this technical solution might make worse. Unfortunately as we advance the world gets more complex haha

[0] You can get pretty good if you do upfront processing to blur people, but that first means you need to detect people lol. So this would need to be done on device (as in, the camera itself. Which is possible btw).

[1] I saw a lot of videos from India (as well as the whole subcontinent and South East Asia), where the customers were trying to prevent theft (good usage), but there were some other things that had me concerned and were being hinted at. I also think one big difference is that I appeared to be the only person on my team that would look at data we were processing. Not to snoop or be invasive, but because this is the best way to solve data processing problems; you need to check your assumptions, learn what is creating errors, find things you didn't consider, and all that. To be good at ML you can't just pipe in data and expect results, and you shouldn't treat the algorithms like black boxes. While they aren't transparent ("white boxes"), that doesn't mean they're completely opaque either (and we're learning more every day).

[2] I think one key piece of information is that we need to ask why things like littering and theft is less common in richer neighborhoods. Or at least by their residents. Personally, my belief is that this is more to do with a personal safety net. It's easy for ethics to be eroded when you're worried about your next meal or being able to afford rent. These are obviously harder issues to resolve, but I think they are worth addressing. Because I think lifting up the quality of life of the lowest class of people benefits everyone. A rising tide lifts all ships, and I do believe it even lifts the biggest ships more.

I'm reminded of ceausescu. Everyone agreed, up until they suddenly didn't and he and his wife didn't even seem to get it until they were lined up and shot.

I think it takes both agreement and desperation for that kind of thing to happen, though. Comfortable people don't tend to buck the people who can freeze their bank accounts in any serious way at simultaneous scale, even when they're in mass disagreement.

Interesting opinion but there is no dystopian literature i know of that worries about banning mass surveillance. Mass surveillance on the other hand features very prominently.

And a valid news/press activity protected by the first amendment

>Recording things is generally interpreted as a form of speech.

Then make it not so, we aren't forced to live with the status quo for eternity.

The law wouldn't be banning people recording faces. It would be much more specific: corporations can't record peoples faces at a mass scale to log them away and sell the data for a profit. If there's any edge cases to this, then let the courts handle it. We let the courts sort out grey areas already, that's their job.

Commercial speech is substantially less protected under First Amendment case law. You can't prohibit random individuals from declaring themselves a citizen journalist and recording people, but I think it would be entirely possible to pass a law saying private companies may not assemble facial recognition databases for sale to third parties.

Resolving this pathological impasse is straightforward - differentiate between personal activity and commercial activity. Individuals recording the police, other people happenstance, or even spending a considerable amount of their personal time compiling a self-administered facial recognition database of people - fine. Businesses (or really, entire industries) creating surveillance databases that would make a Stasi agent blush, likely by paying the salaries of many people to do this, and likely selling [access to] the databases to pay for it all - not fine. Societally, we've basically been hoodwinked with this temporarily embarassed millionaires fallacy - scale itself creates logical contradictions of our rights and we need to attack this head on.