Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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> You’re kidding right? There’s multiple privacy problems.

No, not kidding.

There's a legitimate government interest in identifying people entering and leaving a country. This isn't Facebook, or even cameras on street corners -- this is a government responsible for enforcing legitimate immigration policies at a legitimate location (the border) for a wide variety of reasons (safety, economic, etc.), which absolutely requires knowing who is who.

I don't know any serious thinkers who claim otherwise.

And I don't see a particularly big difference between getting my photo taken for official ID's every few years (passport, driver's license, visas, etc.) and having it taken when I need to prove my identity with one of those.

The government already has photos of me. They already know my flight. How could it possibly affect my privacy that they also have a photo of me when I get on the plane?

I'm just not seeing it.

(Unless you're opposed to the whole concept of passports and photo ID's in general, but that would be a pretty radical position.)

You're correct—it is reasonable for governments to require a photo of yourself to associate with your passport. But it is not necessary to take a new photo every time you interact with the government. That's overreach, or at minimum wasting taxpayer money on unneeded photo storage.

And I'd wager the reason they're doing this is because while a human can make a decent determination of whether the photo matches the person in front of them, computers need a larger sample to get the error rate low enough for broad use. That's great for CBP and airlines that can employ fewer personnel, and great for travelers who can breeze throughª boarding and customs. But imagine how it will go when you are one of those 0.1% errors and the system refuses to let you in.

ªassuming companies/govts decide to increase throughput instead of decreasing cost, or that it's such an improvement that it can do both.

What is the problem with a new photo being taken? You say it like it is obvious but you haven’t actually made your thinking known.

Wasting taxpayer money in photo storage is a laugh. That isn’t the same category of argument as the idea that is is “overreach.”

I think the issue here is not where we are at but the risks inherent.

It would be entirely possible to have a benevolent dictator, he might think he is doing everything for the benefit of the people - and he might even be right. This situation is fine, the issue is what happens when that dictator dies.

Similarly with mass surveillance, if used with restraint and for the right reasons it could be completely fine. The problem is what happens if the situation changes, there is now a massively powerful tool available with little recourse for change.

I think the issue is not the situation as it is _now_, it's the risk potential it inherently has that is terrifying.

>It would be entirely possible to have a benevolent dictator

You lost me at this straw man. You are tossing around nebulous and vague concerns. Would it be fair to say your concern is potential abuse of your photos by a government entity?

I'd call it an analogy rather than a straw man. The formula is [now thing] is safe in [now context] but [future context] != [now context] so is [future thing] safe?

It's fair to say my concern is potential abuse of any system in a fluctuating context.

Not the person you are asking, but as someone who shares a similar feeling of distrust to authority, I'll provide you with my point of view:

It's not just the picture, it's the databases and the veracity of mass data base mining that can come from it.

To better explain:

Right now powerful entities have files on me. My actives. And yours. The collection, use and sharing of these files between these powerful entities violate our rights, even if only in intent (though arguably more)

Right now these files are mostly loosely created, probabilistic based associations.

If you've ever used any ID verification systems, you'd understand this (think lexisnexis)

So, they sort of know, but don't fully. Good. Even if these entities have shown the desire to violate my rights, they can't do it well because of issues related to data collection. I like that.

So the way I see these advancements is... great, now these entities are getting mass fed pictures that are 99.999% a correct association. This could be used for facial recognition software tie ins to say, CCTV systems. As stated, you need more than one picture to increase accuracy.

I don't want them to have it.

Right now, their interest (in violating my rights for profit and power) and my interest (in staking claim to the rights my forebearers fought for) are oposite.

They aren’t violating your rights. At least not in an obvious way. The government’s use of your photo ID is not controllable with the non-existent privacy law the US has not enacted.

However your concern about building a face database is valid. Note that China somehow can do it with only your Wechat profile. Maybe they are better at ML than the US. They are already automatically fining jaywalkers by face ID. And I assume worse.

> They aren’t violating your rights. At least not in an obvious way.

Easy to say. How about evidence. I offer all the evidence from Snowden and other whistle blowers to beg the contrary.

To me, it's very obvious unless you are intentionally not wanting to see it.

Notice I said if only in intent, I'm not here to split hairs on legalese. Intent in things like the Fourth Amendment to me is very clear.

I live in an area where when I go for weekend drives, I have to stop at border patrol check points where I am forced to stop and answer officer's questions. I'm not even traveling between states and I'm over 50 miles from the boarder in those points.

Trust me, I understand the legalese they use to justify it. They define a border zone that I think goes a hundred or two miles in land, which means it covers something like 70% of major American metro areas and allows the gov to basically conduct illegal searches by creating a loop hole.

But that is the point. My rights are routinely violated with impunity. People who have stood up to this get literally crushed. Clear whistle blowers are declared spies. It's them working to undermine my rights. Rights that people literally died so I could have. I think it's wrong to let those rights go. It's why I support things like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

They say they're not storing the new photos. Just matching them and discarding.

They say but they could store photos by mistake. Especially if those are high-quality photos suitable for face recognition.

After Snowden you trust this?

I have to agree with crazygringo. In my home state there are cameras set up at border patrol stations near the Mexican border already filming video of my car and the occupants within everytime you come in from Mexico, and this has been the case for years.

This is nothing new, only new for people that don’t live near a physical border in the US.

The government clearly has missed a few people coming in and out on Visas. What is a way better than the current border protection method that also protects everyone’s privacy?

Isn’t a passport good enough? Why do I need to help train their ML model if a manual check works?

Out of interest, how would you argue against someone using your justifications for facial recognition on street corners, which you seem to think is a step too far?

Would your argument against street corner recognition systems have been different before and after facial recognition was required at the border?

You mention that having your photo taken at passport control is “pretty normal”. Do you remember when it was not? Would you be more concerned if we had gone straight from a situation where no pictures were taken, to rolling out a facial recognition system at the border?

Parent's argument is that the government already has photos of all international travelers and the government already has a written record of each international arrival and departure. So, the delta between a written record of border crossing and a photo record of border cross is the government having additional photos of somebody they already have at least one photo of. For many people, the difference between a single photo and many photos is minor.

Government does not already have photos of all individuals who cross street corners (there is no legal requirement to have ID) and government does not record a list of names of each person who crosses the street. So, cameras at street corners have a much larger delta - between no photos and photos and between no internal location records and having internal location records.

Was this an international flight?

Yes, according to the first tweet.

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