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> Imagine it's 1995. The Web gets banned for five years so that a government committee can meet to figure out what could possibly go wrong with that technology.

Fortunately we already know what can go wrong with facial recognition technology. We have China, and we have American and Israeli and various Asian marketing startups inventing abuse after abuse after abuse. So there is already a test bed in place; it doesn't have to be the entire world.

As a general principle, it may not be a bad idea itself. Let a part of the world play with the new toys and other part observe, after that either the tech will be exported to holdouts (the control group, if you like), or the regulations will be exported to the experimenters.

But the context in those countries is too different to ours to come to any meaningful conclusion about what should be allowed "here" (I'm assuming UK + US mainly).

The vector of anglo world isn't too promising right now either.

I don't remember stating otherwise.

> Imagine it's 1995. The Web gets banned for five years so that a government committee can meet to figure out what could possibly go wrong with that technology.

This analogy doesn't work because the web is something I can choose to use or not, whereas facial recognition isn't.

> But as a general principle I think problems should be solved when they arise. Solving imagined problems before they arise is impossible and prone to misuse of power and influence.

The problems aren't imagined; they're very real and already present in other tech.

Also, "figure out problems when they arise" is rather naïve; history has shown that corporations will do anything to make a buck and will lie and bribe to get away with it. So this strategy didn't always work so well with past.

>This analogy doesn't work because the web is something I can choose to use or not

You cannot choose whether or not others use Facebook and get manipulated by micro targeted ads into making stupid political decisions. And yet you are affected by those decisions.

You cannot choose whether or not all the services you depend on are only available online while the physical branches in your neighborhood are closing.

Most technologies have systemic effects that individuals cannot choose freely. Isn't that exactly why some people argue in favour of "let's stop and think before we jump"?

>Also, "figure out problems when they arise" is rather naïve

On the contrary, I think it's very naive to think we could just stop the clock and think very hard until we have figured out all the consequences of the technologies we are introducing. We have to live with the possibility of bad surprises and try to deal with them as good as we can.

>history has shown that corporations will do anything to make a buck and will lie and bribe to get away with it.

But that is not just true for change. It's also true for blocking change. Would oil companies not go to great lengths to stop us transitioning to renewable energy for instance?

Just look at what's happening in the US right now. You have an administration that thinks climate change is a hoax and that we should dig up more coal and pump more oil and gas. And yet the transition to renewables is in full swing.

Would you really want this administration to be able to press the stop button on all new renewables development based on some fanciful claims about potential future risks?

>The problems aren't imagined;

Which problems? I was talking about a general principle not about face recognition. I did say myself that I think face recognition and similar tech needs to be regulated in some shape or form.

The difference here is that the EU bans something here that some of its governments actually want (e.g. the german minister of internal affairs said he'd like to role out surveillance that can do that).

I understand that things that are new should not be banned per default (as they aren't) — however if it is quite obvious beforehand they might hurt civil rights I think we can make an exception.

As opposed to the Web, facial recognition barely has any positive use for an individual.