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Comment by bsenftner | Hacker News Reader

It is not so important that the fire marshal has facial recognition, because the office chose that option because access was then free of charge and a mere handshake to them. If not the fire marshal, some independent 3rd party. This is a known trivial loophole to facial recognition bans. (Former lead dev of globally leading FR system.)

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Sorry, can you clarify this? I’m not understanding. I think you’re saying

- the fire marshal happened to be the route chosen in this case

- but there are many other routes

- so the fire marshal detail is kindof insignificant.

Is that a correct understanding? If so, I still wonder why the fire marshal has access?

I think what he’s saying is if the police department is trying to identify a person in a photo, then anyone from the public can try to help them out.

Whether those people use facial recognition software or not isn’t exactly relevant to the law because the police didn’t use it. And it’s legal for other people to use it. As far as the police are concerned, they could have just been the person’s neighbor…

Fire marshals are investigative, and under less scrutiny. That specific one probably just wanted it. If one wants Clearview FR, there is very little beyond ethics and the state of mind to understand the ethics preventing anyone from running Clearview FR.

It is not so important that the fire marshal has facial recognition, because the police department chose to ask the fire department because access was then free of charge and a mere handshake to them. If not the fire marshal, the police department would have chosen some independent 3rd party. This is a known trivial loophole to facial recognition bans. (Former lead dev of globally leading facial recognition system.)

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