Clearview AI being used to identify Capitol rioters (opens in new tab)

The sad thing is precisely that no-one cares about "re-integrating" proponents of right-leaning views "to society". Everyone is talking about forcibly deplatforming them all out of society which, even if successful, will only make them far more marginalized and far more open to dangerous, violent extremism. Is this really what we need? We've had enough divisiveness already, so why not try a more constructive approach?

Thank you for the info, I never knew about those two events!

> "From 1945 to 1950, the Allied powers detained over 400,000 Germans in internment camps in extrajudicial fashion in the name of denazification."

I'm more concerned with the data being in the hand of an unaccountable private company than with the facial recognition itself to be honest. I remember that Clearview AI itself was associated with far-right individuals last year, so having them police a far-right insurrection from their personal black box system is more than suspect.

If it happens, it should be done by an institution that is under the supervision of congress and staffed by public servants. This emerging, largely unaccountable surveillance industrial complex with ties to extremist political figures worries me more.

> Is it that different to wanted posters or publishing cctv of a crime?

I think so. That mechanism is judicially auditable. The AI is not. We should not be arresting people based on the output of an unauditable mechanism.

You're right, I think a better phrasing would be "supposed to".

Edited the original.

Identifying terrorists is a positive outcome.

Still without honestly. Relative OSINT laypersons on different social media seem to have little problem identifying terrorists without facial recognition. The fact that they publicised their own multi-angle, high resolution video surveillance in real time seems to help.

Hopefully there will be an AI Judge soon, so we do not need to worry about the ethics.

Comparing cancel culture to China's social credit system is ... not a great choice, in my opinion.

Regardless, I've had this theory about cancel culture. I don't necessarily agree with cancel culture, for the aforementioned problem of it being mob social justice. But it seems to me like it has arisen out of a failure by the real justice system. Issues like sexism in particular, which affect half of the population, have been ignored and marginalized. It took how long for Bill Cosby's heinous crimes to finally be prosecuted? More over, how likely would it have been for his crimes to yet again have been swept under the rug had cancel culture not fostered an environment where the victims felt comfortable coming forward?

The very topic we're discussing, the terrorist attack on our Capitol, is another example of racist failures of our police force.

So is it really any surprise that society has collectively taken matters into their owns hands?

Again, I don't _agree_ with the idea that society at large should pass their own judgements. I'd rather the courts do that. But they haven't been. And aren't. And we just suffered through one of the worst years on record of blatant police abuse and court inaction.

If we want to get rid of cancel culture I think we need to fix our policing and justice system to the extent that society feels they don't need to take up the mantel of justice themselves.

In other words, I don't see value in deriding cancel culture. If one feels that cancel culture is wrong, my belief is that one should be calling for action to repair the _cause_ of cancel culture, not the symptoms. And that cause is a prejudiced justice system.

In reality, cancel culture is just the free market at work and has always felt, to me, like a narrative peddled by the powerful to allow themselves to not be held accountable for their actions.

If I don't want to buy a Musk-mobile because I don't agree with Musk on issues like racism[0] or don't like how he treats his employees[1], I am allowed to act on it. I am also allowed to share these thoughts with people on appropriate platforms, like I'm doing here.

I can understand the frustration coming from people digging up problematic tweets from 4 years ago, but this whole idea that "the internet forgets nothing" isn't new. I learned it in grade school. If you want to post racist/sexist/homophobic things on your public Twitter, so be it, but don't be surprised when someone finds it. There's also a delete button.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18119832/tesla-elon-musk...

[1] https://www.ibtimes.com/elon-musk-hot-water-after-tesla-empl...

Is there any reasonably valid speech that is unduly silenced by cancel culture? I don't disagree that people are restrictive of their speech, but I am trying to ascertain if we are better or worse off due to self-censorship.

“Cancel culture” is also not new. Indigenous societies were “canceled” by Spanish missionaries and Indian schools, gay and trans people have been “canceled” by bigots, political activists “canceled” by COINTELPRO, and communist sympathizers canceled by Joe McCarthy.

So, “cancel culture” been a matter of fact, at least in the US, for quite some time now. It’s just given a scary name when those who have been “canceled” in the past are doing the “canceling”.

Complaining about "cancel culture" with regard to a mob that literally tried to cancel the votes of 81 million people is hilariously missing the point.

True, but what's frightening now is that the mob/SJWs are aligned (mostly) with the new administration, whose party has swept up all power in the government.

Oh, please. People have been "afraid to speak openly" for all of America's history. The notion that there's something drastically different about "cancel culture" in terms of severity is historically ignorant. Look at the comedian Lenny Bruce's arrests for obscenity, for example. Or the anticommunist panic of the 1950s. To say nothing of how women were controlled up to and after suffrage: deprivation of rights, marginalization, beatings, and rape. Ditto the free speech of black people, who faced lynching for as little as whistling.

Social actions will always have social consequences; that's a necessary corollary to freedom of speech. What's different today is that social conservatives and especially the radical right are starting to experience those same social consequences. If people are going to use their freedom of speech and association to, say, support Nazis, then other people are free to use their freedoms of speech and association in response.

> it only works if the bad guys don't think about it

I think the horse has left that particular barn.

Although, of course, the barrel of badguy-stupidity is bottomless, so I suppose they'll keep catching the dumber and dumber ones pretty much forever...

> There is literally no technology that the Stasi having would be a good thing, including pen and paper.

Not sure I agree with that analogy... pen and paper doesn't scale!

Having the ability to do something at global scale, like facial recognition or real-time tracking and saying "Honest! We won't use it for dodgy things" is not sufficient...

It'd be naieve to say I'd rather it didn't exist, however that cat is out of the bag now so there _must_ be incredibly robust and tamper-proof checks and balances round its use and the penalties for subverting that should be incredibly severe.

The point being that the fundamental problem of a police state being the authority granted to the police, rather than the specific tools they use? I do wonder whether tools like this will cause some people to think twice before demonstrating against government policies in the future. AI has the potential to vastly exacerbate the chilling effect of various policies of authoritarians. It will be interesting to see how the next iteration of BLM reacts to these tools being used.

The problems come from when it is hailed as perfect and arrests are made solely on a facial recognition result[0].

Facial recognition has also time and time again proven to be racially biased[1][2].

Not to mention how easy it is to create a surveillance state with facial recognition[3].

[0] https://threatpost.com/lawsuit-claims-flawed-facial-recognit...

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/19/tech/facial-recognition-study...

[2] http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discrimination...

[3] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/9/social-credi...

Why is that a problem? This is just the first step to generate a set of possible matches, there will always be further steps to narrow it down further.

> Thanks for being clear about your perspective. Do you think there's potential for abuse with different rulesets for different people?

Oh, most certainly. The same structure allows for racial discrimination, which I do not believe is a sensible angle of discrimination: i.e. I think Ben Carson should not be discriminated against for being black. Too high value as a top surgeon.

On the whole I accept it, though, because I don't want Elon Musk prosecuted by the SEC and the instrument that permits both is blunt.

> The measure of a crime is subjective and objective. Subjectively, the victim notices they have been wronged. Objectively, there is a claim by a plaintiff against a defendant. A claim either exists or it does not, there is no sorites.

Indeed. When there is a threshold. However, the costs imposed on society by drug users are dispersed. You can't Categorical Imperative them because some people are not capable enough to handle the responsibility.

Other times the crime is exposure to increased risk: no actual harm may occur. For instance, if you do burnouts on city roads there is little concrete harm, only increased exposure to risk.

It's the same with many things: public drunkenness, drink driving, jaywalking. And society reacts to these by permitting these activities in practice for high-value individuals while proselytizing against them at the same time.

I don't drink-drive but I happily do the other two.

I get this a lot with this viewpoint but I've passed through the other ones to get to this one.

If it helps, I am familiar with the Veil of Ignorance, the Categorical Imperative, and every other basic tool of ethics you can think of.

You don't think that happens with tip lines?

If anything, far FEWER mistakes will be made. Not more.

It's this weird thing where people hear about this one scary story of a guy misidentified and think "OMG facial recognition is terrible!" but they don't realize that happens to XYZ number people a day via human error.

But we're all MORE comfortable with it if it's good old fashioned...human error?

How long are we going to lock them up? How many people are we going to lock up?

My understanding was that there was 100k+ people in attendance at this rally and thousands of people were in the capitol building itself.

In this situation we're talking about a bunch of conspiracy nut jobs compared to a cold-blooded criminal that premediates their violent crimes.

Not sure why your comment was at the bottom of the page; it seems like one of the more thoughtful responses.

I have to admit my gut feeling on governments using facial recognition at scale to round up its citizens feels like something you'd find under an authoritarian regime, reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643433

I think it's important to try to frame an opinion on tech like this from a well-informed viewpoint, striving to lend appropriate weight to the latest incidents while avoiding the temptation for tunnel vision to fixate on immediate goals to the exclusion of broader, long-term consequences.

I agree acts that crossed too far past the line of civil disobedience ought to be held to account.

I just hope our collective response doesn't erode the willingness of people of good conscience to take a stand when they see their institutions behave in a legitimately unsanctionable manner.

Ah yes, conservative men, known since time immemorial for their scraggly beards and unkempt attire. Like Eisenhower!