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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-is-the-time-for-all-good-men-to-tint-their-windows dept.

New York's attempt to use facial recognition to track and locate terrorists in our midst has not gone so well.

The Wall Street Journal[*] has obtained a Metropolitan Transportation Authority [(MTA)] email showing that a 2018 technology test on New York City's Robert F. Kennedy Bridge not only failed, but failed spectacularly -- it couldn't detect a single face "within acceptable parameters." An MTA spokesperson said the pilot program would continue at RFK as well as other bridges and tunnels, but it's not an auspicious start.

Facial recognition is already a contentious privacy issue and prone to marginal accuracy at the best of times. Having cameras peering into one's vehicle just for driving down the road may be somewhat off-putting for those who have not given up on privacy entirely. Knowing that it borders on worthless with current technology for cars moving at speed capturing faces through windows will be welcome news to some.

The system also, notably

sometimes has trouble recognizing non-white people and women, and it assumes a culprit won't wear a mask or another disguise. While no terrorist detection system is foolproof, there are real concerns that current approaches could generate false positives or let suspects slip through the cracks.

[*] The name of the publication is "The Wall Street Journal" — the word "The" is part of the name of the newspaper, — so here it should have been cited as The Wall Street Journal. --Ed.]

Happy for privacy that it isn't there yet, or sad for law enforcement being less effective as a result.

Which camp do Soylentils fall into?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @07:48PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @07:48PM (#827037)

    The real concern is that mass surveillance is happening at all, not merely that there are false positives and false negatives. Why are there so many mealy-mouthed 'privacy advocates' who focus on the most minor issues of surveillance without considering the larger, more dangerous issues [gnu.org] with it?

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:35PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @08:35PM (#827076)

    My guess? Because they get tired of constantly pointing out the elephant in the room to people who insist it's only a mouse, and take a breather to point out that even if it were a mouse, the stated plan is *still* F'ing stupid.

    That's my excuse anyway.