posted by
martyb
on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:47AM
from the bands-watching-out-for-the-people-who-watch-the-people-who-watch-a-concert dept.
from the bands-watching-out-for-the-people-who-watch-the-people-who-watch-a-concert dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Former Rage Against the Machine member Tom Morello and band Speedy Ortiz have joined a campaign by digital rights group Fight for the Future.
[...] In a tweet, Tom Morello said: "I don't want Big Brother at my shows targeting fans for harassment, deportation or arrest."
Fight for the Future added: "Music fans should feel safe and respected at festivals and shows, not subjected to invasive biometric surveillance."
[...] Ticketmaster's parent company Live Nation announced in May 2018 that to stop fans having to use tickets, it was teaming up with Blink Identity, which uses technology to scan people's faces as they enter concert venues.
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UK Musicians Call for Facial Recognition Ban at Gigs
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:56AM (11 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by janrinok on Wednesday September 11 2019, @12:29PM (9 children)
I agree with your statement but I feel that you may have missed the point.
If the people that might be harassed, deported or detained is because they have already been found guilty in a court of law and the courts have ruled that they should face legal sanction, then it has nothing to do with your presumption of innocence. Are you suggesting that music concerts are a place that the law and police have no jurisdiction or role to play? Can you commit murder there with impunity because musicians have declared it so? Are people in the audience to be provided sanctuary against lawful detention because musicians deem that they have the right to award such things?
The law of the land is to be enforced and respected throughout that land. Although churches have sometimes been seen as a place where sanctuary from arrest may be obtained, there is no longer any legal basis for this in most countries. (wikipedia [wikipedia.org]). It is still acknowledged and respected in some countries because it stems from earlier times when religious persecution was commonplace, but it has no standing in law.
Similarly, political asylum and protection against arrest might be available in the embassy of another country as the land upon which the embassy stands is deemed to belong to that country whose embassy it is, as afforded under the the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations [wikipedia.org] of 1961 applies only to diplomatic missions and is granted only to permit that mission from carrying out its diplomatic role. People can seek political asylum there and the mission can elect to grant it to them, but it only applies inside that mission and with the express acquiescence of that country to whom the mission belongs.
So, while I understand the desire for musicians to have an audience that is not threatened unduly while attending their concerts there is nothing to support their wish to prevent surveillance under current law in most countries. They tend to hold their concerts in public places and the police have the right to enforce the law in such places. The best that they can do is stop employing companies that want to replace tickets with biometric data because, without musicians paying them, such companies will soon disappear.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @02:00PM (4 children)
Waaayyy to go, Arik and Jan!
Do you really go to music concerts to see the law and police playing a role or the band playing? (grin)
Seriously now, do you equate Ticketmaster with "law and police" and "face recognition used as a ticket" with an indictment?
I'm asking 'cause TFA reads in the very first two lines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by janrinok on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:21PM (2 children)
Which is why I finished by saying the above. It has nothing at all to do with Arik's claim of presumed innocence, which is an complete red herring to the topic under discussion.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:27PM (1 child)
You should move to Germany, I hear they tend to place the verb at the end of the sentence.
Have you heard about executive summary?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:27PM
Is that related to summary execution?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:40PM
I'm innocent! Innocent I say!!
That was just someone who looks like me at that Nickelback concert, I SWEAR!!!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday September 12 2019, @04:56AM (3 children)
It's not about one or two people in a crowd that *might* fit your description - it's about everyone else. Facial recognition databases make fishing expeditions very attractive - but fishing expeditions are not allowed in our system of law, you need a specific credible suspicion before you can examine someone like that.
"Are you suggesting that music concerts are a place that the law and police have no jurisdiction or role to play?"
Not at all. What I'm saying is you don't get to search everyone there on a hunch. You don't get to search everyone there at all, you have to have probable cause on a specific suspect before you can do that.
A concert is about the worst spot you could pick to make an arrest as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:40AM (2 children)
Your argument is about the use of video as a method of replacing tickets. I agree with this point of view and I would not wish it to be implemented. But, the problem is resolved by refusing to employ the companies that use video surveillance. However, that is not what the musicians asked for:
nor is it what you said:
You continued with:
So implement laws that make such things illegal. There is no evidence that the ticket vendors will turn over their video to the police, nor that the police have stated that they would demand to see it. It is your government's role to ensure that laws are passed to prevent such abuses from taking place. Your sound bite is totally irrelevant to the discussion.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday September 19 2019, @05:50AM (1 child)
But it isn't.
Not exactly.
If they did this in an isolated system and it was really unthinkable that anyone else would get their data; they deleted it after the concert; then no one would care.
But that never happens. They're openly talking about searching for warrants. Ok, that's the low-hanging fruit, who can argue with that?
Well I will, and not just because I know that once they get away with searching for warrants, they'll start searching for bad credit scores, and we've got the 'social' credit score already we just don't admit it.
In practice this isn't some crazy theory this is just how it works out over and over again and you'd be a fool to expect anything else. They take the videos and then no matter what they said up to this point they suddenly perceive the data as something of value. An asset. A businessman never gives up an asset willingly unless you pay him what he or she thinks it's worth. They hold onto it, they resell it.
You're right on one thing, there should be a law against it. That's a rare thing for me to say. But if it isn't flat out illegal to keep this data and sell it to anyone that wants it for any reason; from the benevolent to the most viciously malevolent, then it's going to be kept and sold for fractions of a penny in perpetuity.
Which is in no one's interest.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday September 19 2019, @06:52AM
While I can agree with the general thrust of your comment, I need to point out that the data 'could' be used for such purposes according to TFS. It could also be used for a myriad of other things and, for this particular company, there is no record or history of them abusing video data. Why are we concentrating on one specific abuse while ignoring all of the others? Two examples were quoted in the article. A Taylor Swift concert in the USA where a stalker of Swift was detained by police, and an incident in China where "Mr Ao was identified by cameras at the concert's ticket entrance, and apprehended by police after he had sat down with other concert goers.". The latter arrest was initiated by police who were at the entrances and were using security videos which are routinely fitted at stadiums and venues around the world. If such measures were not implemented there would be, at some time, another outcry asking why the public were not being kept safe at such events. At the Swift concert the police were actively searching for known stalkers - this was not a random event but a targetted action.
I remain convinced that the most effective measure is for the bands to refuse to play at venues where video surveillance is used in preference to ticket sales. But to ban all video surveillance inside venues reduces public safety rather than provides protection of a few. After the bomb attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, the perpetrators were identified from video surveillance footage from both inside and outside the concert venue. Likewise attacks on the London tube network, the Westminster bridge attack, and the murders of several policemen in the London area have all required the result of video surveillance to enable the killers to be apprehended and brought to justice.
In my opinion, the correct action now would be for a law to be passed ensuring that video recordings of the public are treated like any other personal data and only permitted to be sold, exchanged or exploited to fulfil a genuine and official need to protect the public, not for commercial benefits. Video footage should be afforded at least the same level of protection as that afforded in Europe to any other personal data and, preferably, significantly more protection.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Bot on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:25PM
Guilty if nationalist, though. Because "natives first" is always a matter of irrational and obsolete hate towards immigrants which is a prelude to fascism, and a possibly trollish outspoken hater is proof enough. Right?
Well better safe than sorry I guess, but then I would apply the same metric to a certain religion... (Cue the out of context Bible citations).
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:14AM (3 children)
"Music fans should feel safe and respected at festivals and shows, not subjected to invasive biometric surveillance."
Every citizen should feel safe and respected everywhere, not subjected to invasive biometric surveillance.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @02:04PM (2 children)
True, but if each profession would do what musicians do now, then maybe we'll get to the point of "every citizen".
Watch your step, lest you gets bits of the Nirvana fallacy on your shoes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday September 11 2019, @04:40PM (1 child)
Nirvana.
I like them because they knocked Michael Jackson of the local radio station.
Looove Nirvana.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 12 2019, @12:27AM
That's because you're bad. You're bad. Cpme on. (Really, really bad.)
You know you're bad. You're bad. I know it. (Really, really bad.)
I know you're bad. You're bad. Come on. (Really, really bad.)
And the whole world has to answer right now as I tell you once again:
Gaaark's bad.
This sig for rent.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @12:17PM
A free citizen in context of an Empire is a contradiction. Citizens of any Empire are not free. Something like that never happened. And never will happen. Freedom is delimited by Empire. Enjoy your Empire's freedom.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 11 2019, @02:48PM (1 child)
Si this is a rage against the (face recognition) machine? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:30PM
Si señor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @04:20PM (2 children)
I'm with Tom Morello.
I'd have my fans pay cash at the door, and use facepaint or masks or whatever. Ticketmaster can pound sand. I hate those bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @05:33PM
Where can we see AC live and in concert?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:56PM
Thus causing literal stampedes for the tickets. But yes you could buy your tickets from online source and just print them and have it scanned at the door. That's plenty fast enough.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:42PM
>Rage Against the Machine
-.-
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:11PM (1 child)
Isn’t this just a special case of the more general question of the benefits of using facial recognition technologies (e.g. more effective law enforcement) versus the drawbacks (e.g. loss of privacy)?
Chances are that fans will be picked up on security cameras anyway...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:04PM
To me, this is creation of yet another database of records of names, payment credentials, detailed facial images, and whatever else they ask for to purchase entry to their concert.
Yet another database circulated amongst God knows who.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]