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Comment by bb88 | Hacker News Reader

Your anger is misdirected.

The fight isn't whether or not ICE should have facial recognition software. The fight is to make ICE act in accordance with our values. Some agency (ICE or whatever replaces it) will still need to protect the borders, and that protection will require facial recognition software.

If you hate ICE, you should also probably hate defense contractors more, because they have very little moral qualms about accepting contracts from the government, even ones that may violate human rights. And that's where that money is going to go now.

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Not sure if the parent expressed anything approaching either anger or hate.

> ... that protection will require facial recognition software.

Why?

Lots of things are effective, but life in a free country means that we don’t do some of them.

We could put cameras in every home, make them illegal to disable. Ban encryption. Censor the web. Ban cars that can’t be remotely disabled.

Free societies are free because there is slack in the system. This freedom is how norms evolve. Gay sex could put you in jail when my parents were teenagers. Supporting Nelson Mandela when he was in jail was supporting the leader of a terrorist organization. Heaven forbid smoking a joint. The status quo is not divined.

My point is, that regardless of your issue, authoritarianism is not a good answer. Even if you think it might swing things in your favor today, there are no guarantees that it will tomorrow.

If you were an honest debater, you would have discussed the pros and cons of facial recognition software instead of labeling my position as somehow inherently evil without argument.

No need to assume I’m out to get you.

Are there benefits of facial recognition cameras for law enforcement which can’t be said of other mass surveillance techniques?

Are there specific pros you want to be acknowledged?

I didn't realize you have the PhD to diagnose me as paranoid as well.

Again, if you want an honest debate, I'm willing to have one. But I think in your quest to make a popular rhetorical argument, you've lost the moral high ground.

I think confounded makes some good points.

> My point is, that regardless of your issue, authoritarianism is not a good answer.

Your assumption that this software would be used for authoritarian ends is exactly the problem the OP was trying to point out.

The argument is that use of this software is inherently authoritarian, in and of itself.

No object ever in society is "inherently authoritarian".

Authoritarianism is a behavior of a country's leaders, not a label on some unwanted technology.

E.g. Sniper rifles are not authoritarian in an of themselves. The use of sniper rifles to snuff out dissent is.

And that's why this debate is dishonest. Because if you support facial recognition software for the police as another tool for the good guys, you get smeared as supporting authoritarianism.

When in fact, if you deeply wanted to remove authoritarian behaviors, you would add more checks and balances to the system to prevent unchecked behavior from our leaders.

The founding father's knew that and designed the constitution that way.

I agree that the existence of the software is benign. I said the use of it is authoritarian.

And sure, I didn't make it explicit, so let me make it explicit now: the use of the software to identify real people is authoritarian.

If you use it to classify random cat pictures then that's obviously not authoritarian.

First, thanks for responding.

But saying two things are equivalent doesn't make it so.

My phone tags people in them. Are you saying that is authoritarian? Because to me, it seems like a really nice tool to tag people in photos.

I mean, it's pretty clear given tweets given to us today by the US president that he'd LIKE to use it in an authoritarian manner. He literally said he wants to remove all courts and judges from the immigration process and have ICE be able to exercise deportation options unilaterally and with 0 tolerance or oversight.

So right now: yeah it's probably an authoritarian system. But in the long term, we need a better understand of the legal and social implications of facial recognition before we can really trust governments at scale to use the technology within a framework that preserves our values.

Right now, it's best to deny them access to it.

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