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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

Facial recognition tech can spot you in a crowd if you take part in a demo against the government

Self-driving car tech can simply refuse to take you there

Or even worse, the facial recognition system can alert government/companies/etc when you aren't where you are supposed to be.

For example, if you take the bus or train everyday to work at specific time. And if you aren't on the bus or train, then the system can alert authorities or your boss.

And if facial recognition somehow gets into your home, you could get the 1984 or black mirror dystopian society.

> you could get the 1984 or black mirror dystopian society

We already have that, let's stop pretending we're not already living in a dystopian society.

Stick on an anonymous mask and walk?

Masks are illegal sometimes because of that

They're not illegal in the UK.

Yet.

Not by default.

But police can impose an order - for a defined area for a limited amount of time - under Section 60AA of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 allowing officers to demand that one removes "any item which the constable reasonably believes that person is wearing wholly or mainly for the purpose of concealing his identity".

Interesting. Never seen that it action yet. Sounds like there's some wiggle room, e.g. for carnival masks for entertainment purposes.

Somewhat ironically, burqa's might be able to get around some restrictions because of their use in religious contexts.

I always wondered how much crime I can get away with by pretending to be a woman wearing a burqa then take it off

Illegal in Germany during a demonstration and grounds for arrest. They also routinely film you during demonstrations and capture all cellphone metadata and location. Facial recognition just automates part of the surveillance. But for groups like ANTIFA they actually have dossiers on the most prominent people and track them during demonstrations manually.

But for groups like ANTIFA they actually have dossiers on the most prominent people

A group that attempts to defeat fascist-detection technology by the most laughably transparent means

Just some sunglasses will defeat facial recognition.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/09/27/how-to...

that is from 2010. not to say this kind of thing isn't possible with nowadays tech, but I'd reckon that if someone trains a model specifically to be deployed for identification in adversarial settings, that this would be one of the first points to address. and at that point it basically becomes an arms race. Just that once you've got the tape, it's easy to go back two years later, re-identify everyone with $magic_tech_from_in_two_years and add that to the dossier.

You will be sued by Warner Brothers...

"Gait DNA"? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon...

I'd imagine some recognition technology could take into account body proportions, posture, (commonly worn) apparel, etc. to make facial recognition less needed.

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