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Comment by alexnewman | Hacker News Reader

Stupid question. I actually am a big fan of no borders but what's wrong with this? Seems like America entering the new millennium.

Edited also why was this downvoted?

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Because constant surveillance of a targeted group will be systematically abused. And because next is using facial recognition to monitor other groups — LGBT, activists, political opponents.

That is extremely frightening coming from an administration that is increasingly using violent and elimitionist language to levy completely made up charges at immigrants, LGBT, and particularly political opponents.

Do people have a right to not be identified in public? In public, your right to privacy doesn't protect you from having your picture being taken. Then, what if someone identifies you from your picture? How about if they use a CV system to speed it up? What's the argument here?

BTW, as I expand upon below, I'm against surveillance of private communications, I think we all are. As far as I understand it, this is not surveillance, this is identification technology, which is different.

Scale matters.

If it were only warm-blooded individual humans identifying you, there wouldn't be much potential for abuse. In the 1960s, your privacy was pretty much preserved even in public spaces. Unless you were a genuine person of interest, worthy of expending costly observational resources.

Now? Drive anywhere, walk anywhere - machines log your travels. It's a perfect recipe for abuse. Just scale, is all it takes.

At one time, rock stars were essentially anonymous and could have relatively normal lives when not on tour. The audience was huge and they were essentially faceless.

Then TV, music videos and the practice of having huge screens broadcasting the faces of the band to the audience ruined that.

KISS used face paint and that helped protect their identity, but when they got too big, you saw Gene Simmons wearing a mask on dates to try to preserve his privacy, yet everyone knew the masked guy was Gene Simmons.

The poison is in the dose.

It’s one thing for you to go out in public, it’s another thing when “public” follows you around like a private investigator snapping photos of you everywhere. The right to privacy is the right to be able to go about your business unimpeded. It’s a core idea on which the bill of rights was founded. It’s not written of course, but I’d argue it’s a fundamental human right.

The Bill of Rights was written in an era when most Americans lived in small towns where everyone was recognized everywhere. The anonymity of urban and metropolitan life is perhaps a happy accident, but it wouldn’t have been perceived as a fundamental right to people living in a predominantly rural country.

The Bill of Rights was also written in an era without systematic government ID or national police system, when you could live or travel in near perfect anonymity if you just left the small town where everyone knew you.

So I think the perception goes both ways.

Additionally, the bill of rights was written in an era when there were no laws about immigration to the US at all. The US had completely open borders at that time, anybody could move there if they chose.

It should also be pointed out that, at the time, cross-Atlantic travel was expensive and few people in North America outside of the US had any interest in immigrating.[1] Additionally, American independence ended the transportation of British prisoners to the colonies and severely limited the amount of indentured servant immigration.

[1] During the colonial era, the bigger problem was the risk of white settlers emigrating to a nearby American Indian community. For example, it's likely that the entire colony of Roanoke did this. Even as late as the 19th century, white children captured and raised by the Comanche almost exclusively chose to continue living as Comanche even after being given the chance to return.

if you moved towns, nobody would know who you are

> In public, your right to privacy doesn't protect you from having your picture being taken.

I believe it does in some places, for example France.

Rules on the sort of thing are not universal. Europe collectively (continent not union) cares a bit less about freedom of speech, quite a bit more about privacy, compared to the USA.

Yea but it's yucky, trump is president and I wanna remain morally pure

Something that doesn’t get publicized but is as onerous is that Amazon is recruiting engineers to work on facial recognition tech that was implied to be used for their warehouse workers[0].

[0] Amazon recruiter emails that coworkers and I have gotten from Amazon. These emails had a very heavy implication that that particular group was using the facial recognition tech for this purpose.

Why does it matter that this is automated? Is your issue the automation?

> ...constant surveillance of a targeted group will be systematically abused...

I'm interested in how you would define systematic abuse vs. just plain abuse.

Police forces have adopted new technology for many decades now (e.g. radio, high-speed police cars, helicopters with search lights, RDBMSs, body armor, DNA sampling and matching, speed measuring radar, tasers ...) and, while it is probably true that all of these technologies have been abused by the police at times, can we also say that they have been "systematically abused?" What does that mean?

Also, because false positives dont matter when it affects "other people"

I see I need to start adding /sarcasm tags. Apparently scare quotes dont work. To clarify...I definitely think false positives are a big issue, though decision makers will often think otherwise as decisions are often not made by minorities.

If this technology is worse than ICE agents indiscriminately asking latinx people for their papers then it adds no value. The hope is it is better at identifying people.

Guess what this is happening every time you walk into a big store , casino or mall. Americans live in a fantasy where they allow large corporations unlimited power but want to keep law enforcement stuck in the 90s because of this administration. Enjoy your fantasy

That's a broad assertion about a whole country. Plenty of us don't want any large institutions with unchecked surveillance power.

Up to a point you can choose not to patronize such places, but where do we draw the line? I'm curious as to any legal arguments other than "You don't have a right to privacy in public." You can't opt out of society.

I agree it sucks,but this is everywhere and trivial to implement . These cameras were already in the airports and borders under obama

I'd be less opposed to it if it was equally applied to everyone and not just immigrants. It becomes another tool to disenfranchise, disable and disadvantage a subset of society.

I made a comment below about how does this violate privacy rights? I think we all feel at a certain level, making it easier to identify people feels unnatural and unnerving, may be because for long swaths of history we had a certain level of anonymity just by the nature of reality. Should that be something that is our right? Does that mean we should explicitly impede the efficiency of the government in doing things like identify people?

I sort of know where I fall, but that is the discussion that we should be having. Because one could read the law or at least think about the logic of the situation and not see this as really being worse in terms of surveillance. If you're in a public place, you have no guarantee of privacy. Therefore, the question should move to whether this is in fact "okay" or "wrong".

Perhaps U.S. v Jones has some insight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones

FBI/police put a gps tracker on a guys car for long term tracking. Ruled 4th amendment violation, unanimous. Differing reasons. The trespass reason wouldn’t seem to apply but the long term expectation of privacy would seem to apply. Oral arguments included ‘beeper’ vehicle tracking which is labor intensive, vs gps which they can do automatically behind their desk...

Nowhere in my previous comment does it say that I'm opposed to lack of privacy in public so I'm not sure how to respond to your comment -- that's not my issue. My issue is that someone shouldn't be targeted for monitoring on the basis of their immigration status. Either do it for everyone or nobody. If you're going to do it for everyone, then have a technical framework in place to ensure (to the best of our ability today) that the system cannot be abused by an errant clown, and have the procedures to provide transparent auditing etc possible and enforce these audits. Otherwise, it's my opinion we'll end up with a corrupt, abused system.

Interesting intellectual question for you -- if I have no rights to privacy on going outside, what are your views on the government making it illegal for me to obscure my identity when I'm in public (say, with a mask?)

I agree with you on the monitoring bit. That is a bigger question, more important question is who could the state monitor without a warrant. I guess the nuance is that this tech is not about surveillance/monitoring but it is about identification. Of course, that implies that one had to get the picture in the first place, which brings up that question about who could the state monitor, but I guess that's separate question from whether this tech is good or bad.

As for the mask deal, I agree with you, that someone has a right to obscure their identity if they want to.

Is that true? I've only seen this for banks and stuff.

Wouldn't this inherintly target everyone crossing a border? What if it was used for rapid progression through border control for Americans? Would you still be against it?

It is. Every bit store, casino, major airport and mall already is

Illegal immigrants are by definition disenfranchised. They are not citizens, so they do not get the franchise, which is the right to vote. That’s as it should be according to the U.S. Constitution, and the basic law of (nearly?) every democracy.

Where does it say that foreigners can't vote in the constitution? Up until the 20th century the only requirement to vote in most states was residency, not citizenship. Many places only required 6 months stay to vote no matter who or where you were from, others required a commitment to long-term residency.

It wasn't until women's and black's voting rights started becoming a popular issue that voting was redefined to mean only citizens. And the only purpose of such a thing was to suppress the voice of these people for the benefit of those already in power.

You're right, the issue is more nuanced than I had assumed.

Federal law (not the Constitution) prohibits non-citizens from voting in national elections [0]. However, it seems like states can establish their own rules for state and local suffrage, and non-citizens can vote under certain circumstances in states like Maryland [1].

Personally, I like the citizenship requirement for voting. It requires voters who weren't born in the U.S. to demonstrate a certain level of investment in the system they're seeking to change.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_St...

Wow, that's an interesting point. The UK will still allow commonwealth and EU citizens to vote in some elections but the Turdy's (Tory's) are trying to get the laws changed to prevent that for precisely the same reason you state.

Well, to be fair, where does it say that anybody can vote?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...

So, if your state legislature chose to appoint electors by lottery, that would be acceptable under the US Constitution. Other options: appoint the oldest people, appoint the richest people, appoint the people who live closest to the center of the state, appoint the heaviest people, appoint the people with the longest tongues...

You need to consider how the US was originally intended to be organized, which is radically different than what is has become. States were envisioned as practically independent nations which would be tied together by an extremely minimal set of shared rules and obligations. The constitution doesn't really lay out many rules for states at all. What it does lay out is mostly just things preventing states from taking on national rules like entering into alliances, printing their own money, or declaring war.

The constitution focuses on laying out those minimal set of laws for the federal government. So it makes no sense for the constitution to tell states how they can or cannot vote. This was antithetical to the entire notion of what the United States was supposed to be. It was a state level matter. As an aside this is also part of the motivation for institutions like the electoral college - to ensure a strong separation between state internal affairs and their influence on the federal level, which could affect other states.

> it makes no sense for the constitution to tell states how they can or cannot vote. This was antithetical to the entire notion of what the United States was supposed to be

The United States was originally "supposed" to be made up of a number of slave states where a large chunk of the population wasn't allowed to vote (but their numbers still counted for seat allocation). Everything follows from there - they went to war with the US government, lost, and had their independence taken away to ensure fair treatment of the black population.

Without the Federal government a number of those states would revert to apartheit.

I don't really agree with your perception of what the current state of affairs would be without the federal government, nor the ideology behind the founding of the US. However, that's tangential to the important point - which you do indirectly hit on. The swap from a state based system to a federal based system most fundamentally changes the scope of operation. Good things, such as the direct termination of slavery, can affect the entire nation at once. On the other hand, this power also comes with an equal but opposite negative. In that bad things can now also affect the entire nation at once.

So for instance not that long ago in the past we were enforcing eugenics from federal level down. In the famous supreme court case Buck vs Bell, where the US federal government ruled in favor of eugenics, supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, "We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.".

Interestingly enough that ruling has never actually been overturned. The reason that eugenics fell out of fashion lay largely with a certain German enthusiast. If not for him it's not unreasonable to imagine the federal level dystopia that we were starting to consider going down. When things are enacted at the state level this gives people the option of getting away from the insanity. When things happen at the top, leaving your country is usually not a practical option.

And so too for the question I was responding to. Should it be legal for foreigners to vote in US elections? Maybe, maybe not. It would probably depend heavily on the state in question. But thanks to our system, that question can no longer be answered by states. In 1996 the federal government made it illegal at the national level.

Every human has rights under the law and international law. Just because someone can't vote doesn't mean they have inalienable rights that states can disrespect.

I agree with your comment but am unsure what is the point you're trying to make? My point was that these techniques might be used to later disenfranchise immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Government monitoring everyone via facial recognition isn't cool either.

Good news. The purpose of the program is for catching any felon, not just immigrant felons. So I guess you are for it?

"Edited also why was this downvoted?"

I downvoted you because you talked about your downvotes.

Please don't interrupt the discussion to meta-discuss the scoring system.

Nobody here will ever complain about illegal aliens because they are wealthy programmers, etc and won't be affected by their unfair competition.

Just look at this tweet I saw a few hours ago from the editor of boingboing: https://twitter.com/xeni/status/1054816681699139584

Imagine her shock when she learns that most people can't afford to hire someone to mow their lawns, mop their floors, or raise their kids! Talk about living in a bubble. Some people here are like her and would never understand the troubles of the working class. And others are terrified of being called racist.

Her comment was being targeted at the upper class who are the loudest ones yelling for this. There's also a fair amount of 'working class' industries who rely on migrant workers to keep labor down, such as landscaping and house cleaning. This is what the tweet is hammering at.

Keeping the price of labor down is exactly what they're talking about. She knows that illegal immigrants providing cheap labor won't affect her wages and allows her to hire people to do manual labor for dirt cheap, so she accuses people of being xenophobic racists if they aren't fine with exploiting illegal immigrants to provide cheap labor.

Huh? She's trying to highlight the hypocrisy in people who want border walls but then demand those services at cheap rates. This is nothing specific to her own thinking and want of cheap labor. It's purely calling out the conflicting stances.

And once again the kind of people who hire others to mow their lawns or deal with their kids won't have their own wages affected by the cheap labour those illegal immigrants will bring.

Speaking of fairness, why exactly should we have more concern about the job prospects of someone who happens by random chance to be born on one side of a border than someone who happens to be born on the other?

If anything, isn’t it less fair if the person who previously lucked into being born in the wealthier country gets the job?

My point isn’t to diminish the very real problems facing the US working class. I just don’t see why working class people from Mexico or El Salvador are any less deserving of my sympathy.

Things are the way they are because American laws are made by American lawmakers, elected by the American electorate.

If the rules could being set independently of the interests of the electorate, our rules could become more moral - but it seems to me more likely they would become a lot less moral.

Being born here or there is an act of random chance. The fact that some countries are developed while others aren't is not random chance. Especially in the new world where all countries have had exactly the same amount of time to develop.

What does that have to do with anything?

Doesn't this statement ignore a huge amount of context?

Reading through that thread reminds me why I deleted my Twitter account.

I downvoted because open-borders is one of the stupidest mainstream ideas I ever heard. Right up there with flat earth.

Of course you want to keep people that don't share your value system out of your country.

That statement is incoherent. I know for a fact that 90% of the population of my country don't share my values in a material way. I am perfectly happy sharing my country with them.

Was just about to say this

I also think nations and tribes are outdated. Glad to know people will down vote because they differ politically. May I ask why you support nations?

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