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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

you can always be the target to border or airport controls regardless of how much technology is involved, and policing was no less crude before we introduced facial recognition checks.

I've been checked at airports before and I have no problem with airport security either. Terrorism or crime are real threats and police without technology is just as biased if not more so then machine aided ones.

The minority report fears every time technology is introduced to policing is an abstract and slightly silly complaint given that most police brutality and abuse of power occurs in impoverished, low tech areas, where if anything police has fewer tools and force available than in public airports and surveilled neighbourhoods.

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The problem is that these kind of automated system give governments more leverage than policing using people, and it enables them to do systemic oppression. Also, people have a moral compass that can prevent them from doing bad things, while machines don't. But everything is fine as long as the government is ok. I come from one of the eastern EU states which were under communist rule, and I am naturally more skeptical towards these systems.

edit: I understand that in this particular example the data is stored only on the phones, so your face is used only used to generate a unique signature, which I don't find that bad. But it's important that this is kept in check and that the system is not extended later to centralise all this data.

>The problem is that these kind of automated system give governments more leverage than policing using people,

they also take power away from arbitrary police action because cameras work both ways. Surveillance doesn't just discipline citizens, it also disciplines authorities. If you're in a room alone with a police officer, do you prefer the cameras to be on or off?

Automated systems can have bias just like people, but at least with a digital system the data is catalogued, we can reason about why they make the decisions they make and document abuse and fix them accordingly. Try fixing corrupt police in a small town without papertrails.

That the Soviet Union was so good at oppressing people without any automated surveillance actually proves the point. Oppressive systems function just fine with people all the way down.

The narrative of surveillance as just a tool for oppression is one-sided. Citizens would be wise to use this point in time when the laws are still being drawn to use it as a tool to hold authority accountable.

> that this is kept in check and that the system is not extended later to centralise all this data.

As already explained the data come from passports. All of the data in passports (and ID cards since this is in France), including pictures, is already centralised in a government database. After all you gave the picture to the government when you applied for a passport...

This is also why this new system is completely neutral.

Yes, but this data isn't available to (most) administrations. I guess that the risk is that the access might slowly be granted to more and more of them ?

> This is also why this new system is completely neutral.

That it is neutral today does not mean it will remain so.

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