Show HN: Simple Face Recognition Attendance System | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Simple Face Recognition Attendance System

github.com

64 pointsnatsu9017 comments

I'm sorry to say this because you probably worked hard and did a good technical job. But as AI/DL experts we always need to think about ethical concerns related to our work, and I would not want to release code like this online for free.

I'm very well aware that with just a bit of technical knowledge this can be reproduced by others even without this repo. And of course all sorts of organizations and governments can do this in a second. But this shouldn't stop us from remembering that this kind of thing is not a toy, and I would not like to make life easier for somebody that doesn't know much about ML, but is very happy to be served an easy solution to whatever their morally dodgy problem is.

Someone who can technically deploy this, but not create it, can also easily pay the small amount needed to get someone to recreate this project.

Not to be a downer on it, but it's a hobby project and hobby-projects should never be a part of anyone's threat profile, or we end up with things like chemistry kit neutering of the 1970s.

Precisely. When the technology has become simple enough that it's in "hobby project in github" territory, plugging our ears and pretending not teaching people how to use the technology will solve the social problems is dodging the underlying issue.

I agree. There is a chance that sufficient spread of this will help develop appropriate counter measures as well.

But yeah, cat is out of the bag. Best we can do now is declaw it.

edit: I forgot to add that I am absolutely amazed at the pace of development in this space.

Why does the cost matter?

The conditions of the license (whether available freely or not) might be a more useful consideration.

This does seem cool, but I would also not want to come to your party if you're going to be running facial recognition on me...

Don't worry; your attendance is irrelevant.

Your Facebook friend will come to the party and be recognized, and you'll show up in the photos they've publicized. ;)

While this is only a personal project for fun, please keep in mind that some countries, such as Germany, have strict laws about personal data. And even if they do not have those, as the developer you are always responsible for your code and the data you gather. Face recognition is a mighty and scary tool, so maybe you can use it to teach your guests in a fun way about it?

Also, many face recognition systems are based on open source datasets that are NOT balanced. This can lead to your non-white, non-male friends being not recognized ect. This is both a real problem and also to a dampened mood at your party. Have fun, but be safe and conscious about it!

> as a developer you are always responsible for your code

I believe most open source licenses explicitly declare that the developers abrogating that responsibility, including the MIT license under which this project is released.

Me and my friend had thought about this idea back when we were in college except we were doing it for class attendance.

The professor would take a snap with his phone and then app would give attendance in single shot. Dived into it a little and realized face detection is easy while face recognition is not.

One more thing we were wondering about was how to bypass this attendance system and realized that a photo of individual is enough to proxy his attendance.

Cool project btw.

https://www.datainspektionen.se/nyheter/2019/sanktionsavgift...

Translated from swedish: A swedish hight school did a pilot with a class with 22 pupils with facial recognition for taking attendance. The school is fined with 20 000 USD for invading the pupils privacy. All pupils has agreed to participate but that doesn't matter since the pupils is dependent to the school, they cannot agree to something like this.

Probably most important: they didn't bother to ask the supervisory authority before they started their tests, with Datainspektionen only learning of the pilot trough the media.

I think asking for permission rather than forgiveness doesn't work as well when you are part of a government agency.

Wow. Sweden has profoundly misapplied the concept of privacy when it is no longer possible for a person to voluntarily yield privacy for a project they find interesting.

Sweden is, on the other hand, not the only country that doesn't let minors or people in a position of dependence "voluntarily" yield anything. The problem in those cases is that it's hard to determine how voluntary the yielding actually is.

You make reference to a "weights" folder, but I'm not seeing it in the repo - am I looking in the wrong place?

EDIT: My mistake, you said it was in the library repo and there it was. For anyone who needs it - https://github.com/justadudewhohacks/face-api.js

Very neat demo. I can imagine putting something like this into a sort of robot butler for house-guests. "I'm afraid the person you're seeking isn't in right now; shall I tell them you called?" Of course, people don't really call on each other these days as they did in the Victorian era.

Any plans to add face authentication and liveliness?

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