Hacker News Reader

Comment by blagie | Hacker News Reader

Texas sounds reasonable in general. I've written license terms which exclude Texas. That's home of the patent trolls.

Heartland v. Kraft Foods is worth a read.

Texas has the “Capture or Use of Biometric Identifiers” act. It’s very similar to the Illinois act that requires consent etc. Although it’s been on the books for a long time, Texas AG Paxton really only started enforcing it in 2022, 14 years after the law first appeared. The first target was Meta.

In this case it’s not the patent trolls, but the biometric collection acts shared by Illinois and Texas.

Aside - if you use Clear for airport security in those states, you get an additional consent screen. It seems like about 50% of the time the Clear employee clicks through the consent screen before you can read it. I imagine this does not fulfill the legal requirements when that happens.

The provisions here don't seem like an unreasonable ask, really:

https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/BC/htm/BC.503.htm

They don't. The complication -- in both directions -- is "record of hand or face geometry"

If I take a photo of you, that's a record of face geometry.

The Meta FAIR demos turned on my webcam because I didn't notice that was enabled when allowing audio. They grabbed a photo of me without my permission, with no purpose as far as I can tell. That should be illegal.

However, posting a photo of a public space in a news article? That seems to fall under the same provision.

This provision is going to throw a monkey wrench into Texas's new Electronic Genital Verification system at the Dallas Forth Worth Airport. I guess they're going to have to go back to the manual genital verification system, and hire thousands of Genital Enforcement Inspectors to hang out in the bathrooms, addressing the biggest problem that threatens society today, by diligently saving the children and protecting the rights of women from trans people and drag queens who need to take a dump and would prefer not to go outside on the lawn or on the windshield of a CyberTruck (so easily confused with a prison toilet). At least that will create many new jobs for ex-cons and unskilled American citizens who can't find work elsewhere because immigrant terrorists took their jobs.

https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/47/20/26/27067779/3/ratio3x2_9...

SECURITY NOTICE

Electronic Genital Verification (EGV)

Your genitalia may be photographed electronically during your use of this facility as part of the Electronic Genital Verification (EGV) pilot program at the direction of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor. In the future, EGV will help keep Texans safe while protecting your privacy by screening for potentially improper restroom access using machine vision and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in lieu of traditional genital inspections.

At this time images collected will be used solely for model training purposes and will not be used for law enforcement or shared with other entities except as pursuant to a subpoena, court order or as otherwise compelled by legal process.

Your participation in this program is voluntary. You have the right to request the removal of your data by calling the EGV program office at (512) 463-0001 during normal operating hours (Mon-Fri 8AM-5PM).

"I saw it on the internet, so it must be true!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com