Opt out of facial recognition?

The story's photo is from an airport in China, but I don't see anything in the article about opting out at non-U.S. airports. I've been scanned at a lot more foreign airports than U.S. airports.

 

It's laughable to think a foreign country is going to follow US rules and laws.Biometric data is being collected on all of us, especially if you've done one of those ancestry test kits .

Your on their soil and a guest in their country, You may ignore their laws at your own peril. You may get lucky and just get tossed out of their country.

 

Closer to home, my Tesla has a cabin cam and nags me if my eyes wander from the road for more than 5-10 second. It is easily defeated with sun or safety glasses which then reverts to 'steering wheel' nag, 45-120 seconds.

I've seen proposals for cabin cams to identify children and animals in hot, locked cars. I suspect they could also detect intoxicated or impaired drivers.

Bob Wilson

 

...easily, perhaps with an air sampler.

@ facial recognition:
That cat escaped from the cloth enclosure a looooooooooooooooooong time ago.

You can't even protect something more important which is your DNA.
YOU may not 'be in the system' but how many of your relatives took advantage of some Black Friday 23-and-me-and the CCP special?

Friends and neighbors....
You can PICK one of them.

 

Key, Key? We don' need no stinkin' key!

Smile at the camera or put your thumb on the reader. Or taking a page from a favorite movie:

Bob Wilson

 

Yep, the computer needs a frame of reference - so your biometric data has to be on file. Otherwise your locked-out.

Stranger-Danger

 

You can opt out of biometrics, but they won't opt of YOU.
That's the point.
I 'got swabbed' in the military a couple of lifetimes ago, which seemed like a good idea back when I was knocking holes in the North Atlantic.
Then?
All of those data got scraped and sold to the ChiComms during the Obama administration (along with everything else in my SF-86 file) so I'm fresh out of rats to give about 'privacy.'

 

Our state is very big on Flock Traffic Camera Systems - they are everywhere.
They have done an excellent job of helping Law Enforcement solve and prevent crimes.
Our State now has a program where you can allow your home Security Systems outdoor cameras to be monitored by Law Enforcement to help them protect neighborhoods.

Most individuals "smart phones" would pose more of a threat to their privacy than any foreign government or perceived big brother state.
For Pete Sake your vehicle probably would have a modem in it and a black box to record your every traffic action so accidents can be reconstructed and this information is easily accessed by any Law Enforcement with a Court Order.

 

How about a GMS mobile transceiver coupled with a GNSS chip?

From the Googles:

As of May 2022, 97% of new vehicles had a GNSS-enabled IVS (integrated vehicle system). GNSS stands for Global Navigation Satellite System and is used in modern cars to improve navigation accuracy and support advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Experts predict that 98% of new cars sold in the next few years will include this technology....

Yes, most new cars sold in 2020 and newer come with some form of cellular connectivity, either built-in or tethered....


What's in YOUR driveway?

 

I welcome that technology, it was invaluable to us on a little vacation trip to an area we had never visited before.

I would also welcome a system that issued traffic citations and fines automatically to reckless drivers.

If you are a law abiding normal citizen- someone would fall asleep monitoring your actions - and surprise, surprise- all the monitoring in the world - would only reveal you are a boring normal law abiding citizen.

 

That's always been my theory.
Speed and red light cameras have been thoroughly covered herein, and I'm pro both of them.
Don't want a ticket?
Obey the rules.
Most privacy activists suffer from at least a little narcissism.

Me?
I really give much of a crap what people think about me because my presumption is that they do not think about me AT ALL.

 

It's my experience that the problem does not lie in them thinking of anyone in particular. The problems surface when there is either a glitch in the system or when the system is used improperly.

One that I experienced two months after buying my 2002 Prius (Manufactured in May, 2002). The wife and I flew to San Diego and left my Prius in the long term parking of the airport for 4 days. The problem arose when paid the fee for 4 days, and they wanted to charge me for almost a year of parking. That's hundreds and hundreds of dollars of fees to park there before the car was even manufactured.

They eventually decided that my parking ticket stub had the wrong license plate number associated with it. That other car had checked in last year and left after a few days. Their software was not design to delete the record of him parking there.

We paid a $50 fee based on the flight ticket stubs and left. In short, they did not care who had that license number as long as they paid the fee.

 

Like most of us, I don't break the law knowingly. But the rules in the US are supposed to be set up so that they can't invade your privacy without probable cause.

The straw man case that comes to mind when we talk of license plate scanners relates to tracking patterns and repossessing cars. There are many cities where the bail bond companies send out their employees to record where every car is parked. They store this data in a database that is then shared / sold to local law enforcement.

So what do you do when there is a crime committed next door to the cafe where you eat lunch every day? How do you handle the subpoena when they serve it to compel testimony against the gang that stormed the jewelry store and cleaned it out?

Yuck.

 

Thank you for understanding the difference between a 'rule' and a 'right.'

??
I was overcharged at a hospital once.
I treated it as the mistake that it was and, like you, corrected it.

I was subpoenaed last year to court for four days over an election irregularity for a primary.
It wasn't a request.
I might wax eloquent about civic duty and fighting bullies, for gang crime - which is a lot scarier than some idiot thinking that they were 'screwed b y the system,' but it's a lot easier to be 'digitally courageous' when one is wearing a cloak of anonymity.
SO...I get it.
On balance I'd say your right to privacy ends at the threshold of your property, but I would also add that if I were forced somehow to live where there is a gang problem I can theoretically see a situation where I might be compelled to APPEAR in court but maybe not COOPERATE in court - but it would be for fear of family rather than me personally.

FORTUNATELY I live where there is very little gang activity.
My CFO was empaneled once as a petit juror in a pretty nasty violent crime trial, and to her credit - she did her duty. I know for a certain fact that I would have - but then it's easier to SAY the thing than it is to DO the thing in when threatened overtly.

License plate readers?
No Problem!

Side Note: I recently attained an FCC license.
Actually I got three of them in succession - but that's another story.

A co-worker asked me what my call sign was and I told him.
He asked me if I was going to get a special license plate and I told him I thought it was very unwise to do so - because it is essentially putting your full name and mailing address - maybe even your email address on your bumper.

I say that to say this:
People do not have a right to privacy in public, and the world might be a batter place with safer drivers if people's PII was displayed on bumpers.

....but sometimes 'security through obscurity' is a wise practice.

 

I also hunted through a lot of call signs until I found one that I'm comfortable rattling off repeatedly. And like ETC I chose not to put my call sign on my license. It's too easy to track it to a physical location.

I learned a long time ago that security through obscurity is a good first step towards robust security designs. It will often remove the low hanging fruit that is targeted by script kiddies. Think about it... If you are the only one using a 2FA scheme based partially on UUCP to authenticate your login, there will be virtually no one trying o break it with unattended bot nets.

But back to facial recognition...

False positives are the biggest facial recognition problem. A couple years ago someone tested one of the major facial recognition programs by feeding it publicly available pictures of American politicians. The error rate was horrendous, and made even worse when the person being checked was a member of some minority.

Personally, I don't like the idea that I might be subjected to a search warrant due to faulty facial recognition.

 

There can be a much darker side to facial recognition - coupled with AI
AI Can Tell Your Political Affiliation Just by Looking at Your Face, Researchers Find (gizmodo.com)
"Once researchers had established this alleged correlation between specific facial morphologies and political orientations, they could create a database of faces that fall into those distinct categories and test their facial recognition algorithm to see if it could accurately predict which faces were correlated with specific political orientations. According to them, it worked."

Imagine what North Korea, China or Russia Politicians could do with this technology if they could reliably determine their potential antagonist!

 

Not going to say that doesn't happen, because it does.
Less often to uninteresting people.

I treat these things like mass extinction sized asteroid hitting the earth (probability: 100%) or a destructive hurricane forcing unplanned urban renewal (same probability) or even one of those goofy prepper scenarios which are less likely but not really something I can prevent.

 

Escape from LA, NYC and myself. Maybe in my dreams, but dhen dhere's da dream police