We may not like the idea of it, but it's becoming an inevitable part of our world.
Remember that it will enable even life-changing things like giving vision to the blind.
Rather than banning a technology that's nearly impossible to do so, we need to figure out how to regulate it in order to protect people the most.
Keeping in mind that in public any assumptions of privacy are nearly moot and have been for a long time. There are hundreds of cameras around you in people's pockets ready to use at any given moment (and many being used) plus surveillance cameras, car cameras and more.
I think banning is the wrong direction. Any time the state bans something it creates a black market. Countless examples of this through the centuries. What would be far more appropriate would be for an overwhelming proliferation of facial capture countermeasures, along the lines of the 850nm masks I've seen in some science fiction novels.
One bit of legislature that I could get behind would be a shadow profile kill switch. I would like to be able to hire a persistant daemon that could scour the web and cloud(s) for my images and any information about me, and destroy it. Two concerns limit my enthusiasm :
First, the government has done a tremendously bad job just in blocking unwanted phone calls, and even blocked companies can get around this by calling once and hanging up. The person who received the call decides to call the number back, which then bypasses the DoNotCall list.
Second, in order to do a proper job of scouring the cloud looking for images related to the subject, the subject will have to submit to a very thorough scan of their features, a scan which would then have to be saved somewhere on a government server, or one thats government-adjacent. I don't know which would be worse.
I think it’ll be a proper incentive for the general public to start acting right. People are not gonna get away with the things previous generations did. But the laws that will address the problems currently happening in public will be laid out accordingly.
Well, I think the hordes of wilding "teens" doing takeovers absolutely spit in the face of that idea. But as usual, the casualties will not be crime or "bad behavior", but rather it will be freedom of speech and freedom of association.
Chuckle. Does the Photos Appl today tell you who random people whose picture you take from a single picture?
Nope.
Or does it learn faces of family members you often take pictures of ( and folks have slapped on their Apple ID avatars?)
I don't know what the Photos App does with the facial recognition, but I know it drives me up a wall that I can't stop it. It was only two years ago that I figured out that I could delete all but one photo from the People folder in Photos and that would make it pause the facial recognition. But just because I can't see it working doesn't mean it isn't.
Funny how everyone trusts Apple with their savings, browser history and medical info but not when it comes to a simple closed loop camera system. Seems like you’re already blaming Apple for Meta and Google’s mistakes.
Not everyone. I don't trust Apple with anything other than my email. I use privacy-hardened Firefox for browsing, Safari for anything with a login, and I refuse to trust Keychain. I don't have any medical information stored on my computer or iCloud. I don't use the medical sensors on my Watch (that doesn't mean its not still gathering info, though, and I've pointed out here numerous times that the data file for Health keeps growing even though I have all of the functions either deleted or blocked.
I'm fully aware that data is leaking from my life, just like that of everyone else, but in my case it's a drip not a burst pipe.
The only way this would be acceptable is if the images captured are used solely by Apple for informational purposes, remain fully secured and inaccessible to users, are never shared externally, and automatically remove or obscure any identifiable people. Otherwise, I think it is a terrible mistake.
If we didn't have AI training on every photon that happens to be passing through our lives right now, I could see your position. What you're describing is making the userland experience acceptable. Thats not the same as making it acceptable at the machine level.
"partially clothed like beaches"? You mean a public beach were you've chosen to go to, partially clothed, joining 10,000 other partially clothed people, wearing that teeny tiny piece of fabric covering just the bits, that you spent big dollars on to look almost nude, and you're offended when someone takes a picture of you? And dressing rooms -- if someone other than yourself is in the dressing room, I'm guessing you don't care. And lastly, doctors surgeries (meaning a doctors office in the US)...bring it on. If I am naked in there and being recorded against my knowledge, I smell a hefty lawsuit. Who can't use a big payday?
I'm sure we all could use a big payday, but put this in the context of robbery: does the insurance payout truly make you whole? Deductibles and insurer contractual gyrations notwithstanding, the money doesn't restore a sense of security, even if you've overinsured and derive a profit from the robbery. The victim is damaged by the act, long term.
Likewise, if a person takes your picture without your consent, you have no idea what the purpose is, you can only hope the damage to your life is minimal. Since the picture can persist across decades, and it can be modified easily, you can only wonder at the future damage that can be caused by that single snap.
And from the typical privacy contrarian point of view, one could use the old "you're in a public place, everyone can see you, so boo-hoo buttercup. Stay home with tinfoil on your windows and make sure to disconnect your phones because they can listen to you." I see a lot of that here on MR, though it's not nearly as bad as it was just a few years ago. Even some libertarians take a similar position, though not one thats quite so snide.
But from a property-rights POV, I could just as easily make the case that someone will be deriving benefit from any pics taken of anyone else. That photo will be posted somewhere, most likely Facebook, and that site makes profits off ads supported by the idiotic posts of its users. It would most likely go through AWS, who would cheerfully take the video data and compare it to facial caps from their millions of Ring cameras.
