Facial Recognition on Public Buses? Kansas City Says Yes (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0184016176
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/06/21/0457230/facial-recognition-on-public-buses-kansas-city-says-yes
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/kansas-city-facial-recognition-ai-cameras-privacy-87847f57c94b6c2a9e22a7b3a222e703
> Officials in Kansas City, Missouri, are preparing to equip cameras on some public buses with facial recognition software capable of identifying passengers who appear on a list of banned riders or missing persons. Supporters and opponents alike view the effort as a major litmus test for tapping the AI-powered software on a U.S. public transportation system, positioning Kansas City as the latest epicenter of a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs.
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> "The idea of running face recognition on a camera that is pointed on live spaces in public is a line that until recently has never really been crossed in the last 25 years," said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the Project on Speech, Privacy and Technology at the American Civil Liberties Union. The state of Missouri declined to help fund the project as expected due to concerns with the facial recognition component. Still, the city is pushing ahead with local and federal money, said Tyler Means, chief mobility and strategy officer at the Kansas City Transportation Authority. "Privacy is always a tricky thing," Means said. "We've always had cameras on our buses. It's just new technology. I think in time it'll smooth over and people will realize, 'Well, it didn't really feel any different'...."
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> Images captured by cameras aboard the buses would immediately be checked against any active alerts, generated when a missing person, banned rider or someone on a law enforcement watch list designated by the transportation authority is identified... After the buses return to the depot, the transportation authority would archive the regular video footage on a local server for up to five years.
The company partnering with Kansas City to run the cameras "started using live facial recognition years ago to alert nursing homes when residents left the building," according to the article, and then "brought the technology to correctional institutions and schools." But this is its first attempt at bringing its cameras onto public transportation.
The article also includes this quote from Will Owen, communications director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. "City residents should not be guinea pigs for transit systems to test Silicon Valley's latest unproven, biased surveillance tech."
[1] https://apnews.com/article/kansas-city-facial-recognition-ai-cameras-privacy-87847f57c94b6c2a9e22a7b3a222e703
storage & safeguards (Score:2)
Why store the footage for so long?
And of course there will be safeguards to protect the general public's biometric data from leaks and not use it for AI training right? Right?
"We've always had cameras on our buses. It's just new technology. I think in time it'll smooth over and people will realize, 'Well, it didn't really feel any different'...."
The water has always been 95C, 10 degrees more is not gonna hurt anyone.
Re: (Score:2)
No safeguards. As soon as the Nazis in the alleged administration can manage it, they'll force the city to turn over all the scans and have an agreement to be sent all future scans. For extra credit, they'll demand it in real time so their Geheime Staatspolizei can swoop in for another body to add to their concentration camps. There's no need to tattoo prisoners with this technology, their faces are the tattoos.
What is the fear? (Score:2)
Do we accept the premise that people can be banned from using the buses for some reason?
Then we must accept you can't get on a bus with your face hidden.
So what are the consequences of being flagged by the face recognition? Is it footage being sent to police?
Is it being asked for ID?
I assume most people using public transport these days are using some sort of electronic payment, so that can be your ID.
What is the scenario where things go horribly wrong?
Yes, bad things have happened where morons treat a face
Major payout when it goes wrong (Score:2)
If a person is misidentified by the software, then an immediate $5000 payment should be made. This will encourage the software maker to be very careful.
The Manchester, UK police claim a very low false positive rate:
GMP have had a total of 1 false confirmed from over 641,533 face
[1]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com... [whatdotheyknow.com]
[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/false_positives_rate_on_live_fac/response/3414745/attach/html/2/FOI.26.016870.D%20RESPONSE%20LETTER.pdf.html
Re: (Score:2)
> ... encourage the software maker ...
The UK polices have strict procedures for processing evidence. The US city police not so much: In fact, several cities have already proven their police are more interested in throwing someone in prison than collecting evidence.
The "software maker" isn't accusing the wrong person of a crime, isn't failing to seek supporting evidence, isn't demanding immunity when the lack of supporting evidence is revealed.
Yes, someone should pay and if the burden is on the software maker, then the software maker shoul