> The obvious harm in outright bans (I know this specific case is only banning it in public areas) are that it stifles innovation where the technologies are used to empower society.
Fair enough but I've just asked this somebody in another thread here: What innovation? This seems completely hypothetical, facial recognition is neither hard, nor complex. Neither is image clustering and other backend stuff required to use this for malicious purposes. If innovation means use cases like clearview I don't really care. Surely the privacy of millions should be valued higher than a few startups with smart photo album technology or whatever that will likely fail anyway for completely untechnological reasons. The EU seems to be, quite surprisingly, relatively specific with this call for a ban.
> The reference to smartphone tracking before the one I believe you're referencing in that article details the myriad other of ways to track people; financial transactions, license plates, MAC addresses, heartbeat, gait, etc.
Don't see how that changes my argument, in the EU none of those are treated like they might be in the US. Especially after the introduction of GDPR that's already mostly illegal tracking, no matter the specific technological implementation, and should satistfy the critique Schneier brings in his article.
This is a question that possibly can't be answered if it's illegal to experiment with it from the get-go. Off the top of my head, it could be used for thought-provoking art installations; perhaps one that utilizes facial recognition to derive the viewer's emotions and let the procedural art change accordingly.
> that's already mostly illegal tracking
Yes, GDPR's a great step in the right direction. It's stopping a lot of the corporate surveillance. Right now the EU needs to keep an eye that their governments are also subjected to the same level of restrictions, which are currently not if its ends are for "national security" or similar reasons.
The art use case is a nice one I haven't considered. But that sounds like something that's easy to cover either in the definition of public spaces or a flat out exception like there no doubt will be for research.
I fully concur w.r.t. applying the same restrictions to European governments, i.e. this sentence from the article: "These include the German government is planning to roll out facial recognition technology [...] after a successful trial in Berlin." The "successful" trial published an anonymized evaluation, results were horrid. It's quite amazing how split the political field must be here. In Germany that's also down to law enforcement exemptions from quite a few privacy laws, no "national security" pretense needed.
Fair enough but I've just asked this somebody in another thread here: What innovation? This seems completely hypothetical, facial recognition is neither hard, nor complex. Neither is image clustering and other backend stuff required to use this for malicious purposes. If innovation means use cases like clearview I don't really care. Surely the privacy of millions should be valued higher than a few startups with smart photo album technology or whatever that will likely fail anyway for completely untechnological reasons. The EU seems to be, quite surprisingly, relatively specific with this call for a ban.
> The reference to smartphone tracking before the one I believe you're referencing in that article details the myriad other of ways to track people; financial transactions, license plates, MAC addresses, heartbeat, gait, etc.
Don't see how that changes my argument, in the EU none of those are treated like they might be in the US. Especially after the introduction of GDPR that's already mostly illegal tracking, no matter the specific technological implementation, and should satistfy the critique Schneier brings in his article.