Current Events > Police face recog a.i. scraped BILLIONS of FB photos with no consent

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/06/ai-company-harvested-billions-of-facebook-photos-for-a-facial-recognition-database-it-sold-to-police/

Yet revelations as to how the company obtains images for their database of nearly 30 billion photos have caused an uproar. Last week, CEO Hoan Ton-That said in an interview with BBC that the company obtained its photos without users' knowledge, scraped from social media platforms like Facebook and provided them to U.S. law enforcement. The CEO also said that the database has been used by American law police nearly a million times since 2017.

Is that good

Its AI... you cant really blame anyone here

Turtlebread posted...

Its AI... you cant really blame anyone here

Calling this AI is really stretching the definition here: it's a database created and maintained by people. And then an algorithm that guesses as to matches.

Arguably the best solution to that one is don't post photos of something everyone has access to.

Unless your account is private, posting shit there makes your shit public even if you don't necessarily want it public.

Antifar posted...

Yes you can! These things are built and utilized by people! AI did not fall from the sky!

Sorry but these things have minds of their own now

I'm always worried about being investigated because "that COULD be illegal, better be safe" based on AI analysis or some similar b/s.

I mean, if you post your face on Facebook, then the Coppers should be allowed to used it to identify you...

Turtlebread posted...

Sorry but these things have minds of their own now

Don't you have a refrigerator to catch?

Without consent? I thought if you put something on Facebook, anyone can do what they wish with it.

Dat_Cracka_Jax posted...

Without consent? I thought if you put something on Facebook, anyone can do what they wish with it.

I really can't feel sorry for people over this.

If you don't want people to use photos of you, don't post it in a place that's literally public.

if you post it on facebook you already consent to it being public. this is the same as when people were upset NFTs could be right clicked and saved. people these days have no technical literacy

Why are some of you so eager to excuse dystopian actions by the police? Even if the photos were "public" have you considered that the police still shouldn't have scraped them into a giant AI database? The type of database people used to only be included in by committing or at least being arrested for actual crimes? And would you like it if the cops scanned your face and added it to a law enforcement database anytime you went outside? Why not, you literally went out into the public with your face uncovered!

Also, there's nothing forcing the police to scrape Facebook with AI. That's a choice they're making for nefarious purposes. It's something that should be illegal with any sort of data privacy/protection laws. You should be demanding those instead of going
"meh, no one is in control of AI" or "but it's public tho"

legendary_zell posted...

excuse dystopian actions

Not excusing it. Stating that everyone should be aware this happens and don't put your pics online unless you want it to happen to you to

legendary_zell posted...

Why are some of you so eager to excuse dystopian actions by the police?

It's not really excusing anything.

Unless the pictures were taken from your private page, the onus is on you. Posting anything on a public forum makes the picture open to the public. You are posting something to literally share it with the world, which you have to take note that this unfortunately will include people who take the photo you just posted and do something you may not like with it.

So like Kloe just said, this comes down to technical literacy. Always post with caution. Frankly the general public ignorance of a digital footprint is concerning. The shit people post that they don't want others to see is mind blowing.

Dat_Cracka_Jax posted...

Not excusing it. Stating that everyone should be aware this happens and don't put your pics online unless you want it to happen to you to

NatsuSama posted...

It's not really excusing anything.

Unless the pictures were taken from your private page, the onus is on you. Posting anything on a public forum makes the picture open to the public. You are posting something to literally share it with the world, which you have to take note that this unfortunately will include people who take the photo you just posted and do something you may not like with it.

So like Kloe just said, this comes down to technical literacy. Always post with caution. Frankly the general public ignorance of a digital footprint is concerning. The shit people post that they don't want others to see is mind blowing.

Have you considered this exclusive focus on "personal responsibility" and no focus on police behavior or the implications of AI is exactly what the cops and large tech companies want, and how they'll get away with introducing the bad things under our noses? This is a perfect chance to talk about such things, but instead of talking about institutions and policies, you're talking about individuals and functionally letting the institutions walk for their policies. The policies are the problem not some teenager or mom posting things to Instagram. The policy of the police should be not to create giant AI databases. The policy of tech companies should be to protect people's data posted on their platforms. The policy of Congress should be to ban the use of AI for these purposes, the scraping of data, and police attempts to do either.

The bigger issue to me is that people have been falsely arrested based on a computer misidentifying their face

legendary_zell posted...

The policies are the problem not some teenager or mom posting things to Instagram. The policy of the police should be not to create giant AI databases. The policy of tech companies should be to protect people's data posted on their platforms. The policy of Congress should be to ban the use of AI for these purposes, the scraping of data, and police attempts to do either.

I don't agree with this frankly.

I think people need to take a hard step back to the pictures and personal data they post on platforms with no real thought to how that digital footprint may harm you.

The idea of police collecting public photos may not sound great to me, but I still put the blame on individual users and poor technical literacy. To me it's no different then a rando taking or downloading your Facebook photo for nefarious or personal reasons. It's one of the reasons I'm not a fan of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and more.

People need to get educated on just posting photos and personal data on the internet to "share it." Whatever you intentionally post in a public page, one needs to be educated that it may come back to haunt your personal life. Don't just post whatever thinking it cant.

As for AI, I'm not a fan of how far AI has advanced and think it's a potential national security risk. But that's a totally different subject.

I already don't post my face online.

But tiktok tho