Facial Recognition on Public Buses? Kansas City Says Yes (apnews.com) 47
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press:
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.
"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'...."
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."
"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'...."
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."
Major payout when it goes wrong (Score:3)
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
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com... [whatdotheyknow.com]
Re:Major payout when it goes wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
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 should demand a cost-plus contract that transfers the fine to the relevant city. Next, $5,000 might do for a week in prison but when US police are enforcing months of imprisonment resulting in the loss of all assets, $5,000 is not enough.
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Ultimately the facial recognition software has got it wrong, so its creator should pay. Of course the cost will need to be added into the payments from the police...
The $5000 is for any false positive. The additional consequences should be charged against the police if they fail to confirm the person's identity appropriately.
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Having software authors pay opens up all kind of strange scenarios you definitely don't want to have. Ond possible example: They will label their software for other uses only and authorities will use it for the obvious use anyway. The liability is still not with the software author (they specified explicitly the software is not suitable for that use) and you gained nothing but a wrongly labeled software that is harder to regulate (banning facial recognition works only as long as the software is not claimed
storage & safeguards (Score:2)
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:storage & safeguards (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:storage & safeguards (Score:5, Interesting)
My city's mass transit system has a contract with March Networks to provide audio and video surveillance of all riders. There are 14 (yes, I've counted them) cameras installed on the interior and exterior of each bus. Audio and video are recorded for each passenger. The stops where each passenger gets on or off are recorded. Every passengers' face, what they wore, who they traveled with, what they were carrying, and what they said - all recorded by March Networks. Where I live, there is absolutely no place outside of a government building or a military facility where you'll be more comprehensively surveilled than when you are on a public bus.
If the powers-that-be wanted to identify and track every passenger, they need only obtain that video footage from March Networks, and do all the post-processing they desired. Banning real-time facial recognition would barely slow them down.
If you are truly - truly - committed to the privacy of passengers in mass transit systems, you should go to your next city council meeting and demand the immediate removal of all cameras and surveillance equipment in all mass transit facilities. Do that, and you might find the response of your local politicians illuminating.
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Why stop at the facial recognition? You can't control that as passenger anyway. Do they have it, do they not? Proof it!
Let's make them remove the cameras. Surveillance does not start with the processing, but with the recording.
Re: storage & safeguards (Score:2)
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
Re: What is the fear? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't we already have the "mass surveillance" you describe? ...
Payments, phones, number plates
So I asked the ai, and realised what was probably obvious to US readers - the class and race divide in Missouri. ... I've just been down a rabbit-hole, reading about poverty in the US, and millions of households not even having bank accounts.
Here its everyone using buses, and scanning their registered cards to get on/off. In Missouri it is poor minorities paying cash?
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The definition of criminal can also change over time. Imagine someone would want to hunt down jews, and the friendly bus driver is a nice person who "does not see" if a wanted person gets on the bus. Some decades ago they could have saved hundreds of lives. Nowadays they will probably get fired as soon as someone else checks the video, finds out at which stop the person got out of the bus to find them, and then notice that the driver obviously turned a blind eye on them. And soon, the system might alert aut
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If a transit system requires electronic payment, then a database of who rode the bus already exists from passengers' card scans. Combine that with the comprehensive video recordings made on modern mass transit, and it is trivially easy to pull that video and correlate with those scan
Re: What is the fear? (Score:3)
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Do we accept the premise that people can be banned from using the buses for some reason?
I'm curious how someone gets banned from riding buses. And for how long? Is there a system to challenge the bans?
Then we must accept you can't get on a bus with your face hidden.
So the idea that people with infectious diseases should wear masks to protect others is ... dead? Which is the greater threat to safety -- a person wearing a mask or a person with, say, drug-resistant tuberculosis?
So what are the consequences of being flagged by the face recognition?
Pity the poor bus driver who has to tell someone they're not allowed on the bus. Someone who may have been banned as a result of some past violence.
I assume most people using public transport these days are using some sort of electronic payment, so that can be your ID.
I can buy a bus pass for cash from a
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Breaking the rules or the law, which varies depending on the specific bus system and area. So it might be something violent yes, but it can also be something like "failure to follow a lawful direction or request from an employee", for example putting your bag on a seat and refusing to move it when the driver tells you to.
Depends on what was done, if it's your first ban, etc.
You can try to appe
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What is the fear?
Nothing, if you an idiot who believes "This will only ever be used for X, by A".
A belief contrary to how data/databases have been spiraling away from X since the first human discovered it could be used for Y. Usually not by A, but B.
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Yes, bad things have happened where morons treat a face-ID as gospel, but nobody is under any obligation to repeat the worst case stupidity.
And yet, the worst-case stupidity keeps happening. False positives happen, people are denied access to services without due process, recourse, or recompense. Facial recognition tends to have lower accuracy on faces with darker skin color. There is not, nor should there ever be in a free society, a requirement to produce ID just to use the bus. And who's to say that it'll be limited just to people who have been blacklisted from public transit (itself rather hilarious). It could easily turn into Kavanau [wikipedia.org]
Unjust act (Score:5, Insightful)
I guarantee there isn't a single city official in Kansas City that rides the city bus. If they did, they would have never voted in favor for this.
Also makes you wonder how many officials are getting kickbacks from SafeSpace Global for this.
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Big-Brother-NIMBYism: "Spy on those other people*, not ME!"
* Who have less political bribing power
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On the other hand, any city resident who has ridden a city bus and been robbed or assaulted would probably vote for it in an instant. For that matter, any KC official who had been similarly victimized would probably do the same.
It is very easy to take the moral high ground in situations where you will not be affected by those policies. It is a different matter w
Re:Unjust act (Score:4)
And how often does that actually happen? Because it's a super common myth perpetuated by those who want a car-first lifestyle that public transportation is unsafe to promote their vehicles.
And yes, it does happen. But you know what? We have surveillance cameras already on buses and other public transit. Taxis have dashcams that face both ways.
And this has been true for decades.
The only difference now is facial recognition, which we already know is already problematic and full of false identification. And if necessary, people do run facial recognition on the surveillance video all the time - be it from a bus, workplace, public street, business, etc.
The car equivalent would be to put up more license plate readers everywhere snapping photos of everywhere you go. But we already know how that's going, and really, this should go the same way as well if you dislike license plate readers.
Maybe we're looking at this all wrong (Score:2)
If cameras are filming citizens in public venues, facial recognition technology is likely already being used surreptitiously by those it benefits.
In the Kansas City case, they are at least still informing the citizens they are planning to deploy it.
Re:Maybe we're looking at this all wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I was contemplating whether or not I would trade facial recognition for bus service, because currently there is no bus service in my city.
I do, however, get facial-recognized by every neighbor's door when I step outside in the morning, and again continually at work, and again at the store, then by the Flock camera when I go to the park... no bus service to speak of, though.
The Genie Is Never Going Back In The Bottle. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Genie is out of the bottle. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
We live in a surveillance state with tracking and facial recognition. It will never be of use or benefit to the commoner. The person that just got robbed or assaulted. But, I guarantee you that it will be used against the commoners to keep them in line.
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The Genie is out of the bottle. The toothpaste is out of the tube.
ha, i remember those metal toothpaste tubes! Lead? Aluminium? But with the plastic ones, you can suck it back in :-)
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Safety vs. privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
"... a fierce debate over whether the safety benefits of artificial intelligence are worth the privacy costs."
I question the premise. What exactly are the safety benefits in this case? What's the evidence? What are the numbers? What are the criteria for deciding whether someone is allowed on buses or not? Are they notified that they're on the list? How does anyone get off the list? How long does the ban last? What if someone is added to the list by mistake?
Seems similar to the secret TSA list of people who aren't allowed on airplanes -- for reasons which are secret and which the people subject to the ban aren't allowed to know or challenge.
5 years? (Score:2)
Why the hell five years?
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I beg America to reject total surveillance (Score:1, Insightful)
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Questions for KC officials ... (Score:3)
What is the "Function Creep" policy? How does the city guarantee that the technology will not be used for purposes other than its stated intent (e.g., used for tracking political protesters, immigration enforcement, monitoring homeless populations, or general surveillance) in the future?
What are the performance benchmarks? Has the technology been tested for accuracy across different demographics (race, sex, age)? Can the city provide third-party, independent audit results showing the error rates of the software?
What is the escalation protocol? If the system provides a "match," what is the mandatory human review process before any law enforcement action is taken? Who is held accountable if the system produces a false positive that leads to a wrongful interaction?
What is the automated deletion policy? For data where no match is found, is there an automated, instantaneous deletion process? Or is that data stored, even briefly, in a "temp" file that could be accessed or subpoenaed?
What is the retention period? If data is kept for a period after a "no match," what is the specific retention period, and where is the policy document that outlines this?
How is the data "purged"? When data reaches the end of its retention period, is it cryptographically erased, or is it merely archived in a way that could still be recovered?
Who owns the data? Is the data owned by the city or the third-party software vendor? Does the contract grant the vendor the right to use the footage to "train" their AI models or improve their algorithms?
What is the data-sharing policy? Is there a database "interoperability" requirement? Does this system automatically share data with federal agencies (like the FBI or DHS), other state agencies, or private organizations? If so, what oversight do local officials have over those agencies' use of this data?
Are there non-disclosure agreements? Are there any clauses in the city's contract with the vendor that prevent the city from disclosing how the technology works, its error rates, or its limitations to the public?
Where is the public-facing policy manual? Is there a comprehensive, publicly available "Surveillance Impact Report" or "Privacy Impact Assessment" that was conducted before the contract was signed?
What is the community oversight mechanism? Will there be an independent civilian oversight board with the power to subpoena records or shut down the use of the technology if it is found to be used improperly?
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Great idea, if... (Score:3)
The tech was 100% accurate
The results were carefully reviewed by an honest reviewer before action was taken
The rules were fair
Sadly, none of these are true
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There's literally a driver at the front of the bus right by the entrance. It would be just as easy to use this facial recognition to show a potential match to the driver on a screen along with a name so the driver can verify.
And then what? (Score:2)
The driver gets a hit on a persona non grata boarding. And then tries to expel them from the bus. We had a driver killed for doing this a few years ago.
As it is, buses are already delayed over problems with fare jumpers. Driver stops and gets in a screaming match with some homeless bum. Meanwhile all the other passengers are late for work again.
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Let them on and have the cops meet the bus at the next stop.
Which still results in the bus being delayed as the cops wrestle with a bus rider having a mental crisis.
That, or encase the driver in plexiglass.
We're doing that here. What we need is plexiglass enclosures for the mentally stable passengers as well.
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Papers! Let Me See Deine Papers! (Score:2)