This seems unconstitutional. It amounts to blocking photography in public spaces and using those photos as you see fit.
It also seems very untimely. Portland is exactly the type of city that needs surveillance, to identify and arrest criminals who are committing property damage, theft, and arson as part of daily riots.
Where's your constitutional right to photograph me and use my photo on your billboard if you see fit? If you don't believe that's OK, and it's clearly not, then we can agree that there are limits to your right to use photographs you've taken of someone.
Also, I've heard approximately zero people from Portland calling for more police presence, even if it would cut down on the non-Portlanders traveling there to start problems. From what I can tell, they're not asking for or welcoming of that kind of "help".
I live in Portland. I don’t live downtown where most of the videos you see are coming from, but I do live in a neighborhood very close to downtown. Over the past few months there have been a bunch of smashed windows (and presumably theft) at many of the businesses on the main street, graffiti is out of control, theft appears to be increasing as well. This is all just in my neighborhood. There are also the fires being set downtown and other violence between various battling groups. I can’t say for sure that putting more police on the streets would solve all these problems, but we need to do something. We are not headed on a good trajectory but for whatever reason it seems like our political leaders are in support of this destruction. We do need help.
We must live near each other. For privacy I won't say where, but I am within two miles of downtown East of the river. The neighborhood has changed for the worse in the past 6 months by an insane amount. I don't feel safe and I'm a fit young male.
Yup, sounds like we are in pretty much the same neighborhood. I wouldn't yet say I feel unsafe, but it sure doesn't seem like the city is moving in a positive direction. It makes me sad because I love this city and maybe I'm naive but I would like to believe that there are ways that we can address injustices that have been perpetrated against some of our neighbors without burning everything to the ground.
Unsafe is relative. I don't think I'll be assaulted, but I do think I could be robbed, or my property stolen. There is also the constant risk of folks in mental health crises or high as fuck being unreasonable or aggressive.
Stay safe, Portland is a good town at times, just it's 2020 you know?
I live in Portland, too. And we do need help. But facial recognition is unreliable. I'd hate to be the one who's misidentified but, overzealous law enforcement keeps insisting it's me. Or, maybe I'm shaking hands with some random person and then facial recognition is used to make it look like we're buddies, and accomplices in some mess he's in.
And I've seen enough unreliable technologies hit the market and marketers don't talk about the flaws or limitations in a responsible way. They highlight when the tech has done something miraculous.
With all of this kind of stuff I ask: what happens when the tech is wrong? Who's accountable? Who makes the victim whole? Too often the answer is nobody is accountable.
I don't know about whether this is an accurate summation of the source material, but the source material is a pretty good definition of fascism (Umberto Eco's writing on ur-fascism)
Many hard left movements (and sometimes even soft left groups) have used both mass violence and thuggish targeted violence to promote their agendas and intimidate rivals. The practice has a long, long history that predates even the soviet union and the Bolsheviks (who were extremely fond of vicious violence to edge their way into power). Claiming that violence for the sake of forcing one's beliefs on others is a uniquely fascist habit is historically ignorant or just biased and dishonest.
At this point people throw around the word fascist at the drop of a hat. Commonly used these days to mean using violence to suppress, intimidate and silence. I'm sure there was a more nuanced historical meaning once but that is being lost.
That was my point. The violent actor in the above referenced incident was a self-described leftist. The post I was responding too laid blame for the riots on the right wing protestors
it is so damn easy to support the protests in Portland and some other cities when you don't have to experience it. The violence and fear is real, when your city officials effectively abandon their duties to score political points it should tell you your worth.
I live near a not so violent city now; we had a time with it but it died out awhile ago because it was embarrassing an important mayor but I too had coworkers looking to get out of the area. People expect the government they elect to protect people and property and it is very disconcerting when they won't.
Worse is the excuses they use for not doing so making you ask, then at what point would you step in?
Not for all purposes, no. You don't have an unlimited right to publish other people's imagery for commercial purposes absent permission, even if they are photographed in public, and they would be able to recover damages from you for doing so.
> You don't have an unlimited right to publish other people's imagery for commercial purposes absent permission, even if they are photographed in public
You 100% absolutely do if it is in public when it comes to publishing, even commercial publishing. Where do you think news gets their photos? Travel magazines? Professional photographers? You don’t need permission to publish or sell a photograph taken in a public place regardless of who or how many people are in it.
With all kindness, it is you who are mistaken. Right to Publicity laws vary state-to-state. For example, California has rather strict Right to Publicity Laws[0] while (oddly) Oregon has less strict rules[1]. There are various factors to consider in every jurisdiction, but the rule of thumb is definitely not ‘if you take a photo in a public space then you can use it for commercial purposes’.
> The mere fact that a person’s likeness is used in connection with a commercial product or service does not violate the statute
Nope even your own source confirms it. You can publish a photo taken in public for commercial purposes without permission - the only exception listed there is if your present it in such a way that it appears as an endorsement. Then you need permission (for the endorsement). In that case though it isn’t the photo that is the problem it is the false endorsement (which is illegal no matter what the medium, photo, words etc).
Slight misconception. You don't need a release for some narrow commercial purposes, like artwork, academic study, or selling to news/wire services. But if you want to use it for stock photography, marketing (i.e. local businesses, tourism boards), entertainment production, or to produce a likeness or design which you intend to own separately, then you would need a release.
Good test here is if you could reasonably make a civil claim against the person reusing/redistributing the cropped images of themselves for their own purposes after the fact without permission.
The problem is that "commercial" is an ambiguous/misleading term in this context. (Cue the long-standing discussion over non-commercial in the context of Creative Commons that was never resolved.)
As you say it means certain types of uses but does not mean simply that I'm making money off it. I can absolutely take your picture in a public place and , in general, sell it to any newspaper or sell a poster made from it if I want.
Again not true at all. If I take a picture of Times Square with 1000 people in it, I don’t need permission from anybody there. I can sell the photo as a stock photo or otherwise with absolutely no permission. The same principle is true for a picture of one person on your local street.
Crowd photo yes. Photo of one recognizable person? Stock sites will absolutely look for a model release so that it can be used in marketing materials, ads, etc. You can, of course, simply publish it on a blog or in a newspaper or sell it as a poster without permission.
Your photos are fair game but if you present someone prominently in your ad they absolutely can come after you for damages or for monetary compensation for using their image. Why do you think that celebrities can sue for it? You think the average joe can't do the same thing?
Yes, that's why I mentioned the publication of the photo for some commercial purposes, eg advertising. Nobody is disputing your right to take pictures in public.
> You don't have an unlimited right to publish other people's imagery for commercial purposes absent permission, even if they are photographed in public
You disputed it right here. You 100% have a right to PUBLISH even for commercial purposes without permission.
Do you live in Portland? How about your family: kids, parents, siblings? Do you own businesses here? Have you spoken to anyone involved in the protests, or local business leaders?
All of the above are true for me, and I was born here, and I for one applaud the new restrictions on facial recognition.
If your answer to most or all of the above questions is "no", please reconsider telling those of us with actual lives here here how we should want to be policed and why.
I live in Portland. Have my whole life. We need more police. We need enforcement of basic laws like larceny and grand theft auto. We need to enforce the laws we have. We need more police.
I called 911 to report an assault in progress. I was on hold for four minutes, and the police took over an hour to arrive.
Yep, (downtown) Portlander here also with similar thoughts.
I was in a bodega last week when a cop came in to respond to a robbery call that was made over 5 hours prior. The cashier was obviously having a bad day, but still absolutely livid at the response time.
We don't have enough cops to go around right now. Technology helps what cops we do have scale the impact each one can have. Ideally, we'd have more cops _and_ more technology that helps them do their job.
This ordinance is outright silly at best, and detrimental/dangerous at worst, IMO.
Technology can help. Good, proven technology. Facial recognition tech is not ready for prime time.
Too often we've seen the legal system use flimsy evidence, and comb the earth for experts who'll back up the flimsy evidence. Then years later the city is paying someone for their wrongful conviction.
I don't want to be the person whose life is turned upside-down, and unable to pay legal fees all because of some flawed facial recognition.
When facial recognition is reliable, then we need to talk about privacy and access to the data and how it's used.
I can already imagine what'll happen. Government entities like, law enforcement, will have to jump through hoops to get warrants and prove they have a good reason to access the data. However, private entities like grocery stores, marijuana dispensaries and car washes won't need a good reason. They'll use it for marketing, and making money allowing 3rd parties to access the data.
On the contrary. It is times like these in which citizens need protections from those that may not have their best interests in mind. People have every right to protest and should not be surveilled in doing so.
People don’t have a right to commit crimes and call it a protest. Identifying criminals should be made efficient and facial recognition is part of that.
This is a nightmare sentiment. No, identifying criminals should not be efficient at all. Everyone is a criminal -- whether that's speeding, jaywalking, vandalism, littering, loitering, or whatever, the last thing we need is police having more powers to point to someone they dislike and saying, "We've got footage of you doing X, comply with our demands or suffer the consequences."
I would very much like to see less speeding, jaywalking, vandalism, littering, and loitering. Reducing these all seem like they'd have a net positive effect.
Giving police better technology to do their jobs doesn't automatically make them corrupt. Those who are corrupt are going to temporarily have more power, sure, but that's all the more reason to root them out and implement better transparency and balance checks at the same time.
Hmm... I disagree. Speed limits are important. So are various other laws that require human judgement to interpret.
There's a reason we have 'judges' -- the law will never cover all corner cases, and the law needs to set boundaries that are sometimes ok to override. You need a human in the loop evaluating various interpretations and keeping those interpretations current with societal expectations. (And those humans absolutely should not be the police.)
> Speed limits are important. So are various other laws that require human judgement to interpret.
What is there to interpret about a speed limit? If someone is going faster than the speed limit they are breaking the law. Add an error bar for equipment accuracy and the case is as closed as anything can be in life.
We don't want judges making decisions unless it is strictly necessary. That is where racism/sexism/classism/etc start entering the legal system. Judges are empowered to judge, but it'd be better if they can keep it to a minimum,
> If someone is going faster than the speed limit they are breaking the law.
In some (many?) jurisdictions, posted speed limits are not absolute limits but are rather evidence for the judiciary to consider when deciding whether the driver was operating a motor vehicle faster than what was reasonable and proper. (Faster than reasonable and proper being the actual law that has possibly been broken.)
Removing judicial discretion in favor of zero-tolerance laws is a step in the wrong direction I believe.
Speed cameras can be poorly calibrated / setup, there can be multiple cars in frame and they ticket them all, it can be a different person driving, the OCR on the license plate can fail and pick a different car, the officer may have tampered with the evidence, the car may have been stolen, etc.
All of these require due process for something as simple as a speeding ticket.
Then get rid of the law! What is the point of the law if we're all "criminals" according to you and any attempts at prosecuting such laws is met with "rules" about making it less effective. How ever did this become about "how can this tool be used to harass people". Police can harass you using absolutely nothing other than the powers given to them by virtue of being a policeman.
Identifying criminals that are breaking the law should absolutely be easy, efficient and absolute. Either you agree they are breaking the law and that the law is just, or the law is unjust. Otherwise, if you agree that there is a "grey" area between the two, then you're just inviting abuse by virtue of selective-policing.
We have laws for a reason and they must be enforced. Your argument here seems to be hinged around naming less damaging crimes like jaywalking to make enforcement seem frivolous. But to most people, enforcing laws against vandalism or littering do matter.
Leaving aside the crimes you named, police do need tools to identify, locate, and arrest those who engage in more serious crimes like property damage (car thefts, burglaries, bike thefts, etc), violence (rioters throwing Molotov cocktails, assaults, shootings), looting, etc. Enforcing the law matters in order to retain a stable and just society. It absolutely should be efficient, both in the interest of serving justice so there is a deterrent against crime, but also to save taxpayers’ money by making more efficient use of policing resources. Suggesting we keep police from enforcing the law efficiently is illogical and dangerous, and followed to its conclusion, is no different than arguing that police should also be denied other tools like computers or electricity.
>People don’t have a right to commit crimes and call it a protest.
Yes they do, it's called civil disobedience, and many Americans from marginalized groups wouldn't have the rights they enjoy now without it. In fact, as people like to point out, America was born from it.
My understanding is that the "traditional" notion of civil disobedience excludes acts of violence (the crimes that the parent was probably referring to) and for the participants to be willing to accept punishment for the law that they are breaking (i.e. you must be prepared to be arrested, fined, etc.).
The point is to show respect for the rule of law while at the same time calling attention to an injustice.
The notion that you can commit arson, theft, assault, vandalism, and so on with impunity as long as you self-proclaim you are doing it for a just cause is not what "civil disobedience" is about, IMHO.
Your reference to the founding of America only seems relevant if you think the current government is illegitimate and needs to be replaced forcefully and in its entirety (i.e. you are making a revolutionary argument). If someone wants to make that argument then I think they should be able to justify that drastic measure with a rationale that is a bit more coherent than protest slogans and be able to explain what they intend to put in place instead of the current government.
You are correct, that's why sit ins and say blocking a road work. Grabbing a rock and using it to destroy someone's storefront is a crime and those people need to go to jail. It just seems like a shame that some people don't seem to see the difference now and support the rioters and people destroying property as if they are noble souls or something rather than the criminals that they are.
I'm disturbed by the riots as much as anyone but I applaud this legislation.
Facial recognition and citizen movement tracking is a slippery slippery slope I want nobody in power to control.
The thing that confuses me is this is clearly done for the rioters but they're the ones with the ideology that generally results in this type of draconian citizen tracking.
Its an upside down world man.
I do agree that limits on photography are probably unconstitutional though.
And I'm not sure the gain justifies the cost. Not being able to facial rec a robbery suspect is going to have tragic outcomes.
I feel the same way. It seems like the future is going to be some cyberpunk place where people have masks or face tattoos to obscure tracking regardless of legislation like this. I'm very pro privacy and facial recognition is quite scary but it seems an impossible tech to contain.
In theory, but not in practice, we can ensure governments aren't using it but businesses and private individuals seem almost impossible. Certainly underground businesses will take advantage of it like the mafia or other groups who figure out how to weaponize it.
> The thing that confuses me is this is clearly done for the rioters but they're the ones with the ideology that generally results in this type of draconian citizen tracking.
If you think anti-authoritarianism is an exclusively right-wing value you're sorely mistaken. Even the term 'libertarian' was co-opted from lefties. You'll learn more if you approach confusing issues with curiosity rather than calling Portland "upside down world" because your biases conflict with reality.
Tell you what: I (a frequent protestor at the JC and elsewhere) will volunteer my face and address, and allow you to perform facial recognition to match my face at any public place in Portland, if every PPB employee will do the same.
Deal?
Presently, the only way to identify the police officers who are polluting our town with toxic gasses and brutalizing families who are trying to assemble to protest the existence of their employers, is by their face.
So don't pretend for a second like it's we, the protestors, who are trying to hide.
A stationary camera looking up up peoples faces 24/7 in a huge database is a very different thing to occasional photography by an individual, who only has a limited memory capacity.
So it's the pervasive always-on nature that makes it different.
I live in Portland. While I’m somewhat proud that my city is leading the way in protecting individuals privacy, it’s also hard given current events not to be a bit cynical about the actual intent of this legislation. There are people that are out everyday legitimately protesting. There are also people out every night setting things on fire, smashing windows, spraying graffiti, attacking other people, etc. It seems that our city government is essentially giving the ok for this crime to continue. If facial recognition could be used to identify the people committing crimes, that seems like a good thing.
I live in Portland. This legislation is an obvious no-brainer; we've known since Philip K. Dick that this sort of technology is primarily meant to harm and control the populace.
As a nice side benefit, the sort of neoliberal surveillance-advertising monolith that we see in "Minority Report" is also banned.
Edit: So many downvotes! Do y'all want to use your words? It's starting to seem like HN users want to build panopticons and they're upset that we legislated that possibility away.
I've advocated for mass-surveillance and facial recognition for policing on here so many times, and every time I voice my opinion on it I get downvoted. The HN crowd is most certainly pro-privacy when it comes to this topic.
Sure. Do you want to explain why you believe that we need more police? Right now our nation is in the middle of a massive consideration: Maybe we have had too many police. This comes on the heels of police evolving from slave patrols [0], police torturing the populace [1], etc.
I guess you could say I'm wanting more enforcement/prosecution, not necessarily more physical police presence. One could make the case that the reason more policing was advocated/promoted in the first place and grew to this level was because we had a problem of enforcement and conviction.
Better and more automated enforcement might reduce the amount of police we want/need and the amount of police interactions we have as well. The quicker we get there, the quicker we can actually decide which laws are non-sense and perhaps just require fines instead of physical jail time.
Imagine a hypothetical perfect scenario whereby we have a non-corruptible AI that watches security-camera footage that is next to ubiquitous in public areas. Suppose it has really good facial recognition capabilities too and can clearly detect + see who committed an assault/rape/murder. Have a bit of "manual" vetting by prosecutors (add double-blind + other steps to prevent bias) before proceeding, and voila you have N-amount less need of having police patrolling around to "deal" with this specific crime that can be automatically picked up.
Even being able to automatically pick up on a murder/assault/rape happening and automatically and immediately dispatching police can save lives, so many lives. Just this simple scenario is one that should be so powerful to convince people of the benefits, yet hypothetical "big brother", "privacy" and "potential abuse" counter-arguments are somehow more important than peoples' lives.
Face detection != face recognition. They don't really spell out if face detection without recognition is kosher, but face ID by advertisers is explicitly verboten.
It doesn't call out advertisers directly but it does call out the Minority Report style ad serving.
IANAL but sec. A: defines FRT as "comparing the facial features of a probe image with the features
of images contained in an image repository (one-to-many search)."
"Private Entity shall not use Face Recognition Technologies in Places of Public Accommodation"
"John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now!" style targeted advertising requires matching features of the face (eyes) to a repository to get the name.
Right, but if that was part of a social media app (say a hypothetical "Instagram display advertising" product) then it is explicitly included in the language: "Exceptions. The prohibition in this Chapter does not apply to use of Face Recognition Technologies:... In automatic face detection services in social media applications."
While I understand the difference between detection and recognition I think an exception naming both recognition and detection is likely to be viewed by a court as permissive.
Otherwise what does that exception mean? I'm not aware of any detection functionality in any social media application that isn't tied to recognition.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to trivialize my comment. I don’t see what this has to do with Fox News, but even if it did, they often do cover stories and angles that other media with different biases do not. It doesn’t make sense to dismiss them as a source outright, given virtually all news media carry biases and virtually all have examples of misinformation.
Getting back to Portland - if you haven’t kept an eye on what’s happening there, and are denying that there are disruptive riots virtually every night in one part of the city, then you are gaslighting. There is a mountain of evidence that a group of antifa/BLM participants willfully partake in criminal activity under the guise of racial justice with regularity (example https://www.cbsnews.com/news/portland-protests-police-declar...). One of them even murdered another citizen recently (see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/michael-reinoehl-arres...).
One of them even murdered another citizen recently
It's widely agreed that an Antifa-supporting protester killed someone. whether it was murder we'll never know as he was killed by US Marshals prior to trial (and whether or not that was murder, we may not know any time soon either). there was a strong self-defense argument to be made - and yes I read the criminal complaint that was used to swear out the warrant, and don't think it would have stood up to close scrutiny.
> there was a strong self-defense argument to be made
How do you figure? From the evidence collected it appeared to me (and others) to be premeditated. [0] Particularly interesting to me were images from the garage security camera showing Reinoehl lying in wait.
The complainant contradicted the statements of several witnesses as well as the early versions of the video I saw about the order of events of the shooting itself (although I don't have a full copy of the video file submitted to the court with the warrant application, so that determination is tentative).
Reinoehl's presence in the garage does not seem to me to meet any definition of 'lying in wait', since he had no prior knowledge of anyone coming that way, and indeed Danielson (the shooting victim) and Pappas (his buddy) did not go in that direction. As documented, Reinoehl looked over his shoulder, appeared to notice the two men walking behind him, and entered the garage where he paused briefly and seemed to draw his weapon. It is just as easily argued that he took cover out of anxiety that he was being followed, and then exited the garage after assuring himself that he had access to the weapon. You will recall that the same photographs you cite seem to show Danielson holding a large canister of pepper spray and a baton in his hands (documented on p17).
Lying in wait is an aggravating factor demonstrating a murder's prior intent to assail an unwary victim. Ducking out of sight and readying a weapon might be a very reasonable thing to do if you discovered you were being followed by a person bearing two weapons.
A trial would have looked into what interactions those parties had earlier in the day, and the exact sequence of events around the shooting, ie who approached who and whether Reinoehl shot Danielson first or whether the shooting was a response to Danielson spraying Reinoehl. I don't know the answer to the first two questions and while it appeared to me that the use of pepper spray preceded both gunshots, being sure would require access to the original video and testimony from the multiple witnesses.
Your framing here is astoundingly biased and doesn't reflect what most reasonable people have understood to be the case. (That the vast majority of the violence comes from police.)
The protests aren't peaceful, but that's deliberate. "No Justice; No Peace" means something. The protesters have been non-violent, but non-peaceful on purpose. The police have consistently escalated (just like they did in Seattle.)
Here is what I can't figure out. What would have to happen in Portland for the protestors to stop protesting? What would represent success? I honestly don't know. Am I wrong to think that most residents of Portland would like their community to go back to some sort of "normal" peaceful routine? How can that happen if there is a minority of residents who have a perpetual veto on returning to "normal"? And even if the demonstrations stopped and therefore the police reaction to demonstrations stopped, doesn't "normal" policing have to happen? What type of policing would be accepted by those who are protesting?
* Defunding. There was a moderate budget cut already, but we want more, and we want the city to not just remove budget from PPB but actually put money into social welfare programs.
* Non-violence. The city council and mayor theoretically have the power to order the police to stop using tear gas right now, and similarly they could order the police to be less violent in all of their activities.
* Justice. The police are failing to arrest fascist street thugs, and instead send them text messages letting them know not to show up [0]. Meanwhile they do nothing to prevent federal officers from using unmarked vans to yank people off the streets.
* Polis. The police mostly live in Vancouver or its suburbs, over in Washington State. This is absurd; police ought to live in their respective precincts, just like how city councillors must live in their district. Even my credit union requires me to live in my county!
* Reform. There are many popular initiatives [1] which would force police work to be more humane and considerate, if only they were adopted.
I would consider any of those to be a victory. We got some defunding earlier, and protestors agreed that it was a good token effort but not enough.
Nobody wants the old routine of police violence and abuse. Nobody particularly wants to be tear-gassed, I think.
I am too far away from the details and the history of the Portland police department to pretend to know what the right course of action is, but it seems to me that the "non-peaceful" part of the protest is actually making any resolution that much more difficult. That is to say it is a tactic that makes the problem worse not better.
I'm also pretty mystified as to why the normal political process was not able to resolve concerns about police activities/methodologies. As far as I can tell from afar, all the Portland elected officials are ideologically aligned with those initiatives. What prevented them from responding and if there really isn't the political will to make those changes through normal peaceful means, by what right to the protesters get to force their will on the entire community?
This is a tough question. When minorities are being targeted, don't have sufficient access to resources, can't engage in political processes, etc, how do they advocate for themselves? The routes you suggest are great, but aren't available to everyone or have been set up to specifically exclude people.
I feel like that it is necessary to be more specific in order to justify using force and abandoning the system. In Portland, who is targeting minorities? What does "targeting" mean? If the elected officials are sympathetic to those problems (what ever the details), what prevents them from addressing those problems? What resources are required to "participate" that aren't available? In a small city doesn't that just mean going to meetings? voting? etc. How are people being "excluded"? Is there a problem with the DAs office that they aren't prosecuting the unlawful actions against minorities?
If there is really a story about elected officials ignoring or contributing to violations of individual rights, failure to ensure due process, failure to manage the police force, and so on then why isn't that story being told or reported on? If that is really the back story then the protestors have utterly failed to communicate that in an environment where it should be almost trivial to gain public visibility for those problems.
Portland is even more puzzling because I believe the Mayor is also the police commissioner so there shouldn't be any problem with control of police policy as there can be in other jurisdictions where there is less direct oversight of the police.
It also seems very untimely. Portland is exactly the type of city that needs surveillance, to identify and arrest criminals who are committing property damage, theft, and arson as part of daily riots.