This is one of the best proposals for how to regulate police use of facial recognition tech. Unfortunately, I continue to believe the guiding ideas, which are reasonable on paper, simply won’t work in the real world, especially over time.
1/

https://twitter.com/policingproject/status/1414949100123049990

Let’s start with the may pros of @barryfriedman1’s testimony. The proposal recognizes serious harms and glaring policy problems: lack of democratic legitimacy and accompanying mistrust due secrecy and opacity; disproportionate harms to minorities; serious risks to privacy,

[Thread] @seanmmcdonald is right. Far too much pandemic response (esp. contact-tracing apps) is “technology theater”: “ technology interventions that make people feel as if a government…is solving a problem, without it doing anything to actually solve” it cigionline.org/articles/techn… Five key points:

1.Manifests via solutionism, i.e., analyzing the “nuances of a technology” in a social vacuum while ignoring “underlying power issues” & other “holistic” concerns.

2. Manifests via technocracy, i.e., undermines democratic legitimacy by “substituting expert

Thread about rationalization & privacy. On a recent trip to @CAIDA_UBC, I had the good fortune to spend time with two brilliant psychologists: @azimshariff & @WillJettinghof. I learned that privacy issues I’ve been classifying as “normalization” problems can be understood as @CAIDA_UBC @azimshariff “rationalization” issues. Here are key points from “Privacy Matters…Or Does It? Algorithms, Rationalization, and the Erosion of Concern for Privacy” (sciencedirect.com/science/articl…). First, it isn’t just that the benefits & conveniences of algo-based products are easier to perceive

[thread] Given @AdamThierer recent straw man attacks on tech critics & advocates of banning facial recognition, I decided to revisit his book "Permissionless Innovation" to see how he defines the class of people he spends most of his professional life arguing against. These are folks who putatively endorse what he calls the “precautionary principle.” Thierer writes: “Generally speaking, it refers to the belief that new innovations should be curtailed or disallowed until their developers can prove they will not cause any harm to individuals, groups,