Speaker 1: So we've been talking about this. This is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: As facial recognition software, it gets better and better. It's
Speaker 1: it's got some cool ways to use it. Obviously, unlock
Speaker 1: your phone or if if you ever end up working
Speaker 1: in a building where it uses your face as your
Speaker 1: key card to get into building or that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: that could be cool. But on the other hand, China
Speaker 1: is using it to uh, to keep an eye on
Speaker 1: everybody all the time. It is absolutely a cherished new
Speaker 1: tool for totalitarian regimes. So we're a little uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: it and exploring it. Daniel Castro is the vice president
Speaker 1: for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Director of i
Speaker 1: t i F Center for Data Innovation. Joins us. Now, Daniel,
Speaker 1: how are you, sir? I'm good, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: You are pro this sort of technology, is that correct?
Speaker 1: That's right. I see a lot of potential benefits and
Speaker 1: how can be used. So are you a communist? Have
Speaker 1: you ever been a member of the Communist Party? Well,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting thing that you would ask that because
Speaker 1: San Francisco is working on becoming the first city in
Speaker 1: America to ban facial ignition software. There are a lefty
Speaker 1: city and they think it's a scary things. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the politics of this are. Well, San Francisco
Speaker 1: seems to like to ban a lot of new technologies
Speaker 1: to come after sidewalk robots, they've gone after the EA scooters,
Speaker 1: and now they're doing facial recognition and to the history
Speaker 1: of moving quickly in banning technology and the technology of straws,
Speaker 1: right right, So listen, help us understand first of all
Speaker 1: the practical uses of the technology. Let's get excited about
Speaker 1: the technology. Then we'll get into the civil rights thing
Speaker 1: a little bit. Sure. So there's both commercial and government
Speaker 1: uses right now of facial recognition. So people are increasingly
Speaker 1: familiar with how you're using it on your phone to
Speaker 1: unlock your device. Uh, you see it on social networks
Speaker 1: to automatically sort photos based on who your friends are
Speaker 1: in search through those. And then you're starting to see
Speaker 1: applications in the hospitality industry, for example. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that you might be able to register for a
Speaker 1: hotel and then when you walk in, instead of having
Speaker 1: to give your name and you know, your credit card
Speaker 1: and everything taken to have a camera that just recognizes
Speaker 1: you and they can creach you automatically. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: You just walk in the front lobby of the hotel.
Speaker 1: Everything recognize you, you walk up, your door opens with
Speaker 1: your credit card or whatever, and you go exactly and
Speaker 1: your things much faster. I mean, we're seeing this in
Speaker 1: airports right now, so you have some of these airlines
Speaker 1: that you just you don't have to have a you know,
Speaker 1: your ticket anymore. You just walk straight past the gate,
Speaker 1: look into a camera, and move on and you're done.
Speaker 1: So lots of benefits there. What people are mostly concerned
Speaker 1: about right now is on the government side, particularly around
Speaker 1: police using it for different reasons. They can use it
Speaker 1: to quickly search for a suspect from you know, some
Speaker 1: surveillance footage. They can use it to create virtual lineups
Speaker 1: of potential suspects. They can use it to help find
Speaker 1: a lost child or an elderly adult for one of
Speaker 1: those Amber Silver alerts. They can also use it to
Speaker 1: help identify where their offices are in the city. Lots
Speaker 1: of different uses there. And what's interesting is that, you know,
Speaker 1: these are things that a lot of times police officers
Speaker 1: are doing right now manually, so right now when they're
Speaker 1: looking for a suspect. Sometimes these departments have just binders
Speaker 1: full of photos of potential suspects and they just have
Speaker 1: to leave through these looking for potential matches. And that's
Speaker 1: a really slow and time intensive process. And what they're
Speaker 1: doing now with the technology is they're able to search
Speaker 1: through millions of records very quickly and identify with more
Speaker 1: accuracy who potential suspects might be. Then they give that
Speaker 1: information to officers whould go out and actually the those
Speaker 1: are some some pretty good upsides to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And did we make it clear that you're you're for
Speaker 1: this facial recognition stuff here. You don't like the idea
Speaker 1: of San Francisco banning it? Um? Yeah, But now there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of things that would make it easier
Speaker 1: to you know, find criminals or whatever that we've avoided
Speaker 1: throughout the history of our country. We have never had
Speaker 1: a national fingerprint and database for instance, or that sort
Speaker 1: of thing where it make it easier to find people. Well,
Speaker 1: the really scary part about facial recognition though, is that,
Speaker 1: unlike other systems like fingerprints, for instance, it can be
Speaker 1: is for general surveillance in a passive way. It doesn't
Speaker 1: require me to hold out my thumb or give a
Speaker 1: fingerprint or let you check my fingerprints. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is an incredibly valuable tool for totalitarians or those who
Speaker 1: would oppress anybody. I mean, you show up at a rally,
Speaker 1: the authorities are going to know it. They'll just generate
Speaker 1: a list, and so that sort of thing scary. Does
Speaker 1: the industry have a position on that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: Daniel Daniel Castros with us. Yeah. Absolutely. I think you know,
Speaker 1: nobody wants the United States to become China in that
Speaker 1: regards what the type of totalitarian surveillance isn't something that anyone,
Speaker 1: an industry or outside industry is calling for. But the
Speaker 1: whole point is there's a there's a big gray area
Speaker 1: in between, and there's also kind of just replicating things
Speaker 1: that were already doing today with the technology, but more efficiently.
Speaker 1: And that's what the problem with the DAN is. It
Speaker 1: would be completely fine that San Francisco was saying, let's
Speaker 1: make sure this technology is never used to, for example,
Speaker 1: you know, track people throughout the entire city. Let to
Speaker 1: make sure this is never used to track people at
Speaker 1: political rallies. But that's not what they're doing. They're saying,
Speaker 1: let's make sure we never use the technology anywhere across
Speaker 1: the entire government, and that's a problem. Interesting. Daniel Castro
Speaker 1: is the VP for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation,
Speaker 1: Director of I T i F Center for Data Innovation. Daniel,
Speaker 1: we appreciate the chat. Thanks, happy to be here, all right.
Speaker 1: You know some of that stuff about finding uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a lost kid or an old ster with Alzheimer's wanting around.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously those are those are good arguments for that,
Speaker 1: but you got you gotta trust that once you allow
Speaker 1: these tools to be in place, that then then they
Speaker 1: aren't gonna be misused. And I just don't have that
Speaker 1: trust you. Well, you would have to have a stringent
Speaker 1: and utterly clear set of restrictions on them. But I
Speaker 1: will I will tell you the history of mankind is
Speaker 1: that those who would misuse whatever technologies are opportunities that
Speaker 1: exist to oppress people, find ways around them. It's like
Speaker 1: campaign finance reform. You give your your bundlers and your
Speaker 1: experts ten minutes, they'll read the law, they'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: no problem, we'll just do this and route it through that,
Speaker 1: and they just beat it. And that's what concerns me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems that the biggest thing that Georgia Orriel missed
Speaker 1: about the surveillance state from was that we're just gonna
Speaker 1: opt into it. It's gonna be so convenient, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna just seem like such a a nonstarter. Yeah, of
Speaker 1: course I'm gonna have my phone linked to my location
Speaker 1: because that makes it easier for when I'm mapping directions
Speaker 1: right neat a ride sharing thing. This whole getting on
Speaker 1: a plane, getting into a hotel thing is so convenient,
Speaker 1: I'll overlook the other part of it. It's seductive, literally,
Speaker 1: and that's what Huxley got right. We'd be seduced into oppression,
Speaker 1: not beaten into it. Um. But you know the other hand,
Speaker 1: I do hate standing there with my bag on my
Speaker 1: shoulder waiting for the damn hotel clerk. I mean, who
Speaker 1: enjoys the freaks? Right? We just stroll into the hotel,
Speaker 1: smile at the camera there it's Joe, I'm here, and
Speaker 1: walk up to my palatial suite and then and then
Speaker 1: that will be like phone records are currently that the
Speaker 1: government can access pretty much any time they want to,
Speaker 1: because it's known that any time they ask for that information,
Speaker 1: it's always given to them right there. It will require
Speaker 1: a warrant unless you know it's voluntarily handed over, and
Speaker 1: the government says to uh, large hotel chain, listen to
Speaker 1: some of your environmental practices aren't so great, and I'd
Speaker 1: hate for the e p A to get all up
Speaker 1: in your business. How about does facial recognition records years?
Speaker 1: Do you mind hand them over? Oh? Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: could do that. Sure, Okay, that's how it works. Study
Speaker 1: history fools. On the other hand, this is really cool technology.
Speaker 1: And again, the politics are kind of interesting. You've got
Speaker 1: a lefty city like San Francisco looking at being the
Speaker 1: first city to ban the facial recognition stuff. There will
Speaker 1: probably be some you know, right wing city that's full
Speaker 1: of conservatives using finger quotes because these these labels are
Speaker 1: not very good in these instance. Indeed, who don't want
Speaker 1: it in their city either. Yeah. Yeah, certainly your libertarian
Speaker 1: type conservatives are going to be uncomfortable with it. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the left, and again, those those words
Speaker 1: are are decreasingly useful. But the interesting thing about the
Speaker 1: left is that they really cherish freedom from the authorities
Speaker 1: until they become the authority. Then they are so utterly
Speaker 1: convinced of their own righteousness they oppress everybody, um and
Speaker 1: then you know, they become indistinguishable from the right. Really well,
Speaker 1: get down. Here's a question for you. Do you think
Speaker 1: in I don't know how many years, twenty years, fifty years,
Speaker 1: how long it will take, we'll have a similar system,
Speaker 1: if not the federal government, at least like local government
Speaker 1: or state government. Where they got the cameras on the corners,
Speaker 1: will have We've already got those everywhere. There will be
Speaker 1: even more of them, and they'll do the same thing
Speaker 1: to do in China where it picks up your faces
Speaker 1: you cross the street on computers, picking up on the okay,
Speaker 1: here's somebody. They have some outstanding parking tickets, they're behind
Speaker 1: on their taxes. All that information will be constantly they'll
Speaker 1: keep a track of where you go. I absolutely think
Speaker 1: that will happen. Yeah, I'm afraid it will. And and
Speaker 1: sorry to be checking around all sorts of political theory
Speaker 1: at you, but there are quite a few on on
Speaker 1: the libertarian side of things, including iron Rand, whatever you
Speaker 1: think of her. Her idea was that there would be
Speaker 1: so many crimes large and small that everybody would be
Speaker 1: guilty of something. And that's about where we are right now.
Speaker 1: So once you are a criminal, the government is justified
Speaker 1: in doing about anything they want, including you know, the
Speaker 1: stuff you were describing. So yes, I definitely think we'll
Speaker 1: have that system, at least in big cities in the
Speaker 1: future where they're doing that facial recognition thing and everything
Speaker 1: about you is you know. Uh brought up on a
Speaker 1: computer and kept track of At the same time, Old
Speaker 1: iron Land Iron Rand was a little over the top
Speaker 1: and wrote unnecessarily long and dull passages in her books,
Speaker 1: but she got a lot right, And uh, I think
Speaker 1: we're seeing some of it happening. You know. You you
Speaker 1: give a government capability, they will misuse it eventually. It's
Speaker 1: just the way humans work.