The aim of this project/campaign is not to be scary, but to raise awareness among policy makers and citizens. This is the background I want to highlight:
1. the first political fight is about the ban of real-time identification in public spaces. that's the dystopian scenario that nobody wants, and that's why we participated in the creation of https://reclaimyourface.eu in 2019.
2. the second (not because it's less important, but because it comes later chronologically) is not to let the monopolists get stronger roots.
Both have their complexities, and the European Parliament made something OK for 1 and 2, now the Council of European Ministries is screwing up both.
The ethical arguments: (i) massive biometric surveillance is bad in itself, (ii) the models are trained on biometric data collected without consent, (iii) and this is also fundamental to building the deepfakes (because the GNA discriminator uses a constant biometric comparison).
Even if there are three reasons, the Council is saying "Dear Parliament, no, we want facial recognition and unregulated foundation model".
So, DontSpyEU try to explain the related parts with a little prankish attitude, (and, btw, Microsoft lobbyists are just pushing their solutions, which are only meant to consolidate their monopoly)
1. Photographs/video might be inevitable: cellphone cameras are ubiquitous, people love to share media and memories; There are strong cases for CCTV for security. however ...
2. Analyzing images for biometric markers and linking it to a database of persons can absolutely be legislated against.
3. One step further, utilizing biometric information for decision making is also very easy to legislate against.
Some companies might do these things secretly anyway, but then we have the need for audits and strong enforcement of the law, which is another matter. First step is to get this into legislation.
I agree. This is much like legislation around traditional weapons: Sure, you can't un-invent nuclear physics, gun powder, bows and arrows, knifes, sticks. They are to some level ubiquitous, available to anyone with enough resolve.
But that doesn't mean any entrepreneur can decide to produce or hoard large amounts of weapons for personal or commercial gains. In most countries, there are legislative boundaries that make sure the state has monopoly of violence and (preferably democratic) government controls that force.
That system of course is still dangerous and fragile, but far better than roving gangs or ultimate power at the hands of commercial organizations...
2: governments can legislate against against anything, but this feels like the other side of the same coin as pro cryptographic freedom: you're trying to ban maths.
We can, and IMO should, ban this type data use in commercial and party political contexts, but that isn't going to do anything to stop criminals and foreign governments doing these same things for their own commercial and political goals.
> I used to be worried about face scanning. But sometimes I wonder if it's an inevitable evolution of technology.
The cat's out of the bag. But you can still exercise caution. I remember when that app FaceApp was trending, and everyone wanted to see what they looked like when older, oblivious to the ulterior motives behind the app. Essentially they were building a FR database from user generated content. So, don't feed the beast and don't upload your faceprint to apps every chance you get.
> I used to be worried about face scanning. But sometimes I wonder if it's an inevitable evolution of technology.
Werent you worried about face scanning precisely because its a seemingly inevitable evolution of technology? The use of “but” is confusing to me. It seems like the reason for being concerned has assuaged your concerns.
It's already pretty easy to spin up a facial recognition model, and it's likely that facial recognition will be an emergent property of multi-modal modals like GPT4/Dall-E.
How would the EU enforce a multinational ban on facial recognition or biometric pattern recognition?
Depends on details of how autonomous weapons show up in the national medias.
It's political capital and the game is border security. Russia is moving to a position where they can bluff again. It's not a simple matter of true or false because it's a constant race condition.
I appreciate the humor. But in case there is a misconception at the root of this quip, I still have to point out that the annoying popup banners on every page are on the page owners, not the EU or the GDPR. Nowhere does the GDPR mandate popup banners. Banners are just the lazy answer to a very people-friendly law by an economy addicted to surveillance.
I would like to quickly share this through my social media channels. A sub-page with pre-made material to spread the word would do it. For example 2-3 Instagram story templates, something for X/Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, …
Thanks for the suggestion, yesterday I implemented a way to link directly to each politician's face, i.e.: https://dontspy.eu/x/164/ so it can be easily embedded in social media.
It's not "announced" yet and the links aren't embedded in the page yet, I'm testing if the sentence at the top ("The AI Act must protect human rights and work for civil society, not fall into easy concessions to the surveillance ecosystem!") works well or not.
About Instagram stories (I'm building a GPT ), which would turn the most complex article into a series of stories. We don't have a graphic designer and we only do social media in a personal capacity, without a real strategy. I'll update here when I do, I guess if the day goes well it would be around midnight GMT.
The Don't Spy EU is a very unfunded project with only a few people working on it, with other day jobs. (But I'm very happy about the outpouring of support we've gotten from HackerNews - lots of new politician names have been imported, and lots of pictures too!)
For this reason I have really noticed a spike in views and input, it was very important to be seen now that time is running out. if any of you can also share it on reddit or other tech-politics related forums, it would be really helpful!
When companies spy on their customers/users it's a 4 million Euro fine, when member states want to track the phones of its citizens it's a human rights violation, but when the EU it self wants something similar or worse it's a question of safety.
The EU doesn't have security services. What you're referring to is what (primarily) the member states want and they try to get it at the EU level so they won't be in violation of EU laws
In any case this specific request is about adding additional safeguards in a new act, not about stopping an ongoing practice or blocking a regressive proposal like the chatcontrol issue
EU is not something different than the member states, it's %100 made of (elected) or (appointed by the elected) from the member states.
So the appointed by the elected will consult with the elected and come up(or already came up) with a proposal and the elected will vote on it.
This website is made by some interest groups(both from Italy) that want to pressure the elected to reject a certain proposal.
Nothing weird really, just politics of a democracy in action. If you agree with the position of these interest groups you can support them, if you don't care you can ignore them or if you disagree you can start a counter campaign.
I wish it was so simple, there are a bunch of different bodies; only the parlement is directly voted in. Especially the EU commmision the most powerful part are picked by the 27 leaders. Consequence is lot of deal making and influence by main countries France & Germany; and no direct responsiblity to citizens. It's not all bad, but also not all great.
A governing body chartered for the collective interest of its members is indeed something different than a group of states working for their own interests. Just because I vote for my representative doesn’t mean my representative is no different from me.
> EU is not something different than the member states
This is clearly false. The member states exist independently of the EU. If you get rid of the EU, all the states still exist. Which means the EU is something more than “just the member states”. The EU is obviously a governing body on top of and between the member states. There is an EU president, parliament, and other offices for crying out loud. There is no way you yourself can believe what you’re claiming.
EU countries are allowed to spy just fine. I remember we were all freaking out by Snowden's revelations about phone tapping in the USA. Dutch Journalist were describing how scandalous it was, while at the same time the Dutch intelligence been doing that for a long time without needing a warrant, were and no one really cared about it.
There’s a difference between your own democratically elected government spying on its citizens and some other government you have no control over doing the same. Not saying that it’s good that the Dutch government was spying on its citizens, but it’s worse when it’s a foreign super power.
What's weird about that other than the mistake of thinking "the EU itself" is a thing in this context?
States are allowed to have armies, corporations are not. States can send people with guns after you and lock you away, corporations can not. Do you think that's weird too? States hold more power than corporations because corporations exist only because states allow them to.
Now whether states are a good thing or not is another question of course.
Readit News
[0] https://dontspy.eu/country/#Germany
1. the first political fight is about the ban of real-time identification in public spaces. that's the dystopian scenario that nobody wants, and that's why we participated in the creation of https://reclaimyourface.eu in 2019.
2. the second (not because it's less important, but because it comes later chronologically) is not to let the monopolists get stronger roots.
Both have their complexities, and the European Parliament made something OK for 1 and 2, now the Council of European Ministries is screwing up both.
The ethical arguments: (i) massive biometric surveillance is bad in itself, (ii) the models are trained on biometric data collected without consent, (iii) and this is also fundamental to building the deepfakes (because the GNA discriminator uses a constant biometric comparison).
Even if there are three reasons, the Council is saying "Dear Parliament, no, we want facial recognition and unregulated foundation model".
So, DontSpyEU try to explain the related parts with a little prankish attitude, (and, btw, Microsoft lobbyists are just pushing their solutions, which are only meant to consolidate their monopoly)
Deleted Comment
Which – to be clear – is not support for it, but a question about what is emergent from the new things we create.
2. Analyzing images for biometric markers and linking it to a database of persons can absolutely be legislated against.
3. One step further, utilizing biometric information for decision making is also very easy to legislate against.
Some companies might do these things secretly anyway, but then we have the need for audits and strong enforcement of the law, which is another matter. First step is to get this into legislation.
But that doesn't mean any entrepreneur can decide to produce or hoard large amounts of weapons for personal or commercial gains. In most countries, there are legislative boundaries that make sure the state has monopoly of violence and (preferably democratic) government controls that force.
That system of course is still dangerous and fragile, but far better than roving gangs or ultimate power at the hands of commercial organizations...
We can, and IMO should, ban this type data use in commercial and party political contexts, but that isn't going to do anything to stop criminals and foreign governments doing these same things for their own commercial and political goals.
We need a milieu where we can survive that.
The cat's out of the bag. But you can still exercise caution. I remember when that app FaceApp was trending, and everyone wanted to see what they looked like when older, oblivious to the ulterior motives behind the app. Essentially they were building a FR database from user generated content. So, don't feed the beast and don't upload your faceprint to apps every chance you get.
Werent you worried about face scanning precisely because its a seemingly inevitable evolution of technology? The use of “but” is confusing to me. It seems like the reason for being concerned has assuaged your concerns.
How would the EU enforce a multinational ban on facial recognition or biometric pattern recognition?
It's political capital and the game is border security. Russia is moving to a position where they can bluff again. It's not a simple matter of true or false because it's a constant race condition.
It's not "announced" yet and the links aren't embedded in the page yet, I'm testing if the sentence at the top ("The AI Act must protect human rights and work for civil society, not fall into easy concessions to the surveillance ecosystem!") works well or not.
About Instagram stories (I'm building a GPT ), which would turn the most complex article into a series of stories. We don't have a graphic designer and we only do social media in a personal capacity, without a real strategy. I'll update here when I do, I guess if the day goes well it would be around midnight GMT.
The Don't Spy EU is a very unfunded project with only a few people working on it, with other day jobs. (But I'm very happy about the outpouring of support we've gotten from HackerNews - lots of new politician names have been imported, and lots of pictures too!)
For this reason I have really noticed a spike in views and input, it was very important to be seen now that time is running out. if any of you can also share it on reddit or other tech-politics related forums, it would be really helpful!
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
When companies spy on their customers/users it's a 4 million Euro fine, when member states want to track the phones of its citizens it's a human rights violation, but when the EU it self wants something similar or worse it's a question of safety.
The EU doesn't have security services. What you're referring to is what (primarily) the member states want and they try to get it at the EU level so they won't be in violation of EU laws
In any case this specific request is about adding additional safeguards in a new act, not about stopping an ongoing practice or blocking a regressive proposal like the chatcontrol issue
So the appointed by the elected will consult with the elected and come up(or already came up) with a proposal and the elected will vote on it.
This website is made by some interest groups(both from Italy) that want to pressure the elected to reject a certain proposal.
Nothing weird really, just politics of a democracy in action. If you agree with the position of these interest groups you can support them, if you don't care you can ignore them or if you disagree you can start a counter campaign.
This is clearly false. The member states exist independently of the EU. If you get rid of the EU, all the states still exist. Which means the EU is something more than “just the member states”. The EU is obviously a governing body on top of and between the member states. There is an EU president, parliament, and other offices for crying out loud. There is no way you yourself can believe what you’re claiming.
States are allowed to have armies, corporations are not. States can send people with guns after you and lock you away, corporations can not. Do you think that's weird too? States hold more power than corporations because corporations exist only because states allow them to.
Now whether states are a good thing or not is another question of course.
Deleted Comment