As per my initial comment, I’d compare it to pre-WWII Netherlands banning government registration of religion. It could safe tens of thousands of people from deportation and murder.
OK, sounds like the biggest issue is not the recognition algorithm itself (can be replicated or bought quickly) but the acquisition of databases of people’s identities (takes time and maybe consent earlier on). They can definitely come together, but otherwise, consider the possibilities (a) a city only uses face recognition for narrow cases like comparing video footage to a known suspect while not being able to do face-rec for the general population, and (b) a city has profiles and the ability to identify all its citizens for some other purpose but just doesn’t have the recognition algorithms (yet).
It seems like a big distinction between the two lies in how quickly they could be rolled out. A pre-WWII database of religion would have taken a long time to create, so pre-emptively not creating one significantly inhibited the Germans, while the US already had the census data so could intern the Japanese. But it doesn’t seem likely that not using facial recognition now would make it significantly harder to use later.
As per my initial comment, I’d compare it to pre-WWII Netherlands banning government registration of religion. It could safe tens of thousands of people from deportation and murder.
OK, sounds like the biggest issue is not the recognition algorithm itself (can be replicated or bought quickly) but the acquisition of databases of people’s identities (takes time and maybe consent earlier on). They can definitely come together, but otherwise, consider the possibilities (a) a city only uses face recognition for narrow cases like comparing video footage to a known suspect while not being able to do face-rec for the general population, and (b) a city has profiles and the ability to identify all its citizens for some other purpose but just doesn’t have the recognition algorithms (yet).
It seems like a big distinction between the two lies in how quickly they could be rolled out. A pre-WWII database of religion would have taken a long time to create, so pre-emptively not creating one significantly inhibited the Germans, while the US already had the census data so could intern the Japanese. But it doesn’t seem likely that not using facial recognition now would make it significantly harder to use later.