“I can’t let you in. “ The guardian of the Atlantic Plaza Towers is at her post, behind her desk, but she is inaccessible. To enter this building in the heart of a black neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, visitors must go through a first glass door, ring their host’s intercom to open a second door. Finally, we arrive in front of the guardian, who observes you, as well as her barely concealed camera. If you can prove your identity, maybe she’ll let you go through the third glass door and into the apartments. Moreover, nothing is known, except that the rent-regulated building is filled with cameras, including in the elevators.
Tenants enter the building with electronic badges. In a few weeks, it will probably be worse. The manager of the building, Nelson Management Group, wants to install facial recognition cameras to compensate for the weakness of the badges, which can be stolen or copied. All tenants will have to comply to go through the second door, the one that leads to the caretaker. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back: some 134 tenants mobilized and sued this decision in early May. They are awaiting a judgment from the New York authorities.
In the meantime, the atmosphere is tense. We are the only white in this neighborhood undergoing slight gentrification. African Americans and Africans, a few Latinos. We are curtly rebuffed, before finding some benevolent interlocutors. “It’s a good place”, estimates Nicole Dunkin, who has just visited her father. “Everyone knows each other, there is no need for facial recognition”, assures the young woman. Same speech by Jeff Cervois, of distant Haitian origin, who walks with his two children.
“This facial recognition is too much. This building is not dangerous, it is very family-friendly. Perhaps this was not the case a few years ago. It was surely supporters of Donald Trump who had this idea. “
Abuse of power
The idea irritated, because this “first”, as if by chance, targets the poor, people of color (90% of the building’s population) and women (80%). The subject is even more sensitive, because the technology is not developed… for blacks. A study carried out by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, of Boston, showed that facial recognition systems were 99 percent effective for white men, but the error rate was as high as 35 percent for dark-skinned women. The American Civil Liberties Union put members of Congress through Amazon software, comparing their photo to a file of 25,000 portraits of offenders taken by police: 28 members of Congress were, wrongly , identified as delinquents.
You have 46.76% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.
–
