Brave New World, the Panopticon, and the Minority Report all rolled into one.

From AI meets MSG by Robert F. Graboyes.  The subheading is Corporate Panopticon Punishes Girl Scouts.  

I have seen aspects of this story bandied about over the past few weeks but never in a fashion to cohere into a clear picture of what happened and why.  Which is understandable since it is improbable, remarkable, and concerning in multiple ways.  Some of the claimed elements of the story were so improbable that it didn't warrant reading.  Graboyes' is the first account which I have seen which tells a coherent and reasonably clear story.

According to NBC New York and other news outlets worldwide:

Kelly Conlon and her daughter came to New York City the weekend after Thanksgiving as part of a Girl Scout field trip to Radio City Music Hall to see the Christmas Spectacular show. But while her daughter, other members of the Girl Scout troop and their mothers got to go enjoy the show, Conlon wasn't allowed to do so.

MSG used facial recognition software to identify Conlon so that security guards could eject her from the venue as Girl Scouts and chaperones entered the facility. While her daughter’s troop and other parents watched the Rockettes, Conlon waited outside in the rain. Why? Because she is an attorney with a New Jersey law firm (Davis, Saperstein & Salomon) where other attorneys are representing clients involved in a personal injury lawsuit against a restaurant property now owned by MSG. MSG owns an empire of entertainment venues, including Madison Square Garden.

Read the whole account for the many implications.

MSG issued a statement confirming the veracity of these events:

MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys pursuing active litigation against the Company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved … While we understand this policy is disappointing to some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adverse environment.

To put it another way, “Nice Christmas plans you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to them.” Ponder the steps required to make this drama possible. MSG had to place Davis, Saperstein & Salomon on their Grinch list. They had to compile lists of attorneys (and others?) at the firm. They had to secure facial scans of all of those people—presumably via companies that scan Facebook pages and the like. They had to put in place the technology necessary to spot Conlon instantaneously as she entered the facility. They had to divert their security team toward planning and executing the ejection of Girl Scout mothers rather than, say, focusing on potentially dangerous intruders.

This is an example of story that calls for a first principles approach but then, when you go back to first principles, it becomes even murkier.

Do private entities have a legal right to create such a capability?  It certainly seems so.  

Should corporations practice collective punishment?  I would argue not because collective punishment seems awfully close to category discrimination.  Even from a brand or commercial perspective, it seems like a strategy with a lot of potential to backfire.

Is there a potential conflict between security and contract?  In other words, what happens when the company sells a ticket to a person, they incur costs to travel to the venue, but the company then reneges on the contract (the purchased ticket) based on the visual identification match when the customer shows up?  It would seem like there might be some legal exposure there.

Does it make sense to have and to use this capability?  Well . . . Maybe, but I would think it ought to be very, very targeted.  I agree that you might not want a legal opponent to have open access to some aspects of your operations in a fashion that might increase your legal exposure.  But that seems a very narrow remit compared to what is actually implemented.

To what extent do we want corporations to be able to segment their market and discriminate against customers based on factors beyond the control of the law?  We have been rehearsing this over the past five years with advocacy groups trying to force private companies to sell to others in circumstances that violate other Constitutional rights.  Forcing bakers (and other professions) to sell to products or services that violate their religious beliefs has become a favorite punishing pastime for various advocacy groups.  This has seemed to be wrong but we also don't want to allow individuals and corporations to arbitrarily blacklist categories of customers. 

 

In a world of such social control, would it be possible to avoid the creation of castes with different rights and obligations?  Such control seems a necessary predicate capability in Huxley's Brave New World.  

Does this social monitoring and control potentially reflect the issues covered in Minority Report?  Certainly Philip K. Dick was addressing the conflict between authoritarianism and individualism.  In this instance, the victim is being punished by the corporation not for anything she has done, but for what the corporation is concerned she might do.  

 

Would we be comfortable with the government having the same capacity?  This is already a long standing question but there has been ambiguity as to just how capable government might be in executing such a capability.  We don't know what we don't know.  We have a lot of experience seeing the government not being able to do what we know it should be doing well; why would we expect it to do something greatly more complex, that much better?

The issues are legion and the answers not obvious to me on many of them.

What is most striking to me is that this is done with great effectiveness by a large corporation, and not even a technology company.  This capability would be a peripheral issue for them in their business with a very narrowly defined benefit.  And yet they seem to have built an effective social monitoring and control mechanism that works.

If they can do it, then surely the government already has this ability.  And if so, why don't we know about it?  And if so, why is it not being directed at the legion of legal issues confronting the nation?  Human trafficking?  Child sex porn?  Illegal immigrants?  Criminals with outstanding warrants?  Drug consumption?  Corruption among government personnel?  Public security (no longer need TSA)?

This kind of social monitoring would seem be an effective tool in substantially reducing these ailments of the nation.  The fact that the problems are not reduced suggests that the government does not have this capability.

Or, much worse, the government has the capability but is not using it for these purposes.  

Woof!  I hope there is more and deeper coverage on this going into the New Year.  Especially with regard to what the government actually has as a capability.