"However, the legality of doing so is on the artist’s side: a concert is technically a private event..."
I bet a lot more of these private events integrate more of this kind of technology for both good reasons (prevent stalkers) and bad reasons (prevent opposition) from attending an event. Let's say Hillary has a talk but she doesn't want hecklers. Or Cheney, same thing. That would be unfortunate use of this tech.
What's wrong with someone wanting to ensure a calm event where they can talk about their policies and ideas? If you want a private event where everyone attending is required to seat calmly and quietly throughout you should be able to organize it. Just state what the rules are in front.
>"What's the point of going to a play when the script is already printed?
That's a ridiculous analogy. You go to a play to be entertained, because it's a live experience, it'a performance that will always be slightly different and unique from performance to performance depending on any number of variables. In fact a play is great example of why spontaneity is so important.
>"Not all forms of engagement require spontaneous unplanned interaction to be considered interesting or useful by those partaking."
Really? Name one live event that doesn't presume some level of unplanned interaction? You go to see someone speak - there might be laughter, groans, facial expressions - a feedback loop. You go to see a band - there will be between song banter, audience reaction, requests. It's a kinetic ritual.
You go to a book signing and there will be an audience Q AND A with an author.
Please share some examples of which live events that are completely devoid of any unplanned human interaction are interesting?
It's not exactly spontaneous when an organized group of hecklers decides to attend an event with the specific purpose to disrupt it and interrupt or prevent the speaker's message from getting across.
As long as events actually stay spontaneous, I doubt speakers/performers will be motivated to become early adopters of the tech. When attendees with bad intent or repeated bad behavior become too frequent, then it's actually maintaining spontaneity to filter them out.
No but not allowing for any possibility of it is absurd.
>"It's not exactly spontaneous when an organized group of hecklers decides to attend an event with the specific purpose to disrupt it and interrupt or prevent the speaker's message from getting across"
Oh no not hecklers! How have we survived up until now? Yes we should definitely optimize for avoiding that at the expense of of normalcy i.e not having to be vetted to attend a public event. How serious of a problem to society is heckling really? I have never heard of "an organized group of hecklers" before. Pre-screening against potential hecklers sounds like ham-fisted to solution to a societal problem so small it doesn't even register.
So please take me down this slipper slope. What's the criteria for "heckling"? Is protest heckling? Is verbally voicing disagreement heckling? Is someone deemed a heckler entered into a database and prevented from attending other public events?
It's pretty easy to draw the line even using your spontaneity criteria.
When a group of your sacred hecklers organizes to disrupt an event to the extent to the degree that it destroys the spontaneity of the rest of the audience.
Believe it or not, many people attend events to hear the speakers, and interested members of the audience, and not some randos that want to monopolize the attention on for themselves.
I suppose you're one of the people that is against ad-blockers, because they prevent those marketers from spontaneously changing everyone's internet experience?
You haven't bothered to answer any of the questions have you? No, you resorted to ad-hominem attacks about ad-blockers? Seriously? Grow up.
I can't even remember the last time I saw someone get heckled. And I live in city where I go to either a speaking engagement, a comedy show or a concert at least once a week. It happens with absolutely no regularity. The prospect is about as concerning as having a hang nail.
Sorry, I thought the answers you sought were obvious to anyone following the news.
See [1], [2], & [3] for some examples, all of which involved organized groups doing premeditated actions to stop speech or disrupt a concert, in one case with mass murder. And of course TFA, about the serious premeditated security threats to a famous performer.
It's apparent that we're talking about two different things.
In your anecdata set, a heckler is apparently an over-drunk loud-ass in a comedy club. Sure, that's a "so what?" event.
I'm talking about the much larger issue of actual premeditated and/or organized disruption, which does exist, even though you "have never heard of it".
I'll agree that there are MANY good arguments to regulate and manage use of facial recognition tech, having to do with sound security (vs. security theater), individual rights & avoiding improper discrimination, general human rights privacy protections, and even maintaining normalcy as you noted in kind of an afterthought.
However, your "spontaneity" reasoning is especially weak and unconvincing, despite your apparent feeling that it should trump all others. The ad-blocker comment was specifically a rhetorical analogy and definitely not intended as ad hominem; it is interesting to see that you took it that way (if I wanted to make an ad hominem argument, I'd say that the 'spontaneity' arg sounds like someone from a sheltered background who doesn't get out of their bubble to read news, but I don't bother with ad hominem arguments).
For the "criteria for heckling?" question, I'd refer back to the previous answer, when a known person or group would disrupt an event to the extent that it destroys the spontaneity of the rest of the audience.
Slippery slope? Likely, but there are obviously degrees, and easily recognizable ends where it's appropriate to exclude or not. I think we'd agree that shooting the performer would be very exciting, but quite out of bounds. Wearing a funny hat, as long as it isn't too tall so as to obstruct the view of those behind is in bounds. Stopping the performance, out... Stalking? out...
I'm willing to recognize that there are both valid use cases, and arguments against, and that it needs to be tuned.
[3] pretty much any event with Milo Yiannopoulos, some of which have nearly ended in riot. While I object to almost his entire attitude & view set & would likely agree with the protesters, when he's booked in and people want to come see him speak, they want to see him, not the protesters, and it seems to me that he ought to have the right to decide whether he wants them outside or in.
This is not really new. A friend from Washington was hired to do IT security for few of Trump events. Initial ones they hired people off craiglist because Trump just started rolling out his third attempt on Presidency. He brag how often they got super nice people that seemed to love trump only to run them through facial recognition system on crowds libraries (there are companies specializing in high quality 4k recording of crowds of political events so that later they can be sold to security corps) to find out they were hard core against his agenda and that was their attempt at final sabotage during life event.
People have been circulating photographs of potential threats to their security guards since photography became ubiquitous. This is just an additional tool.
> Let's say Hillary has a talk but she doesn't want hecklers. Or Cheney, same thing. That would be unfortunate use of this tech.
Why? Your right to free speech is not a right to prevent others from exercising their right to free speech, and that's exactly what a heckler is doing. Your rights end where others' begin.
The purpose of free speech is to not stifle the free exchange of ideas and arguments, and "shut up," is not a particularly novel or valuable contribution to any conversation. and therefore does not deserve the same level of protection as an actual argument or idea.
Come on, it’s not just a “tool.” It radically changes privacy because of the scale. A human can only scan and accurately identify so many pictures manually with their eyes. I don’t necessarily disagree with the use of technology, but let’s be honest, it’s a dramatic shift.
It's only dramatic change if the purpose of the system is to identify as many people as possible (i.e., data mining the crowd), rather than to scan for a fixed set of known individuals (which is what guards already do). It's like the difference between checking IDs for entry vs scanning and saving IDs for entry.
And she's had to deal with plenty of them too. The two I remember recently were some guy climbing on and trying to break into her NY apartment, and some guy on social media threatening to kill her when she performed in Australia. The story is often familiar, the stalker guys will profess their undying love for Ms. Swift and lament that they'll never be with her so they must harm her in some way.
And then there's the regular crazy Swiftie fangirls who obnoxiously battle each other on Tumblr and concerts to get noticed by Taylor while despising all the people who have gotten picked to meet her. There have been numerous incidents at concerts of people jumping up on the stage and trying to grab her. I remember a few moments during the Reputation tour where she appeared very distracted between sets, snapping her head to the side as if she thought someone was about to jump her. I don't blame her for being paranoid, fans can be crazy.
I think also these big ticket venues are rightly more paranoid as of late, especially since Manchester and the shooting in LA. I made this really cool (I thought so at least) wearable LED matrix tee shirt (RGB Neopixels driven by a Teensyduino and cellphone battery pack) that displayed various Taylor related animations, but was only able to get it in 2 concerts out of uhm...several that I went to (Hackers can be Swifties too ok). The rules seemed arbitrary and highly dependent on what security guard you got when entering, which did not instill me with much confidence (one guard said the LED's were fine but I could not take the battery. Well ok then, even though the battery was just a regular cellphone charger that they explicitly did allow. And several times after I had been denied I go into the concert only to see other people with light up LED signs on full display).
Anyway, it's one thing for a private venue to employ these measures for security to voluntary participants who knew damn well they were surrounded by guards and had to abide by certain rules, and an entire other sinister thing for governments to arbitrarily collect this data on everyone to do god knows what with backed by the power of the state.
Between you know, John Lennon and the recent sad story of Christina Grimmie, I'm very glad Taylor Swift is taking security seriously.
These things can be serious. In another life I was co-managing the tour of a semi-successful boy band (we couldn‘t afford any Taylor Swift sized security measures, then again the concerts were usually less than 1000 people). The breaches were egregious. One day, one of the guys came home into his hotel room exhausted after a concert and there were three nude girls in his bed. Another walked out from his shower into a similar situation and was more shocked and angry than anything else. None of this could have happened without the help of Hotel personnel. On top, all of these intruders were getting very hostile when they weren‘t being „taken advantage of“ but sent out. Being famous, even slightly so, isn‘t as nice as it seems from the outside.
> Being famous, even slightly so, isn‘t as nice as it seems from the outside.
It's not that I don't believe you. I can rationally accept that what you've said makes sense. However, being on the outside, it takes some mental effort to make the fame you've described not seem extremely nice.
There's a level of fame, the more superstar type level, where simply walking by yourself in public is much less feasible because of the tendency to get mobbed or attract unwanted attention. This is probably the level where problems like stalkers are much more serious. I'd guess that this is the level where it isn't "as nice". You no longer can do things without considering potentially crazy fans or overly uncomfortable levels of recognition.
A long time ago, I remember the difference being illustrated at a Dragoncon in the early 2000s. Guests on the fame level of, say, Babylon 5 cast members, could walk around the convention just fine. They could do standard things like, say, go to the restaurant and have a meal without being heavily interrupted. Walking around they'd maybe get some hellos and photo poses and whatnot but it didn't seem terribly intrusive.
And then there was Alice Cooper, who walked around the main convention floor one day and instantly got mobbed by a huge crowd.
My hunch is that Taylor Swift probably is at the fame level where she needs security of some sort merely to walk around in public. That's a negative in my mind.
Babylon 5 is probably a bit too obscure, but you don't even need to be a Taylor Swift to get that "treatment"; I'm guessing anyone playing a main character of, say, Grey's Anatomy is probably getting constantly interrupted in public (meals, gym, parks, everywhere can be fair game for shrieking fans to badger you and demand you act like the character). At least that's my experience living with someone who got such a part (although at the scale of a small country, not worldwide like Grey's).
There’s a Sev2 bug report sitting Unassigned in God’s JIRA, something about humans fundamentally lacking the capacity to understand how even the poorest people can shine and how even the richest can suffer.
There’s no magical set of circumstances that result in happiness or joy. In fact I think the external things that we most often identify as bringing happiness or joy, apparently when most people are faced with these things, it results in quite the opposite.
In my opinion Taylor Swift has one of the hardest and most unrelenting jobs on the planet. Going out night after night trying to appeal to the teeming masses sounds like absolute hell. Everyone you meet more likely to be a vampire than not. No thanks!
Indeed. There are some fucking crazy people out there. I was at a relatively minor gig, right at the front and someone threw a full beer can at the frontman and smashed him right in the face. He picked a stage speaker up and threw it at the guy, then dived off the stage and tried to strangle him. He had just lost it by then. So gig ended there and when the police turned up and took statements, I overheard that apparently this guy had followed the frontman round the last 5 gigs and thrown cans at him at each one.
But I'm more curious about whether they all knew each other, or if it was like, one girl gets in and gets naked, and then another and she sees the first one and thinks, meh no biggie, and then what happens when the third one gets in?
The story would be a little more boring if they all knew each other ahead of time.
> it's one thing for a private venue to employ these measures for security to voluntary participants who knew damn well they were surrounded by guards and had to abide by certain rules
It sounds like you were not subjected to "certain rules" but rather arbitrarily enforced, unknown rules.
I think its technically funny they decided to make that distinction, because like obviously? Although I do see people misinterpreting their rights often times, I guess saying it this way helps steer the discussion
Interesting that they are private events in the US. It is not so everywhere so it is good thay they mentioned it.
In Finland they are considered public events. The definition is that if you do not need an invitation it is a public event, even if you pay for access.
Yes but the tickets also couple as countracts usually written on the back and in the purchasing process, which can override default legal treatment, in many places
Youll have to check the user experience and supporting local legal precedent
Yeah sure. I'm not sure what the privacy law here allows. But I would guess taking photos of faces is allowed to be contracted.
The public event mostly means here that you cannot have alcohol consumption inside except in the super regulated way like in normal restaurants. And regulations that you need X guards per Y visitors and whatnot stuff.
In a true private event you can do whatever. Those are the same as you'd just sit home with your friends.
I think you are allowed to take photos in public as well. Even surreptitiously, in most jurisdictions. Though like anything else, I am not sure how systematic that can be.
Contracts can only stipulate things that are legal. If a term is illegal it is considered void. Courts tend to look unfavourably at unfair terms in one-way contracts which the other party had no opportunity to negotiate. I think that it is unlikely that a contract on the back of a ticket can override default legal treatment.
I would definitely hire an appropriate lawyer if I wanted to understand the legality of something like this in a given jurisdiction!
> Contracts can only stipulate things that are legal
Such as overriding default treatment
> Courts tend to look unfavouravly at..
Common practices can successfully shield liability and go unchallenged for a hundred years.
A lot of incorporation strategy and contract law is based around deterrents and cost prohibitiveness of testing them, with a bit of thought into how actual litigation would wind up.
Good points. I would also assume that a major artist and the venues they perform at would have hired some serious lawyers and have a fairly strong idea that what they are doing is legally sound.
Really the only thing to do if you are curious is to find a good lawyer and get some real advice.
Am I misunderstanding the word stalker? What harm do they do at a concert?
I get why you want to keep out known trouble makers and such from concerts, and why you want to keep stalkers away from your private sphere, but I am not quite sure how obsessively watching the performer at a concert is causing other concert goes any trouble.
>On June 10, 2016, Grimmie was shot by 27-year-old Kevin James Loibl (March 10, 1989 – June 10, 2016) while she signed autographs following her performance with Before You Exit at The Plaza Live in Orlando. Loibl was tackled by Grimmie's brother, but the gunman broke free, backed against a wall, and shot himself dead.[78][b] Grimmie was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center in critical condition with three gunshot wounds;[c] she was pronounced dead just before 11 p.m. local time.[80] An autopsy revealed that Grimmie was shot once in the head and twice in the chest.[81] Her death was declared a homicide.
>The Orlando Police Department said Loibl had traveled by taxicab to Orlando from his home in St. Petersburg, Florida,[80] bringing two handguns, two extra magazines full of ammunition, and a hunting knife.[d] Orlando Police Chief John Mina stated, "We believe he came here to commit this crime."[82] Loibl did not have an arrest record in his home county and did not appear to know Grimmie personally.[83] Police did not offer a motive,[e] but said Loibl had shown an "unrealistic infatuation" with the singer and tried to make himself more physically attractive through weight loss, hair and eye surgery. Loibl's family said they were not aware of his plans to travel to Orlando nor that he possessed any guns.[78]
Even at a much smaller scale than Taylor Swift (though with relatively reasonable internet fame), see Meg Turney
"On January 26, 2018, a fan armed with a handgun broke into Turney's and Free's home, breaking a window to enter and firing one round as he did.[38] Turney and Free hid in a closet and called police. When the man could not find the couple, he left but was confronted by police outside. The suspect fired one shot and police returned fire; when officers approached the suspect's vehicle, they found him dead. Whether the suspect's death was from self-inflicted shots or shots fired by police is under investigation. Turney and Free were unharmed during the incident. It has been assessed the suspect had developed an obsession with Turney, and he was attempting to cause harm to Free, against whom he felt resentment.[39] Turney ceased updating her YouTube channel for nearly half a year following the incident, citing concern for her safety in sharing her life with an audience.[40]"
Yes, you misunderstand. These stalkers are lunatics who would harm her given the chance, and they've tried several times. We're not talking about normal fans.
It’s really not. I used to be an EMT; one of my most memorable calls was as backup to a police call to a hotel where a famous singer was staying because a known stalker was in the lobby. Talking to the guy, you could tell he was trying to downplay the creep factor but he had definitely crossed a line and he seemed to know it. One particular exchange:
Him: “I’ve sent her a few letters”
The cop: “How many is a few?”
Him: “A few, not that many”
The singer’s bodyguard: “two hundred in the last six months”
>Swift’s facial recognition system was built into a kiosk that displayed highlights of her rehearsals, which would secretly record onlookers’ faces.
>Afterward, the data was sent to a “command post” in Nashville, Tennessee that attempted to match hundreds of images to a database of her known stalkers.
Without any links to a repo or code samples it's hard to evaluate her individual contribution. Optimistically she used Node.js and is running on embedded arm for the kiosk. The remote control center in Tennessee could just be her kiosk app posting to some SaaS API for all we know, it's hard for me to count this as "experienced full stack" but definately points for communication skills and experience with successfully delivering a product working in or with a remote team. She was definitely key contributor in creating the kiosk content.
I know she didn't write the article's title but I don't know any more about what if anything she did write...
In this case, "Taylor Swift" is probably shorthand referring to the loosely defined "Taylor Swift" organization, which consists of a staff of probably dozens if not hundreds of employees/contractors dedicated to making the shows, album releases, social media, etc. happen, rather than "Taylor Alison Swift", the private individual.
All of that AND they probably purchased the system from a company that specializes in this stuff, or a traditional event security company is providing add-on packages that post up a few of these kiosks at events.
If I’m wrong and anyone can forward me to TSwift’s GitHub profile, I’ll eat my shoe.
>Swift’s facial recognition system...displayed highlights of her rehearsals...
Good point, if you are correct then he (the author, Stefan Etienne) has successfully obfuscated the details of her (the loosely defined Taylor Swift organisation) involvement and we (HN audience) need one or more of them (SE, TAS private citizen, TAS of TS and/or other TS representative) to provide clarity on what contributions she (Taylor Alison Swift private individual, or as member of Taylor Swift) provided.
I think the likelihood of Taylor Swift having written any of the code on this project is precisely zero. As it would be with any celebrity who uses tech.
Fear. Fear! FEAR!! They are fucking terrified of us. We're terrified of each other. We're terrified of darkness, of strangers, of foreigners, of immigrants. We're terrified of the future and past and even the present too. It's on the news all the time, on the TV all the time, on the internet all the time. Governments, militaries, intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, celebrities, sports teams, any kind of event you imagine...
I think you missed my point. Pretty sure that John Lennon did not live in fear of being shot in the back his entire life. The fact this happened scared everyone else so bad that they live profoundly different lives full of fear. My point has nothing to do with how rational or irrational that fear is. I'm only pointing its existence, the elephant in the room is our own fear, like a huge Spectre over everything that nobody ever looks at or questions. Fear drives society.
The US was dramatically more dangerous 40 years ago than it is today. The murder rate was 100% higher in 1980 - approximately the peak murder rate in US history - vs the expected 2018 full year figures (which based on numbers so far, will show one of the largest single year reductions in murder ever recorded in the US; Chicago's murders for example should be down about 15% this year). The culture was a wild mess throughout the 1970s, far beyond anything we see today. If John Lennon wasn't afraid of being shot at the time, that says more about his personal attitude on life than it does about the actual murder risks in 1980.
Yes, my point is about the psychology of today versus then. I can remember back to the early 1980s, remember well the 1990s. Today the fear is very, very bad. Which is ironic, considering the very statistics you cited. We're more terrified than ever, even as the real threats are statistically less. Go go gadget brain!
The averages are not that great when talking about specific/special cases. I can't find the details about the 60s, but currently in Chicago ~60% of homicides are gang warfare related. Being a famous person living in a nice area isolates you from that a lot. So whatever city it is, I'm sure celebrities enjoy a much lower chance of street murder than an average person.
It's when they're announced and surrounded by huge crowds, that's a bigger risk.
In Baltimore: "According to the analysis, nearly 90 percent of the 344 [homicide] victims in 2015 had a prior criminal record. Of those, 80.2 percent had a prior drug arrest; 60.8 had been arrested for a violent crime; and half had a prior gun charge. The average victim had been arrested 13 times before..."
I agree that celebrities have a smaller chance of random murder, but fans harming celebrities is definitely a quirk of human nature. Beyond the one deaths that make wikipedia, there are plenty of crazies that get caught before being able to act, or the celebrity survives the attack with injuries. X percentage of humans are crazy, and once you have 113.8m instagram followers, that's 1,138 instances of 1 in 100,000 crazy.
And how often are pop stars killed by crazed fans? In the 60 year history of rock you can count them on one hand and not use all five fingers.
Lennon was killed on the street walking into his apartment building not at a concert. Lennon also lived like a regular New Yorker picking up his own dry cleaning and prescriptions from the drug store on 72nd and Columbus, taking the family to the park across the street etc. You couldn't have chosen a worse person.
>"This is nothing new."
No setting up a "command post" as mentioned in the article, facially ID'ing "fans" and introducing police culture to concert venues is indeed very new and very creepy. It's also about the most un-rock and roll thing I've heard of. Any venue larger than a club has security and metal detector as the door. This is just a self-aggrandizing control freak.
It seems that it's a big problem in US. People in US are scared as nowhere else (even in the zones of open warfare). Cops are killing harmless people being afraid of them, celebrities are afraid of their fans, moms are afraid of this strange-looking guy standing near their children, common people are afraid of a foreigner even though the statistical probability of him being a terrorist going to kill you is three times lower than that of a lightning bolt unexpectedly doing the same.
The more secure and wealthy our world become, the more scared people get. It's pretty the same with the economy. Out ancestors had no toilets in their homes and faced starvation, yet nowadays people feel deprived of wealth as never before.
> common people are afraid of a foreigner even though the statistical probability of him being a terrorist going to kill you is three times lower than that of a lightning bolt unexpectedly doing the same
Avoiding to stand on a hill with a metal rod during a thunderstorm is a viable strategy to drastically reduce being struck by lightning. Avoiding to walk along dark alleys in skimpy outfits drastically reduces your personal risk of being raped. Avoiding suspicious strangers drastically reduces your personal risk of being attacked.
> We're terrified of darkness, of strangers, of foreigners, of immigrants.
Antisemitism, hatred for LGBTQ people and Religious fanaticism is rampant among those foreigners and immigrants, especially those who yell "Allahu Akbar"
That's what media does, they show you a particular case creating an illusion of some tendency. In reality what percent of muslims are threatening your life? Is the probability of being killed by such guy is higher than that of a car accident or lightning strike.
>Terrorism in Europe has killed 11,288 people in 18,811 attacks since January 1970
(many of which were committed by local groups like IRA, ETA or RAF)
>26.421 died in 2015 from car accidents
1 year of car accidents killed twice as much people as 50 years of terror.
Quoting a 2012 interview with Taylor: "I don’t have security to make myself look cool, or like I have an entourage. I have security because there’s a file of stalkers who want to take me home and chain me to a pipe in their basement."
If you wonder how much damage a stalker / obsessed fan can do at a public event like a concert, just ask Christina Grimmie (who was many, many orders of magnitude less famous or visible than someone like Taylor)
Also, keep in mind this was 2012... two years before "1989" came out and made her a full-on global superstar with her crossover to the pop world. One has to imagine her "basement-dwelling stalker" problem got a whole lot bigger.
I initially had the same thought, but no. Stalking implies a kind of general location tracking, not just proximity detection. It also implies a degree of stealth or secrecy, when in this case she's being quite laudably open about the measures in place. I'm not sure if I see a privacy issue here at all, unless the information (especially for non-matches) is being shared with others, but I am sure it's not stalking.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 152 ms ] threadI bet a lot more of these private events integrate more of this kind of technology for both good reasons (prevent stalkers) and bad reasons (prevent opposition) from attending an event. Let's say Hillary has a talk but she doesn't want hecklers. Or Cheney, same thing. That would be unfortunate use of this tech.
For fuck's sake why would we want to start sucking the spontaneity and chance engagement out of everything?
Not all forms of engagement require spontaneous unplanned interaction to be considered interesting or useful by those partaking.
That's a ridiculous analogy. You go to a play to be entertained, because it's a live experience, it'a performance that will always be slightly different and unique from performance to performance depending on any number of variables. In fact a play is great example of why spontaneity is so important.
>"Not all forms of engagement require spontaneous unplanned interaction to be considered interesting or useful by those partaking."
Really? Name one live event that doesn't presume some level of unplanned interaction? You go to see someone speak - there might be laughter, groans, facial expressions - a feedback loop. You go to see a band - there will be between song banter, audience reaction, requests. It's a kinetic ritual. You go to a book signing and there will be an audience Q AND A with an author.
Please share some examples of which live events that are completely devoid of any unplanned human interaction are interesting?
It's not exactly spontaneous when an organized group of hecklers decides to attend an event with the specific purpose to disrupt it and interrupt or prevent the speaker's message from getting across.
As long as events actually stay spontaneous, I doubt speakers/performers will be motivated to become early adopters of the tech. When attendees with bad intent or repeated bad behavior become too frequent, then it's actually maintaining spontaneity to filter them out.
No but not allowing for any possibility of it is absurd.
>"It's not exactly spontaneous when an organized group of hecklers decides to attend an event with the specific purpose to disrupt it and interrupt or prevent the speaker's message from getting across"
Oh no not hecklers! How have we survived up until now? Yes we should definitely optimize for avoiding that at the expense of of normalcy i.e not having to be vetted to attend a public event. How serious of a problem to society is heckling really? I have never heard of "an organized group of hecklers" before. Pre-screening against potential hecklers sounds like ham-fisted to solution to a societal problem so small it doesn't even register.
So please take me down this slipper slope. What's the criteria for "heckling"? Is protest heckling? Is verbally voicing disagreement heckling? Is someone deemed a heckler entered into a database and prevented from attending other public events?
When a group of your sacred hecklers organizes to disrupt an event to the extent to the degree that it destroys the spontaneity of the rest of the audience.
Believe it or not, many people attend events to hear the speakers, and interested members of the audience, and not some randos that want to monopolize the attention on for themselves.
I suppose you're one of the people that is against ad-blockers, because they prevent those marketers from spontaneously changing everyone's internet experience?
No. That's your word. You introduced that.
You haven't bothered to answer any of the questions have you? No, you resorted to ad-hominem attacks about ad-blockers? Seriously? Grow up.
I can't even remember the last time I saw someone get heckled. And I live in city where I go to either a speaking engagement, a comedy show or a concert at least once a week. It happens with absolutely no regularity. The prospect is about as concerning as having a hang nail.
See [1], [2], & [3] for some examples, all of which involved organized groups doing premeditated actions to stop speech or disrupt a concert, in one case with mass murder. And of course TFA, about the serious premeditated security threats to a famous performer.
It's apparent that we're talking about two different things.
In your anecdata set, a heckler is apparently an over-drunk loud-ass in a comedy club. Sure, that's a "so what?" event.
I'm talking about the much larger issue of actual premeditated and/or organized disruption, which does exist, even though you "have never heard of it".
I'll agree that there are MANY good arguments to regulate and manage use of facial recognition tech, having to do with sound security (vs. security theater), individual rights & avoiding improper discrimination, general human rights privacy protections, and even maintaining normalcy as you noted in kind of an afterthought.
However, your "spontaneity" reasoning is especially weak and unconvincing, despite your apparent feeling that it should trump all others. The ad-blocker comment was specifically a rhetorical analogy and definitely not intended as ad hominem; it is interesting to see that you took it that way (if I wanted to make an ad hominem argument, I'd say that the 'spontaneity' arg sounds like someone from a sheltered background who doesn't get out of their bubble to read news, but I don't bother with ad hominem arguments).
For the "criteria for heckling?" question, I'd refer back to the previous answer, when a known person or group would disrupt an event to the extent that it destroys the spontaneity of the rest of the audience.
Slippery slope? Likely, but there are obviously degrees, and easily recognizable ends where it's appropriate to exclude or not. I think we'd agree that shooting the performer would be very exciting, but quite out of bounds. Wearing a funny hat, as long as it isn't too tall so as to obstruct the view of those behind is in bounds. Stopping the performance, out... Stalking? out...
I'm willing to recognize that there are both valid use cases, and arguments against, and that it needs to be tuned.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/05/22/manches....
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201....
[3] pretty much any event with Milo Yiannopoulos, some of which have nearly ended in riot. While I object to almost his entire attitude & view set & would likely agree with the protesters, when he's booked in and people want to come see him speak, they want to see him, not the protesters, and it seems to me that he ought to have the right to decide whether he wants them outside or in.
> Let's say Hillary has a talk but she doesn't want hecklers. Or Cheney, same thing. That would be unfortunate use of this tech.
Why? Your right to free speech is not a right to prevent others from exercising their right to free speech, and that's exactly what a heckler is doing. Your rights end where others' begin.
The purpose of free speech is to not stifle the free exchange of ideas and arguments, and "shut up," is not a particularly novel or valuable contribution to any conversation. and therefore does not deserve the same level of protection as an actual argument or idea.
And then there's the regular crazy Swiftie fangirls who obnoxiously battle each other on Tumblr and concerts to get noticed by Taylor while despising all the people who have gotten picked to meet her. There have been numerous incidents at concerts of people jumping up on the stage and trying to grab her. I remember a few moments during the Reputation tour where she appeared very distracted between sets, snapping her head to the side as if she thought someone was about to jump her. I don't blame her for being paranoid, fans can be crazy.
I think also these big ticket venues are rightly more paranoid as of late, especially since Manchester and the shooting in LA. I made this really cool (I thought so at least) wearable LED matrix tee shirt (RGB Neopixels driven by a Teensyduino and cellphone battery pack) that displayed various Taylor related animations, but was only able to get it in 2 concerts out of uhm...several that I went to (Hackers can be Swifties too ok). The rules seemed arbitrary and highly dependent on what security guard you got when entering, which did not instill me with much confidence (one guard said the LED's were fine but I could not take the battery. Well ok then, even though the battery was just a regular cellphone charger that they explicitly did allow. And several times after I had been denied I go into the concert only to see other people with light up LED signs on full display).
Anyway, it's one thing for a private venue to employ these measures for security to voluntary participants who knew damn well they were surrounded by guards and had to abide by certain rules, and an entire other sinister thing for governments to arbitrarily collect this data on everyone to do god knows what with backed by the power of the state.
Between you know, John Lennon and the recent sad story of Christina Grimmie, I'm very glad Taylor Swift is taking security seriously.
Full-disclosure: I was a very excited mid-20s adult male when Taylor finally decided to be on Spotify.
(1989 won me over.)
There are dozens of us!
It's not that I don't believe you. I can rationally accept that what you've said makes sense. However, being on the outside, it takes some mental effort to make the fame you've described not seem extremely nice.
A long time ago, I remember the difference being illustrated at a Dragoncon in the early 2000s. Guests on the fame level of, say, Babylon 5 cast members, could walk around the convention just fine. They could do standard things like, say, go to the restaurant and have a meal without being heavily interrupted. Walking around they'd maybe get some hellos and photo poses and whatnot but it didn't seem terribly intrusive.
And then there was Alice Cooper, who walked around the main convention floor one day and instantly got mobbed by a huge crowd.
My hunch is that Taylor Swift probably is at the fame level where she needs security of some sort merely to walk around in public. That's a negative in my mind.
There’s no magical set of circumstances that result in happiness or joy. In fact I think the external things that we most often identify as bringing happiness or joy, apparently when most people are faced with these things, it results in quite the opposite.
In my opinion Taylor Swift has one of the hardest and most unrelenting jobs on the planet. Going out night after night trying to appeal to the teeming masses sounds like absolute hell. Everyone you meet more likely to be a vampire than not. No thanks!
Maybe I'm just old :-)
Are you insinuating that the goal wasn't to have sex with a pop idol but instead to blackmail them?
But I'm more curious about whether they all knew each other, or if it was like, one girl gets in and gets naked, and then another and she sees the first one and thinks, meh no biggie, and then what happens when the third one gets in?
The story would be a little more boring if they all knew each other ahead of time.
It sounds like you were not subjected to "certain rules" but rather arbitrarily enforced, unknown rules.
I think its technically funny they decided to make that distinction, because like obviously? Although I do see people misinterpreting their rights often times, I guess saying it this way helps steer the discussion
In Finland they are considered public events. The definition is that if you do not need an invitation it is a public event, even if you pay for access.
I guess it's similar thought the EU. The surveillance would violate GDPR as it requires an affirmative action/consent.
Youll have to check the user experience and supporting local legal precedent
The public event mostly means here that you cannot have alcohol consumption inside except in the super regulated way like in normal restaurants. And regulations that you need X guards per Y visitors and whatnot stuff.
In a true private event you can do whatever. Those are the same as you'd just sit home with your friends.
I would definitely hire an appropriate lawyer if I wanted to understand the legality of something like this in a given jurisdiction!
Such as overriding default treatment
> Courts tend to look unfavouravly at..
Common practices can successfully shield liability and go unchallenged for a hundred years.
A lot of incorporation strategy and contract law is based around deterrents and cost prohibitiveness of testing them, with a bit of thought into how actual litigation would wind up.
Really the only thing to do if you are curious is to find a good lawyer and get some real advice.
I get why you want to keep out known trouble makers and such from concerts, and why you want to keep stalkers away from your private sphere, but I am not quite sure how obsessively watching the performer at a concert is causing other concert goes any trouble.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Grimmie
>The Orlando Police Department said Loibl had traveled by taxicab to Orlando from his home in St. Petersburg, Florida,[80] bringing two handguns, two extra magazines full of ammunition, and a hunting knife.[d] Orlando Police Chief John Mina stated, "We believe he came here to commit this crime."[82] Loibl did not have an arrest record in his home county and did not appear to know Grimmie personally.[83] Police did not offer a motive,[e] but said Loibl had shown an "unrealistic infatuation" with the singer and tried to make himself more physically attractive through weight loss, hair and eye surgery. Loibl's family said they were not aware of his plans to travel to Orlando nor that he possessed any guns.[78]
"On January 26, 2018, a fan armed with a handgun broke into Turney's and Free's home, breaking a window to enter and firing one round as he did.[38] Turney and Free hid in a closet and called police. When the man could not find the couple, he left but was confronted by police outside. The suspect fired one shot and police returned fire; when officers approached the suspect's vehicle, they found him dead. Whether the suspect's death was from self-inflicted shots or shots fired by police is under investigation. Turney and Free were unharmed during the incident. It has been assessed the suspect had developed an obsession with Turney, and he was attempting to cause harm to Free, against whom he felt resentment.[39] Turney ceased updating her YouTube channel for nearly half a year following the incident, citing concern for her safety in sharing her life with an audience.[40]"
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Turney#Home_Invasion
Someone also fired Bullets through and broke a window of a fairly popular streamer DrDisrespect while he was streaming.
Him: “I’ve sent her a few letters” The cop: “How many is a few?” Him: “A few, not that many” The singer’s bodyguard: “two hundred in the last six months”
>Afterward, the data was sent to a “command post” in Nashville, Tennessee that attempted to match hundreds of images to a database of her known stalkers.
Without any links to a repo or code samples it's hard to evaluate her individual contribution. Optimistically she used Node.js and is running on embedded arm for the kiosk. The remote control center in Tennessee could just be her kiosk app posting to some SaaS API for all we know, it's hard for me to count this as "experienced full stack" but definately points for communication skills and experience with successfully delivering a product working in or with a remote team. She was definitely key contributor in creating the kiosk content.
I know she didn't write the article's title but I don't know any more about what if anything she did write...
If I’m wrong and anyone can forward me to TSwift’s GitHub profile, I’ll eat my shoe.
Good point, if you are correct then he (the author, Stefan Etienne) has successfully obfuscated the details of her (the loosely defined Taylor Swift organisation) involvement and we (HN audience) need one or more of them (SE, TAS private citizen, TAS of TS and/or other TS representative) to provide clarity on what contributions she (Taylor Alison Swift private individual, or as member of Taylor Swift) provided.
Terror is the currency of today.
Fuck, what a mess we are in.
Oh wait, he doesn’t. Because some crazy fan shot him and he’s been dead for decades.
This is nothing new.
It's when they're announced and surrounded by huge crowds, that's a bigger risk.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-co...
--
I agree that celebrities have a smaller chance of random murder, but fans harming celebrities is definitely a quirk of human nature. Beyond the one deaths that make wikipedia, there are plenty of crazies that get caught before being able to act, or the celebrity survives the attack with injuries. X percentage of humans are crazy, and once you have 113.8m instagram followers, that's 1,138 instances of 1 in 100,000 crazy.
Lennon was killed on the street walking into his apartment building not at a concert. Lennon also lived like a regular New Yorker picking up his own dry cleaning and prescriptions from the drug store on 72nd and Columbus, taking the family to the park across the street etc. You couldn't have chosen a worse person.
>"This is nothing new."
No setting up a "command post" as mentioned in the article, facially ID'ing "fans" and introducing police culture to concert venues is indeed very new and very creepy. It's also about the most un-rock and roll thing I've heard of. Any venue larger than a club has security and metal detector as the door. This is just a self-aggrandizing control freak.
It seems that it's a big problem in US. People in US are scared as nowhere else (even in the zones of open warfare). Cops are killing harmless people being afraid of them, celebrities are afraid of their fans, moms are afraid of this strange-looking guy standing near their children, common people are afraid of a foreigner even though the statistical probability of him being a terrorist going to kill you is three times lower than that of a lightning bolt unexpectedly doing the same.
The more secure and wealthy our world become, the more scared people get. It's pretty the same with the economy. Out ancestors had no toilets in their homes and faced starvation, yet nowadays people feel deprived of wealth as never before.
Avoiding to stand on a hill with a metal rod during a thunderstorm is a viable strategy to drastically reduce being struck by lightning. Avoiding to walk along dark alleys in skimpy outfits drastically reduces your personal risk of being raped. Avoiding suspicious strangers drastically reduces your personal risk of being attacked.
Fear the hill.
> Avoiding to walk along dark alleys in skimpy outfits
Fear the alley. (Actually! Fear the husband, uncle, friend!)
> Avoiding suspicious strangers
Fear the stranger.
Fear fear fear.
Celebrities are right to fear their fans though.
Antisemitism, hatred for LGBTQ people and Religious fanaticism is rampant among those foreigners and immigrants, especially those who yell "Allahu Akbar"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/13/manhunt-for-st...
>Terrorism in Europe has killed 11,288 people in 18,811 attacks since January 1970
(many of which were committed by local groups like IRA, ETA or RAF)
>26.421 died in 2015 from car accidents
1 year of car accidents killed twice as much people as 50 years of terror.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/a-history-of-t...
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/sites/roadsafety/...
If you wonder how much damage a stalker / obsessed fan can do at a public event like a concert, just ask Christina Grimmie (who was many, many orders of magnitude less famous or visible than someone like Taylor)
This sounds very dystopian to me.