11 ms·

How an accused drug dealer revealed Jacksonville's facial recognition network

warsaw 10y ago
Americans are whistling down to the concentration camps.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  And we have been for a very long time. Quite frankly there isn't even a viable way to vote against it anymore.
  - koverstreet 10y ago
    There was, back during the democratic primary. But we blew that one.
    - jeff_petersen 10y ago
      Were you going to vote for the guy who later endorsed the corporate-owned neoconservative warhawk? Because, given that, it seems like his principles weren't worth very much.
      - socialist_coder 10y ago
        Such a bad and tired argument. He was doing it to try and stop Trump from getting elected. As a hardcore Sanders supporter, I am behind that decision 100%.
        jeff_petersen 10y ago
        I fail to see how stopping Trump from winning is a palatable outcome if the alternate option is Clinton winning. She is diametrically opposed to just about every progressive position, I don't see how any progressive could support her in good conscience. Unless of course it's more important that the team you identify with wins than what the principles that team stands for are.
        socialist_coder 10y ago
        If you truly consider yourself a progressive, take a minute to really think rationally about the situation. Put aside your emotions for Sanders. I know it's hard, and it took me a long time to come to grips with the situation before I could do that. I was very close to voting for Trump because of how terrible I thought Clinton was. But, if you really think rationally about it, supporting Clinton is clearly the best option. Under Clinton you still get many progressive policy pushes - paid leave, higher minimum wage, protecting abortion, stopping Republican voter suppression, and most importantly, SUPREME COURT NOMINATIONS! The supreme court nominations alone should be enough to convince you, and the rest is just icing on the cake. Not the mention, Trump supporters feel like they can be openly racist (which was my fear if Trump won, and sure enough, it has become a reality). So yes, Clinton is a great option when compared to Trump.
        jeff_petersen 10y ago
        > The supreme court nominations alone should be enough to convince you They did. I do not want Hillary Clinton appointing judges to the supreme court any more than I want Trump doing it. Again, Hillary is not a progressive, so I see no reason to believe that her justice picks would be. You haven't really made a convincing argument in her favor, you've essentially said "yes, she would have been an awful authoritarian who would continue and amplify the bad policies we already had, but at least she paid lip service to some inconsequential social wedge issues that serve as uniforms for my team!" edit: It's especially disappointing that Hillary didn't lose by an even wider margin. Perhaps if the Democrats got bitten hard enough by their failed strategy we could have a chance at some real reform in four years. Instead people like you rewarded their avarice and deceit, so we can expect things to continue like this.
        masonic 10y ago
        "...paid leave, higher minimum wage, protecting abortion, stopping Republican voter suppression..." When she was a Senator, she did absolutely nothing on any of those fronts (or immigration)... even when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, including a filibuster-proof Senate majority.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - pessimizer 10y ago
        His only other alternative would have been to run on the Green ticket, and that probably wouldn't have worked out well for a number of reasons. As things shook out, he somehow ended up the de facto leader of a Democratic party that he hasn't even officially joined yet. If things had come out the other way, he would have pull for having brought his followers around and the chairmanship of a Senate committee. If he had been a failed Green party candidate, he would have been out of politics by now. As it was, his answers to specific questions about what he endorsed about Clinton were so carefully phrased that he sounded like Clinton talking about emails.
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      But we were told that we couldn't vote for him because he was unelectable. We had to vote for the candidate who had been hated for decades, and who coincidentally directly or indirectly employed at least half of the Democratic party apparatus. No matter, though. I'm sure that President Trump will be a wise and careful steward of his new surveillance network.
- sctb 10y ago
  We've already asked you to please comment substantively, and there's nothing here besides inflammatory allegory. So we have to ask again: please don't post if you have nothing to say.
- hga 10y ago
  Not those of us who've been buying guns, but primarily rifles, of military utility in ever greater numbers, starting in the George W. Bush administration.... And let me quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The GULAG Archipelago on the general question of "whistling" vs. resisting: And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - masonic 10y ago
    "Not those of us who've been buying guns, but primarily rifles, of military utility in ever greater numbers, starting in the George W. Bush administration" Actually, gun ownership surged during the early Clinton administration in response to his party's push for gun bans and the "Brady Bill".
    - hga 10y ago
      I can well believe that, but as I remember the big surge started after 9/11, when we were told the only thing we could personally do was to shop (support the already crashing economy), i.e. that we were are our own. Quibble: our best numbers come from NICS checks, and they only started in 1998 based on 1993's Brady Bill. E.g. they capture sales of used guns, which the ATF otherwise doesn't have visibility into like they do with new stuff through Pittman Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Federal_Aid_in_Wildlife_Restoration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Fede...). And even that data is getting iffier as more and more people get concealed carry licenses, which generally allow you to skip the NICS check. But, yeah, pretty much every effort, mooted or actual, at gun control prompts us ornery gun owners to resist, generally by buying some of what's under fire, so to speak.
kw71 10y ago
I don't understand how these things get revealed in court. The cops are lying to secure warrants and charging documents, so why don't they keep lying when they're on the stand during a trial?
- iliketosleep 10y ago
  perhaps because they are under oath. which sort of implies that it's OK for them to lie normally..
  - kw71 10y ago
    They're also under oath when they raise their right hand before a magistrate or other court officer and swear that the narratives they've written to support the warrant they're requesting is 100% true.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  It's generally understood that police will lie like rugs at every point in the process, because the smooth functioning of the system requires it. But, when they're directly lying to a judge, the judge tends to take it personally (since no one likes being lied to) and has the power to impose immediate consequences. Make no mistake, they do lie to judges, or at minimum give incantations with no regard to their truth value ("I noticed a furtive movement"). But easily-disproven lies are riskier.
z3t4 10y ago
a possible problem is when the software gets better then humans ... And you get many people who all can be identified by the vitness, witch one do you prosecute ?
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  on the other side of the coin, it's also a problem when the software is buggy. If innocent, it's tough to mount an effective defense without access to the algorithm.
  - benevol 10y ago
    > it's also a problem when the software is buggy Or when the software is not open source and therefor can contain elements of corruption because not being reviewed by the public.
- makomk 10y ago
  You prosecute the one who seems most likely to have done it - who has a record, or was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or... Then you claim in court that there was less than a 1 in a million chance that he matched the suspect's photo, omitting the fact that there were numerous other matches. This is already happening with some of the less accurate forms of DNA testing.
- foolrush 10y ago
  “Better” here is problematic on many levels, not the least of which is an entirely automated (and likely privatized) legal system, streamlined for razor sharp "efficiency". Every law an ethical implication, written by a culture frozen in a frail moment of history or worse, by the cultural detritus of corporate ownership, malignant power, or shady backrooms. Every line of code written by a human, with bias and imbalance. The "efficiency" of such a system is carved out of the bedrock of dystopian science fiction.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > a possible problem is when the software gets better then humans ... And you get many people who all can be identified by the vitness, witch one do you prosecute ? The non-rhetorical answer, according to how the system is supposed to work, is none of them. It's not possible for four independent actors to each have a 95% chance of being the perpetrator. If one has a 95% probability then the combined probability of all the others has to be <5%. And if the probability of the "most likely suspect" to have done it is e.g. 40%, that clearly isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt." But this was all true even before computers. The system doesn't care about the math. A crime is committed, someone is to be punished, they put the most likely suspect in front of a jury and most of the time the jury will convict regardless. In reality most of the time the accused will plead guilty to take a six month sentence over the 90+% chance of getting five years from a jury who doesn't understand (and is not given an opportunity to understand) how the probabilities actually work. And that incentive to plead guilty for a shorter sentence and lower legal bills is the same whether you're guilty or innocent.
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
Kathy ONeill has written a book covering some of this new area of concern (hers is the use of poorly controlled algorithms in making life altering decisions (which teachers to fire, how long a prison sentence to recommend)) The existence of algorithms intending to help head teachers run their schools, or here in technology intended to help police catch criminals, the existence is not the problem. It's the poor use, the lack of transparency and the lack of oversight I expect cameras covering public spaces to be ubiquitous in a decade - but the difference between crime free neighbourhood and oppressive police state is who has access to the video feed, what algorithms they use to process the faces and so on. This seems a sneaky move by the sheriffs department to avoid negative headlines. A bad PR move one suspects but the principle ... that's what we need to spend the next decade debating publically
- noir_lord 10y ago
  > It's the poor use, the lack of transparency and the lack of oversight. And the fact as (many of us are) programmers we know just how buggy, generally unreliable and flaky software can be. Much like my instinctive recoil from IoT - "You want to put lowest cost manufactured network devices that have access to tonnes of personal data on my internal network and connect them to the internet..!", I find this trend deeply worrying, people who aren't techies tend to put undue weight on computer systems that usually give the correct results but can fail in subtle and not subtle ways with "Well it worked last time". I've had people tell me "Well that's not what the computer says" when I absolutely knew that what the computer says is wrong, most recently that I'd submitted electricity meter readings (I had a screenshot of both the submission and the corresponding "Your meter reading was recieved" success message, not my first rodeo..). To quote Jurassic Park "You where so busy figuring out if you could no one stopped to consider if they should".
- marchenko 10y ago
  It is interesting to consider that we may not actually want a 'crime-free' neighborhood, depending on how crimes are defined, and the distribution of personal and public costs associated with policing behavior and punishing offenders.
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
>Using the technology, police can insert people with no criminal histories into virtual lineups without their knowledge "This tool is too important to give up for the fight against 'bad guys'. Fears that it will spread are overblown. This technology will only be used to catch the worst of the worst" This is beyond Orwellian. Now we're all stock images for police lineups. I'd argue for royalties, but I'd settle for at least being notified. What happens if someone picks your mugshot when it was included to just fill out the lineup? Do you now have to mount a costly legal while not having access to any details on the program? I dont agree with its secret use for national security purposes, but at least i can understand it. Now its available to medium size cities with absolutely no oversight or transparency. This is the type of tool that allows unconstitutional investigations to be covered up with parallel construction. On another note, Peter Thiel (Palantir) might have become the most powerful man in the world overnight.
- criddell 10y ago
  > Peter Thiel/Palantir might have become the most powerful man in the world overnight. Overnight? Thiel has been building Palantir for a long time now. It's older than Twitter. It sucks, but I'm not sure what can be done. The technology is only going to get better and cheaper and more accessible.
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    He's leading Trump's transition team as of a couple of days ago.
    - benevol 10y ago
      Thiel brings the mass surveillance, Trump adds the hate. Explosive mix, but again, this danger was obvious a couple of decades ago.
      - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
        Well, now not only is he the defacto head of the NSA, he has a direct line to the President, AND he'll most likely be Trump's go to guy on policies towards the Silicon Valley. I know this has been coming for a while, but without the Trump win, he's not nearly as powerful.
Scea91 10y ago
Would we have problem if he was identified by manual search in the database? If not, I don't see why using technology to remove the manual labor is worse. Is the problem in the existence of the database? Then I would not make this a discussion about facial recognition software but about mugshot databases instead.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  > f not, I don't see why using technology to remove the manual labor is worse. What's its accuracy? How was the surveillance obtained? Is the time of the photo accurate or was the server clock set incorrectly? Was it obtained constitutionally or through an illegal investigation? What if it's incorrect, can I have the algorithm to help mount a legal defense
  - Scea91 10y ago
    I suppose that the result is still evaluated by a human so the question about accuracy is irrelevant. All of the other questions can be asked irrespective if pattern recognition or manual labor was used.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - coleca 10y ago
    It shouldn't really matter what the accuracy of the software is being used properly. The facial recognition software should be used as a tool to help narrow down potential suspects. It shouldn't be the judge jury and executioner to decide if someone was indeed at the scene of a crime. The officers using the system need to be properly trained to understand the limitations of the system. For example just because the system finds a close match, it is only searching a database of people it already knows about. The actual suspect may not be in the system. Traditional police detective work still applies. The face match is just a lead not hard evidence. Also, the systems use should be public (just like the police's use of fingerprint biometrics is). Problems come in when you try to use this or any technology to automate law enforcement. Human judgement and police work need to always be part of the equation. Facial recognition should be thought of as a username not a username and password combination. It shouldn't be the only piece of evidence in a case to prosecute.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
This article reminds me of the one where the guy in prison discovers the existence of the Stingray devices. [1] A fine example of research and investigative work to uncover a serious violation of rights. [1]. http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveillance-device-daniel-rigmaiden-case http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveill...
coldcode 10y ago
I'm in that database because my photo was taken for a driver's license. Imagine the system is not 100% reliable (which of course it isn't), I wind up being matched as a probable, and become a target for investigation, and potentially arrested. At this point I am only guilty of driving a car and will have to defend myself by hiring a lawyer. Eventually it will be obvious I couldn't be the person. By then my life is mostly in ruin. Yet there is nothing I can do to avoid this possibility legally.
- anonymfus 10y ago
  Same thing happens when police publishes photo of suspect and then your neighbour reports you.
- CalChris 10y ago
  Yes. This is similar to asset seizure where the entire burden of proving your innocence is placed on you.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  "Yet there is nothing I can do to avoid this possibility legally." Don't drive? I know that sucks, but with self-driving cars on the horizon, these sort of "capitulation of rights" scenarios should not need to exist. We are very vulnerable (in terms of rights) when driving in the US.
  - r0muald 10y ago
    > We are very vulnerable (in terms of rights) when driving in the US. We are very vulnerable (in terms of rights) in the US.
  - CapitalistCartr 10y ago
    In the USA that doesn't help. If you don't have a driver's license, you have to have a "state-issued ID card", which is the same except it doesn't confer the right to drive. The only way to avoid both is to opt out of society completely, which is effectively giving up living in this country.
hackuser 10y ago
What will a neo-authoritarian President do with such power? How about one who threatens to use his legal power to suppress and punish his political enemies? Would law enforcement, such as the FBI, act on behalf of one party? It is on every one of us to act. What is your company doing to create or reduce these risks? What is your legislator doing? If the United States is the land of the free, if that is more than words, then its citizens must act like it. As many veterans of prior struggles have said: Don't get scared, don't get mad - Organize!
elcct 10y ago
It is sad that so much effort is wasted on catching unlicensed drug dealers. Maybe looking for killers etc. is too difficult?
- hga 10y ago
  No, they generally do the latter, and generally well. One problem is there just aren't enough killers etc. anymore, crime rates are way down from their peaks not so many decades ago. But, somehow, where this has happened, it hasn't resulted in a reduction in the size of what I like to call the police-judicial complex. This book's underlying thesis is that too avoid unthinkable layoffs, the complex needs a steady diet of "the clueless" to keep running at it's current tempo: Arrest-Proof Yourself (https://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-Carson/dp/1613748043/ https://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-Carson/d...) I haven't read the 2nd edition I linked to, but I can't recommend the 1st highly enough in every respect, theory to practice.
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    > No, they generally do the latter, and generally well. Minor quibble, but I don't find a 50% clearance rate on murders to be good. [0] I also don't put much faith in the accuracy of many (most) police departments numbers as they "Juke the Stats" [1] [0] http://laist.com/2015/01/26/almost_half_of_the_murders_in_the_c.php http://laist.com/2015/01/26/almost_half_of_the_murders_in_th... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH_6_8NOfwI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH_6_8NOfwI
    - hga 10y ago
      Stranger murders are particularly difficult cases to clear; here I'm talking about "real felonies" in general, and I'm also speaking very generally. E.g. Chicago's murder clearance rate for 2016 murders has plummeted to 21% (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-homicide-clearance-rate-20160909-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago...). Here in my above average crime rate (old mining town) corner of SW Missouri, the murder clearance rate is very high. However, the first relevant thing I found on Google was a State Police summary document for 2013 (https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/pdf/Crime%20in%20Missouri%202013%20ver%205.pdf https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/pdf/Crime%20in...), violent crime clearance rate was ~50%, murder ~64%. And Missouri overall might be a good proxy for the US in general, we have everything from two old urban centers to the most rural of areas. So, yeah, you could well be right in #0, and you're certainly right with #1.
gcb0 10y ago
everyone forgets the obvious: line ups don't work. you got a broken concept, and throw expensive technology that only contribute to the illusion but doesn't address any of the flaws, just make it easier for the enforcers of the broken system. the result is people abusing even more the broken system, because now it's easier, and some tech provider getting very rich, and then sponsoring campaigns so that the system never change.

Americans are whistling down to the concentration camps.

cmdrfred 10y ago
And we have been for a very long time. Quite frankly there isn't even a viable way to vote against it anymore.
- koverstreet 10y ago
  There was, back during the democratic primary. But we blew that one.
  - jeff_petersen 10y ago
    Were you going to vote for the guy who later endorsed the corporate-owned neoconservative warhawk? Because, given that, it seems like his principles weren't worth very much.
    - socialist_coder 10y ago
      Such a bad and tired argument. He was doing it to try and stop Trump from getting elected. As a hardcore Sanders supporter, I am behind that decision 100%.
      - jeff_petersen 10y ago
        I fail to see how stopping Trump from winning is a palatable outcome if the alternate option is Clinton winning. She is diametrically opposed to just about every progressive position, I don't see how any progressive could support her in good conscience. Unless of course it's more important that the team you identify with wins than what the principles that team stands for are.
        socialist_coder 10y ago
        If you truly consider yourself a progressive, take a minute to really think rationally about the situation. Put aside your emotions for Sanders. I know it's hard, and it took me a long time to come to grips with the situation before I could do that. I was very close to voting for Trump because of how terrible I thought Clinton was. But, if you really think rationally about it, supporting Clinton is clearly the best option. Under Clinton you still get many progressive policy pushes - paid leave, higher minimum wage, protecting abortion, stopping Republican voter suppression, and most importantly, SUPREME COURT NOMINATIONS! The supreme court nominations alone should be enough to convince you, and the rest is just icing on the cake. Not the mention, Trump supporters feel like they can be openly racist (which was my fear if Trump won, and sure enough, it has become a reality). So yes, Clinton is a great option when compared to Trump.
        jeff_petersen 10y ago
        > The supreme court nominations alone should be enough to convince you They did. I do not want Hillary Clinton appointing judges to the supreme court any more than I want Trump doing it. Again, Hillary is not a progressive, so I see no reason to believe that her justice picks would be. You haven't really made a convincing argument in her favor, you've essentially said "yes, she would have been an awful authoritarian who would continue and amplify the bad policies we already had, but at least she paid lip service to some inconsequential social wedge issues that serve as uniforms for my team!" edit: It's especially disappointing that Hillary didn't lose by an even wider margin. Perhaps if the Democrats got bitten hard enough by their failed strategy we could have a chance at some real reform in four years. Instead people like you rewarded their avarice and deceit, so we can expect things to continue like this.
        masonic 10y ago
        "...paid leave, higher minimum wage, protecting abortion, stopping Republican voter suppression..." When she was a Senator, she did absolutely nothing on any of those fronts (or immigration)... even when Democrats controlled the White House and Congress, including a filibuster-proof Senate majority.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      His only other alternative would have been to run on the Green ticket, and that probably wouldn't have worked out well for a number of reasons. As things shook out, he somehow ended up the de facto leader of a Democratic party that he hasn't even officially joined yet. If things had come out the other way, he would have pull for having brought his followers around and the chairmanship of a Senate committee. If he had been a failed Green party candidate, he would have been out of politics by now. As it was, his answers to specific questions about what he endorsed about Clinton were so carefully phrased that he sounded like Clinton talking about emails.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    But we were told that we couldn't vote for him because he was unelectable. We had to vote for the candidate who had been hated for decades, and who coincidentally directly or indirectly employed at least half of the Democratic party apparatus. No matter, though. I'm sure that President Trump will be a wise and careful steward of his new surveillance network.
sctb 10y ago
We've already asked you to please comment substantively, and there's nothing here besides inflammatory allegory. So we have to ask again: please don't post if you have nothing to say.
hga 10y ago
Not those of us who've been buying guns, but primarily rifles, of military utility in ever greater numbers, starting in the George W. Bush administration.... And let me quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn in The GULAG Archipelago on the general question of "whistling" vs. resisting: And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- masonic 10y ago
  "Not those of us who've been buying guns, but primarily rifles, of military utility in ever greater numbers, starting in the George W. Bush administration" Actually, gun ownership surged during the early Clinton administration in response to his party's push for gun bans and the "Brady Bill".
  - hga 10y ago
    I can well believe that, but as I remember the big surge started after 9/11, when we were told the only thing we could personally do was to shop (support the already crashing economy), i.e. that we were are our own. Quibble: our best numbers come from NICS checks, and they only started in 1998 based on 1993's Brady Bill. E.g. they capture sales of used guns, which the ATF otherwise doesn't have visibility into like they do with new stuff through Pittman Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Federal_Aid_in_Wildlife_Restoration_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Fede...). And even that data is getting iffier as more and more people get concealed carry licenses, which generally allow you to skip the NICS check. But, yeah, pretty much every effort, mooted or actual, at gun control prompts us ornery gun owners to resist, generally by buying some of what's under fire, so to speak.

kw71 10y ago

I don't understand how these things get revealed in court. The cops are lying to secure warrants and charging documents, so why don't they keep lying when they're on the stand during a trial?

iliketosleep 10y ago
perhaps because they are under oath. which sort of implies that it's OK for them to lie normally..
- kw71 10y ago
  They're also under oath when they raise their right hand before a magistrate or other court officer and swear that the narratives they've written to support the warrant they're requesting is 100% true.
h4nkoslo 10y ago
It's generally understood that police will lie like rugs at every point in the process, because the smooth functioning of the system requires it. But, when they're directly lying to a judge, the judge tends to take it personally (since no one likes being lied to) and has the power to impose immediate consequences. Make no mistake, they do lie to judges, or at minimum give incantations with no regard to their truth value ("I noticed a furtive movement"). But easily-disproven lies are riskier.

z3t4 10y ago

a possible problem is when the software gets better then humans ... And you get many people who all can be identified by the vitness, witch one do you prosecute ?

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
on the other side of the coin, it's also a problem when the software is buggy. If innocent, it's tough to mount an effective defense without access to the algorithm.
- benevol 10y ago
  > it's also a problem when the software is buggy Or when the software is not open source and therefor can contain elements of corruption because not being reviewed by the public.
makomk 10y ago
You prosecute the one who seems most likely to have done it - who has a record, or was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or... Then you claim in court that there was less than a 1 in a million chance that he matched the suspect's photo, omitting the fact that there were numerous other matches. This is already happening with some of the less accurate forms of DNA testing.
foolrush 10y ago
“Better” here is problematic on many levels, not the least of which is an entirely automated (and likely privatized) legal system, streamlined for razor sharp "efficiency". Every law an ethical implication, written by a culture frozen in a frail moment of history or worse, by the cultural detritus of corporate ownership, malignant power, or shady backrooms. Every line of code written by a human, with bias and imbalance. The "efficiency" of such a system is carved out of the bedrock of dystopian science fiction.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> a possible problem is when the software gets better then humans ... And you get many people who all can be identified by the vitness, witch one do you prosecute ? The non-rhetorical answer, according to how the system is supposed to work, is none of them. It's not possible for four independent actors to each have a 95% chance of being the perpetrator. If one has a 95% probability then the combined probability of all the others has to be <5%. And if the probability of the "most likely suspect" to have done it is e.g. 40%, that clearly isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt." But this was all true even before computers. The system doesn't care about the math. A crime is committed, someone is to be punished, they put the most likely suspect in front of a jury and most of the time the jury will convict regardless. In reality most of the time the accused will plead guilty to take a six month sentence over the 90+% chance of getting five years from a jury who doesn't understand (and is not given an opportunity to understand) how the probabilities actually work. And that incentive to plead guilty for a shorter sentence and lower legal bills is the same whether you're guilty or innocent.

lifeisstillgood 10y ago

Kathy ONeill has written a book covering some of this new area of concern (hers is the use of poorly controlled algorithms in making life altering decisions (which teachers to fire, how long a prison sentence to recommend)) The existence of algorithms intending to help head teachers run their schools, or here in technology intended to help police catch criminals, the existence is not the problem. It's the poor use, the lack of transparency and the lack of oversight I expect cameras covering public spaces to be ubiquitous in a decade - but the difference between crime free neighbourhood and oppressive police state is who has access to the video feed, what algorithms they use to process the faces and so on. This seems a sneaky move by the sheriffs department to avoid negative headlines. A bad PR move one suspects but the principle ... that's what we need to spend the next decade debating publically

noir_lord 10y ago
> It's the poor use, the lack of transparency and the lack of oversight. And the fact as (many of us are) programmers we know just how buggy, generally unreliable and flaky software can be. Much like my instinctive recoil from IoT - "You want to put lowest cost manufactured network devices that have access to tonnes of personal data on my internal network and connect them to the internet..!", I find this trend deeply worrying, people who aren't techies tend to put undue weight on computer systems that usually give the correct results but can fail in subtle and not subtle ways with "Well it worked last time". I've had people tell me "Well that's not what the computer says" when I absolutely knew that what the computer says is wrong, most recently that I'd submitted electricity meter readings (I had a screenshot of both the submission and the corresponding "Your meter reading was recieved" success message, not my first rodeo..). To quote Jurassic Park "You where so busy figuring out if you could no one stopped to consider if they should".
marchenko 10y ago
It is interesting to consider that we may not actually want a 'crime-free' neighborhood, depending on how crimes are defined, and the distribution of personal and public costs associated with policing behavior and punishing offenders.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

>Using the technology, police can insert people with no criminal histories into virtual lineups without their knowledge "This tool is too important to give up for the fight against 'bad guys'. Fears that it will spread are overblown. This technology will only be used to catch the worst of the worst" This is beyond Orwellian. Now we're all stock images for police lineups. I'd argue for royalties, but I'd settle for at least being notified. What happens if someone picks your mugshot when it was included to just fill out the lineup? Do you now have to mount a costly legal while not having access to any details on the program? I dont agree with its secret use for national security purposes, but at least i can understand it. Now its available to medium size cities with absolutely no oversight or transparency. This is the type of tool that allows unconstitutional investigations to be covered up with parallel construction. On another note, Peter Thiel (Palantir) might have become the most powerful man in the world overnight.

criddell 10y ago
> Peter Thiel/Palantir might have become the most powerful man in the world overnight. Overnight? Thiel has been building Palantir for a long time now. It's older than Twitter. It sucks, but I'm not sure what can be done. The technology is only going to get better and cheaper and more accessible.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  He's leading Trump's transition team as of a couple of days ago.
  - benevol 10y ago
    Thiel brings the mass surveillance, Trump adds the hate. Explosive mix, but again, this danger was obvious a couple of decades ago.
    - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
      Well, now not only is he the defacto head of the NSA, he has a direct line to the President, AND he'll most likely be Trump's go to guy on policies towards the Silicon Valley. I know this has been coming for a while, but without the Trump win, he's not nearly as powerful.

Scea91 10y ago

Would we have problem if he was identified by manual search in the database? If not, I don't see why using technology to remove the manual labor is worse. Is the problem in the existence of the database? Then I would not make this a discussion about facial recognition software but about mugshot databases instead.

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
> f not, I don't see why using technology to remove the manual labor is worse. What's its accuracy? How was the surveillance obtained? Is the time of the photo accurate or was the server clock set incorrectly? Was it obtained constitutionally or through an illegal investigation? What if it's incorrect, can I have the algorithm to help mount a legal defense
- Scea91 10y ago
  I suppose that the result is still evaluated by a human so the question about accuracy is irrelevant. All of the other questions can be asked irrespective if pattern recognition or manual labor was used.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- coleca 10y ago
  It shouldn't really matter what the accuracy of the software is being used properly. The facial recognition software should be used as a tool to help narrow down potential suspects. It shouldn't be the judge jury and executioner to decide if someone was indeed at the scene of a crime. The officers using the system need to be properly trained to understand the limitations of the system. For example just because the system finds a close match, it is only searching a database of people it already knows about. The actual suspect may not be in the system. Traditional police detective work still applies. The face match is just a lead not hard evidence. Also, the systems use should be public (just like the police's use of fingerprint biometrics is). Problems come in when you try to use this or any technology to automate law enforcement. Human judgement and police work need to always be part of the equation. Facial recognition should be thought of as a username not a username and password combination. It shouldn't be the only piece of evidence in a case to prosecute.

Overtonwindow 10y ago

This article reminds me of the one where the guy in prison discovers the existence of the Stingray devices. [1] A fine example of research and investigative work to uncover a serious violation of rights. [1]. http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveillance-device-daniel-rigmaiden-case http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveill...

coldcode 10y ago

I'm in that database because my photo was taken for a driver's license. Imagine the system is not 100% reliable (which of course it isn't), I wind up being matched as a probable, and become a target for investigation, and potentially arrested. At this point I am only guilty of driving a car and will have to defend myself by hiring a lawyer. Eventually it will be obvious I couldn't be the person. By then my life is mostly in ruin. Yet there is nothing I can do to avoid this possibility legally.

anonymfus 10y ago
Same thing happens when police publishes photo of suspect and then your neighbour reports you.
CalChris 10y ago
Yes. This is similar to asset seizure where the entire burden of proving your innocence is placed on you.
gm-conspiracy 10y ago
"Yet there is nothing I can do to avoid this possibility legally." Don't drive? I know that sucks, but with self-driving cars on the horizon, these sort of "capitulation of rights" scenarios should not need to exist. We are very vulnerable (in terms of rights) when driving in the US.
- r0muald 10y ago
  > We are very vulnerable (in terms of rights) when driving in the US. We are very vulnerable (in terms of rights) in the US.
- CapitalistCartr 10y ago
  In the USA that doesn't help. If you don't have a driver's license, you have to have a "state-issued ID card", which is the same except it doesn't confer the right to drive. The only way to avoid both is to opt out of society completely, which is effectively giving up living in this country.

hackuser 10y ago

What will a neo-authoritarian President do with such power? How about one who threatens to use his legal power to suppress and punish his political enemies? Would law enforcement, such as the FBI, act on behalf of one party? It is on every one of us to act. What is your company doing to create or reduce these risks? What is your legislator doing? If the United States is the land of the free, if that is more than words, then its citizens must act like it. As many veterans of prior struggles have said: Don't get scared, don't get mad - Organize!

elcct 10y ago

It is sad that so much effort is wasted on catching unlicensed drug dealers. Maybe looking for killers etc. is too difficult?

hga 10y ago
No, they generally do the latter, and generally well. One problem is there just aren't enough killers etc. anymore, crime rates are way down from their peaks not so many decades ago. But, somehow, where this has happened, it hasn't resulted in a reduction in the size of what I like to call the police-judicial complex. This book's underlying thesis is that too avoid unthinkable layoffs, the complex needs a steady diet of "the clueless" to keep running at it's current tempo: Arrest-Proof Yourself (https://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-Carson/dp/1613748043/ https://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-Carson/d...) I haven't read the 2nd edition I linked to, but I can't recommend the 1st highly enough in every respect, theory to practice.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  > No, they generally do the latter, and generally well. Minor quibble, but I don't find a 50% clearance rate on murders to be good. [0] I also don't put much faith in the accuracy of many (most) police departments numbers as they "Juke the Stats" [1] [0] http://laist.com/2015/01/26/almost_half_of_the_murders_in_the_c.php http://laist.com/2015/01/26/almost_half_of_the_murders_in_th... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH_6_8NOfwI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH_6_8NOfwI
  - hga 10y ago
    Stranger murders are particularly difficult cases to clear; here I'm talking about "real felonies" in general, and I'm also speaking very generally. E.g. Chicago's murder clearance rate for 2016 murders has plummeted to 21% (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-homicide-clearance-rate-20160909-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago...). Here in my above average crime rate (old mining town) corner of SW Missouri, the murder clearance rate is very high. However, the first relevant thing I found on Google was a State Police summary document for 2013 (https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/pdf/Crime%20in%20Missouri%202013%20ver%205.pdf https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/MSHPWeb/SAC/pdf/Crime%20in...), violent crime clearance rate was ~50%, murder ~64%. And Missouri overall might be a good proxy for the US in general, we have everything from two old urban centers to the most rural of areas. So, yeah, you could well be right in #0, and you're certainly right with #1.

gcb0 10y ago

everyone forgets the obvious: line ups don't work. you got a broken concept, and throw expensive technology that only contribute to the illusion but doesn't address any of the flaws, just make it easier for the enforcers of the broken system. the result is people abusing even more the broken system, because now it's easier, and some tech provider getting very rich, and then sponsoring campaigns so that the system never change.