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How is this different to lots of coppers activly looking for suspects? We have so much intrusive CCTV here I can’t quite get the complaint. Was it just the intr

How is this different to lots of coppers activly looking for suspects? We have so much intrusive CCTV here I can’t quite get the complaint. Was it just the introduction with lip service to community engagement?

drasticmeasures 8y ago
It's a gradual worsening of civil freedoms and rights. Intrusive CCTV is intrusive. Facial recognition is more intrusive. It wouldn't be different from an impossibly high number of law enforcement officers keeping watch on everyone at all time like in a high-tech big brother nightmare -- except the tech doesn't work properly, and there are high numbers of false positives that will lead to the wrong innocent people being put under suspicion and potentially having their life ruined by a police investigation that presumes you're guilty until you've been illibated by a court. They shouldn't be watching or tracking us in the first place.
faceplanted 8y ago
The difference is automation, and the issues that come with that. If you look like someone the system is looking for, there's nothing you can do to whitelist yourself other than wear something on your face, you will be flagged, every single time until a human looks at it, and if they're stopping people, that means being stopped, every time. If the system has the wrong face in the database, bad luck. If someone finds a way of preventing detection, say, make up, or big glasses, the system doesn't work any more, as far as I know, even the best facial recognition that only relies on cameras and not depth cameras significantly lose accuracy with either of those. There are a lot of people in London, the false positive and negative rates aren't usually published and anything above zero means those technical problems happen an undisclosed amount too much. Did you ever hear the story of the guy with a very common name ending up on the no fly list? The no fly list was for a long time, and I think still now, literally only a list of names, meaning if someone with a common name goes on the list, everyone with that name gets stopped at the airport as the database gets checked to see if they're the same person. Now think what happens if someone with a generic looking face ends up in the police database.
- drusepth 8y ago
  >If you look like someone the system is looking for, there's nothing you can do to whitelist yourself other than wear something on your face, you will be flagged, every single time until a human looks at it, and if they're stopping people, that means being stopped, every time. Wouldn't such a system (ideally) learn the differences in [who it expected] and [who it found] and attempt to improve its accuracy to prevent false positives in the future? I don't know if this is too basic, but I'd assume training with a set of similar-but-not-an-exact-match data would be vital for accuracy at scale.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    I read /r/legaladvice over on reddit. At least a couple times a month there's someone who has had repeated issues with law enforcement banging on their door, sometimes even with guns drawn, because someone with a similar name had a warrant out for their arrest, or a criminal background of some type, or someone the police wanted used to live at their address years ago. And there seems to be very little an average person can do to get "the system" to correct itself; even after multiple instances, the police keep coming back again and again and again and again because "the system said so". Massively scaled automated facial recognition will multiply that many times over, especially when officers are trained to just trust "the system" when "the system" says you're a criminal.
    - ddeck 8y ago
      Yep. One only needs to look at the recent story The Machine Fired Me[1] to see the potential impact of such system errors once things become connected and automated. That poor guy was effectively fired despite the fact that every human agreed that he actually wasn't and should still be employed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645
    - drusepth 8y ago
      Thanks for sharing this. Perhaps I interpreted it wrong, but I think this speaks volumes for the amount of low-hanging fruit that exists for improvements in such a system: obviously, the above _shouldn't_ happen but does, which raises the question.. why? I may be (and probably am) wrong, but my guess is that many PDs are still using incredibly outdated systems (at least, mine is), and would vastly benefit from modernizing and improving their systems. There's many other possible reasons (improved systems don't fix this problem, or improved systems have other problems, or administration doesn't care about this problem, etc), but when I read stories like this I think "modern technology would help/fix that" rather than "adding/scaling technology would exacerbate existing problems".
ta76567656 8y ago
"Quantity has a quality all its own."
mtgx 8y ago
In the same way targeted surveillance from 50 years ago was different from the total surveillance of everyone today, or in the way air strikes from 2 decades ago are different from the tens of thousands of drones strikes that the US launches every year, a number that is bound to increase at least another ten fold if the drones strikes are automated. The differences are cost and scope. The cheaper it is, the easier it is move from doing it to "highly-valuable and highly-like to be guilty targets" to increasingly more innocent people (because "why not?"). That's how the governments think (unless the people strongly oppose these new changes).
zimbatm 8y ago
Because it makes the activity much cheaper. The cheaper it becomes to track everyone, the more tempting it becomes to not only track criminals but also any other groups of interests that haven't committed any crimes.
godelski 8y ago
Commonly people say "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear". Leaving side the origin of the phrase side, it is still a bad argument. You may not have something to hide now but can you trust that what you do now doesn't become something to hide? We've seen many times in history oppressive regimes rise out of free states. This power doesn't just belong to the government in the now, it also belongs to the government of the future. There is the possibility for turnkey tyranny. There's a balance to protecting the people now and people of the future (part of civil rights). It belongs to other groups as well. We've seen pretty frequently the state of computer security in governments. Can you also trust that this technology won't be hijacked? Can you tell me that this system can't be used by an invading force to quickly target important individuals? It isn't always what a technology is being used for that makes it concerning, you also have to consider how it can be abused. This type of technology, and most surveillance technology, has a high potential for abuse. By both our own governments AND adversarial groups.
- Zarath 8y ago
  I do have stuff I want hidden. Why is that such a damn crime?
  - godelski 8y ago
    It isn't, and I'm not trying to imply it is.

drasticmeasures 8y ago

It's a gradual worsening of civil freedoms and rights. Intrusive CCTV is intrusive. Facial recognition is more intrusive. It wouldn't be different from an impossibly high number of law enforcement officers keeping watch on everyone at all time like in a high-tech big brother nightmare -- except the tech doesn't work properly, and there are high numbers of false positives that will lead to the wrong innocent people being put under suspicion and potentially having their life ruined by a police investigation that presumes you're guilty until you've been illibated by a court. They shouldn't be watching or tracking us in the first place.

faceplanted 8y ago

The difference is automation, and the issues that come with that. If you look like someone the system is looking for, there's nothing you can do to whitelist yourself other than wear something on your face, you will be flagged, every single time until a human looks at it, and if they're stopping people, that means being stopped, every time. If the system has the wrong face in the database, bad luck. If someone finds a way of preventing detection, say, make up, or big glasses, the system doesn't work any more, as far as I know, even the best facial recognition that only relies on cameras and not depth cameras significantly lose accuracy with either of those. There are a lot of people in London, the false positive and negative rates aren't usually published and anything above zero means those technical problems happen an undisclosed amount too much. Did you ever hear the story of the guy with a very common name ending up on the no fly list? The no fly list was for a long time, and I think still now, literally only a list of names, meaning if someone with a common name goes on the list, everyone with that name gets stopped at the airport as the database gets checked to see if they're the same person. Now think what happens if someone with a generic looking face ends up in the police database.

drusepth 8y ago
>If you look like someone the system is looking for, there's nothing you can do to whitelist yourself other than wear something on your face, you will be flagged, every single time until a human looks at it, and if they're stopping people, that means being stopped, every time. Wouldn't such a system (ideally) learn the differences in [who it expected] and [who it found] and attempt to improve its accuracy to prevent false positives in the future? I don't know if this is too basic, but I'd assume training with a set of similar-but-not-an-exact-match data would be vital for accuracy at scale.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  I read /r/legaladvice over on reddit. At least a couple times a month there's someone who has had repeated issues with law enforcement banging on their door, sometimes even with guns drawn, because someone with a similar name had a warrant out for their arrest, or a criminal background of some type, or someone the police wanted used to live at their address years ago. And there seems to be very little an average person can do to get "the system" to correct itself; even after multiple instances, the police keep coming back again and again and again and again because "the system said so". Massively scaled automated facial recognition will multiply that many times over, especially when officers are trained to just trust "the system" when "the system" says you're a criminal.
  - ddeck 8y ago
    Yep. One only needs to look at the recent story The Machine Fired Me[1] to see the potential impact of such system errors once things become connected and automated. That poor guy was effectively fired despite the fact that every human agreed that he actually wasn't and should still be employed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645
  - drusepth 8y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. Perhaps I interpreted it wrong, but I think this speaks volumes for the amount of low-hanging fruit that exists for improvements in such a system: obviously, the above _shouldn't_ happen but does, which raises the question.. why? I may be (and probably am) wrong, but my guess is that many PDs are still using incredibly outdated systems (at least, mine is), and would vastly benefit from modernizing and improving their systems. There's many other possible reasons (improved systems don't fix this problem, or improved systems have other problems, or administration doesn't care about this problem, etc), but when I read stories like this I think "modern technology would help/fix that" rather than "adding/scaling technology would exacerbate existing problems".

ta76567656 8y ago

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

mtgx 8y ago

In the same way targeted surveillance from 50 years ago was different from the total surveillance of everyone today, or in the way air strikes from 2 decades ago are different from the tens of thousands of drones strikes that the US launches every year, a number that is bound to increase at least another ten fold if the drones strikes are automated. The differences are cost and scope. The cheaper it is, the easier it is move from doing it to "highly-valuable and highly-like to be guilty targets" to increasingly more innocent people (because "why not?"). That's how the governments think (unless the people strongly oppose these new changes).

zimbatm 8y ago

Because it makes the activity much cheaper. The cheaper it becomes to track everyone, the more tempting it becomes to not only track criminals but also any other groups of interests that haven't committed any crimes.

godelski 8y ago

Commonly people say "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear". Leaving side the origin of the phrase side, it is still a bad argument. You may not have something to hide now but can you trust that what you do now doesn't become something to hide? We've seen many times in history oppressive regimes rise out of free states. This power doesn't just belong to the government in the now, it also belongs to the government of the future. There is the possibility for turnkey tyranny. There's a balance to protecting the people now and people of the future (part of civil rights). It belongs to other groups as well. We've seen pretty frequently the state of computer security in governments. Can you also trust that this technology won't be hijacked? Can you tell me that this system can't be used by an invading force to quickly target important individuals? It isn't always what a technology is being used for that makes it concerning, you also have to consider how it can be abused. This type of technology, and most surveillance technology, has a high potential for abuse. By both our own governments AND adversarial groups.

Zarath 8y ago
I do have stuff I want hidden. Why is that such a damn crime?
- godelski 8y ago
  It isn't, and I'm not trying to imply it is.