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London Metro Police Deploy Facial Recognition Tech Sporting a 100% Fail Rate
- inherentFloyd 8y agoIt's good to see the UK finally turning into the authoritarian dictatorship Orwell knew it could be. Good for them!
- setquk 8y agoWe're getting pretty good at being examples to the rest of the world of what not to do recently. Might as well sink our ship in style.
- baby 8y agoI just want to bring up a difference that I've noticed living in both London and the US (Chicago and San Francisco). Note that I am also not trying to make a point here, as to what is better for a city. I think it's much more complex than spying on your citizen. Just trying to bring my perspective and things I've seen: London is one the safest city I've lived in (along with Beijing). Chicago and San Francisco are the most unsafe cities I've lived in. People often don't realize this there, it's just that they have been desensitized to it. I've seen countless accidents in the US, people getting bullied or mugged, cars getting broken in, homeless people everywhere (sometimes shooting themselves up with syringes). Walking in the streets at night can be really dangerous. Most people avoid public transport here and take uber. On the other side you have London. You'd see single girls walking alone in the streets at 4am. Everyone takes the public transport, never seen anyone fight, almost no homeless people, everybody loves the cops. It's a different world.
- paganel 8y ago> On the other side you have London. You'd see single girls walking alone in the streets at 4am. Everyone takes the public transport, never seen anyone fight, almost no homeless people, everybody loves the cops. It's a different world. You must have lived in the nicer parts of London, perhaps. I have a friend who has moved to London 6 months ago (her bf was already living there) and she told me that she's afraid of leaving her home all by herself after 8PM. She told me that while walking down the street she can "feel" the looks of the people whose religion I won't mention because I will probably get a ban, take that as you like.
- weego 8y agoI'll take it as one uninformed bigot spreading the word of another uninformed bigot.
- EngineerBetter 8y agoYour friend's problem is that she's a bigot.
- paganel 8y agoShe had friends of the same religion here in Eastern Europe, but they were the kind of people that were staying at after parties at 7 in the morning. The people she now tells me about don’t look like they have shared a drink with a woman late at night anytime during their life. It’s easy to accuse someone of bigotism when you haven’t interacted directly with any of the talked-about people.
- michaelgrafl 8y agoThen you're the one who's bigoted for bringing up religion in the first place, when that's not really the reason for your friend to be scared.
- scottlamb 8y agoI'm going to guess that the religion in question is Islam, which forbids alcohol. Her being okay with the kind of Muslim who isn't religious enough to follow this proscription doesn't disprove her being a bigot. "Doesn't look like they have shared a drink with a woman late at night anytime during their life" is a poor basis for being afraid of someone. Many don't choose that lifestyle. Some will judge you for choosing it. Fewer will physically attack you for choosing it... If they're leering at her (she said she can "feel" their looks, which could mean looks of moral judgement or of objectification/lust), I can start to understand why she'd be afraid. But there is a subjective element to interpreting others' body language, and bringing religion into the complaint makes me think prejudice might be coloring that.
- 8y ago
- Maken 8y agoHave you ever been in other European cities?
- baby 8y agoPretty much all over the place. Lived in a few different places in France. It's usually relatively safe, except in suburbs.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago> never seen anyone fight, almost no homeless people …Do you live in a different London from me? You must be talking about London, Ontario, right? There were at least three major Islamic terror attacks around my address in London in the past few years. I live just by Borough Market. There were the three guys who drove the van into Borough Market and stabbed people, killing eight. There was the guy who drove his car into people on Westminster Bridge, killing five and injuring 50. There was also the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich, in the street in the middle of the day outside a primary school. Lee Rigby was a colleague of my best friend. My best friend and I were walking exactly where the murder was to take place a few weeks prior. I'm also quite shocked you don't notice the homeless in London. Before I started my career in IT — when I was a broke musician — I used to eat with them every day. Hare Krishna feed the homeless most evenings in Holborn, and at the time on some nights you could get leftover Pret a Manger meals outside the Rymans on the Strand. There's almost always people sleeping rough around London Bridge, and in many places all throughout the city. And if you enjoy the nightlife you're bound to see at least some street violence occasionally.
- baby 8y ago> major Islamic terror attacks just lol. They were a few crimes, nothing major, and nobody in London really cared or seemed to be affected. Please stop spreading FUD. > I'm also quite shocked you don't notice the homeless in London Have you been to San Francisco, Chicago or LA? There is really no comparison.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago…Nobody seemed to be affected? Are you on drugs? People died. And yes, I have been to SF and LA. I have walked through the tent cities and seen the people defecating in the streets. That was never the question, and your whataboutery is not constructive.
- baby 8y agoRegular crime in the city, I haven't even heard of people talking about it. Maybe in the few days following the attack yes, but come on. That's just FUD.
- Latteland 8y agoIt's not possible to believe London got better because of all the cameras added the last few years (which accomplish little or nothing). It hasn't gotten safer because of surveillance. Just like in the us, the fact that the border patrol takes people's phones at a high rate hasn't made it any safer. It's just improved spying.
- michaelgrafl 8y agoI've been to London twice, and compared with Vienna I felt less safe, especially when riding the Tube as opposed to the U-Bahn. Even Berlin felt chill to me in comparison. Not that my feelings are a good indication of anything, but comparing any European city to San Francisco and Chicago will leave you with a similar conclusion regarding personal safety.
- aeesop 8y agoi disagree https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/20/death-in-westminster-a-wake-up-call-on-homelessness https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/20/death-in-wes...
- ionised 8y agoThis is not the London I know of.
- starbeast 8y agoWe took bids from a variety of suppliers and it turns out that bespoke and competent totalitarianism in Orwell's '1984' model is rather expensive and will restrict how much money will be available for the minister to spend on grouse shooting in the Scottish Highlands. So we took the liberty of soliciting a range of bids at different price points and as it turns out, G4S brought up a lovely little offering that they have titled 'Central Services from Terry Gilliam's Brazil'. It is both cheap and looks the part, but most importantly, doesn't rely on anything actually working or anybody doing anything that could reasonably be described as work, especially at the top end, thus freeing up far more time for golf.
- ironic_ali 8y agoYou, I like you. One thing I believe you missed is the the promise from G4S of a cushy 'director' role for said minister when politics has run its course, for said minister....
- starbeast 8y agoAhh yes, well it is a jolly little number that, but be aware not to discuss it with your colleagues until you are well out of department. We don't want it coming up in committee, now do we? You don't want it becoming a wash.
- bsenftner 8y agoThe author of that article make it very clear he hates FR and police. To the level that his opinion overwhelms the article.
- ataturk 8y agoWell I'm glad somebody does! Regular people are losing big time here--facial recognition tech has a huge false positive rate, and probably a ridiculous false negative, rate, too. It's junk, but they keep pushing and pushing for it like it is some miracle tech. I always thought the weird face makeup in those dystopian sci-fi films like Johnny Mnemonic were just there to make the street hacker type characters look edgy, but in fact, even back in the '70s and '80s, the authors were on to something.
- bsenftner 8y agoThat's stupid. You want objective fact, not slanted opinion.
- mtgx 8y agoIs the 100% failure rate for this facial recognition system not "objective fact" enough?
- rbetts 8y ago> A number of unknowns make this tech a questionable solution for its stated purpose. We have no idea how many hot list criminals were scanned and not matched I don't think the article's author had sufficient information to make any claims about success rates. Counting "not identified" as an error is wrong if the system only expects to identify hot-list faces - which is also more protective of privacy for those not on a list.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoThere were five alerts generated due to a positive match, and five of them were false positives. We have no idea how many of the ~500 individuals on the watch list were scanned and missed, and we have no idea how many faces were scanned, but it's still a 100 percent failure rate.
- pjc50 8y agoPrior work by the Met includes the "ring of steel" anti-terrorist surveillance zone, and the whole dodgy business of "super-recognisers" as well as the use of face recognition on crowds of protestors.
- sbhn 8y agoThe police are very nice people assisting in the theft of peoples facial profiles. They work for a little bit of money, take on a bit of angry response and sniggers from passers ny, and hand over the data to private industry, with free pass from government to bill the tax payer billions, since the data, well, you know, needs to be kept secure. Police officer gets there weekly wage, a bit of fun beating up a few who disagree, and private security contractor makes all the money. I here them laughing now, “yeah, we monetise loads of innocent peoples face profiles, they think its to save them from terrorists lol, the police stole it for us, lol”
- bgun 8y agoThis is great news - an expensive and highly publicized failure of FR means it will be a long time before other municipalities start looking to "invest" in it.
- emptyfile 8y agoI can't understand why would citizens of a country not accept a national ID system like every other country, but they're fine with CCTV and this.
- xeromal 8y agoBut the UK does have a national ID???
- pjc50 8y agoMore stupidly, the UK has effectively hard national ID requirements (have to show ID and proof of residence/employment visa status in order to work, rent privately; ID checks on having a bank account and house purchases etc), but no national ID. Often utility bills get used instead. (I was actually part of the NO2ID campaign because we anticipated that it would be used for essentially discriminatory purposes like this, as well as the giant highly vulnerable database. It never occcured to us that they could impose ID requirements without issuing the cards!)
- avianlyric 8y agoNo it doesn’t. Neither a driving licence or a passport are manidtory in the UK. Additionally a driving licence isn’t considered a form of national ID (despite many people treating it like one)
- orf 8y agoIt's not considered a national ID outside of the UK, but it's valid identification anywhere inside the UK.
- bogle 8y agoNope. Can you explain your thinking, please?
- bogle 8y agoWho said we're fine with this? Mostly it's apathy and ignorance, partly it's that if you go up against the authorities you know your card is going to be marked.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoThe real purpose of this isn't to be accurate. The reasons are likely to make Londoners accustomed to even more surveillance and/or to give them some "legitimate" reason they can appeal to when they want to persecute someone for less glamorous reasons like ethnicity or economic status.
- rebuilder 8y agoWell, it's better than them deploying a system that actually works. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time before one is developed.
- tk75x 8y agoStep 1: deploy crappy system, let everybody mock it and quickly forget. Step 2: update software so it actually works. People think "how accurate can it be, it was crap just a short while ago" Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit.
- icanhackit 8y agoPlot twist: it's actually 100% accurate. It knows everyone has committed at least one minor crime in their lifetimes due to a perfect mix or ambiguous legal wording, innumerable laws and ease of committing minor crimes. They'll need to tweak its tolerance level.
- rebuilder 8y agoMore like 1: Frame the discussion around technical problems instead of social ones. Let opponents fixate on false positives. 2: Fix the technical problems. 3: Watch your opponents squirm as they try to pivot to a different rhetoric much too late.
- agumonkey 8y ago100% is always impressive, success of rail
- rthomas6 8y agoThis is great! When the system IDs someone, you know they're not the person you're looking for. It's a great way to weed out potential suspects.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- adetrest 8y agoAKA the "not a hotdog" algorithm.
- realthing 8y agoMaybe - just maybe - that is what they want you to believe.
- logfromblammo 8y agoThey forgot to put a known elephant in Cairo. They should probably use a well-known public figure, such as the prime minister--someone whose movements can also be partially verified against public calendars--to verify that the system is working. Or just hire someone to walk a known path through camera FOVs regularly, using varying efforts to disguise appearance and at different times of day.