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This seems like a bad decision to me. We have a crime epidemic and it seems to me like facial recognition can help. My house has been broken into several times

This seems like a bad decision to me. We have a crime epidemic and it seems to me like facial recognition can help. My house has been broken into several times and I've been assaulted in areas of SF with clear video footage; why wouldn't we want to use tech to solve this problem? Forgetting my own situations, why wouldn't we want it for sex traffickers or terrorists? I don't understand why the tech issues should prevent it from being used- it isn't as if people are being locked up solely based on what the technology sees, there are humans involved too, and I think we should enable the humans with better tech. What are some good counter arguments?

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I do not want the government to possess the tools for dragnet surveillance for the same reason I don't want the cops kitted out like they're navy seals or the army stockpiling chemical weapons. No amount of dragnet surveillance will change the fact that going hard on petty crime is politically unpopular in SF. If it really was an issue SF wanted to solve they would solve it with or without facial recognition.
- fosk 7y ago
  This is so true, but why is it politically unpopular? Who would want to defend petty crime instead of condemning it? SF sometimes really makes no sense.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    If it turns out that most of petty crime is committed by “disadvantaged” (whatever that means) populations, then the enforcement will necessarily also impact the “disadvantaged” populations the most, and some people don’t like the idea.
    - fosk 7y ago
      As opposed to letting them commit crimes which in turn will never give them a chance to be less disadvantaged? This reasoning makes no sense. These are people that need help, letting them act unchecked will certainly not provide them with the assistance and re-qualification required to be reintroduced in the society.
RickS 7y ago
The potential for abuse and false positives is just too high, and that class of failure mode is invited by the very mechanism that makes facial recognition effective: broadness of coverage. IMO what SF needs is beat cops. What I want is a city where it feels like your actions might have consequences. Like there are actually police who are there to help citizens and intercept criminals – fast, and non-apathetically. That's what SF doesn't have. Everything between broadway and townsend on the Y axis and the embarcadero and van ness on the X axis should have, at minimum, a beat cop per 4x4 block area. Doing laps all day, meeting and integrating with the community, and enforcing the law – lowering the time and variance between violation and consequence, instead of promoting the perception that you can mess around and 9 out of 10 times the cops are going to be too distracted to care. Ditto for the mission. When I lived in SOMA, just under the loin, the liquor store guys knew who all the baddies were. They knew their faces, their MOs, where they hung out... nobody cared. The police presence in SF is so ethereal and abstract. It was so disappointing. The people on the street have the answers, and they're not exactly a sophisticated group. But it seems like the system just doesn't want to interface with the population at that level. I want old fashioned preventative community policing, not high-tech post-crime people monitoring. There's a court system component, as well. My understanding is that the courts just don't have the bandwidth to enforce the law in all cases, so they have to let the small stuff slide, which just creates a system with no consequences for petty crime. SF's situation is very unsurprising when viewed through that lens.
- fosk 7y ago
  This a hundred times. Why is police in SF so bad at dealing with criminality? I am actually looking for a real answer.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - pound 7y ago
    because we, as progressive city, shouldn't hurt criminal's feelings, they are people too. Also what's with this gestapo idea of telling other people what they cannot do at their wish in public? /s Sarcasm aside - only that much can be done by the police if there is no point in doing it. Let's not forget about DA office with revolving door, making sure anyone apprehended will be released and at the same place tomorrow without any consequences to their actions.
hanniabu 7y ago
A solution for the pain of a few should not have negative affects on the rest. If you have your house broken into them I'm sorry, but maybe put up some cameras that upload to the cloud. If something happens this can be handed over to the police and they can run their searches. Stopping privacy from everyone should not be considered a solution. History shows that ther government likely doesn't have the best interest of the people and will try to get away with anything they can so it'd only be a matter of time before this is used to against the population. Before you know it, it'd be discovered that these cameras also "unknowingly" also had mics and "accidentally" were recording everything.
- smohnot 7y ago
  I do have cameras that upload to the cloud; the system for interfacing and finding someone with that data (at SFPD) is abysmal; imagine looking through thousands of faces to find the perpetrator... Now imagine if technology could help solve the problem.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    I have no doubt technology can solve that problem, but hence the rest of my comment.
citilife 7y ago
> We have a crime epidemic and it seems to me like facial recognition can help But.. do you? https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-francisco.html https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-f... Property crime, is up, but not an "epidemic" - that's probably the homeless issue. Violent crime, it's not any worse than normal.
- smohnot 7y ago
  Your link suggests that property crime in SF is up 40% in the past 5 years while it's down 25% nationwide... The economist and others consider it an epidemic: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/02/16/property-crime-rates-test-san-franciscans-values https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/02/16/property-... SF has the worst property crime in the nation
  - mistrial9 7y ago
    SF has the most reported and documented property crime in the nation there, I fixed it for you
    - missingcolours 7y ago
      And the crazier thing is that in my experience SF is much less interested in taking your report than other cities I've lived (even Detroit), so it may even be substantially understated.
    - arkades 7y ago
      Is there a reason to believe SF would be wildly anomalous in its propensity for reporting and documenting property crime? If not, that nitpick is valid but pointless.
zapita 7y ago
It's a matter of prioritization and due process. Sure, mandatory ubiquitous face recognition at all levels of society might reduce crime. By how much? At what cost to our society? What are the alternatives we could pursue instead to reduce crime, and how do they compare? Those are important questions which deserve a thoughtful, cautious public debate before we rush into implementing it. I'm personally in favor of these bans because it gives us chance to have that debate.
snarf21 7y ago
People desperate to break into your house because of socio-economic issues won't care about the cameras. It has also been shown that masks and other prosthetics can be added to your face to prevent detection (something a robber would probably be willing to do). In the end, you give up freedom for perceived security and lose privacy in the bargain.
orthoxerox 7y ago
Motion-triggered guns set up in your house would be more effective against burglars.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  If the choice is coming home to a smashed window and stuff stolen or to a dead body of someone I’d killed, I know which option I’d take.
chungleong 7y ago
We have to beware of unintended consequences. Deployment of facial recognition tech could very well make the crime situation worse. You see, teens are rebellious by nature and they think everything is about them. They'll likely react by masking their faces in public. First the delinquent ones. Then the wannabes. Soon enough it would seem there're hoodlums everywhere on the city streets.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

I do not want the government to possess the tools for dragnet surveillance for the same reason I don't want the cops kitted out like they're navy seals or the army stockpiling chemical weapons. No amount of dragnet surveillance will change the fact that going hard on petty crime is politically unpopular in SF. If it really was an issue SF wanted to solve they would solve it with or without facial recognition.

fosk 7y ago
This is so true, but why is it politically unpopular? Who would want to defend petty crime instead of condemning it? SF sometimes really makes no sense.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  If it turns out that most of petty crime is committed by “disadvantaged” (whatever that means) populations, then the enforcement will necessarily also impact the “disadvantaged” populations the most, and some people don’t like the idea.
  - fosk 7y ago
    As opposed to letting them commit crimes which in turn will never give them a chance to be less disadvantaged? This reasoning makes no sense. These are people that need help, letting them act unchecked will certainly not provide them with the assistance and re-qualification required to be reintroduced in the society.

RickS 7y ago

The potential for abuse and false positives is just too high, and that class of failure mode is invited by the very mechanism that makes facial recognition effective: broadness of coverage. IMO what SF needs is beat cops. What I want is a city where it feels like your actions might have consequences. Like there are actually police who are there to help citizens and intercept criminals – fast, and non-apathetically. That's what SF doesn't have. Everything between broadway and townsend on the Y axis and the embarcadero and van ness on the X axis should have, at minimum, a beat cop per 4x4 block area. Doing laps all day, meeting and integrating with the community, and enforcing the law – lowering the time and variance between violation and consequence, instead of promoting the perception that you can mess around and 9 out of 10 times the cops are going to be too distracted to care. Ditto for the mission. When I lived in SOMA, just under the loin, the liquor store guys knew who all the baddies were. They knew their faces, their MOs, where they hung out... nobody cared. The police presence in SF is so ethereal and abstract. It was so disappointing. The people on the street have the answers, and they're not exactly a sophisticated group. But it seems like the system just doesn't want to interface with the population at that level. I want old fashioned preventative community policing, not high-tech post-crime people monitoring. There's a court system component, as well. My understanding is that the courts just don't have the bandwidth to enforce the law in all cases, so they have to let the small stuff slide, which just creates a system with no consequences for petty crime. SF's situation is very unsurprising when viewed through that lens.

fosk 7y ago
This a hundred times. Why is police in SF so bad at dealing with criminality? I am actually looking for a real answer.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pound 7y ago
  because we, as progressive city, shouldn't hurt criminal's feelings, they are people too. Also what's with this gestapo idea of telling other people what they cannot do at their wish in public? /s Sarcasm aside - only that much can be done by the police if there is no point in doing it. Let's not forget about DA office with revolving door, making sure anyone apprehended will be released and at the same place tomorrow without any consequences to their actions.

hanniabu 7y ago

A solution for the pain of a few should not have negative affects on the rest. If you have your house broken into them I'm sorry, but maybe put up some cameras that upload to the cloud. If something happens this can be handed over to the police and they can run their searches. Stopping privacy from everyone should not be considered a solution. History shows that ther government likely doesn't have the best interest of the people and will try to get away with anything they can so it'd only be a matter of time before this is used to against the population. Before you know it, it'd be discovered that these cameras also "unknowingly" also had mics and "accidentally" were recording everything.

smohnot 7y ago
I do have cameras that upload to the cloud; the system for interfacing and finding someone with that data (at SFPD) is abysmal; imagine looking through thousands of faces to find the perpetrator... Now imagine if technology could help solve the problem.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  I have no doubt technology can solve that problem, but hence the rest of my comment.

citilife 7y ago

> We have a crime epidemic and it seems to me like facial recognition can help But.. do you? https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-francisco.html https://www.cityrating.com/crime-statistics/california/san-f... Property crime, is up, but not an "epidemic" - that's probably the homeless issue. Violent crime, it's not any worse than normal.

smohnot 7y ago
Your link suggests that property crime in SF is up 40% in the past 5 years while it's down 25% nationwide... The economist and others consider it an epidemic: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/02/16/property-crime-rates-test-san-franciscans-values https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/02/16/property-... SF has the worst property crime in the nation
- mistrial9 7y ago
  SF has the most reported and documented property crime in the nation there, I fixed it for you
  - missingcolours 7y ago
    And the crazier thing is that in my experience SF is much less interested in taking your report than other cities I've lived (even Detroit), so it may even be substantially understated.
  - arkades 7y ago
    Is there a reason to believe SF would be wildly anomalous in its propensity for reporting and documenting property crime? If not, that nitpick is valid but pointless.

zapita 7y ago

It's a matter of prioritization and due process. Sure, mandatory ubiquitous face recognition at all levels of society might reduce crime. By how much? At what cost to our society? What are the alternatives we could pursue instead to reduce crime, and how do they compare? Those are important questions which deserve a thoughtful, cautious public debate before we rush into implementing it. I'm personally in favor of these bans because it gives us chance to have that debate.

snarf21 7y ago

People desperate to break into your house because of socio-economic issues won't care about the cameras. It has also been shown that masks and other prosthetics can be added to your face to prevent detection (something a robber would probably be willing to do). In the end, you give up freedom for perceived security and lose privacy in the bargain.

orthoxerox 7y ago

Motion-triggered guns set up in your house would be more effective against burglars.

lostlogin 7y ago
If the choice is coming home to a smashed window and stuff stolen or to a dead body of someone I’d killed, I know which option I’d take.

chungleong 7y ago

We have to beware of unintended consequences. Deployment of facial recognition tech could very well make the crime situation worse. You see, teens are rebellious by nature and they think everything is about them. They'll likely react by masking their faces in public. First the delinquent ones. Then the wannabes. Soon enough it would seem there're hoodlums everywhere on the city streets.