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Good. Facial recognition coupled with mass CCTV is going to force us to make _hard_ choices in respect to privacy, and I don't think any society on earth is tru
by bfuclusion 6y ago
Good. Facial recognition coupled with mass CCTV is going to force us to make _hard_ choices in respect to privacy, and I don't think any society on earth is truly prepared to deal with that yet.
- raxxorrax 6y agoBritain uses a lot of CCTV but I don't see them doing better on crime. Theoretically that should conclude the topic.
- waihtis 6y agoDo you base this based on numbers or gut feeling? I've always felt unnaturally safe in London despite it being a massive sprawl of people-filled chaos.
- asdff 6y agoApparently by the numbers, London is less safe than most American cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London
- waihtis 6y agoThis always requires the question: less safe for who? Per that article, in 2010 the vast majority of violent crime offenders were black - and I wouldn't be surprised if the victim profile would look similar. Pure anecdata, but this was 90% of the news I saw. Gang stabbing in park. Gang stabbing at party. Gang shooting at club.
- bb123 6y agoThat page contains no comparison with any American cities? Do you have an actual source for your claim?
- TLightful 6y ago"Apparently"
- biscotti 6y agoOnly 7% of crimes are solved by our police [1]. London is the knife crime capital of the world. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53443246 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53443246
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago> Only 7% of crimes are solved by our police Meaningless without comparison to other countries. > London is the knife crime capital of the world. Doubt it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
- tfigment 6y agoWhile you may be right, knife crime is not murder. Knife attacks are less deadly than firearms and we dont see breakdown there.
- biscotti 6y agoWhyever would we compare it to other countries? We compare it to the past. The statistics were compiled from 2015 and in just the few years since then solved crimes have halved: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49029545 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49029545. If you and I were to travel back in time to the high trust society before mass surveilance & enquired our police wouldn't deny they held the the monopoly on violence. My friends in the forces of today tell me they feel under siege most days. Apologies, "London is the knife crime capital of the world." is part of the venacular here akin to "The man who broke the Bank of England".
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoGood points.
- raxxorrax 6y agoYou should certainly feel safe in London, but you can also feel safe in Paris, Berlin or Amsterdam. That was the argument, your re-framing quite deceptive. Numbers are difficult to compare since data collection mechanisms are subject to change, but here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_London The need for CCTV is marketing and gut feeling from my perspective because the numbers say it didn't do much.
- waihtis 6y agoThanks - didn't mean to push an agenda for CCTV, just to be clear.
- tim333 6y agoLondon used to be safer 30 years ago before all the CCTV. There are many factors involved.
- dx034 6y agoA few years back I read a statistic in the economist that said CCTV coverage in areas reduces crimes at night to the same degree as better lighting. Sure, there is an effect but it can easily be achieved with other methods as well.
- weego 6y agoAgain, as always, what you call Britain the reality is that its centers around a small number of cities and primarily the heart of London. And again, a large percentage is privately owned and not wired into the kind of Person of Interest system that people appear to have conjured up in their minds.
- mcv 6y agoDo you mean there's no public accountability for all the CCTV surveillance in the City?
- DanBC 6y agoAnyone running CCTV needs to register with the Information Commissioner and there are some limits to what can be done with the footage or how long it can be kept for.
- TLightful 6y agoTheoretically, good point. In reality, LOL!
- bb123 6y agoCould also be rephrased as "Do you mean that the all the CCTV surveillance in the City is decentralised and only accessible by warrant to each system owner?"
- mcv 6y agoIn the City, I can easily imagine there's still a single entity behind it, just one that's not accountable to the public. No idea whether that's the case, though.
- AdmiralGinge 6y agoIn the minds of many people (especially British politicians!) the UK is actually "The City State of London with Four Inconvenient Countries Attached".
- Xelbair 6y agoThere was a good, widely quoted paper that i read back in my uni days that analyzed crime rates all over uk in context of surveillance. It heavily depends on the location type - parking lots were way way safer with CCTV presence, but there was no effect in public pedestrian spaces.
- billyruffian 6y agoWhat do you mean by that? Prevention, detection or prosecution? Genuinely interested. For certain crimes (I'm thinking of the Salisbury poisonings for example) CCTV seems, on the face of things, pretty central to finding out what actually happend.
- akerro 6y ago2 years ago facial recognition was used in Cardiff during UEFA final, the result was >2000 false positives https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/facial-recognition-wrongly-identified-2000-14619145 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/facial-recogni...
- marliechiller 6y agoThis is a classic example of twisting statistics to fit a narrative. That match had ~65k attendance with ~2k false positives for sake of argument. thats < 3%. Not great, but then consider the system is going to scan a vast portion of those in attendance which a human eye alone could not do. Even with the false positive rate, in terms of making human jobs easier, its surely a benefit to scan 2000 false positives than some large portion of 65,000 when checking for unsavoury characters.
- Renaud 6y agoFrom the article: "But of these 92% – a total if 2,297 – were incorrect, with just 173 providing ‘true positive alerts’." Those are frightening odds when you consider the impact such system could have on those "false positives", eg. possible detainment until your identity is confirmed. The police may have had the resources to check each case in person during the trial but you can imagine what could happen once there is a push for more wide adoption of these systems as a way to save on police resources. I would also love to see the proportion of people with dark skin tones who were flagged as false positives. Then what happens to the pictures of non-confirmed positives and negatives? Are they purged from the system automatically or are they kept around for a while? What recourse have the false-positive to not be harassed in the future? Let's face it, this genie is not meant to stay in the bottle and it's a policing dream to be able to automatically identify potential undesirables, wherever they are. Why not at the entrance of banks and other sensitive places? Like sports clubs and parks and swimming pools. At every corner of the streets maybe?
- akerro 6y agoThe face recognition vans were standing on busy streets and sidewalks, scanning everyone, not just match attendees.
- Angostura 6y ago> Britain uses a lot of CCTV but I don't see them doing better on crime. I think we'd need a comparative trial to really know that.
- vaxman 6y agocoupled with mass 5G CCTVs ..there, fixed it for you. With _the_federal_government_ ensuring that 5G covers every inch of the territory enabling economies of scale for low cost SOCs and pricing tiers, the days of WiFi for any kind of mass deployment (doorbells, ATMs, street cams, etc) are ordinally numbered backwards from a small integer. With all fixed location cameras connected in that way, he who controls the 5G controls the world...
- MikeRJM 6y agoAgreed. There have already been a few 'iffy' situations in London where facial recognition trials have caused upsets. Big Brother Watch has been highly vocal on the subject and worth keeping an eye out for on social media etc