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I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber wa

I have mixed feelings over this. As a recent victim of crime (burglary and robbery) I know there is nothing the police can do about it even though the robber was caught on tape. There is a lot of crime that goes unpunished that contributes heavily to morale of the honest part of the population and their belief in the system. Why work when some thugs can take your staff for free and won't even be bothered by police over it. I mean if I am spending better part of my life working and giving away huge % of what I make to the government the least I could expect is said government having resources to catch the bad guys. I am in lucky position that the crime won't affect me much. It's a significant sum of money and a lot of days spent fixing stuff, worrying about security etc. I can't start to imagine how demoralizing it must be for someone who losses years of savings in a burglary and that's not even a stretch to imagine if they go for a few nice things you have (like say a nice mountain bike or skiing equipment). I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. As an honest working tax payer the government has all my data anyway and can get phone records to pinpoint my location most of the time. I don't care that much anymore. I do care about being safe though. As long as the cameras are in public places and not on private properties it's not such a big hit to privacy anyway.

eunos 5y ago
>I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying Ironically I think petty crimes are much more impactful personally than say political corruption/bribery. If you find out that your politicians received bribe/corrupt personally you don't feel it immediately. It's not like your tax amount suddenly increasing to cater the corruption. Petty crimes on the other hand are much more direct in impact. Personal property/Money loss, that feeling of "why me", terror, etc.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
noodlesUK 5y ago
> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognition is honestly really bad about getting people caught in the dragnet. If we have an attitude where “computer says no” means you’re now subjected to criminal penalties, that’s a nasty world.
- sentinel 5y ago
  An argument here is that it disincentivizes others from doing similar crimes. If the technology is so spot on that 99% of the time you commit the crime you'll get caught, then others will likely not take the risk. Granted there's an easy counter argument there (all the more prescient these days) that they could wear a mask while committing the crime. There's a similar (less discussed about) trend happening these days. Law enforcement is using DNA evidence from crime scenes, passing it through (sometimes private) DNA databases and getting matches. Let's say those database continue to have more data – what are the odds that someone involved in a crime will leave some DNA behind, and will either themselves have their DNA in a database, or, a relative. The chances of you getting away with a crime converge to zero. And if you know you have high odds of getting caught when doing the crime, you might be less likely to do it in the first place.
  - noodlesUK 5y ago
    I agree, it does disincentivise people from committing similar crimes to a certain extent, but I think what it often does is shift people to different kinds of crime. In the pandemic, burglaries dropped significantly, presumably because people were home and the perpetrators didn’t like the idea of being caught. However, scams have risen sharply.
    - sentinel 5y ago
      Certainly possible. I don't know what the mapping would be there, and whether it is 1 to 1. > In the pandemic, burglaries dropped significantly, presumably because people were home I would have expected that to be the case too, but in fact in the US there's been a rise in burglaries during the pandemic.
mistrial9 5y ago
right - your real and legitimate feelings of being vulnerable individually are a basic ingredient to a society-wide "sea change" in public life. First to say, feelings are real and you have spoken your truth in public, yes on that. However, "compliance !== safety" What if you are being tracked overall, others are too, then someone breaks into your flat while you are out dining, and then nothing happens to help you, for whatever reasons. Public life is altered forever by tech yet, your problem is not solved. There have been surveillance cameras for decades in Britain, is everything OK now? or, do you want to compare the modern society in China as a goalpost?
arlort 5y ago
I haven't been able to read the whole resolution, which has not legal value as is anyway, but my impression is that police using software on existing video to extract an image or even compare with an existing database would be fine Having a CCTV pointed at a random square identifying everyone in it and tracking their movements for indefinite amounts of time, less fine
- gpderetta 5y ago
  > my impression is that police using software on existing video to extract an image or even compare with an existing database would be fine Like DNA and fingerprint evidence, I'm sure that an indiscriminate database search will absolutely have no false positives and no innocent people will ever get in trouble.
CountDrewku 5y ago
I agree with your stance. However, I don't think the fix is every going to come from police, government officials, or mass surveillance. Even if their intentions are altruistic they just can't be every where at once to help people and their hands are tied when it comes to enforcement. I think laws that prioritize the right to self defense or defense of one's property are what's best. Castle doctrine laws, stand your ground etc. Yeah they're going to result in a minute amount of cases where crazy people go off on some innocent person but I think that's a better alternative than giving criminals more rights than law abiding citizens.
akomtu 5y ago
That works until the day you get charged with robbery because the lousy FR system matched your face with a fuzzy picture of a robber in another state. Trading freedom of other people for personal gain (feeling of safety) is IMHO a much bigger crime than robbery. Edit. Wrong people spent life behind bars for crimes they didn't commit. With FR it's just going to be more often. Your weak "but this is not me" will be countered by prosecutor's "all criminals say this and this certified FR system is more reliable than humans, your honor, I ask for 10 years for this gentleman" and the strong incentive to close the case paired with political desire to not disprove belief in FR will convince the judge to make the right decision. Important people will be exempt from FR, obviously.
pjc50 5y ago
> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying This is nothing to do with facial recognition, though. It's a question of how the police allocate their time and effort, and how effective the processes that they work within are.
toss1 5y ago
I totally get that you want to catch the thief that stole your stuff - I get a bit angry hearing about it from here. But what I really would not want to happen is some poor soul to get collared and have to defend himself because his face (mis-)matched some random street camera. Despite all the hype about "Artificial Ihtelligence", this technology is nowhere near intelligent, nor even reliable. sure, being able to make a lot of matches sometimes, on white male faces can seem impressive, and perhaps even be genuinely useful in some situations. But the databases on which these 'tools' have been trained are known to be full of garbage (remember "GIGO") and biased, so badly that the results are lawsuits about bad results from the tech. e.g., [1]. The EU is wise to start down the road of banning it, and frankly, this is just desserts for the industry that over-hyped this stuff. We already had one 'AI Winter' because of this, and apparently no one learned the lesson. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-over-racially-discriminatory-facial-recognition-id-checks/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-ov...
smolder 5y ago
Are you in California, maybe? Or one of the EU countries this would apply to?
raxxorrax 5y ago
My car got beaten up not too long ago. Costly yes, but nothing compared to constant surveillance, it doesn't even come close. Of course that would have a chilling effect on behavior everywhere. If crime goes down, more security companies should go belly up. We don't yet see that happen with the latter.

eunos 5y ago

>I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying Ironically I think petty crimes are much more impactful personally than say political corruption/bribery. If you find out that your politicians received bribe/corrupt personally you don't feel it immediately. It's not like your tax amount suddenly increasing to cater the corruption. Petty crimes on the other hand are much more direct in impact. Personal property/Money loss, that feeling of "why me", terror, etc.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

noodlesUK 5y ago

> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying. I think the cost of it is underestimated. If we can use technology to catch the bad guys let's try it. For the sake of argument, we’ve caught the bad guy. What should we do now? I think this is a seriously hard to answer question, and we haven’t really got a coherent answer. This assumes that we actually get the right person as well, and facial recognition is honestly really bad about getting people caught in the dragnet. If we have an attitude where “computer says no” means you’re now subjected to criminal penalties, that’s a nasty world.

sentinel 5y ago
An argument here is that it disincentivizes others from doing similar crimes. If the technology is so spot on that 99% of the time you commit the crime you'll get caught, then others will likely not take the risk. Granted there's an easy counter argument there (all the more prescient these days) that they could wear a mask while committing the crime. There's a similar (less discussed about) trend happening these days. Law enforcement is using DNA evidence from crime scenes, passing it through (sometimes private) DNA databases and getting matches. Let's say those database continue to have more data – what are the odds that someone involved in a crime will leave some DNA behind, and will either themselves have their DNA in a database, or, a relative. The chances of you getting away with a crime converge to zero. And if you know you have high odds of getting caught when doing the crime, you might be less likely to do it in the first place.
- noodlesUK 5y ago
  I agree, it does disincentivise people from committing similar crimes to a certain extent, but I think what it often does is shift people to different kinds of crime. In the pandemic, burglaries dropped significantly, presumably because people were home and the perpetrators didn’t like the idea of being caught. However, scams have risen sharply.
  - sentinel 5y ago
    Certainly possible. I don't know what the mapping would be there, and whether it is 1 to 1. > In the pandemic, burglaries dropped significantly, presumably because people were home I would have expected that to be the case too, but in fact in the US there's been a rise in burglaries during the pandemic.

mistrial9 5y ago

right - your real and legitimate feelings of being vulnerable individually are a basic ingredient to a society-wide "sea change" in public life. First to say, feelings are real and you have spoken your truth in public, yes on that. However, "compliance !== safety" What if you are being tracked overall, others are too, then someone breaks into your flat while you are out dining, and then nothing happens to help you, for whatever reasons. Public life is altered forever by tech yet, your problem is not solved. There have been surveillance cameras for decades in Britain, is everything OK now? or, do you want to compare the modern society in China as a goalpost?

arlort 5y ago

I haven't been able to read the whole resolution, which has not legal value as is anyway, but my impression is that police using software on existing video to extract an image or even compare with an existing database would be fine Having a CCTV pointed at a random square identifying everyone in it and tracking their movements for indefinite amounts of time, less fine

gpderetta 5y ago
> my impression is that police using software on existing video to extract an image or even compare with an existing database would be fine Like DNA and fingerprint evidence, I'm sure that an indiscriminate database search will absolutely have no false positives and no innocent people will ever get in trouble.

CountDrewku 5y ago

I agree with your stance. However, I don't think the fix is every going to come from police, government officials, or mass surveillance. Even if their intentions are altruistic they just can't be every where at once to help people and their hands are tied when it comes to enforcement. I think laws that prioritize the right to self defense or defense of one's property are what's best. Castle doctrine laws, stand your ground etc. Yeah they're going to result in a minute amount of cases where crazy people go off on some innocent person but I think that's a better alternative than giving criminals more rights than law abiding citizens.

akomtu 5y ago

That works until the day you get charged with robbery because the lousy FR system matched your face with a fuzzy picture of a robber in another state. Trading freedom of other people for personal gain (feeling of safety) is IMHO a much bigger crime than robbery. Edit. Wrong people spent life behind bars for crimes they didn't commit. With FR it's just going to be more often. Your weak "but this is not me" will be countered by prosecutor's "all criminals say this and this certified FR system is more reliable than humans, your honor, I ask for 10 years for this gentleman" and the strong incentive to close the case paired with political desire to not disprove belief in FR will convince the judge to make the right decision. Important people will be exempt from FR, obviously.

pjc50 5y ago

> I find the attitude of ignoring "petty crime" very worrying This is nothing to do with facial recognition, though. It's a question of how the police allocate their time and effort, and how effective the processes that they work within are.

toss1 5y ago

I totally get that you want to catch the thief that stole your stuff - I get a bit angry hearing about it from here. But what I really would not want to happen is some poor soul to get collared and have to defend himself because his face (mis-)matched some random street camera. Despite all the hype about "Artificial Ihtelligence", this technology is nowhere near intelligent, nor even reliable. sure, being able to make a lot of matches sometimes, on white male faces can seem impressive, and perhaps even be genuinely useful in some situations. But the databases on which these 'tools' have been trained are known to be full of garbage (remember "GIGO") and biased, so badly that the results are lawsuits about bad results from the tech. e.g., [1]. The EU is wise to start down the road of banning it, and frankly, this is just desserts for the industry that over-hyped this stuff. We already had one 'AI Winter' because of this, and apparently no one learned the lesson. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-over-racially-discriminatory-facial-recognition-id-checks/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/05/uber-faces-legal-action-ov...

smolder 5y ago

Are you in California, maybe? Or one of the EU countries this would apply to?

raxxorrax 5y ago

My car got beaten up not too long ago. Costly yes, but nothing compared to constant surveillance, it doesn't even come close. Of course that would have a chilling effect on behavior everywhere. If crime goes down, more security companies should go belly up. We don't yet see that happen with the latter.