5 ms·

That seems perfectly reasonable?

defrost 2y ago
Sure, it may be reasonable, it's still worth pointing out that the article is not just about people entering a specific chain of shops, it's also mentioning police vans sitting in the middle of pedestrian concourses outside such shops doing the same face scanning.
jjbinx007 2y ago
It places a burden on someone to somehow prove their innocence, if they can. What if a person refused to speak to the police? Or what about this? A man covered his face when walking past one of these vans in a public street. He protested and was then fined £90 for swearing (swearing is not illegal but The Pubic Order Act is another law that is often abused by police but that's tangential) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recognition-cameras-technology-london-trial-met-police-face-cover-man-fined-a8756936.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recogniti...
- foldr 2y ago
  This is the same burden a person would be under if a police officer simply noticed someone on the street who looked like a wanted suspect (without computer assistance). I agree that the automated system makes this situation more likely to occur, but it has always been the case that you can potentially be arrested because you look a bit like someone else. And in that situation you would have to do your best to convince the police officer that you were in fact someone else.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    That's generally why you're only required to provide ID to police in the US (at least in a car. Don't think you can force anyone off the street to show ID). The right to remain silent, or to deny entry into your home cannot put you on a Arrest list. Of course, all this assume US police have consequences for breaking the rules. So this is unfortunately moot.
    - foldr 2y ago
      No difference at all from the US here. If a police officer in the US recognizes you as being someone for whom there is an outstanding arrest warrant then they can arrest you. And of course, they could be mistaken.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        You act less arrest warrants these days stop the police from arresting someone. That's part of the problem.
theodric 2y ago
Dragnet surveillance meets fishing operation. I do not find it so reasonable.
ConsiderCrying 2y ago
It's perfectly reasonable to harvest thousands of photos of unknowing people and then accost them based on faulty software that can produce an erroneous match? How so?
- swarnie 2y ago
  Nothing in OPs post said anything about accosting people or using faulty software to drive that interaction. Simply going out looking for people of interest in east London is perfectly fine, we call it "police work" and have done it for bloody ages. Maybe instead we could issue officers with a deck of cards with 52 faces on them and they can use that as a comparison point? Seems pretty inefficient to me but im only a tax paying pleb what would i know.
  - nmeagent 2y ago
    > Seems pretty inefficient to me Police surveillance should be inefficient. People do not exist to be arbitrarily inspected at scale; it should be an expensive, manual process and you should be forced to choose carefully whom you target, by necessity keeping that list small and limited to those for whom you can articulate cause.
    - swarnie 2y ago
      I'm sorry but i strongly disagree. If you're taking money from the public and spending it you should be legally bound to use it in the most efficient and effective way possible.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - pixxel 2y ago
        [flagged]
hnbad 2y ago
It sounds like they had weren't looking for any specific person (just anyone on "the watchlist") and they were simply mass processing faces to find potential matches. Let's ignore the privacy implications as not all countries have an expectation of privacy outside windowless closed private spaces. How is this meaningfully different from a general stop and frisk policy? Sure, this adds a non-physical filter before the physical police interaction but it's still a widespread warrantless search. How does this work with the presumption of innocence?
- foldr 2y ago
  The counterpoint would be to ask how this is meaningfully different from a group of police officers standing on the street comparing the faces they see to a set of photos of known suspects. The efficiency of the automated system obviously makes it feel very different. However, fundamentally, being arrested for looking like someone else is not a new phenomenon. I do not like what is going on here, but I’m not sure that your particular line of argument against it is very strong.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Same deal as LLMs. Police don't get to automatically input facial data into a database when on the streets. If there was some guarantee all that data wasn't going into some government sanctioned back end, we can start to compare it to police out on the street. >However, fundamentally, being arrested for looking like someone else is not a new phenomenon. Was always wrong and still is wrong. But if you want a modern difference: companies these days (even minimum wage) are really strict about arrests. Even a false arrest can cause complications in a background check, so there is more potential (albeit indirect) slanderous effects from mistaking people nowadays.
    - foldr 2y ago
      > Was always wrong and still is wrong. I don’t understand this comment. The police sometimes have to arrest people based on descriptions and other fallible data points. It’s unfortunate when the wrong person is arrested (and false arrests should obviously be minimized), but it’s not reasonable to expect police to get this right absolutely 100% of the time. If someone is a fugitive then they are very unlikely to reveal any information that identifies them with certainty. Also, police in the US use the same technology: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/post-final/facial-recognition-nypd-impact-and-use-policy_10.26.23.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_informa...

Sure, it may be reasonable, it's still worth pointing out that the article is not just about people entering a specific chain of shops, it's also mentioning police vans sitting in the middle of pedestrian concourses outside such shops doing the same face scanning.

jjbinx007 2y ago

It places a burden on someone to somehow prove their innocence, if they can. What if a person refused to speak to the police? Or what about this? A man covered his face when walking past one of these vans in a public street. He protested and was then fined £90 for swearing (swearing is not illegal but The Pubic Order Act is another law that is often abused by police but that's tangential) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recognition-cameras-technology-london-trial-met-police-face-cover-man-fined-a8756936.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recogniti...

foldr 2y ago
This is the same burden a person would be under if a police officer simply noticed someone on the street who looked like a wanted suspect (without computer assistance). I agree that the automated system makes this situation more likely to occur, but it has always been the case that you can potentially be arrested because you look a bit like someone else. And in that situation you would have to do your best to convince the police officer that you were in fact someone else.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  That's generally why you're only required to provide ID to police in the US (at least in a car. Don't think you can force anyone off the street to show ID). The right to remain silent, or to deny entry into your home cannot put you on a Arrest list. Of course, all this assume US police have consequences for breaking the rules. So this is unfortunately moot.
  - foldr 2y ago
    No difference at all from the US here. If a police officer in the US recognizes you as being someone for whom there is an outstanding arrest warrant then they can arrest you. And of course, they could be mistaken.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      You act less arrest warrants these days stop the police from arresting someone. That's part of the problem.

theodric 2y ago

Dragnet surveillance meets fishing operation. I do not find it so reasonable.

ConsiderCrying 2y ago

It's perfectly reasonable to harvest thousands of photos of unknowing people and then accost them based on faulty software that can produce an erroneous match? How so?

swarnie 2y ago
Nothing in OPs post said anything about accosting people or using faulty software to drive that interaction. Simply going out looking for people of interest in east London is perfectly fine, we call it "police work" and have done it for bloody ages. Maybe instead we could issue officers with a deck of cards with 52 faces on them and they can use that as a comparison point? Seems pretty inefficient to me but im only a tax paying pleb what would i know.
- nmeagent 2y ago
  > Seems pretty inefficient to me Police surveillance should be inefficient. People do not exist to be arbitrarily inspected at scale; it should be an expensive, manual process and you should be forced to choose carefully whom you target, by necessity keeping that list small and limited to those for whom you can articulate cause.
  - swarnie 2y ago
    I'm sorry but i strongly disagree. If you're taking money from the public and spending it you should be legally bound to use it in the most efficient and effective way possible.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - pixxel 2y ago
      [flagged]

hnbad 2y ago

It sounds like they had weren't looking for any specific person (just anyone on "the watchlist") and they were simply mass processing faces to find potential matches. Let's ignore the privacy implications as not all countries have an expectation of privacy outside windowless closed private spaces. How is this meaningfully different from a general stop and frisk policy? Sure, this adds a non-physical filter before the physical police interaction but it's still a widespread warrantless search. How does this work with the presumption of innocence?

foldr 2y ago
The counterpoint would be to ask how this is meaningfully different from a group of police officers standing on the street comparing the faces they see to a set of photos of known suspects. The efficiency of the automated system obviously makes it feel very different. However, fundamentally, being arrested for looking like someone else is not a new phenomenon. I do not like what is going on here, but I’m not sure that your particular line of argument against it is very strong.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Same deal as LLMs. Police don't get to automatically input facial data into a database when on the streets. If there was some guarantee all that data wasn't going into some government sanctioned back end, we can start to compare it to police out on the street. >However, fundamentally, being arrested for looking like someone else is not a new phenomenon. Was always wrong and still is wrong. But if you want a modern difference: companies these days (even minimum wage) are really strict about arrests. Even a false arrest can cause complications in a background check, so there is more potential (albeit indirect) slanderous effects from mistaking people nowadays.
  - foldr 2y ago
    > Was always wrong and still is wrong. I don’t understand this comment. The police sometimes have to arrest people based on descriptions and other fallible data points. It’s unfortunate when the wrong person is arrested (and false arrests should obviously be minimized), but it’s not reasonable to expect police to get this right absolutely 100% of the time. If someone is a fugitive then they are very unlikely to reveal any information that identifies them with certainty. Also, police in the US use the same technology: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/post-final/facial-recognition-nypd-impact-and-use-policy_10.26.23.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_informa...