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Florida Surveillance Cameras Claim a Victim
kris_lang writes: "The St. Petersburg Times has an article that describes how an innocent man was tracked down because he was used as a "demo" face for Visionics Face-It face recognition software with their on-the-street video surveillance system in Tampa's Ybor City district. The "demo" image was printed in the St. Pete Times, and then sold to U.S. News and World Report which used it in an article. A USN&WR reader in Oklahama misidentified the face as being that of her ex-husband wanted on felony child neglect charges. The Tampa Police tracked him down to his job site and interrogated him. Now here's a question: how did they identify him in the first place to be able to track him down? Well, Florida has also been using digital photos for their newer driver's licenses. So they already have a handy-dandy database to work with."
The title of this post totally shows how DESPERATELY the editors want this to be an issue. When the software IDs someone incorrectly, fine.
INSTEAD, some lady in Oklahoma saw a picture of this guy, and said "That's my deadbeat ex!" This has no reflection on the software (which, BTW, I'm no fan of)
You hurt your cause when you present nondamning "evidence"
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Ask yourself this: would you care at all if some other schmuck in Florida was walking down the street, somebody thought that he was their long-lost ex-husband who had been negelcting the children, and reported them to the police, only to find out it was mistaken identity? Of course not.
I'll admit I would care less about that, but that is not what really concerns me. What concernes me is this:
Suppose there is a criminal who resembles me in basic appearance, buld, facial characteristics etc. (be honest, how many times have you mistaken at total stranger for someone you know) and I go off to the mall/movies/park/office and the software pegs me as the bad guy, and I get swarmed by police officers. But wait here comes the best part, four days later on my way to dinner downtown it happens again.
Now pretend it was you. is the computer controlled survailance future leading us towards utopia? Or towards the Orwellian future you would rather choose to ignore.
"The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance" --Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin
The plundering of our rights and freedoms are never made in massive steps, but in small nudges (i.e. more restricted copyright laws lead to the DMCA) No one was told that "Communism/Lenninism/Socialism" was only a sugar-coated prelude to the murder and fear of Stalinism. And anyone who doesn't think that we in the US, or any other democratic/republican/parlimentary statis is immune to this, then they have fogotten the first thing taught to them in history class: "Thos who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it"
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
- Police install cameras
- Police take picture of guy
- Police put guy's picture in a magazine
- Woman buys magazine, reads article
- Woman believes (mistakenly) that guy in picture is her ex and calls police.
- Police go after man
- Man gets angry
I don't see any mention of face-recognition software anywhere in that list (nor the article). The fact that the cameras were on the street is largely inconsequential because I've seen cameras on many, many, many pieces of public (and private) property in the Seattle area. None of these are hooked up to face-recognition software (AFAIK) and they can be used to find criminals just as easily.marotti.com
Here, we are seeing Government going beyond its Constitutional role to harass an innocent man. It really bothers me to see so many people in this forum say, "So What?". The "What" is that a person should not have to fear that the Government will randomly pick you out of the crowd and threaten you! Questioning is a form of Governmental threat because you know if you don't get the answers right or look the wrong way, you go to jail until you deplete your bank account on a lawyer -- plus as a bonus, when you are found innocent, you don't get reimbursed for your expenses.
If anything in the US, the cameras should not be trained on private citizens but on public officials. They are the real criminals. I would love to have the bright light of sunshine pound down on each and every politician -- focusing in on the actions they commit during their waking hours.
Frankly, as far as I am concerned, Uncle Sam should go have marital relations with himself. Its so sad to see the "Freest Country on the Planet" resort to this Fascist behavior. Even worst are the bleating sheep that think these cameras are a "Good Thing®".
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I've got a deal for you, why don't you and everyone else who doesn't mind being monitored 24/7 just wear a radio collar so the police can keep up with you and make sure you're not doing anything wrong. The rest of us will just continue with our lives as they are.
The only people who don't want this are 1) criminals, and 2) people who cheat on their spouses and don't want to get caught.
Wrong! The only people who do want this are the sheep who don't understand that by agreeing to this kind of thing in the name of public saftey, they are slowly giving up every shred of personal freedom they have. Another poster said it, but's it's worth repeating, Rights just don't disappear, they're slowly eroded away over time.
Check out AbiWord.
I think one of the most basic freedoms in the US is to be free of government surveillance unless there is at least some evidence (ahead of time!) that a crime has been committed. Otherwise, mistakes may happen, and apparently they often end with innocent people in prison - even on death row. Certainly DNA testing has recently borne this out on numerous occasions.
The Fourth Amendment must be used to prevent such invasions of privacy, or we'll slide down the slippery slope until we're living in a country that'd make the old Soviet Union look open and enlightened.
On a somewhat related note, I'd be very wary of a government that repeatedly calls for more police and prisons, even though the crime rate has been going down for years. (This same government has also decided to artificially inflate the crime rate by pursuing an unwinnable "war on drugs"...and is using that as an excuse for all sorts of excesses including confiscating vast amounts of private property.)
186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
In college, I was doing research on the fall of Democracy in Chile. What fascinated me about the subject was how Chile, which had been a democracy for about a century, had become a military dictatorship. More importantly, I wondered if such a thing could ever happen here.
It turns out that there is an entire series of volumes titled The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. There are volumes dedicated to Europe (e.g., Nazism in Germany), Latin America, a couple of more general texts, and a single volume dedicated just for Chile. And the entire scope of this series was summarized best by Julius Caesar over two thousand years ago:
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
Or, "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Or the great Benjamin Franklin quote above: "Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for security deserve neither." They get neither, as well.
We can't trust a government to do anything right. Why do we? Would you trust a bunch of complete power-greedy strangers to feed and clothe your children? Government has to be kept on a very short leash. If you do not set up and defend strict limits on the power officials can have and how long they can have that power, government will get too big for its britches. And if you give them more power than they deserve for more "security," you will find yourself walking down the streets, accosted by policemen. Or arrested without habeas corpus -- or bail.
Having things to hide does not necessarily mean you have ILLEGAL things to hide.
My visits to a political party's headquarters,
a planned parenthood center, or my girlfriend's
house should not be monitored by the government, period.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
If this is the same Orwellian universe in which law enforcement has routinely used illegal wiretaps, the FBI has illegally infiltrated and monitored left-wing activist groups, the NSA may monitor global electronic communications, the FBI maintained massive files on citizens based on the whims of a perverse director, and people during the 1950s were harrassed by Congress and denied employment based on their constitutionally protected political beliefs (which they may or may not have actually held), the government tested the effects of radioactive material on humans without their knowledge or consent (and conducted other horrendous experiments as well)... If that's the Orwellian universe you're talking about, then, yes, this is important and I am concerned.
Governments in the US, all the way from the federal level to the local level, have a terrible history of abuses. The potential for abuse here is huge, and the temptation to abuse it will be even larger. I cannot think of a single technology available to law enforcement that has not been used to violate the rights of citizens in some way or another, and I see no reason why this technology will be any different. We have a lot to lose here and very little to gain. Why take the risk?