Slashdot Mirror
Phoenix School to Install Face Scanners
I'm Spartacus! writes "CNN reports that a Phoenix middle school is intstalling face recognition scanners to help locate missing children and identify sex offenders. Civil Libertarians are justifiably concerned."
If any missing children show up at the school, we're covered.
Two cameras, which are expected to be operational next week, will scan faces of people who enter the office at Royal Palm Middle School. They are linked to state and national databases of sex offenders, missing children and alleged abductors.
Easy, if you're a sex offender (or a missing child that would like to remain missing), don't enter that school. They were nice enough to warn you in advance!
everything in moderation
not a joke or anything but does it mean sex offenders are not allowed into schools??
Two cameras, which are expected to be operational next week, will scan faces of people who enter the office at Royal Palm Middle School. They are linked to state and national databases of sex offenders, missing children and alleged abductors.
If these "missing children" are "entering the office" - how missing are they really?
Do you need a camera to tell you that the kid has been found?
...between this and a cop with a really good memory standing around? Other than the cop would probably have a better hit (less false positives) ratio.
But why would there be enough non-faculty, non-parent adults entering a school that they would need something like this?
I'm assuming that the children aren't sex offenders.
Hey! come on! try dividing it by anything!
Civil Libertarians are justifiably concerned.
As is anyone else who knows anything about the technology. What a waste of money! [sigh]
Let this be a clarion call to all those Phoenix middle school students out there: Print out a photo of Jeffrey Dahmer and tape it to your backpack. Fun for the whole class!
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
The reason civil libertarians are upset is not that a school wishes to protect it's kids, but that this can serve as a precedent for other such actions in more public places.
Read this and tell me if it doesn't turn your skin:
CNN reports that Phoenix City Hall is intstalling face recognition scanners to help prevent tax evasion and identify those misusing building permits.
Sure, it's well down the road in terms of "extreme privacy invasion"... just short of the face recognition cameras installed on city streets (wasn't that tried already somewhere?)
Since when were face recognition scanners accurate enough (and the databases complete enough) to expect to identify a stray sex-offender?
What is a sex offender anyway? A kid I knew in highschool was a registered sex offender because he kicked his little brother in the balls while they were wrestling and they decided to go tothe doctor to get him checked out. The Doctor said he was obligated to report it to social services or he could face charges himself. Social Services reported it to the police and they convicted the high school kid for Sexual Assault on a Child (because he DID exactly what the law defines - to intentionally touch a child's groin area). He's now a lifetime registered sex offender (as is mandatory under the law) and he's on probation for 10 years.
I can't wait until they put these things in the airport! *scoffs*
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Someone has an overinflated sense of self importance. Planning on blowing up some buildings or nabbing some kids? No? Then the FBI, etc could care fuck all what you say on slashdot. Really now, get over yourself.
I don't really recall hearing about lots of pedorapists stealing children from schools. Am I just not paying attention or is this a solution looking for a problem?
privilege not right deal
It seems that this person keeps appearing at visual identity scanners across the nation. Security experts are working even now to determine who this individual is, and the threat it potentially poses to America.
A lot of work would need to go into updating the database viz. Michael Jackson's picture there...don't you think?
So if a former sex offender takes the time to visit the middle school, goes into the principles office, and doesn't come up as a false negative, you know they are a sex offender and can watch them more closely. Then, if they leave with a child (which might, incidentally, be their child) you can give them a huge paperwork hassle on their way out. Is it my imagination or is that about the extent of the good a system like this can do.
Do a lot of middle school kids get snatched out of the principles office without anyone noticing? Or do these people regularly make visits to the principles office without someone spotting them?
What problem is it that they are trying to fix?
Also, what are the error rates on this system? False positives and false negatives? Is this really accomplishing anything at all?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
I hate to sound like a privacy activist, but i would feel somewhat uncomfortable having my face scanned *anywhere*. Maybe, instead of trying to create things to stop known offenders, we should focus more on preventing the offences, through education and rehabilitation. Not to flame, but if the US government spent more of its budget on the countries own welfare, instead of destroying other countries, it may prove a more worthy cause.
Hi there
We called them "teachers." They were given some subroutines for face recognition during the first few years of their construction in order to recognize individual students and reject those who didn't actually go to our school. Apparently these had some other function as well, usually, but I forget what it was. Something about information transfer, I believe.
The advanced model of these, "administrators" also had some programming for student retrieval (of outlier students with difficient programming, leading them to go to well-traveled entertainment locations rather than going to the school). Administrators were also programmed for information retrieval, augmenting their face-recognition and reasoning skills - allowing them to run intrusion-detection hiring subroutines with heuristics designed to limit the presence of malicious entities at the school.
Is this a new model of administrator? How does it stack up to previous versions?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Not only because of the privacy concerns but because the technology SIMPLY DOESN'T WORK! The department of homeland security trialed some of the best available systems and the error rates were WAY too high.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The whole "no sex offenders within xx distance of school grounds" is a joke. Sure, maybe it's necessary and a good idea, but it's still a joke.
I've read more stories about guys being arrested for shopping at a store that happens to a lot behind a small daycare center getting arrested and thrown in jail for 5 years... I've never read about one wandering the halls of a school. Maybe there are some stupid enough to do that... but... sheesh. We need $10,000 machines to tell us there's a man wandering the halls who isnt' a teacher?
Oh... you know what just occurred to me... sex offenders ARE allowed to have kids, right? Are they not allowed to go talk to their kids' teachers? hmmm....
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Now this is so cool its scary because of the types of abuses that can occur with the chip. Now reason for bringing this up? BOP, and DOD were looking at the chip. DoD as a method of replacing dotags, BOP (Bureau of Prisons...? Puzzling considering these chips are implantable.
Sex offenders? They should have something like this, but at the same time they shouldn't. If they've done their time, they should go through a vigorous psyche exam before being released. Why punish them twice if they've served their time. Now I think they're the biggest scum on earth, but at the same time you can't have your cake and eat it too...
What? The chip to replace the Social Security card? Scary thought... but in a way freakishly cool...
MoFscker
when the gestapo sticks a needle in your arm and they tell you.
you right to life? what right? its a privilege.
and your eyes become doopy as the poison kills your body and you DIE.
good job. good job. you then realize on the gurney what the difference is between privileges and rights are.
Just wear a pair of sunglasses, and voila, you're in.
When these things are standardized in every public place (and yes they will be)...I'm going to put on a little bit of makeup to match the dots on some suspected terrorist and see how long it takes them to "nab" me. Hell I could make a TV show out of it...getting my self sprayed with mace...having dogs unleashed on me...having guns pointed at my head...getting beaten with batons. I'm sure we'll all have fun...I'll let you know when my pilot shows in a decade or so...
I see couple of issues here. Firstly, sex offenders are barred from going in to schools? They must have already got punishment for what they have done. Isn't it violation of their free movement? There should be problems with technology too. I wonder how cameras would be able to capture a mugshot of person going in and out of school. If this is so reliable then "theoretically" all security cameras installed just about everywhere (Shopping malls, airports, ATMs, Traffic lights) should be able to work this way. Pretty scary scenario.
It's only a matter of time before they install these suckers at airports to search for suspected terrorists. A false positive is gonna suck. They'll confiscate your obviously forged passport, search every body cavity you have plus a few that didn't exist before, and finally ship you off for an all expense paid Cuban vacation!
my highschool had one of those. He sat in a chair by the office near the front entrance for the busiest part of the day. I think he also did work with parole officers for the trouble-kids and worked with DHS sometimes on cases involving kids at the school. He knew all the kids by name. I never talked to him, but he knew me. He must have studied yearbooks.
In all, I found him creepy. I would rather he wasn't there, but seeing how I lived fairly close to Columbine Highschool, I'm sure all the soccer moms couldn't sleep without knowing our school basically had a tax-payer provided armed guard.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Just being cynical here but - I'll bet the scanners only come in black and white.
...and you can just take a wildass guess as to which 'color' gets picked more often in the line-up?
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
"A kid I knew in highschool..."
Well if you knew a guy who knew a guy who told a story in high school...IT MUST BE TRUE! Thanks for the anecdote.
As for the city hall, I don't have a problem with that either. Whats the difference between requiring a photo ID and a full search at the door to the city hall? This is common in major metropolis' now. I'm supposed to be worried about someone taking my picture at that point? I cower in fear.
Well, sorry to break the news to them, but it DOES NOT EXIST! I'm familiar with a lot of research that takes place in my university and I know how imperfect the best systems are. (unless the military developed something amazing and decided to share it with the company that sold this school their system.. methinks that's balderdash). Just being able to get a proper face from a crowd is a big deal right now - even with faces aligned properly w.r.t the camera, face recognition is pretty crappy at the moment.
But of course, even if the system doesn't work, I'd be very concerned if my face was scanned into some government computer that is accessible to umpteen departments and might end up being used for god knows what!
"When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
So these cameras are being placed in one school with the hope that funding will show up to place them in other schools, at $3K to $10K per installation with the sole justification being "If it works one time, locates one missing child or saves a child from a sexual attack, I feel it's worth it," . The article does not state that this is an ongoing problem -- rampant missing children or sexual attacks on campus. But the article does not contrast the time (money) spent on false alarms vs. spending funds for additional law enforcement personnel -- instead of paying for more unproven face recognition systems.
Anybody can work under ideal circumstances. -- Jeff K. (January 4, 2001)
why dont you check out slashcode i mean spaghetti code from CVS? you can see for yourself. its not bug. its there. plain and simple. you rights, your logged info, at john ashcrofts disposal.
From a sheriff who issues pink underwear? I think we found the purvert.
Seriously, there is the potential for abuse. Why not just do better background checks of who the school hires? This is a scapegoat. First, it will not work, as some human has to be there to make a final decision if two photo's match (las vegas casino's have a system like this to catch cheaters, but they pay big bucks for analysts who run the software). This software is not like a fingerprint. Second, it may relax the current hiring, with officials thinking "eh, the camera will catch what slips by us". Third, what if this does lead to other more invasive losses of privacy, such as finger printing each child- some may see this as a slippery slope.
While I am all for keeping kids safe, I think there are much better ways to do it rather than getting kids used to having camera's everywhere.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Face scanners failed miserably in airports AFAIK, so why do they expect them to work in schools. And besides, for almost every adult in america, there's probably at least one registered sex offender out there who bears a striking resemblence to them.
Just give out photos of missing children and local sex offenders to several staff members and save a fortune.
People complain, but what's the real problem here? Why are people so afraid of image recognition cameras if their picture is not in the database? I've never molested, assaulted, or robbed anyone. I know my picture is not in the database. Is yours?
Missing kids. You guys joke that these kids are not missing if they walk into the office, but there are lots of missing kids going to schools. A mother or father may tell them the other parent is dead and flee with the child during a custody dispute. An abductor may steal a child to raise as their own. There's nothing funny about that.
Sex offenders. Most known pedophiles have court orders barring them from approaching a school, let alone entering one, but how about when they move to another state and try to become a teacher at your kid's school? Is that funny? It happens.
Whenever the system gets a positive ID from the database, an operator compares the database picture with the camera picture. The system is designed to narrow down the people to look at. The police are not going to come barreling in every time the camera has a false positive.
Sometimes the cameras miss a known sex offender. Doesn't the fact that the offenders know these cameras exist deter them from entering our schools? What about the offenders the cameras don't miss?
There is nothing Orwellian about these cameras. They are not trying to track the movements of every American citizen. They are trying to protect our children. You can cry about civil rights all you want, but this is the real world. Bad people are out there and they will, through subterfuge, sneak into your children's schools, your financial records, and even your homes.
When they want to put the camera in my home, I'll be worried. Otherwise, I say put the cameras out if there's a chance that they can reunite a missing child with its family or prevent the molestation of another innocent child.
so I'll just reply here.
Probation conditions often include a "no-go". For thieves/vandals, it's often the area around a store they've targeted, so as to prevent either striking again or hassling (or threatening) those storeworkers who testified against him/her.
For sex offenders, a no-go for schools, daycares and the like is not at all uncommon.
No-go's can be an infringement of rights if they are overbroad and interfere with a place the individual needs to go. I've seen a no-go that covered several blocks and included the pro-b's workplace -- obviously he had to violate it, challenge it, or lose his job (and guess what -- if a parolee instead, often he/she is under a condition to maintain employment).
If the pro-b has a kid, then things get complicated. Is there someone else who can pick junior up from school, meet with the teacher if need be, etc? If not, then conditions need to be worked out, like having to call the school first to announce he/she is coming down.
I know this will strike many as being contrary to the idea of justice being served, but this is what probation and parole are all about -- we consider the person rehabilitated and/or a minimal risk to society, provided that certain rules are observed -- if we allowed for no risk, we'd be keeping people in prison that may present no danger -- if we allowed for more risk, we'd see more paroles and pro-b's re-offending (often in exactly the same manner as their previous crime) and there'd be hell to pay, as there is when such things happen. We can't know what's in a particular person's mind, so we draw the line at some hopefully non-arbitrary point and call it fair enough.
I would add that if this seems unfair, consider the position of the sex offender who gets their name, address, and face plastered all over every neighbourhood they move to. This strikes me as completely contrary to justice, in that it:
a) invites vigilantism,
b) denies any realistic second chance (if their compulsions are a way of dealing with things, how will this contribute to straightening out?),
c) completely contravenes our ideas of having served time for the original crime and having been rehabilitated.
In the school example, the courts are trying to minimize risk without keeping people locked up indefinitely. In the post-your-face example, it's denying the person the second chance they're supposed to get, and certainly not contributing to the pro-b turning over a new leaf.
Imagine if we did that to convicted thieves? (of course, much less stigma, but imagine) If no one was willing to employ them, what options would they be left with? Yep. Way to straightjacket the situation. Great if you're looking for an excuse to just toss them back in.
Shouldn't Michael Jackson charge them for his picture?
Big Brother isn't watching you, you're watching Big Brother. I see great careers in 'reality TV' in forthcoming generations. Even though 'reality TV' is a contradiction of terms. 'sif I care, tho, change the channel ;p
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
Okay, it was 20 years ago, but even then it was on the edge of questionable. This dodgy-factor was from a few students, though, and not from unwelcome visitors. The school is in an older part of town in a fairly high-traffic area (it's on 19th avenue, a major thoroughfare) but it is by no means an "inner city" school. Back then the school itself was surrounded by chain link fences and all classrooms have windows, with no hallways. Perhaps they've had these bad characters sneaking on to campus, but I would be surprised if they would go to the front office from there.
Unless something has changed, this school is two fences and a concrete walkway away from the district office. Maybe that has something to do with the selection of the location.
Sheriff Joe always seems to come up with new ways of raising eyebrows here in Phoenix. If you look him up on google, you'll find he also had cameras pointing at prisoners, he makes people wear black-and-white stripes in jail, he feeds then the bare minimum for food sometimes, and he has this "tent city" that I hear is not a fun place to visit at all. I expect we'll eventually have to start carrying our identification papers if he stays in office.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read about a "face scanner" is a... FACE PLANT in big orange letters appearing on the identification screen as if it was a combo move in a game like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, score!
I also imagine a nerd getting his head stuck in a document scanner, but that is another story.
Are you uncomfortable with people LOOKING at you too? Or being on a security camera? Get a grip. Don't rape children and you'll stay off their list.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I work in a computer vision lab. Face Recognition software plain does not work.
If your in a good enviroment with perfect lighting and good segmentation, you can get 100% accuracy.
Using lame cheap security cameras pasted all over a campus with varying lighting, very low resolution samples, faces at any random angle, and huge numbers of faces at once, your not gonna detect jack shit. Face detection does not work. This is stupid and should not be implemented if only to save the campus money.
It seems to me that people do not know how to judge correctly anymore.
My old high school now has a cop on duty everyday during school hours. I hate to see it. I don't know if it's necessary. But as for this alternative, it seems to me that every machine has its limits, either in tech or programming. Once you learn what the thing does and how it does it (what's being monitored, where), you can find a way around it.
Humans adapt on the fly, and can also make good (of course, also bad) judgment calls. If I had to choose one, I'd rather have the human.
Yes, implantable devices are going to be the norm soon because there is mention to some kind of mark that the beast places upon people so they can trade. In order for this to occur, the technology needs to be invented (which it has) plus some kind of societaly desire to actually have it implemented - voila, wacko sex predators, etc.
A teacher at my elementary school was kidnapped from her classroom at gunpoint one day by her estranged husband. One possible use for this would be to feed his picture into it and when he showed up, the cops could have been called before he even got to the door.
1) Do you want to enter all the "estranged husbands" into the database? How do you define "estranged"? What if he has a kid at the school?
2) The police wouldh ave been called WHEN he got to the door and ONLY if he entered the principles office first to say "hi". Assuming the outlandish, that he DID go to the office to announce his presence, he would have then proceeded to the classroom and pulled his gun. The cops would have showed up 2 minutes later and a) there would have been a shootout b) he would have escaped and kidnapped her anyway or c) he would have surrendered at gunpoint in front of a bunch of kids.
Wow... sounds GREAT.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Several members of the jury approached this boys' mother after the trial and apologized. The remainder could not look her in the face. The prosecutor was gleeful and his conviction, however.
This would have never gone anywhere if the system 1) did not have mandatory reporting (it's a draconian law that's too broad) or 2) allowed the family and the "victim" to ask to withdraw the charges.
Both of these are important in my opinion, but there are few socieites in the world where it's possible anymore (not even the Netherlands as of October 2002).
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
So now you're telling us that roshambo is illegal? How the hell else are we supposed to settle disputes? This government law-making business is just going too far!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
...I'm perfectly fine having cameras all over public areas to be scrutinized by law enforcement, as long as those public areas include Senators, Governors, and other local elected officials offices where the public can provide oversight. Additionally I wonder if the Civil Liberties groups would be as upset by cameras watching our government officials as they are about it watching the public?
It is important to make judgments out of love and not some by strict reading of statutes.
There is a SciFi 'Computerworld' which on the cover reads "Ultra modern science fiction for the post 1984 era" (Daw Books, 1983).
On the backpage: "... Newspeak has been replaced by the new language of the programmers and computer microchips, and the prospects of the years to come have a more sharply defined and less human form".
You might argue about VAN VOGT, but this one is quite anticipatory.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Which cant afford to install these expesive equipment. Are these kids gonna be kidnapped by the boogie man?
By buying some magical machine, whether it works or not, someone is able to tick a box that says something like "initutive to protect children against sex offenders". Then the salesman goes onto the next sucker. Even if it is a lot cheaper than employing enough staff to look after the children, it is no substitute because these things don't work yet, and even when they do in a few years time the camera can do more than supply a record of children being abducted, like in an ongoing case in the UK. If no-one is watching the cameras in real time then real time intervention can't occur.
Everything else aside, I'd say who, how and why is more important that when, where and what. People usually trust Doctors, which covers who, we know that whatever they write down goes into a nice file that is somewhat private (how) and we know why they're taking down so much information. Do you trust whatever company/federal agency enough to forget about the when, where and what they're recording? After all, innocent men have no secrets to hide.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yeah, becasue we all know that the first thing a pedophile confronted with school thinks is, "Hey, I shouldn't be here!." The fact is, people who act like they belong, aren't terribly likely to be questioned even if they are out of place. Least of all by people who consider themselves lacking in authority.
Wouldn't it be nice if the level III sex offender you came to apply for a janitorial position at the school was caught when he brazenly dropped off his application as opposed to after some kid was raped and murdered.
This interferes with NO ONES rights. And if they've developed a good protocall, it won't mess up the lives of people that don't deserve it. As an early silent alarm that recommends increased scrutiny, it's a high cost, low benefit solution deployed on a scale this small. But it's not big brother.
Personally, have two penelties for crimes against children: mercilessly tortured to death over a period of weeks, or the straigh up death penalty. That way, they die, but the prosecutors have something to bargain with, and they have a reason to surrender peacfully.
It might be effective if it actually worked.
Up till now it's just been an expensive and error prone waste of public money.
Why am I wondering how much this is going to waste?
Becuase it still isn't working thats why.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Civil Libertarians are concerned about anything that gives the government more power. Video surveillance (sp?) creates knowledge about citizens. Knowledge is power. Ergo, concerned Civil Libertarians.
Privacy, in my opinion is a generally bad idea. I feel society would be better if it were fully open.
Would we be more understanding and trusting of each other if we all had nothing to hide? If we all could see the lives of others?
Would there be terrorism if terrorists couldn't hide? Could we trust our governments if we knew everything they were saying and doing?
Privacy creates suspicion and mistrust.. It's a cause of wars and fighting of all kinds. It's what hinders us from finding and thwarting criminals--and from understanding them...and knowing why they do what they do.
I wish we all lives in glass houses with speakers that echoed everything we said to the outside. I wish nobody wore clothes... and we all knew eachother for who we really were.
Matthew C. Tedder
even if it caught him getting out of his car, the timeframe is still too slim. The best it could do would be to identify him as the kidnapper in case nobody in the school got a good look at him while he was doing it.
:-)
:-D
Also, who gets to appeal on what grounds you get added to the database that automatically calls police. If she had a legal restraining order, then I could see it MAYBE being justified (still a stretch because she may not even have been there when he arrived!!) But just a "we don't like you" database triggering a call to the police CAN and WOULD be abused.
Not a bad argument. Didn't sway my opinion at all though.
Now... a sattellite-tracking system for every citizen... THAT would have stopped this crime... and 60% of other serious crimes... except the ones perpetrated by those who control the sattelites... *dramatic pause*
ooooooooo
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
*Click*
Another troll pic for my collection...
n/t
They were trying them in a situation which could not sustain high false positive error rates.
In this situation, all they need to do is flag a kid or adult for more attention. In this situation, only false negative is truly bad, which is the same problem existed in the first place.
It's a simple device that helps them better allocate their limited resources. The only way it is worse, is if the system has a higher rate of false negatives than the other procedure, and people trust it more.
Cost-benefit wise it might not be impressive. But there is little down is will be of some benefit. Since the price of a false postive doesn't need to be missing a flight for an unschedueled prostate exam. It could be as low asking a few innocuous additional questions, and having law enforcement pull up some data.
the error rate is higher than the detection rate in these systems.
Just wait for someone to be falsely accused and take the matter to court.
Well wouldn't you agree that it's better to have this technology installed in just one school as opposed to all schools?
I realize this is still new technology, and still a far cry from being done... but how are we supposed to learn and improve on this technology without testing it? We obviously can't get things right the first time around (most of the time).
I know there's the privacy issues, but really... if you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to hide... I'd gladly give up a freedom or two to a certain degree to ensure the safety and well-being of others. And even if you are picked up by the camera by chance, don't worry... its still the humans that make the final call on what to do, not the box without a brain.
Isnt great that technology is yet agine being used to replace human effort at the expense of quality and reiablity
Good post man
In the UK we have warnings for speed cameras, but hat doesn't necesarily make them right.
Or similarly, just because I have a sign saying "Warning! Trespassers will be shot!" on my lawn doesn't give me the right to shoot anybody who sets foot on my lawn.
what i would give to have my moderator points for this story
/me kicks self for wasting precious mod points on silly stories
mmm precious
And, no, I should not have used the goddamn Preview mode first.
Say someone is looking to rob a specific house in a rich part of town. Attach a few of these gps/radio gizmos to each car of the people that live in the house. Now you always know exactly where they are, and how far from home they are (which tells you how many minutes you can spend stealing their stuff).
It is not something I am looking forward to.
Truly an American icon.
Officials say the problem could be even more widespread: Some of the tens of thousands of rapists, molesters and others missing nationally could be hiding in Arizona, they say, especially because an estimated 33,500 are missing in California.
Note there's no real evidence for any of this except "lots of sex offenders are missing and Arizone is such a fantastic place to live we suspect they're all moving here."
Maybe they're onto something. After all, the numbers mentioned in this article equate to a statewide population of more than 13,000 registered sex offenders for a population of about 5.5 Million residents - about a half a percent of its population. Compare that to 3000 for the entire state of Conneticut for a population of a little over 3 Million, or less than 0.1% of its population.
Are things really so much better in Arizona that there should be five times as many registered sex offenders? Per capita, their sex offender registry is nearly double that even of California!
Must be all the sunshine and beaches they have in Arizona. Especially in Tucson. I lived there a couple of years one winter and I recall there being old people everywhere. And we all know it's those dirty old men who fiddle little kids in the park... those bastards.
Maybe they can incorporate this information into the flag or their license plates or something. It would appear Arizona is the mecca for sex offenders!
Some of the pupils are sex-offenders, I know someone in england who was police-checked for working in a school when he was actually yougner than many of the students.
We spend all this time organizing our entire culture to protect children and what does it gain us? Adults who feel that it's okay to trample sense and rights in order to feel protected? The whole sex offender thing is bullshit anyways, I'd just as soon have "mugs people a lot" registry or "beats up people while drunk" registry. At least that would be more concrete than "sex offender" - which covers an awful lot of ground, and would be something more practical since you could use "beats people while drunk" registries to avoid the people in bar. What are you supposed to do with sex offender registries anyways, besides take the law in your own hands and burn the person's house down so that they move into someone else's neighborhood?
Always look where youre walking.
Everyones concirned with the short-term, no one cares what happens in 10 or 20 years time, and 50 ha, we leave that to wierdos at BT.
But we could be headed for disaster and no one looked up to see it comming.
Well since we're public official's employers I think it's not so bad, when the government wants to spy on the public it's tantamount to insisting on installing a camera in the bosses lavatory because you're afraid he might not be screwing the secretary.
Lick HE-Man's balls, Cringer.
The best news here is that the School District is probably wasting its money. So far, field tests of this technology have been pretty uniformly bad.
... OK, but what about the NRA ?
Ybor city spent a lot of money installing a face recognition system to track down criminals.
Number of criminals caught? Zero.
They eventually stopped when they realized they were spending a lot of money for no security.
Kidnappings by strangers is so infrequent that it does not justify the widespread use of surveillance devices. What ever happened to common sense? What ever happened to "don't talk to strangers?" Worked for me and many others.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I don't usually post anonymously, but this time I will. And it is obvious why: officially I am a sex offender. Realistically that means nothings. So let me explain.
When I was in college I went to a party. I met someone there. They looked about 20-21. They said they were 21. And unlike most of my life, this geek got lucky. Not once, but several times over the next few weeks. You think I wasn't in heaven?
Then one day this person visited with a friend. While the friend kept me busy in one room, this person stole a spare set of keys to my car. The next day I woke up and my car had been stolen. I went to the police and filed a report. Several hours later my car was totaled in a 4 car accident with the friend driving and this person in the car. The friend told me if I pressed charges there would be trouble. I pressed charges and there was trouble.
For despite what I had been told, despite what the ID this person had stated, they were only 15 when I met them and had only turned 16 the week before. And this person and the friend then told the police what had been going on. I was searched, arrested (and beaten during the arrest, my nose got "accidentally" broken) and spent a week in jail.
I was then indicted and convicted of a felony. I spent 6 months in prison and was also given 5 years on probation. I now have a felony record and little hope of a decent job. In fact I lost my union job when I was convicted. My car was totaled and the police refused to press charges because this person told police I let them borrow it. My insurance was cancelled and I now am high risk despite never having a ticket or accident ever. My future, my career and my life was destroyed because I was lied to.
That same year 3 other guys at college had similar things happen to them. One went to prison for six years because they drank beer before having sex which meant a triple sentence.
So before you make blanket statements such as "those people are the scum of the earth" remember guys, this could happen to you! And then you are marked for life and the alarm will go off when you pick up your kid. And your face and personal info will appear on the online database. And your neigbors will judge you. "Corruption of a minor" looks pretty bad on that screen when you don't know the facts.
Fortunately I met a wonderful woman who will soon be my wife. She also had a brush with the law because she dated a 15-year-old sophmore when she was 18. They broke up and he told his parents they had sex. She was arrested but charges were dropped later. So she has an arrest record for a sex offense. We do intend to have children. But I guess we'll have to send grandma to school to pick junior up. We are after all, "sex offenders". We paid for it in so many ways, but the stigma and the nightmare never ends and before I met my fiance, suicide seemed like a possible solution. I just hope it never happens to any of you "scum of the earth" people who stand in judgement of us.
Gawd, now I'm depressed, guess it's time for a beer...
The reason we have juries and the reason their not guilty verdict is final is to undermine such ridiculous laws and abuses of over-zealous government through the veto of common sense.
Here's a decent article on the subject.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
If it didn't work for Tampa police (http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0803/21tampa cams.html), why would it work better in this application?
After 2 years it yielded no positive identifications.
It doesn't matter that the technology doesn't work well currently, what matters is children grow up with RFID, face scanning, retina scanning, bio this electronic that and they get used to it, they get chipped/printed/scanned because our "culture of fear" (see Bowling for Columbine)requires it. Once they grow up with it and are used to it, they (the parents) see no reason their children shouldn't have the same. Over the generations it becomes as common place as vaccinations, or the Nike swoosh (talk about being a tool)
We can not change this, the momentum that exist will carry this type of technology thru any protest, you can't convince a worried mother that it's better her baby isn't chipped because the technology may be abused.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
As in Europe there are retina scanners now in place in some American cities so that children can get their lunches without needing a card, it's being done in Europe under the notion "so we don't embarrass the poor kids" sounds like bullsh*t to me, the thing is, kids don't have a choice and once scanned that data is good forever (barring eye transplants)so down the road protest will be futile because *they* already have the data...did I just say "protest will be futile"? Nawwwww /I goes back to watching NG reruns with Borg.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
that the justifications for the cameras are for public consumption only and have nothing to do with the real reasons for the cameras - which probably have to do with self-absorbed administrators who are incompetent or perhaps budget squandering.
This sort of thing is ubiquitous in the public schools - not to mention a lot of other places. It's not necessarily a grand conspiracy but it IS symptomatic of the state of mind of educators in this country.
And of course the politicians and the cops and the secret police love this stuff as well since they don't even have to mandate it to make it happen.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
When we we learn - this technology does not yet work to recognize people. In fact, it can not even tell a cat from a dog.
"The best news here is that the School District is probably wasting its money" Correction the School District is wasting your money.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
Two points for raising the crux element:
" Since the price of a false postive doesn't need to be missing a flight for an unschedueled prostate exam. It could be as low asking a few innocuous additional questions, and having law enforcement pull up some data."
But I disagree about your assertion that the cost can be low. I think it is analogous to car and house alarms that go off all the time. Eventually everyone ignores them because everyone has better things to do than waste that much time.
I wish nobody wore clothes too!
Can you imagine a wife comparing what her husband looks like to a neighborhood teenager mowing your lawn? How about a husband comparing his wife to the women at Nordstrom's?
After a few months there sure would be quite a few healthier people in this country.
ac
The cameras aren't the important part of the system. That's just what they're telling you. In fact, the cameras are really just empty camera housings like they have on buses and such.
The important part is the office secretary who's paid to notice people who squinch up their face to fool the cameras.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Does anyone else think that they just used the reasons that are given to get a knee jerk reaction from parents to allow them to install this system? I dont see any way that a face recognition system will prevent the things that are already happening. In my HS, we had door guards and you had to either have a child in the building or have an appointment with a teacher or administrator. This system worked much better at keeping "unauthorized" people from the building.
I remember a few years back I went to the Xmas parade and Joe Arpao was the grand marshal. He road ontop of the 6-wheeled assualt vehicle the sherrif's dept. owns sporting a santa hat.The guy seems to enjoy anything that causes the maximum amount of controversy.
It shouldn't take very long for anyone living in Phoenix to realize that this joker is some kind of low-rent Goebbels
It looks more and more like the shit-storm is coming.
itadakimasu
Once they are CONVICTED, they as far as I'm concern, loose ALL rights. Once they have PROVEN they have paid their debt and are rehabilitated, they can regain SOME of those rights but not all.
If it sounds unfair to the crook, that's just too bad. They committed a crime and those are the consequences.
And personally people that want to treat them like law abiding citizens make me sick.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Your observation does raise a corollary though. As the system gets more "accurate", false postives will be generated less, and so most people will not have first, second, or third hand knowledge of any false positives. The natural result will be that anyone caught by this, including false postives, will be more quickly and thoroughly damned.
I've got an idea for those who don't like this - use copyright law against them. Paint or otherwise create something original (it would help if you were a professional and had established market values on your work, I would think), and then carry it around. Any time a camera catches you and the signal is recorded, that's a classic infrigement of the right of reproduction. If enough people do it (sue, I mean), supporting the system would be to expensive. The obvious problem I see is that I'm sure congress would act quite quickly to amend the copyright laws to allow this somehow, though.
Could we trust our governments if we knew everything they were saying and doing?
To equate exposing the inner workings of our governments and their intelligence services to the loss of privacy for the individual is disengenuous to say the least.
I have heard the argument that it is equivalent (Open government and loss of personal privacy), usually with the Monica Lewinski scandal as an example, but I cannot justify the actions of a media that would target Clinton over a blow job yet participate in hiding from the public what is known to have happened in Iran-Contra. The one is an issue between a man, his wife, and his mistress, the other is the direct defrauding of the American taxpayer, the breaking of federal laws that were implemented by the persons who later broke them, and justice for the people whom the funded acts of terrorism were committed against.
We, as citizens, should demand openess of our governments operations, and we should insist that this cannot be coupled with infringement on our own privacy. As taxpeyers, we have a right to know when our tax payment is funding wars that were social engineered into existance by our tax-supported intelligence operations for the benefit of intelligence community associated businesses (the Curry Company, the Carlyle Group, Haliburton, Wackenhut Services Corporation, and thier subsidiaries).
This is not the same as requesting that the private occurances of our individual lives be exposed to public scrutiny, although those who work directly for, or have contracted themselves to, the intelligence agencies and thier contracting companies might see this differently. IMHO, those who have made a decision to work in such feilds have traded away thier right to privacy as soon as their own actions and the actions of thier employers no longer are in support of the public good.
Privacy creates suspicion and mistrust.
Secrecy creates suspicion and mistrust. It is not privacy that is the issue here. The issue is that the lack of privacy is already here, and it is those persons who are using thier (government granted) access for profit that make arguments such as yours, as they are enjoyoing a limited monoply on thatr information. They publicly advocate privacy rights while supporting implementations of technology that will both eradicate privacy for private individuals while limiting access for those same people to information about the actions of government and large companies, such as centralized databases for our personal information.
Those same persons oppose the use of technology by private individuals to protect thier own privacy, such as the use strong encryption and PKE for personal communication, usually using "terrorism" as the catch all boogeyman in support of eradicating the privacy in our "private" lives.
Yet I agree with at least part of your facetious statements, in that I do believe that society would be better if government, law enforcement, and intelligence community actions were fully open. Those who chose to make thier living in those fields are in need of a little scrutiny (as is demonstrated by the last fifty years of U.S. history) by the people who's interest they are pretending to protect, and who's will they are pretending to represent.
Read, L
then another says, equally without thought and as a knee-jerk, "but they will track us all" and "no one should have any info on anyone else... Hey you, you remember me... you'd best forget my face and name!"
I would call myself a civil libertarian, but I don't worry about labels. Perhaps people can quit picking fights and start working on solutions.
Reminds me of where I work, when one person will butt in and attempt to dominate any and all conversations through attempted intimidation and bullying. Then 5 minutes later bitch about how some are just so egotistical and wrapped up in forcing themselves on others. Basically, the pot doesn't really realize how black their iron really is. Please stop trying to win arguments and be "right" and try to help out people. (oh, and quit trying to sound tough and pseudo-threatening people... you may get your ass handed to you, if you don't watch out)
... gave me quite a turn. Also the slogan "Get Chipped!". Compare the logo in the PDF to that of Broken Saints. The logo in BS represents, among other things, another chip which is implanted in people for supposedly good purposes...
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
They just have to convince sex offenders to put their face on the scanner
This failed in Florida miserably. Finding NOBODY (but they wanted a very low false positive rate). What makes them think it will work for them? Either it will give them too many false positives or find NOBODY.
The problem with people is they don't remember more than 15 minutes. Ex. This failed in Florida but I have not seen any comments about it. Another ex: Bush: "Amera Corp is a great program and needs all the funding", two days later Bush removes funding for it AND NOBODY but Ameri Corp complained.
It's not about nothing to fear. It's about giving governments the machinery for tyranny. Sure, you may trust the government with your left nut today, but tomorrow there might be some crooks in there (as unlikely as it sounds). The ability to monitor where everyone 24/7 is extremely helpful to the ability to enslave a population... Even if those in Washington have the best intentions, we're setting up a future generation for tyranny.
Actually some of that fear is in the paranoia of any governmental action. In this case, the costs don't appear to justify the benefits. I didn't know Phoenix had that many sex offenders and missing children though the two probably are correlated. I sorta like it when everyone screams the slippery slope argument everytime the gov does something. The mass interment of Japanese didn't lead us down a slippery slope. Today, there are no mass, indiscriminant internments even if some people are getting screwed. If anything, civil libertarians are the the spiked boots that kept us from sliding downward. The US has learned from its mistakes; the Guantanamo, Padilla cases, etc. are new mistakes unfortunately.
We live in a country with a massive amount of capital (unconstitutionally obtained, I might add), as well as an almost 300 million dollar a year defense budget.
First off, the Constitution (the US's at any rate according to the Supreme Court)allows for taxation so the massive amount capital the government has (or rather spends since we wouldn't have massive debts otherwise) is constitutionally taken even if you don't like it. Secondly, I'm sure you meant that the US defense budget is around $300 billion a year but as a percentage of our GDP it's actually less than plenty of other countries.
Let's give paranoid fantasy a chance.
No one anywhere can argue that easy access for sex offenders is a good thing. No one can argue that missing children should remain missing. So cameras in schools are a really good thing. No one in his right mind can argue against them.
Yeah right.
The problem with transparent access by power or authority to the new security technologies out there is not that they will do good things like preventing crimes like kidnapping and murder or stealing a pack of gum. The problem is that, the ability to not be watched or spied on, or informed on, privacy, is a form of wealth that gives us freedom of thought and action and the technology in question robs us of that wealth.
The extent to which the value of privacy seems lost on Americans today is disturbing.
Privacy is power. Privacy is the ability to make practical use of Games Theory. It is the ability to engage in transactions with both players starting on a level playing field with incomplete information. It allows the individual to act as an individual on so many levels that it is difficult for many people to frame questions about privacy effectively.
Our society is a hierarchy, a heap, with a broad base and a narrow tip and the erosion of privacy destroys freedom of action in the classic slippery-slope scenario where those at the top of the hierarchy have access to information about those below where that information increases their ability to wield power over them. Cameras and software combinations allows people at the top of the heap to gather information automatically, circumventing the provisions of the classic judicial process in which you must actually *DO SOMETHING* to garner the attention of authority, which then investigates and then prosecutes and punishes.
Classically, jurisprudence and enforcement is retroactive in that it only steps in after the fact, allowing free individuals the choice to do things from 'stretching-the-truth,' to commiting actual crimes or not. Modern security technology is working to allow law-enforcement, and other powerful organizations, a greater and greater ability to be *proactive*--providing a scenario where society has access to information which improves its ability to prosecute or to make decisions in a way which works to remove choice from the individual at the same time as it improves the position of those in power as games players.
Technology which is ostensibly there to protect children can also provide evidence in a fraud case, or in a burglary case, or in a drug case, or in a civil matter like a divorce, and there no provisions for any device ostensibly put in place to perform one security task to not be bent to the service of others.
The cameras are put there to keep track of the children and to make sure that a database listing of pedophiles, but cameras you know about prevent more than just access by pedophiles: they prevent you from thinking that you are not watched and they work to prevent any and everything that those who are not watched might want to do. You pretty much sum up the phrase, 'chilling effect,' with this scenario.
In the end, the answer to the real question of these technologies--from the rings of databases that know your bottom line and whether or not an insurer should grant you a policy that might provide medical care that will keep you from dying--is not to be found in engineering, but in literature: It is the substance of the title and central metaphor in Anthony Burgess's, 'A Clockwork Orange.'
The central question is not 'can be breathe easier because, in this one place, pedophiles and missing children will be automatically detected,' but whether or not anyone can meaningfully be said to be an individual in society with the human capacity for choice when, for all intents and purposes, he lives his life handcuffed between an accountant and a policeman.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
This law is controversial, like all the anal laws in Canada... in Alberta you'll have trouble, in Ontario you can ignore it and go for the fourteen. So if you're a 16-year old male who has seduced a 15-year old girl in Calgary, be careful with sodomy. You really don't want to get walked in on. Of course, if you can convince a 15-year-old girlfriend to go anal, you're probably a pretty clever guy anyway. Maybe you can talk her father out of pressing charges.
If you're a 16-year old gay man living in Calgary... well hell, just move to B.C. or Ontario. Calgary will be trouble for you long after you pass the age of majority.
And of course, the punchline: I must warn you that IANAL.
That's a very silly idea. What if they offend long before they have a child? It's not possible to permanently deny someone the right to have children... that's a serious constitutional breach. At the same time, any offender is tracked FOREVER. One could well have offended when one was 19, had a child fifteen years later, and be troubled by this sort of thing.
He showed up at her house and so she called the cops. While they were arresting him she came out with a camcorder and started videotaping. The cops arrested her too. When I read this I thought, "What fucked up politician thought of this piece of shit legislation?" Now the cops have video cameras in their patrol cars (which apprently can be switched on or off by the cop), but we can't film them. Lovely, huh?
Debunking the "59 Deceits"