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."
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
...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.
Civil Libertarians are justifiably concerned.
As is anyone else who knows anything about the technology. What a waste of money! [sigh]
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.
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?
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
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.
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)
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.
Of course, that's not to say that I think this camera thing is a good idea. The more we make schools like prisons, the more students - even the "good ones" - will feel like they're criminals.
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?
With these systems, you picture will be in the database. You just won't have any data in the "offender" field.
I've never molested, assaulted, or robbed anyone. I know my picture is not in the database. Is yours?
Are you sure? Do you have a drivers license? Ever gotten a security clearance for a job?
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.
Better background checks.
When they want to put the camera in my home, I'll be worried.
Ok...everywhere except actually inside your home. School, work, your car, pointing at your front door.
I'm sure you wouldn't mind a camera pointed at your chair at work, just to make sure you're doing nothing wrong.
It does happen that a child will be abducted by a parent who, for one reason or another, does not have legal custody.
I would be surprised if this system would be able to do a facial match on these kids based on the family photos that the family provided to law enforcement. It's unlikely that they have any good "driver's license" (digital on a particular background, full face) photos.
They would still be "missing", and could still be in danger.
Missing yes. But if they are going to school, I'm a lot less concerned about their safety. It's the poor kids locked up at home who may be in danger.
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.
How about we give each sex offender a GPS device, so we know where they are 100% of the time. It can be a condition of parole. If they ever get stopped and do not have it, they go back to jail. If they go within a certain distance of a school, they go to jail.
It would provide a much better system. Not only would you protect the kids better by knowing where all the sex offenders are, you would not force the rest of us to have to submit to an invasion of privacy for a system that does not work.
I also hate the idea of teaching kids that getting photographed everywhere is okay.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
...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?
How about "try not being accused of breaking the law"
I'm not the only person I know who's spent time (wrongly) in jail awaiting trial only to be told "oops, wrong person" and released.
I'm a middle class white american citizen. I can't imagine being a shifty looking black woman. *chuckles*
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
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.
Maybe you're trolling, maybe you're just pretending to be George Carlin, but I'll bite heh.
Get rid of privacy and you'll witness the slow death of individuality. Peer pressure and groupthink are powerful enough without the fear of your life being an open book for anyone to read/judge. I'm sure you'd have the best intentions, but many folks out there don't. For example: no matter how open you are willing to be, your government will remain just as secretive and private as ever (i.e., Bush administration). I hardly see that as an improvement.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Isnt great that technology is yet agine being used to replace human effort at the expense of quality and reiablity
Only ones that the spouse feels may be a problem. It would be their choice to toss them in the database.
Of course divorcing people would never (on their own initutive or advice of their lawyers) attempt to use any means of herassing the other party...
This woman was going throug a VERY bad divorce with this dude, and he had a history of abusing her.
Actual abuse or claims of abuse? It's even quite common for a bully to claim to be the bullied if they think they can get away with it.
Insitutional bigotry is a relevent issue here. With divorce and domestic violence frequently being dealt with by entities which are instututionally sexist.
In that case, I can see where that would be a good thing to do. I couldn't see this happening for cases outside of what I described, and it is in fact a very narrow use.
The moment you have a system which gives someone power over another it will be abused and it's envelope pushed. This is just human nature.
It's more meant to come into play in a sitation where a child is kidnapped in New York (for example), then is taken to this Phoenix school and registered under a different name (not real hard to do). In a situation like that, there would be no real way to track down the child without this camera system. Of course, this requires that the system work flawlessly. A false positive means a visit from the Feds to the parent/parents of the child flagged as a match for a missing kid (with ensuing investigations and picutres in the paper and whatnot - possible life destroyer there). A false negative means an abducted child stays abducted, and everyone assumes the tech knows what it's doing, therefore never questions it. Both are VERY bad.
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
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."
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!
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
This problem, though, is bad for even those who are true sex offenders. Whether it is the lists on websites or elsewhere published, or these face recog cameras, all of it amounts to a "scarlet letter" being placed upon them.
These people (and as per your example, it can quickly be anyone) serve their time - but they never are let alone afterward to become good citizens, they are continually punished, hounded for the rest of their lives like some Frankenstein creature.
These lists and databases are not any form of deterence, they are simply lists for shunning, and in some certain worse cases, vigilante mobs or people to use to beat them up or kill them. As a civil society, we should not have these lists.
Finally, many times there are people who have these urges, and want to seek treatment, but by the stigma of the issue, they are even unable to do that! Sometimes the laws prevent it, sometimes they can't get treatment because of other issues. So, the fester, try to control it themselves, sometimes they fail - many either get caught (even though they didn't want to do anything in the first place and wanted treatment), others end up killing themselves.
This abuse at the hands of the system needs to end.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
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..."