The London Riots and Facial Recognition Technology

nonprofiteer writes "A bunch of vigilantes are organizing a Google Group dedicated to using recently revealed facial recognition tools to identify looters in the London riots. While Vancouver discussed doing something similar after the Stanley Cup riots, the city never actually moved forward on it. Ring of Steel London, though, is far more likely to incorporate FRT into its investigative work." A related article points out how development of face-recognition technology has been kept under wraps by some organizations, but we're getting to the point where it'll soon be ubiquitous.

Comments

Re:Really? Vigilantes?

[smallfries]

Why on earth would your beliefs be in any way relevant? Are you aware that the machine in front of you allows you to search for information so that you can test your beliefs. Shocking, eh?

A member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily (as when the processes of law are viewed as inadequate)

The key point of the definition is that a vigilante takes extra-legal action; a vigilante is one who acts outside of the existing legal framework. Publishing the identity of the looters is not operating outside of the law. In fact it actually supports the official effort to identify looters from video shot during the riots. Only acting on the identities to go and mete out some kind of illegal retribution would be vigilante action, and as there is no suggestion that they will do so the use of the word is loaded as the GP originally stated.