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Scotland Yard Confirms It's Using Facial Recognition Tech
nonprofiteer writes "Scotland Yard confirms that it's using facial recognition technology to identify rioters in London. 'A law enforcement official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that facial recognition is one of many tools police are using to hunt suspects still at large.' Meanwhile, the vigilante group trying an amateur stab applying facial recognition to the riot photos abandoned the project because the results sucked. This is the big test of the surveillance state that London has become. Are all those cameras effective, or just taking a toll on privacy without bringing added security?"
Nope!
"We want to see who is doing a great job at enforcing the peace! Better law enforcement through publicity! We need his name and picture! After all, he has nothing to hide right? Right?"
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Ronald Regan is sought for questioning.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
As long as law enforcement doesn't take down social networks... People in London have been using it to protect themselves and communicate with each other from the yobs running around.
Use of this technology was inevitable and people can always argue about the "big brother" feeling with these cameras and technology, but in the end it dOesn't affect normal, law-aBiding citizEns except for Yobs.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
OK, firstly, London is a city not a state. But it's the second part of this sentence I have problems with. There are two possibilities. One is that the cameras are effective and allow their owners to identify people. Note that most CCTV cameras in the UK are privately owned, they aren't a part of some kind of government super network. But imagining they were, this could pose a privacy problem.
The second possibility is that they don't work reliably and you usually can't identify people due to hoods, baseball caps, or low quality images, in which case they aren't a privacy problem.
I don't see any way cameras can be both ineffective and a privacy problem simultaneously. If they don't work then they are, at best, an expensive placebo.
Judging from the quality of pictures put up by the Met, I'd imagine they're good enough to provide evidence in court if you already have an idea of who it is, but they probably aren't good enough to reliably identify you out of millions of possibilities, even assuming facial recognition tech was really good. There might be a few successes but most images are of too low quality or the intruders too well disguised for it to have any impact.
I'm glad the police can use this technology THIS TIME- although it is quite scary that it is progressing so much (and who knows when it will be used for less approvable scenarios). What the police have today corporations and criminals will have tomorrow (or is it the other way around). You can't escape it either. I stay away from Facebook and the like- but the fact that I'm a hot sexy beast means other people take photos of me and post it online. Even though I actively stay away from Facebook and other sites that catalogue my life- I'm still exposed via others.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I predicted this a while back.
Just remember, if you have strong views and opinions. Then you post about them on your Facebook. You are a ridiculously easy target to find. They are catalogued forever and for the rest of your life. If political correctness changes (and it will) then you could find yourself in a situation where you have done things that now the general public believes is abhorable. You are suddenly the target.
Just go to YourOpenBook.org and search
Incriminating huh? I can find people of any faith/religion or political motivation or even recent transgressions. Who they've slept with, what they believe etc. Whether or not they hate their boss. Ironically you need to execute Javascript from Facebook.com so they could in theory track your searches. So now we can track the people who are looking for people to persecute and we can use it to persecute. Nothing can possibly go wrong!
What's to stop someone from searching for your minority opinion and silencing you?
If that's not enough, there are plenty of reasons why you should quit.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, you read my tone mostly right - I put things in quotes that are a dramatically amplified version of a serious point.
Not only are security forces camera shy, if you *do* get your own footage for your protection they then push even harder and game the system to make that an adjunct crime.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you make a Facebook account and upload a pic of a rioter who is also on Facebook, wouldn't they be auto-tagged?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
How is it "taking a toll on privacy" to collect data on people's behavior IN PUBLIC PLACES?
It also records the times when you entered and left private property. They can follow a person from the time he/she left his/her appartment all the way while they travel to their favourite sex-shop.
Not a big deal perhaps, unless you live next to the camera operator and he/she has a grudge against you for some reason.
Also, try to collect data on a policemans behavior in public places and you will see how public it really is.
Because people actually live in public places. Stalking is an invasion while just walking behind somebody for a short while is not. Seeing someone in public is something totally different than collecting every public presence and store the data. Always-on cameras ARE an invasion to privacy.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Well. One thing 5000 cameras DIDN'T do is stop people from looting.
Privacy is terrorism.
Easy, because this is a complex issue. To over simplify:
Most people seem to have no problem with using all the technology at their disposal to catch these rioters. This includes CCTV, face recognition etc.
Next time there is a problem they can say "well we used this technology before." Then you get feature creep where they use it for every crime. Then they use it for suspicion of a crime. Next thing it's police principle to pull people over because the face recognition software thought they looked like someone who dropped a piece of litter three months back.
You might even argue this is acceptable, but the worry for me is how do I defend against the accusation? I have no evidence for my innocence except the CCTV that I have access to. It might be public CCTV cameras but if only the police have access then you can imagine a corrupt officer could frame trouble makers with relative ease. Or at least select amoungst the guilty to target his favourite pressure group.
You might be fine with all of this and say I'm worrying over nothing and I might be, but the only thing that would make me 100% comfortable with this is if the public CCTV cameras' records were publicly available so that we all could defend ourselves. more than that I'd want access to CCTV of the police investigating their case against me.
But I don't see any of that happening.
So do I have a problem with this at the moment? No. But as the old saying goes, first they came after the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew so did nothing; then they came after the gays, etc.. Then they came after me and there was no-one left. You have to stop these things before they get to the point whereby they come after you.
What has worried me about these riots if what happens if we in the UK ever had to violently overthrow a corrupt government? What happens if democracy stops working. If I understand the US, then the second amendment was partially intended to allow the citizens to get rid of a corrupt government; too many of these tools that are only in the hand of the government is a worrying scenario.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
I'm pretty tired of hearing these riots being referred to as being anything remotely like V for Vendetta. These are young people, disenfranchised people without jobs or educations, robbing stores and beating people up and stealing their stuff. None of them are attacking the government directly for political reasons. They are hurting their own people; it's a social implosion and it's fucking sad.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Except London isn't a region. The nearest UK (or rather, English) equivalent of a US state is called a county. London isn't one of those, either.
P.S. the example you didn't link to gives two examples of European states - Italy and Germany. Not Berlin and Rome. It also mentions Bavaria - not Munich.
Fail.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because of this I have often wondered if I were to print up a bumper sticker and stick it to the bumper and just below the driver's side window that states "By approaching this vehicle you agree to audio and video recording". It basically becomes a EULA but similar signs exist places that have video surveillance (the "this premisses is under 24 hour video surveillance" signs).I think one could argue that in a 2 party consent state that since those signs are legal the warning sticker on your vehicle would also be legal since they were informed that they might be recorded. This would also be similar to the recording stating that this call may be recorded for quality reasons when you call a customer service number. Now I am not a lawyer so I don't have any idea how this would pan out but it seems logical to me.
A vehicle seems like an ideal place for a personal recording device as there would be ample power and it could be hardened against authority oopses. It would also provide a number of good mounting positions for multiple cameras and mics.
Time to offend someone
I'm pretty tired of hearing these riots being referred to as being anything remotely like V for Vendetta. These are young people, disenfranchised people without jobs or educations, robbing stores and beating people up and stealing their stuff. None of them are attacking the government directly for political reasons. They are hurting their own people; it's a social implosion and it's fucking sad.
I totally agree with you. While I certainly don't think V for Vendetta is the new New testament as many seem to, I do find the overall moral of the movie to be interesting. And I found it to be a fairly entertaining movie. However, none of the "protesters" in the end were violent or destructive in any way, this is certainly not what is happening in the UK right now. In fact, as I recall, they mildly addressed that people would take advantage of a situation, but seriously downplayed that fact. The problem is, is that many of these animals that are out looting and burning would probably feel that V for Vendetta would be some kind of justification for their stupidity.