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Police Scanning Every Face At UK Download Festival
AmiMoJo writes: Leicestershire Police have announced that they will be scanning every face at the popular UK Download music festival. The announcement article on Police Oracle (paywalled) reads, "the strategically placed cameras will scan faces at the Download Festival site in Donington before comparing it with a database of custody images from across Europe." The stated goal is to catch mobile phone thieves. Last year only 91 of the 120,000 visitors to the festival were arrested, and it isn't clear if the data will be deleted once checked against the database.
The linked article provides at least one image of a costume that would probably trip up any facial recognition technology yet devised.
Why would the festival cooperate? Basically they are saying to their customer that their privacy is of no value. Not only is this cruel but it also indicates that the festival will probably sell on any data they have gathered on the festival goers.
It is this callous disregard for privacy that screams for laws that clamp down on any organization, including the police, from being able to gather data. Quite simply I want a law that prevents any organization from gathering data that isn't crucial for the transaction and to not be able to share that data without a warrant. Thus I want this reaching the point where the power company can only gather the minimum amount of data to send me a bill and deliver my service. I don't even want them noting my gender. Then I pretty much want them not to be able to share that data with their own marketing department, let alone "trusted third parties".
If he were alive!
Walmart, Best Buy, and Staples are using this facial detection to "add value" to their ceiling based security cameras. I looked into it after receiving Facebook ads for things I never searched but only picked up and examined physically (like very specific models of camera). Unfortunately it's harder to camouflage your face than it is to camouflage cookies from website visits. It starts with security and then goes to marketing... Leicestershire Police will be able to sell a list of attendees to companies marketing hardware, for example (one of the more valuable commodities for conference advertisers... for now).
Gently reply
They're keeping it secret because its trivial to circumvent by wearing a hoody or a mask.
It seems very likely that the prevalence of CCTV has driven the trend over the last 15 years towards hoodies - i.e. jumpers with a hood that may conceal a lot of your face.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
. . . do they want to scan thousands of guy fawkes masks . . .
Wonder what the unstated goals are?
The festival needs a license, the last labour government made it condition of the license that the police agree, so the police use it to add any arbitrary law to the agreement.
So here the police demanded mass surveillance as a condition of their approval and so the festival has no choice but to go along with it.
This is how the UK is, the police drive the democracy, its heavily over-policed, and if you try to tackle them, they send out PR people to talk trash on TV.
You'd think they would have to provide some sort of reason why this specific venue was chosen for this "dragnet" law enforcement. This isn't like license plate scanners where they're throwing them up all over the place on highways... this is a very specific deployment. If they're going to use the reason of "catching cell phone thieves" (which by itself seems to be a very trumped-up reason) you'd thing they would be expected to provide some justification, why they have any reasonable belief that any significant number of said theives are going to be there.
That reason could actually probably be dismantled now that they've announced they intend to BE there, any said thief would be very likely to avoid the venue as a result. So just based on that alone, they should be packing up?
It'd be like the police planning a raid on a local bar that had a track record of lots of underage drinkers. If news of the date/time of the raid gets out, it'd be pointless to go ahead as scheduled with the raid? If they went ahead with it even after being exposed, you'd have to assume that the "looking for undeage drinking" was just an excuse for the raid and there was some other specific reason that they didn't want to become public knowledge.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
so a fun anecdote i heard from a friend who works in the biometrics field is that in testing facial recognition software that would track people on a college campus, they found a strange anomaly that there was one person that had been spotted hundreds of times in multiple locations at the same time. after reviewing the footage he realized that the cameras were actually finding bob marley's face on t-shirts.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
fuck the plebs
How far have we come :(
They should sell those wide brimmed sombreros for 2 £ there.
It should be pretty obvious by now.
All your data r belong to us.
Why do people keep allowing this bullshit?
Cause they think cell phone theft will be lowered?
Can you think of a more expensive and intrusive system for your "cell phone", security?
They should boycot the event.
Here's the license condition used to force bars to install CCTV:
http://londonist.com/2009/02/mandatory_cctv_cameras_in_pubs.php
Quite simply if you refuse, the police object to the license and the festival would not be permitted. The police drive the law, and they're above any niceties like citizens rights.
None of this has been agreed by Parliament, Police were given the right to object to festivals in cases of public danger or major crime, and they expanded that into "do as we say or we'll object and your festival will be cancelled".
Download festival know this is unpopular, and it only leaked out because a police journal wrote a story on it, otherwise the police would have done it in secret.
THE DATA WILL BE KEPT. The police kept DNA evidence voluntarily given to them to rule out people as rapists. The police promised to destroy that, they kept it anyway, the court ruled that was illegal, and they still kept it. It forms part of the DNA database they created now.
Absolutely, positively FUCK THIS WORLD!
It's already been reported that you need the wristband to do pretty much anything. They already know who you are. Facial recognition in addition seems pointless.
Has anyone noticed new cameras on London Luton Airport? The ones with white LEDs pulsing in cylon-like circle pattern. Are those facial recognition cams?
"Last year only 91 of the 120,000 visitors to the festival were arrested"
Great, I still have no idea if this is too much or not enough.
It would have been much more informative to compare the 91 arrestations to the number of reported cellphone thefts.
into a mask party.
I would like and prefer to show respect to any random venue by taking off headgear when entering. But if you then abuse that show of respect to store my likeness in databases for any length of time at all and run all sorts of automated whatnots on it, then that is less than no respect in return.
I really don't care that it's about ferreting out (a very very few) bad apples. You just don't get to do that to everyone.
http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/...
I say everyone should wear a tshirt with some famous terrorist on the front.... watch the fun
I've been involved in quite a few uk festivals and know several organisers and IMNSHO opinion this could have been rejected by the organisers.
Download has a reputation in the festival scene for being one of the grimmest most corporate of festivals, think mainstream moshing meatheads on speed
and lager , not hugging hippies on ecstasy. Its quite likely the police strong armed download about this because of their target audience but its just as
likely download came up with this themselves to reduce policing bills. Having seen policing bills for other festivals its quite likely download were
hit with something in the order of millions and hired someone (lots of ex-coppers consult on this ) to analyse how to mitigate it and they came up with this.
Note the almost total lack of outcry from festival goers about this, downloaders just don't care, if this was tried with glastonbury there would be riots.
The RFID purchasing thing is way more dangerous in my opinion , this has been tried as several festivals and has resulted in a lot of festival
traders getting ripped off by organisers who simply loot their traders revenue if they fail to make enough money (which happens a lot because
festival running is subject to a bewildering array of regulations that don't make sense and cause unpredictable expenditure). People who work
at festivals know full well that accepting anything that isn't cash is a gamble on the skills of the organisers. It turns festival organisers into banks
which is a terrible idea.
the police strategy of applying more and more over the top requirements on festival organisers is driving festivals into smaller and smaller events,
this is typically because the explosion of festivals is a direct response to similar controlling behaviour regarding events and venues in cities. Its a dangerous game to play , over zealous legislation drives events underground where they are potentially less safe (although often much more sensible), where they generate no tax revenue and have no access to sensible venues. This also dramatically increases the possible harms of drug use , contributes to a lot of post drug use psychosis and creates a vast revenue for criminals.
Until the government and the police recognise and protect the right to have fun and gather socially as the vital part of our culture that it is we will continue to
have all manner of baffeling social problems as people do it anyway in less than safe circumstances.
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India is the world leader in these stickers, from traditional simple red/maroon circles, to really fancy pieces that are almost jewelry . They should be able to whip up a few million eyes, noses and lips in a jiffy.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Three shots ring out. V's shape slumps to the ground, lifeless. The morning news report a terrorist shot and killed. Popular approval for the police rises. Norsefire remains in power. That's how things go in real life.
News item from Leicestershire Police :
https://www.leics.police.uk/news-appeals/news/2015/06/15/download-success-see-you-in-2016
Interestingly apparently a 0.2% false positive rate. On attendance size of 90,000 that's 180 people mis-identified. This is apparently using NEC's NeoFace Watch system which they started trialling in the middle of 2014.
http://www.necam.com/Docs/?id=c8a08fd5-e79c-4f00-9f37-9919318cc772
If they asked people if they want to be recorded everywhere, they say no. So the UK created a 'data protection registrar' who approves these things on behalf of the people!
That's how they get around the right to privacy, you consent to have your privacy invaded (well the data protection registrar does it for you!).
"The linked article provides at least one image of a costume that would probably trip up any facial recognition technology yet devised. "
Clark Kent's lenless glasses?
Really need more people in disguise if the scum are going to be pulling this constantly...
For FUCK sake LEAVE us ALONE. Your supposed to be the countries foundation, not our overloads - fuck off.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There is no such thing as a temporary tax, or in this case, data collection. The UK is the shining example behind North Korea of an oppressive police state. These data will be used to further inhibit the lives of the citizenry.
Just make a monthly T-shirt drop of with the FBI's 10 most wanted poster a thing.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Nothing a good ol' fashion bandanna can't fix.
I suggest a few bright infrared bulbs and a battery in your cap, to the cameras you will likely look like jesus himself. could hurt your eyes so wear eye protection..
"To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System"
This is just one more reason in a long list of reasons for spending my tourist money elsewhere.
Maybe their paymasters thought it was a Music Download Festival and thought it'd be a good idea to have incriminating evidence complete with mugshots (nice for the world-wide facial recognition database) of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes against the hard-working, living-off-scraps music community.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.