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Pre-Crime in the UK: Businesses Crowdsource a Watch List (arstechnica.com)
Press2ToContinue writes: In the film Minority Report, people are rounded up by the Precrime police agency before they actually commit the crime. In the movie, this pre-crime information is provided by 'pre-cognition' savants floating in a goopy nutrient bath who can apparently see the future.
Replace those gibbering pre-cog mutants with Facewatch. It's a system that lets retailers, publicans, and restaurateurs share private video footage with the police and each other. It is integrated with real-time face recognition systems, such as NEC's NeoFace. Where previously a member of staff had to keep an eye out for people, on the crowdsourced Facewatch watch list, now the system can automatically tell you if someone on the watch list has just entered the premises. A member of staff can then keep an eye on that person, or ask them politely (or not) to leave.
Better then LA pre_crime where then get you for per Prostitution just for driving down a road.
It's a system that lets retailers, publicans, and restaurateurs share private video footage with the police and each other.
That's not pre-crime. That's sharing video footage of actual behavior.
Casinos has done this forever, and I'd imagine so do large chain grocery, department, and big box stores.
This sort of thing is a cancer on civilization and needs to be stamped out, firmly and completely.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Retailers post pictures on their wall saying "Do no accept checks from this person". It's just a reputation system committed to paper. It's not really a problem, but it's also not something the government (police) should be involved in because government blacklists violate due process rights.
If somebody has a history of shoplifting, keeping an eye on that person when they're in your store seems perfectly sensible to me.
I also have to wonder why half the article was about Minority Report when there are few similarities between pre-crime and this system. In Minority Report arrests were based on information from the future, while this system is based on past information. In Minority Report people were arrested and charged for crimes they had yet to commit, while this system simply gives stores better information on which customers they need to keep an eye on. The differences are so pronounced I fail to see why Minority Report even needed to be mentioned.
Perhaps they could extend it to check for commas, that don't need to be there.
At the bottom of the
Considering there were hundreds of expenses fraudsters in UK's Houses of Parliament, maybe the politicians should be added to this pre-crime "watch list".
Take Nobody's Word For It.
In my view, it crosses the line when it infringes on your activity. If Facewatch gives you a warning that this person might deserve some scrutiny in case they shoplift, and store owners watch your behavior, but allow you to shop and act normally, that's behind the line. It crosses over the line when the reaction to a warning is to refuse to let you in the door, or escort you out upon entering, particularly when there is no recourse to correct the information.
Even now, businesses could use this kind of information to determine whether or not to offer you a bargain, a deal, a coupon relative to the marked price. For businesses like Safeway (US), that routinely offers price breaks on items that they know you buy or want you to start buying, incorporating Facewatch into the mix could lead toward price discrimination that would be very objectionable.
I'll give you the first part, they can put up signs all day long making such claims. That does not in any way give them legal right to do as they wish with your images.
You are either confusing, attempting to conflate, private property to be the same as public property. It is not the same thing by any legal standard.
If I can walk my dog into the grocery store and have it shit on the ground I'll surely allow the grocery store to be treated as public property. They won't, and it is not.
If a person was not given proper notice that they are being filmed on private property then the owner of the property can not use the film for any purpose except for self viewing and filing reports with law enforcement. Otherwise, people would be perfectly within their rights to install cameras in their toilets and invite the neighbors over. (It has happened and people have been sued and criminally prosecuted).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I know this is a bit nit-picky, but it feels very un-Slashdot-like to not attribute an idea to its origins, which in the case of 'precrime' would be the Philip K. Dick story on which the aforementioned movie is based.
Let's start a Pre-Corruption database.
How long would that last?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Airstrip One.
Thank you Dave Raggett
And if you are conscientious member of society, you will help them out from time to time by being truthful and honest and cooperative if you have witnessed a crime. You know, Golden Rule and being a good neighbor and all.
Doesn't the UK have some pretty nasty defamation-type laws? I would think a single mistake that results in such a suit (win or lose) would cost a retailer decades worth of "shrinkage."
Alex, you post AC because you are a bully, you are a coward, and you because you've been banned from every board you've ever posted to that didn't allow anonymous posting.
Others post AC when confronting you because you've a 15+ year history of stalking and harassment of anyone who voices any kind of disagreement with you whatsoever. You've been called out on it over and over again. It's all over the Net, dude, and you can't get rid of it.
It's real shame you got abused as a kid and punished for trying to defend yourself. But does doing the same thing to others really make you any happier or your life any better?
PubWatch has been running in UK pubs since the 1990's, it's a voluntary organisation where landlords share photographs of troublemakers between themselves and with police. They probably include video by now.
Remember the corporate police force out of Robocop? In the UK they have a corporate police force, being the City of London Corporation's private police force. And they kick in doors all over the country, together with other corporate representatives (and sometimes a token member of the local police force, to add legimitacy and not to step too much on their toes).
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I was going to say that at least we don't shoot black people just for, well, being black.
But just the other day we did.
Shooting an armed professional criminal is not the same thing as shooting a random teenager on his way home from school..
The police here in the UK are not perfect, but they are a thousand times better than in the US in terms of numbers of mistaken shootings of minority groups.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it