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Face Recognition + Mandatory Police Body Cameras = Mass Surveillance? (siliconvalley.com)
Facial recognition software is already in use, and it has privacy advocates worried. An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup.
Southern California-based FaceFirst sells its facial recognition technology to retail stores, which use it to identify shoplifters who have been banned from the store, and alert management if they return. Corporate offices and banks also use the software to recognize people who are wanted by police... Several local law enforcement agencies have expressed interest in the technology, but so far none have had the budget for it. FaceFirst sells software police officers can install on their smartphones and use to identify people in the field from up to 12 feet away.
Some privacy experts worry facial recognition technology will show up next in police body cameras, with potentially dangerous consequences... The problem, say privacy advocates, is that all kinds of people come into contact with police, including many who are never suspected of any crimes. So lots of innocent people could be caught up in a police database fed by face-recognizing body cameras. The body cameras could turn into a "massive mobile surveillance network," said Jeramie Scott, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
One-third of America's police departments use body cameras. (And just in San Jose, there's already 450 neighborhood cameras that have also agreed to share their footage for police investigations.) The new technologies concern the ACLU's policy director for technology and civil liberties. "You have very powerful systems being purchased, most often in secret, with little-to-no public debate and no process in place to make sure that there are policies in place to safeguard community members."
Some privacy experts worry facial recognition technology will show up next in police body cameras, with potentially dangerous consequences... The problem, say privacy advocates, is that all kinds of people come into contact with police, including many who are never suspected of any crimes. So lots of innocent people could be caught up in a police database fed by face-recognizing body cameras. The body cameras could turn into a "massive mobile surveillance network," said Jeramie Scott, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
One-third of America's police departments use body cameras. (And just in San Jose, there's already 450 neighborhood cameras that have also agreed to share their footage for police investigations.) The new technologies concern the ACLU's policy director for technology and civil liberties. "You have very powerful systems being purchased, most often in secret, with little-to-no public debate and no process in place to make sure that there are policies in place to safeguard community members."
We already have mass surveillance in private hands. Ever been to a casino? Do you know what kind of tech they use?
The real question is how we keep police accountable to the public, not how to make sure the police are kept away from every new technology.
I'll be finding a nice place about 500km from the nearest cop shop.
Potential means you haven't done anything, yet.
What if they record a man going into a woman's bathroom, and use facial recognition on the suspect, and then discover that this was just a transgender person using their self-identified preferred gender washroom? I think the ACLU or SJW should get involved now.
What could possibly go wrong? Imagine the convenience for your local police officers!
I've always wondered what they are listening to in their little earphones, but with this technology incorporated into their body cameras, it's going to be like this:
"Suspect 1: Man in red hat, 30 yards away at heading 25 degrees. 12 actionable offenses, probability 65% of jail time. Suspect 2: Woman in brown skirt, 55 yards away at heading 350 degrees. 4 actionable offenses, but she'll probably offer sexual favors for release. Suspect 3: Man in suit, 20 yards away at 55 degrees. 71 felony offenses, but close friend of the mayor, 2% chance of collecting a fine. Select 0 for additional suspects."
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Aside from that, if you have a drivers license then they already have your face.
The problem is not using such technology but relying on such technology. Too often it is believed above common sense. We have DNA databases that have now outgrown the probability of a match so if you enter data you get more than one match. If facial recognition says that a person is a suspect that does not mean that the person is a suspect and does not mean that there is a reason to arrest or detain said person. It does justify watching said person but not harming them in any way including harming them by detaining them.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Body cameras should encrypt their contents as they capture them.
Records at the station house should be dumps of the encrypted data.
The keys should be stored elsewhere, available by subpoena or warrant.
In addition to making body cam data useless for mass surveillance, wearers can be required to have the camera running all the time - nobody gets to see officers in the bathroom unless they are accused of beating someone up there.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Where did you see mention of criminals protesting?
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Police need to have bodycams to protect us!
If the police have bodycams who will protect us!
Everyone should be watched and not watched at all times and simultaneously. Like there has to be an unbroken universal superposition both of surveillance everywhere and nowhere, just in case someone might do something bad with either. Instead of pointing to something and yelling "problem!" and expecting others to solve it, solutions could be presented instead.
We're going to have that kind of mass surveillance anyway. Doesn't every police car where you live already have a license plate scanner? They do here and we're a town of 90k. If the tech was accurate and inexpensive those same license plate cameras would be doing faces and comparing to the DL records. Then there are all the other government owned cameras you pass every day
Police body cameras are a completely separate issue from mass surveillance. I'm a big advocate for them simply because police have so much power. They have to as part of their jobs. Body cameras act as a check on that power. Here is how I think they should be used.
- On-duty they are recording. No turning them off. You are on duty they better be recording.
- The recordings are available as part of any criminal investigation, prosecution or defense but are not released publicly.
- -- They are not under FOIA. They cannot be used in studies. Active criminal cases only.
- The recordings can only be released publicly with the consent of everyone in them or a court order.
- A button on them that grants 15 minutes of privacy. That data takes a direct court order to access but still exists. Encryption exercise.
Face recognition isn't reliable enough for mass surveillance; that is, unless you have context or additional information, you'll get thousands of false hits for every face you try to look up in a national database even under the best of circumstances. With people actively trying to fool the system and the kind of poor quality you get from wearable cameras, it's even worse.
you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Hopefully the resolution is a little bit better than the resolution in bank cameras.
Banning people from stores for not spending money today is certainly not going to convince them to come back with money tomorrow.
Frankly, I'd rather have police accountability than privacy from having people see my face while I'm in public.
... with the introduction of smartphones with a camera or 3.
The thing is, this is unstoppable. So we might as well look at the advantages instead of running around like headless chickens all the time. Officers need these to prevent violence towards the officers AND the public to avoid unnecessary police brutality, now everyone IS accountable for their actions, I can't see this as a bad thing.
It's also highly unlikely that all video data will be stored for eternity because EVEN though we do have massive storage capacities, just imagine 7 million cameras with gigabyte storage all having to be centralized in some giant network, it would still take ages for any data processing to go trough that with image recognition, and there will probably be enough errors to keep an army of workers busy going through all of that.
And an extra little thing... ...the gov. constantly WANT to add survellance powers but TAKE away our retaliation powers (counter survellance, or private survellance) as we need to trust the powers that be 100%, I for once - never did, and history repeats itself over and over again with officers breaking the law by browsing gov. citizens data bank for personal use and not professional use, this is because they're ALSO human - as corrupt and curious as the rest of us.
The only thing you can rest assure of, there are those in the public who also have survellance capabilities, heck...I had this back in the 80s and kept a close eye on those I wanted to keep a close eye on, including the law enforcers - and they were as clueless then as they are today. If you want to stay out of trouble - stay OFF the radar, because they already have ALL the dirt on anyone of you, they just don't know you exist - yet!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
have upgraded most of the US CCTV over the years to help with months of storage, resolution and software. A private security just walks out and uses their smart phone if the person of interest is just out of range.
Face, gait can all be sorted in a local database.
Thats one way to get around gift card tracking many months later. People still think CCTV is been lost days or weeks later as storage is still expensive.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
How about using facial recognition software on police?
Actually, you'll have the ability to look up their record and note whether additional attention is warranted.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I demand justice. I demand THE parent to be MODDED in the DOWNWARD DIRECTION!
Do all you want to your skin, but your bones will show who you really are.
Walmart knows that by the time they caught you stealing $100 of stuff, you probably already stole $500 they didn't catch you for. So having you in the store has cost them $500 or more.
Walmart's profit margin is 3%, so just to break even they'd have to bet you'd buy at least $16,500 from them without stealing anything else. Since you're known to be thief, the odds of that happening are not good.
Hopefully the resolution is a little bit better than the resolution in bank cameras.
I suspect that bank camera resolution is somewhat better then we have been led to believe from video released to the press. I've set up some relatively inexpensive security camera systems and given office lighting levels, the resolution is quite good. How a professional system designer/installer can fuck up so badly is beyond me.
I suspect that in some towns, the cops want to see if it's the mayor's nephew or a couple of the high school jocks before they release video to the public that might incriminate them.
How much an administration can change things:
2013: Although we at the ACLU generally take a dim view of the proliferation of surveillance cameras in American life, police on-body cameras are different because of their potential to serve as a check against the abuse of power by police officers.
2017: You have very powerful systems being purchased, most often in secret, with little-to-no public debate and no process in place to make sure that there are policies in place to safeguard community members
They pretty much wrote the white paper on police camera's which had very weak provisions for privacy because of purported unnecessary violence against members of grassroots terrorist organizations and violent criminal gangs, now you're asking why these things are purchased - because you asked for it, it's no secret that police are recording you, we techies told you that when they started with red light camera's and CCTV and cheap tech is only going to make it easier.
It's impossible to fight it at this point, you should've fought it when they started recording in their cars and on street corners. Now you can only 'defend' yourself because the tech itself is too cheap and available to stop the tide. Even if you wanted to, cops would just go out and buy a GoPro just like they do with guns and everything else they don't want to be too official.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Mandatory Police Body Cameras = Lots of Selfies
Mandatory Police Body Cameras + Government only = Mass Surveillance
Mandatory Police Body Cameras + Full Public Access = Public Display
The Mandatory Police Body Cameras were implemented to avoid polices from shooting random black people and getting away with it. A lot of innocent people were killed with no justice with cops overpowering them in court, while other times police have a hard time presenting their judgement on the situation.
Case in point, it was to protect the citizens and the polices from corruption. The citizens see the police with the camera and believe the officer will follow order (and not kill them). The polices see the citizen behaves to avoid being sued.
As long as the citizens can review the result (any corruption from police), it is a fair system, which is better than the they have money and win lawsuits regardless of you're right or wrong. Some other points, the polices should be able to record as long as he/she is in a public location. The citizens should have the right to decline those polices from entering private properties, and the cameras should also be in a closed system without internet to avoid hacks.
Face Recognition on the other hand... is stupid. Unless the camera concluded the subject as a criminal (recorded stealing), why would they need face recognition (using thief face to find name)? To mark wrong targets and show how bad software companies are? We know polices are stupid and companies are incompetent. We don't need more stupidity in this world.
Seems pretty unlikely as cops generally don't hang around bathrooms
Sure they do.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/05/long_beach_police_rebuked_for_illegal_anti_gay_stings.html
http://www.sunherald.com/news/local/crime/article81336687.html
http://fox2now.com/2016/04/28/sex-busts-in-st-louis-park-bathrooms-lead-to-surprising-plea-deal/
https://www.queerty.com/long-beach-police-accused-of-illegally-targeting-gay-man-in-bathroom-sex-sting-20160304
http://www.newnownext.com/aggressive-cop-forces-gay-woman-out-of-womens-bathroom-for-not-having-id/04/2016/
and with cameras, too:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/02/09/colb.restroom/index.html?_s=PM:LAW
https://www.glapn.org/sodomylaws/usa/ohio/ohnews21.htm
https://www.datalounge.com/thread/7715912-the-police-film-of-the-1962-mansfield-ohio-undercover-men-s-bathroom-sting
I have something of guerrilla mentality; I wonder how technology can be used against its owner.
Criminals tend to lazy and thoughtless but improved surveillance has required smart criminals to build infrastructure. They can do the same with this: Sneak a camera into the local cop school (Even easier when US federal guidelines require each state to have an academy) and take pictures of the students. Then the criminals will know, via their own face recognition technology, who the police or police sympathizers (in the case of failed students) are, regardless of their clothing.
If you are in public (where you are most likely going to encounter a police officer) you have no expectation of privacy. If they are called to your house, they'll already know who you are. If you're getting a ticket, they already have your plate.
Ya know, where the cops cruise a grocery store, grabbing all the license plate numbers. Meanwhile, another cop is on the freeway, grabbing license place number. While the third cop is doing his rounds, grabbing license plate numbers.
This shit has to end or we as a society are totally fucked. Forget what Trump might do, look at what these paper cuts, taken together,, might do.
Problem solved.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Doomed.
Holy crap man, do you know how little time police are actually out wandering around mingling with the public?
Compare that to 24x7 traffic cams, mounted on nearly every stoplight. Compare that to cameras outside every store and most homes now, all of which the police have legal access to footage from if they ask. Or forget about facial recognition, why would that even matter when you have all of your friends taking pictures everywhere you are with them and tagging you in images?
Where the hell have you been? We have had mass surveillance for a long, long time... It's only getting more and more mass, and body cameras are like a baby spitting into the viagra falls of cameras already watching you.
You need to read David Brin's "Earth" novel for the reality of how to deal with this situation, since it cannot be stopped nor controlled... only harnessed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Police cars often have devices that auto record all license plates near the squad cars and run checks on them. It is a great way to find stolen cars and motorcycles. Naturally such systems can be attached to buildings or poles or whatever and in a way they do have a record of where your car has been. I do not see it as a privacy issue. If I am in public view anyone has the right to snap a picture of me. Are we at the point of saying that police must have less rights than all other members of the public? Obviously we all will and must have less privacy as population sizes grow and threats become likely to produce really large consequences.
i'm just going to go on a limb here and say we're passed Orwellian society at this point, various things mimick the comedic writing of 1984- while others are far different. Police body cams are something that shouldn't be in question, of course bodycam all the things (EMTs and firefighters as well). Give the heroes wings and burn the witches(, or something therein more logically described). facial recognition as part of the bodycam is an interesting concept. Provided the recognition works as well as it does in CSI (or other drama-forensics-o-magic show) than this could theoretically reduce the number of mistaken identities that end up leading to the arrest of look-a-like innocents. Though if the recognition software is bad, it good lead to more shootings (say a dangerous known armed perp. is mistaken to be a bystander). idk
when visiting donut shops, picking up their cleaning, meeting their girlfriends, questioning whores, talking to other cops, or doing anything they shouldn't be doing.
It's amazing how many police cameras/cellphones/radios prove to be "inoperative" when something questionable might have been done.
There is also a difference in the way you interpret the data.
Redlight and speedcams work very precisely because each vehicle has a license plate, matching an entry into a vehicle database.
Either you have a matching number, that should match an exact vehicle (or a counterfeit license plate), or you don't.
Identity is binary.
Also the devices are usually calibrated to guarantee precise results regarding measurement.
in other words, you can at least reliable trust the information (platenumber ; speed) coming out of photo by a speed-cam
(then, whether the license plate matches the actual car or was tampered with, and whether the car's registered owner was driving or some 3rd party, is an entirely different question)
Image analysis only give you a likelihood of resemblance.
Footage of person may or might not look like the suspect.
It has the same kind of imprecision as any visual witness. Some are better than other at identifying suspect, but nobody is perfect.
The only certitude you have is that the person doing crime on the video tape looks more or less like a given suspect.
The suspect *might be* the perpetrator.
But the suspect *might also be* a random look-alike that looked close enough to the person on the tape to fool the algorithm by chance.
That's valid both for visual clues (and that even if technologies becomes better at distinguishing people's image than regular witnesses) and for DNA clues (given a big enough pool of DNA samples, any methodology - short of full genome sequencing and that doesn't take into account twins - will eventually start to show random matches)
So information from cam can only be used as clues ("a person with a description matching the suspect has been recorded on tape to perpetrate a crime") and compared with other information (alibi: the suspect was at a party at that time and everyone else there saw him. The tape recorded a look-alike).
TL;DR: Technology is never going to replace good old detective work, only give extra information and tools.
That's unless government makes it mandatory to shave everyone's head and tatoo a QR-Code with the SSN.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
First everyone wants body cams.
Now everyone is complaining about it.
I knew this would happen. Can never please these people.
Besides, Body cams are typically only turned on during contact.
There is just to much video to store and sort thru.
We had to setup taser body cams and https://evidence.com/
They dock on a rack and upload the data when docked.
Just about every restaurant and retail business has security cameras. I help run a strip mall and we've got security cameras all around the outside and along the sidewalks (on top of the cameras the tenants have inside their businesses).
Have people already forgotten the Boston marathon bombing? The FBI tracked down the responsible brothers almost exclusively through use of private security camera and cell phone footage. You already have no privacy when you are out in public. It's just that 99.99% of the time nobody cares what you're doing so the video eventually gets automatically overwritten.
The problem with using this against the police is that if there's a major police incident (e.g. fatal shooting by an officer), the police will often confiscate the videos for their own investigation. Rather than just taking a copy of the video (what they ask me for in robberies, muggings, and hit & runs), they will frequently delete the original, or even confiscate the security camera hardware. It's gonna take cloud and automatic local backup systems to thwart this.
Interesting to see that criminals are protesting a measure at its highest effectiveness.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This would've been a valid concern, if being a "dissident" were in any way dangerous in our country. And it is not.
Certainly not lately — on the contrary, supporting the elected President or the majority-holding Party is what can get you beaten up or reported to your employer (and subsequently fired).
Dissidents in the US denounce the sitting President to the ovations from audiences, fearing not one bit neither for personal safety nor for job-prospects.
So, no, any concern over police identifying "dissidents" in a free country is invalid. But helping the officers separate known rioters from peaceful — even if excited — protesters is a useful thing.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.