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British Cops Will Scan Every Fan's Face At the Champions League Final (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the scan-copy-print-repeat dept.

Using a new facial recognition surveillance system, British police will scan every fan's face at the UEFA Champions League on June 3rd and compare them to a police database of some 500,000 "persons of interest." "According to a government tender issued by South Wales Police, the system will be deployed during the day of the game in Cardiff's main train station, as well as in and around the Principality Stadium situated in the heart of Cardiff's central retail district." From the report: Cameras will potentially be scanning the faces of an estimated 170,000 visitors plus the many more thousands of people in the vicinity of the bustling Saturday evening city center on match day, June 3. Captured images will then be compared in real time to 500,000 custody images stored in the police information and records management system alerting police to any "persons of interest," according to the tender. The security operation will build on previous police use of Automated Facial Recognition, or AFR technology by London's Metropolitan Police during 2016's Notting Hill Carnival.

18 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Never look up by arth1 · · Score: 2

    The stereotypical dystopian world where people shuffle around without ever looking up is already here.
    We just didn't know that cameras would be the reason.

    1. Re:Never look up by slashrio · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sometimes the implementation of this kind of measures is a warning sign of such government to come.
      About two years before WW 2 broke out, somebody in Dutch government thought it would be a good idea to register all people's religions. Catholics, Protestants and, of course, Jews.
      The then under secretary of state (or whatever you call that position) didn't agree and refused. He was forcefully replaced with a more docile one, and the measure was implemented and completed anyway, just before WW 2 broke out.
      We now know how this helped the German Nazi's with separating the Jews from the non-Jews and shipping them off to labor camps where they were physically abused, mostly until death followed.
      I don't think this was a coincidence, so prepare for what might be coming your way after all cash is gone and the Americans' guns are taken from them.
      Probably by a law they all agree with.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    2. Re:Never look up by jandersen · · Score: 2

      The stereotypical dystopian world where people shuffle around without ever looking up is already here.
      We just didn't know that cameras would be the reason.

      In light of the now several terrorist attacks on major, public events, I think the majority of people will welcome this. We are not all paranoid about surveillance - I personally tend to look at cameras with positive interest and sometimes wave at the (potential) guy at the other end. Silly, I know, and no doubt you will call me an idiot or worse, but I know what I am and I am self-assured enough to feel comfortable about it, so what what do I care?

      When people go to a football match, perhaps bringing their young child, the last thing they want is a group of hooligans ruining it for everybody with their mindless stupidty; or some worthless tosser with a grievance against society, who decides that getting himself killed after maiming and killing a load of innocent spectators, somehow makes sense or earns him brownie points in eyes of God.

  2. Minority Report by Moheeheeko · · Score: 2

    Time to get into the face transplant business.

    1. Re:Minority Report by networkBoy · · Score: 2

      Nah, just sell those glasses frames that confused facial recognition systems:
      http://www.theverge.com/2016/1...
      *everyone* is the Queen of England.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
    2. Re:Minority Report by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      Just have somebody pummel your face so it swells all funny. I'll volunteer to assist. You might even look better after.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:Minority Report by dwywit · · Score: 2

      They're talking about an event on June 3rd. Males can take advantage of this time frame by 1. growing a full beard, if they don't normally have a beard, or 2. if they do normally wear a beard, shave it off on June 2nd. That, a couple of team logo decals on your cheeks and forehead, and a pair of dazzle glasses or sunglasses should take care of it. A celebrity-face t-shirt (perhaps an image of one of your team's players) will help.

      Maybe some gimmick sunglasses with LEDs flashing away around the rims.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    4. Re:Minority Report by infolation · · Score: 3, Interesting
      On slashdot that would work. But meanwhile in the real world of UK policing:
      • Police spotters identify the individuals with facepaint/hoods/etc.
      • Police approach them and ask them for name & ID (eg debit card) to weed out the 'ordinary people'.
      • If anyone resists, claims their rights not to give name, are belligerent etc, police wave a drug dog somewhere near them which barks on cue (signal from handler)
      • Police now have 'reasonable suspicion' and demand name, address, DoB etc. If they think the person might be of interest, they'll run an on-the-spot fingerprint scan against the Police National Computer.

      Am not saying this is right, but have seen this happen many times at festivals, protests, demonstrations, rallys etc.

  3. "Scan Every Fan's Face" by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    I'm going, but since I'm not a fan, I won't be scanned.

    -1 Literal Pandemic

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  4. We need enforced standards by Baron_Yam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The American definition of 'Person of Interest' is someone who has not been formally accused or charged with a crime, which means they don't have enough evidence yet. If you don't have enough to charge a person, you shouldn't have enough to run public facial recognition scans for them.

    If you're ready to arrest them on sight, that's enough for me. That's a good standard.

    But what about everyone else? Do you really think the cops won't keep every face they capture, for comparison against future images from security cameras? Do you think they won't start analyzing who shows up where and the correlation with criminal activity to create lists of suspects?

    They cast this net as far and wide as the technology permits unless and until they're reined in by law. Given enough cameras and enough processing power, they'd gladly follow every citizen all day long, because it'd make their job much easier.

    The public needs to decide just how much privacy they're willing to sacrifice in the name of security, and get their legislative representatives to give that decision the force of law... or the cops will take all their privacy without even blinking. Not because they're evil, but because their job is to catch bad guys, not consider the moral and philosophical issues of the tools and methods they use to catch them.

  5. Fairly easy to defeat by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Face dazzle paint in team colors, reversible pattern hoodie and scarf, fake nose and or eyebrows (team colors).

    Hit ratio drops from 50 percent false positive to below threshold.

    Basically, if it worked during WW II, it still works. That's how inaccurate facial recognition actually is. It's even worse for women than for men.

    --
    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
    1. Re:Fairly easy to defeat by erapert · · Score: 2

      they will probably make you take your head off

      This is the UK, not France. Geez, didn't you even read the summary?

  6. An amazing probability of failure by davecb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They have 170,000 * 500,000 faces, for a total of 85,000,000,000 comparisons. If you have a 99% chance of sucess (ie, NOT identifying grandma as a wanted terrorist), then a 1% failure rate will give you 850,000,000 wrong comparisons.

    In tests with football-crowd-sized sets of people, the very best recognizers hit 80% and the worst were below 20% accurate. See http://www.washington.edu/news...

    How many people will be pulled out of line, I wonder, before the police notice that the're getting an larger number of false positives than they were prepared to handle? I wonder if it will identify everyone who shows up as a terrorist (:-))

    --dave
    [The German federal security service noticed this many years ago, when they tried to scan airports with a former employer's product]

    --
    davecb@spamcop.net
    1. Re:An amazing probability of failure by TheConway · · Score: 2

      you may be overestimating the number of comparisons. It's entirely possible that the faces are grouped based on particular characteristics and that any given face might be sorted into a group's parameters first, before then being compared to faces within it. It's still likely to be a stupidly big number of comparisons, but a comparison system that is designed with even a slightest degree of intelligence will have many fewer false positives that you are suggesting.

    2. Re:An amazing probability of failure by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      I wonder if it will identify everyone who shows up as a terrorist (:-))

      At a British football match doesn't kind of go without saying?

  7. Britain is the surveillance capital of the West by UpnAtom · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Theresa May passed what Snowden called "the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes further than many autocracies."

    Before this, airports were making 3D models of flyers' faces without their knowledge or permission, and attaching such to their passport records. This happens if you go through the 'inbound' e-passport aisle. I saw this with my own eyes at Bristol Airport before a security guard shouted at me. There is no law against such data collection.

    I don't know if you can get a ticket with cash but otherwise you can bet these facial/3D scans will be added to a GCHQ database.

  8. Re:Speak up sheeple! by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    You're fucked for not being a sheep.

    In Cardiff it's the other way round, lookyou.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. I need to open up a shop... by wardrich86 · · Score: 2

    I have a feeling there could be a large market for shirts with this pattern printed on it.