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IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage To Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Skin Color (theintercept.com)
Three months after the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that Amazon provided facial recognition technology to local law enforcement, a new report by The Intercept says that IBM collaborated with the New York City Police Department to develop a system that allowed officials to search for people by skin color, hair color, gender, age, and various facial features. VentureBeat: The Intercept and the National Institute's nonprofit Investigative Fund, citing "confidential corporate documents" and interviews with engineers involved with the project, write that IBM began developing the analytics platform roughly 10 years ago in partnership with New York's Lower Manhattan Security Initiative counterterrorist center, after an earlier experiment with the city of Chicago. Using "thousands" of photographs from roughly 50 cameras provided by the NYPD, its computer vision system learned from 16,000 points to identify clothing color and other bodily characteristics, in addition to potential threats like unattended packages, people entering off-limits areas, and cars speeding up against the flow of traffic.
Searching camera feeds based on physical human traits. Quelle horror.
What's immoral about this? I understand the objections to mass surveillance, but what's wrong from analyzing the footage to find what you're looking for?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
While this could be open for abuse, I don't think IBM was trying to be racist in this case, it is just a visual factor to help narrow down a search. Just like how law enforcement will also identify people by the tattoos or scars they may have.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Yes IBM helped the Nazis deal with the jews!
IBM profit at any cost take your pick H1B, anti jew, anti black, etc.
They may even help north Korea as well.
Oh no, someone mentioned skin color. Racist! Racist! Racist.
Burn the Witch!
So, police searching by characteristics that a suspect, you know, has, is bad? Why?
I've long joked that our national obsession with race would lead to people being unwilling to simply describe people ("well officer, he was ... er ... tall?") but I guess reality has outrun my sense of humor at this point.
Hang on buddy.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.... Here come the racists, with the usual cesspit of comments.
They'll explain to you why they are
a: Not racist
b: "Facts" that "support" justified racial biases
I was here in '97 at the beginning of this site. It's pretty sad.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Instead of looking for people by race in this country, we tend to identify them by skin color.
Race is not skin color; race is a collection of traits which make people from different groups appear, act, and be constructed slightly differently from those of other groups.
Since we cannot talk about race ("African-American") we identify suspects by description in the news, including skin color. Here's the relevant quotation:
We are looking at one of the 16,000 point here.
Alternative Right.
The title should say:
"IBM Used NYPD Surveillance Footage To Develop Technology That Lets Police Search by Physical Features"
The NYPD can now go after the purple people eater.
Governmemts can ease off antitrust investigations in exchange for helping spy on people (we will ignore for now wiggling fingers behind the back for "donations", the source and driver of much corruption in the world).
Nah, this never happens. Nevermind.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I do not think it is acceptable to use this type of tool for anything resembling data science or statistics, and access to it needs to be very tightly controlled with transparent policies and a justifiable purpose.
I saw a documentary on the NYC surveillance capabilities a few years ago, back when they could search only by clothing color and a few other visual cues easier than race/ethnicity. This is a system for responding to descriptions of suspected terrorists (or criminals?), allowing easy filtering of a massive collection of CCTV cameras (the documentary demonstrated a real-time filtering of CCTV feeds, seeking somebody wearing red. It was eerie). I'd be okay with this if it had a strict access control policy requiring highly detailed audit logs and ideally something resembling a warrant procedure, especially if it were limited to terrorism investigations.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The editors are trying to make this story sound scary like IBM is targeting brown people. There was a lull in news stories about Trump so they had to come up with something.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Search for: Orange skin, fake blonde hair covering a bald head, wanted for treason, collusion, tax fraud, wire fraud and stupidity.
found in under microsecond.
Nice!
until of coarse Pakistan or China steel the technology.
Where are all those , if we don't build it , someone else will, folks who frequent here , who always think developing every piece of technology is good.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
You do realize that we live in a society where news organizations are criticized for including race in descriptions of police suspects?
" develop a system that allowed officials to search for people by skin color,..."
They had an analog one already for decades.
It's called 'RacistCop 1.0'
You just implied that the media uses the term "youth" for only black people and that black people of all ages are called "youths". Both of those things are stupid.
This is NYPD, so: *Youse. (Like in "Youse all")
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What is sad is you apparently feel comfortable calling anyone who has a different opinion than yourself, a racist.
Go ahead and explain to everyone why, when searching for someone based on a description, the person's skin color, or anything else, should be omitted.
Do you think the police should just be looking for, "some guy"?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I thought it was Yutes
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Imagine some lady rob a convenience staff then describe the appearance to the police.
Staff: The robber is a lady.... .... you must have offended somebody with your behaviour for them to target you
Police: woah.... that's sexist I can't write that in my report!
Staff: ummmm.... ok.... she is white
Police: woah.... sorry now you are trying to be racist
Staff: what the fuck! I'm the victim here
Police: You are under arrest for intimidating a Police officer!
Discrimination in a legal aspect is far different than discrimination - or should I say, categorization - by physical attribute. The latter should be allowed in the same way that the former should be defended against. That this article even exists is proof that some loud folks believe both types of discrimination listed above are the same. Otherwise, how could you consider that police using skin color in any aspect would be anything but normal, unless you somehow consider that to be wrong on some moral, ethical, or legal level? That's a problem, because at that point, it's just an attempt to whitewash reality with what today is considered politically correct. In fact, it sounds like .
Searching for suspects or describing victims based on known attributes is just a rational, good practice. Imagine if police were not allowed to consider gender, skin color, age, hair color, eye color, height, or weight in their official records. Imagine if it were hospitals that were not allowed to use those traits when treating patients.
Sounds absurd to you, like this is one of those 'taken to a logical extreme' examples that no one would ever consider?
Well, I've got news for you. It's already creeping in. Apparently the practice of using someone's apparent or legal gender and legal name for police reports is deeply upsetting to folks. The TG community calls it 'deadnaming,' and considers the use of the original or legal name to be violence, done both to the victim and to the TG community.
They're actually upset that the legal name and gender are being used by police in any capacity.
There's a good point in there, where their preferred name might be known and can be used while interviewing folks. The thing is, they say it like it's new, like there's not a 'known aliases' field somewhere. Or perhaps 'important notes: TG male to female, named X'. The folks advocating against deadnaming don't want that though. They don't want notes. They want this to be used for the official, primary fields. They state that even bringing up name in a historical reference about the individual should be disallowed, and go on to include things like parents (who might not approve) and so on.
Now, this isn't like other minority rights issues. For example, marriage is a legal definition that confers real legal entitlements, and the LGBT* marriage rights is about getting official recognition for any couples regardless of gender (which is what we should be doing, and is so obvious I have a problem even considering alternative viewpoints) . But that's not what this is. This is lying about reality to make someone feel good about themselves, or at least, not make them feel bad, or in the case that they've died, getting others to feel good knowing it won't happen to them.
Those advocating for absolute validity of personal feelings are going to be constantly confronted with the premise that the physical world doesn't care much about political correctness, and they're not going to just make their peace with it. I actually worry that we're going to have to legally protect concepts like critical thinking and scientific method as they're nickle and dimed away over time. ... well, I went off on a rant there. Anyway, let's not let political correctness become legally enforced stupidity.
Yes. They're false. The media calls young people "youths" even if they're not black and does not call elderly black people "youths".
I'm not sure i follow your argument, the fact that he's muslim is almost tangential; 19 year old male, no job, lots of passports stamps from Syria and Yemen -- sticks up as someone to investigate all by itself.
And THAT is pretty much the entire argument against profiling on religion. Merely being muslim should be a non-issue.
When you added on all the rest of the stuff it becomes more of interest, but that's not targeting muslims... that's proper profiling sure ... maybe he's part of some missionary-building-schools-digging-wells project or assisting doctors without borders or god forbid he's visiting his grandmother so even then one shouldn't jump to conclusions. But yeah, of course that's the person you'd want to look into more... but it's the other stuff, not because he's muslim.
FWIW the 80 year old Swedish nun would be a good drug mule.
https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/08...
What's immoral about this? I understand the objections to mass surveillance, but what's wrong from analyzing the footage to find what you're looking for?
Nothing, once-off. But suppose what you're looking for is, say, a confidential "anti-terror watch list" with tens of thousands of middle eastern men on it, and the machine stops every middle eastern man? Now it becomes racial profiling, and a very different moral question.
Hey!! That's sooo Sexist! How can you possibly suggest that the police would be so sexist as to be looking only among that male population?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Let say your a detective and have a witness that gave you a physical description of a suspect, but doesn't know the person's name (a very common scenario.) It seems like this would be a good way to find that suspect in a crowd. Frankly this is a sensationalist news piece.
I'm not racist and I don't see the problem with this. If someone robs a bank and is described as dark skinned should one then be forbidden to include that as a search criteria? Should people that are obviously not fitting the profile of the suspect still be harassed as you can't enter some type of information into the system?
Criticize racial biases all you want but don't go around bullshitting.
THIS SHOULD BE DISALLOWED!
Government should only use AI to view and catalog and track people by actual individual faces, walking gait, clothes, clothing style probabilities, license plate, vehicle type, vehicle damage deltas, phone emissions, Bluetooth reflections, WiFi reflections, infrared, night vision, and more all feding into a live tracker database panopticon they can just type your name into to find where you are right now.
Adding skin color to that is racist and just going too far!!!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Here's a little known fact: If you separate the luminance and chrominance of skin color (YCrCv), everyone is the same color (chrominance) within a very narrow band not separable by race. We had the opportunity to look at millions images of first grader's of all races taken in the middle of winter in identical lighting conditions and cameras. This eliminated things like makeup and sun burn and other skin color changing factors. The test was done for some proprietary process I cannot talk about. We noticed a surprising detail that we were not looking for. The only difference is in the luminance. So sorry all you racists and race baiters, skin color ain't a thing.
Clearly (no color intended), color is a parameter, one of many, in the description of anyone. There's nothing racist about describing the color of someone's skin, or for AI to use it in identifying someone. The fact that you can't accept that says more about the chip on your shoulder than about the facts of the matter.
Oh, and FU for calling me a racist.
Just another day in Paradise
I though the Left wanted to require all criminals to be identified as "Republicans."
Mmmm...IBM...Third Reich...Skin Color...oh, now I see the connection. Common, media.
With Herman Munster(Fred Gwynne) as the judge.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
I'm not racist and I don't see the problem with this. If someone robs a bank and is described as dark skinned should one then be forbidden to include that as a search criteria? Should people that are obviously not fitting the profile of the suspect still be harassed as you can't enter some type of information into the system?
Criticize racial biases all you want but don't go around bullshitting.
This can be a problem if it's generalized. Let's say that 77% of illegal immigrants in the US are from Latin America (71% from Mexico or Central America; 6% from South America). Does that mean that Latinos should face more scrutiny? NO because that is racial profiling, and most Latinos in the US are here legally. The difference between this scenario and what IBM is doing is paramount: IBM is helping to look for individual suspects whereas the other is just a drag net.
You have to use newspeak terms now. When you hear about blacks committing crimes they are referred to as "youths" by the media.
Now that's just wrong. The newspeak for black people committing crimes is "urban youths". "Urban", not "youth" is the new black. Of course, most people of any race who commit crimes are young, but it is a bit racist for the media to assume that young black people are criminals.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"Ignore the 19 year old muslim male with no job and lots of passport stamps from Syria and Yemen. "
Report it lost.
Get a new passport without stamps.
Profit.
But jokes aside, nobody registers those idiotic 18th century things called 'stamps'.
Damn!
Guess I have to check my Male Privilege.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Give the police the possibility to classify people by skin color, and they wil mistakenly believe it is an important factor.
If you're looking for a specific person, the skin color is very important.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Of course, most people of any race who commit crimes are young
There is likely a bunch of survivorship bias in that. Some people might "grow out" of being a criminal but this is likely small crimes. Hardened criminals aren't likely to suddenly stop committing crimes. Either they get good enough where they stop getting caught or they are removed from the pool via either prison or death.
It hasn't been acceptable to call a black man boy during the 36 years I've been alive anywhere in the US. The latest and greatest is women calling white men boys to demean them in much the same manner.
Nah, white ghetto kids are still "urban" Most of the worst criminal elements come out of Urban culture, it doesn't really matter what color they happen to be.
"Hardened criminals aren't likely to suddenly stop committing crimes. Either they get good enough where they stop getting caught or they are removed from the pool via either prison or death"
It depends on what you call "small crimes" but the common factor in people not growing out serious crime is mental illness, either natural or induced from the Trauma of going to prison.
They include white male in the descriptions of criminals, they include race and gender in the description of anyone else if they accomplish something of note like science.
Ummm skin color is important in this context, this is for visual identification of suspects.
And he referred to him as a "guy" which isn't consistent with calling "guys" boys and equating them with children... you know, to correct the p-hack provable pay gap.
Ummm... better check your human privilege before PETA finds out.
I dunno, you did just assume the criminal would have dark skin. What if people are pissed about this being used to target Asians?
This isn't flamebait but rather someone taking the bait laid by someone inflaming him by calling him a racist.
That reminds me. Need to pick up a Ribeye on the way home tonight.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Really? Black men refer to other men as their 'boys' all the time. Of course, they call each other 'my nigga' all the time and nobody cares. But if you are white and say those things... oooooooohhh boy, I mean, ooooooooh man!
So, are we expecting that police officers, when looking for a suspect, will not go to the most obvious feature of a person while scanning a crowd? How would that conversation go?
Officer 1: OK, let's search for that black guy that is suspected of robbing that bank.
Officer 2: Gottcha. I'll look for some guys with black skin and....
Officer 1: No, no, no. Don't LOOK for guys with black skin. That's racist.
Officer 2: Soooo... I SHOULDN'T look for guys with black skin? Isn't that the guy we are trying to arrest?
Officer 1: Well, yes, you should LOOK for a black guy, but don't ACT like you are looking for a black guy!
Officer 2: Wha....?
Officer 1: I don't know... just... search casual.
Yes
"It is human garbage that think that they are above the law and that other people's property are there to be taken by them and they have no regard for human life."
The law is just a set of codes to make sure it is difficult for the poor to take other people's property while providing protections for the actions of the wealthy doing the same.
What the actual fuck?
A man is a man. A boy is a boy. A woman is a woman. A girl is a girl.
I dare you to walk up to a black man and call him boy.. We'll see if he buys you retarded logic.
Tell it to the Asian gangs, yakuza, and various criminal organizations in China. Indians are technically Asian although India is a very distinct sub-continent but it also has streets filled with criminals and delinquents.
As a group nothing, every white, black, and asian is an individual every large scale metric becomes meaningless when applied to an individual. The only valid way to apply information to a group is one individual at a time.
I dare you to walk up to a black boy and call him 'boy'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This can be a problem if it's generalized. Let's say that 77% of illegal immigrants in the US are from Latin America (71% from Mexico or Central America; 6% from South America). Does that mean that Latinos should face more scrutiny?
If you're specifically looking for illegal immigrants and if they truly do make up the overwhelming majority then yes, absolutely.
NO because that is racial profiling, and most Latinos in the US are here legally.
So what? "Scrutiny" does not mean "lock them all up". If you're looking for X, and most of X are in group Y, then the most productive use of your time is to look primarily at group Y. If you know that breast cancer occurs far more often in women than it does in men then it makes sense to screen women more often and more vigilantly than men. Calling that "profiling" does not make it wrong.
Trump, you say? I'm pretty sure that IBM's new system enables the police to search for orange-skinned criminals, too.
Remember kids are too small to handle pistols and rifles safely.
They are much better suited to crew served weapons. Machine guns and mortars. Where their low strength is less of an issue and they can learn teamwork.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
discrimination? Be specific.
Do you mean "Affirmative Action"? Because that's usually what folks mean when they use language like you just did. If so, for what I wish was the last time "Affirmative Action" is _not_ a quota system. All "Affirmative Action" does is require businesses keep records of their hiring decisions and furnish them on request. This is necessary if you're going to make discrimination on the basis of protective classes illegal since otherwise it's the businesses word against the person they refused to hire.
Now, if you're going to point to private quotas then that's all well and good, but those quotas are illegal and if you cared to be bothered you could get them ruled as such. Yes, "White Male" is just as much a protective class as "Black Woman".
If you mean something else entirely then that's fine. But your tone is a touch on the hostile side and you explicitly call out the government for enforcing discrimination when since the 60s the gov't has done the polar opposite. Usually that means you're leaning towards the alt-right talking points I mentioned above. If that's not the case please elaborate.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Most of what you think of as "Social Justice Warriors" these days are Russian Trolls trying to divide the country.
There's a very, very small number of nut job feminists running out of community colleges. They've got absolutely no power but they're blown way out of proportion by the likes of Fox News for much the same purpose as the Russian Trolls pretend to be SJWs: They're trying to get a rise out of you and distract you from economic problems with meaningless social ones (to wit: A loss of social standing).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah. REAL demeaning.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-co...
Police say the new technology does not make it easier to catch criminals or prevent crimes, but it does make it easier to find someone to pin them on.
She's a big girl. She won't be a victim like Mollie Tibbetts
Unlike you.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I can call a friend an arsehole or cunt and get away with it as my friends know me. If I call a random person a cunt or arsehole, bad things are likely to happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It is "quelle horreur"
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Everything one has was taken from someone else, it isn't a question of whether it is acceptable, it isn't preventable.
Whether you are picking a pocket, taking by physical force, using your relative leverage to negotiate terms with an employee, or inventing a new system of lending and credit to exploit more interest or extract profit via penalties on loans that default; it is all taking from somebody else. All forms of profit are taking from someone else. Which of those are legal mostly seems to follow who has or had power at the time the laws were established and other politics.
Do you really think pressing someone with physical intimidation to get $20 is any different than exploiting his ignorance to extract an extra $20? Either way you are taking advantage of some weakness or fault to take his $20.
Exactly, one would likely prevent your house or family from getting harmed by an intruder if he noticed and heard something. The other is likely to hide in a closet and call the cops and pretend to be a hero.
The chinese government is completely corrupt and controls all reporting, and also rewrites any offending content that travels over Chinese data lines so I'm curious how you think you'd know any sort of real statistic on crime rates. In the US we definitely don't have an illegal organized criminal element as powerful as the Chinese triads, perhaps the closest we came was during prohibition. There are certain elements that are obviously immoral, unethical, and harmful to society that are as powerful in the US but they are powerful enough that they are legal.
"Crime statistics are extremely racist, especially if they are accurate. That's why no one talks about them on the news, and that's why cops are perceived to be so hard on blacks. They know from direct experience exactly where the crime is coming from, and unless they are willing to ignore black neighborhoods completely, like Chicago, they are going to run into a lot more black and brown criminals than whites."
Sure but by your own assessment, that has more to do with culture than race. There is also a very significant relationship to desperation and poverty but accounting for that it still takes significant phacking and spin to erode the correlation with race. Correlation doesn't equal causation. It is also self feeding, because of those statistics being true even the most idealistic young officer becomes disillusioned and begins profiling which means they are more likely to catch brown criminals. In the real world the criminals who are caught don't even represent a statistically significant sample of those who break the law so those numbers aren't useful for assessing crime. And there you have it, the moderate reality that stands somewhere in the middle and contains uncomfortable realities neither extremist political party wants you to consider... if you did people might realize there is some common ground to be found that doesn't require making race the issue but would attack the racially targeted problems alongside the rest.
I think you missed my point. It has nothing to do with friends or not friends. It has to do with white vs. black. Just SAYING the word nigga in conversation (not calling someone or a group of people that) as a white person would automatically get you labeled a racist. If you are black... don't worry about it. It's fine since you have the correct skin color to use that word.
Ok, /. what the eff is a "Filter error: Lameness filter encountered"?