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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.
Oh no, someone mentioned skin color. Racist! Racist! Racist.
Burn the Witch!
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.
I cannot believe how insensitive and discriminatory you are! Your example says "he", but is that really how zhey identified on that day? Your belief in what zhey really are is forcing your constrained, bigoted views on them. And tall? Are you a heightist or something? Everyone is as tall as they want to be, or need to be, calling attention to zheir own preferences is simply intolerant. Can't we just call people "zheyselves", because on any given day they may not identify even as a human but a blue liger? Seriously, you people with your prejudices and hate-filled hearts...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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
You do realize that we live in a society where news organizations are criticized for including race in descriptions of police suspects?
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.
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
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.
Ummm skin color is important in this context, this is for visual identification of suspects.