And you can't do that by having undercover cops follow them around?
Of course you can. So how does this make the problem worse? Are you worried that instead of using it for targeted persecution, they'll just arrest everyone? That ought to work well. Nothing says "economic growth" like locking up 90% of your population.
The problem is once the cops go after the liquor store robbers, they'll start going after protesters and jaywalkers. Making their jobs harder limits the amount of idle hands available to be Satan's playthings.
Yeah that's what the other guy said. My answer is the same; it seems more rational to get rid of the stupid laws. And if you think that getting rid of stupid laws isn't possible, what makes you think it's possible to stop them from using this tech?
Fire 50% of the cops because their jobs are redundant due to increased efficiency? Doesn't work that way for parasites with powerful public employee unions behind them -- they'll figure out a way to lobby for new laws just to keep them relevant.
You don't even need to fire them if you think it would be a problem; you can transition them to "community policing". Walk around, help out people, change tires, take kittens out of trees. Just hire fewer recruits and let attrition bring down the numbers over time.
That's all assuming that this tech seriously lowers the need for police, which is unlikely. A computer picking out known felons in a crowd isn't going to have any effect on the vast majority of what cops do. You can't send a camera to deal with a robbery in progress, or a domestic dispute, or an accident scene.
How does this tech make that easier? Currently you can just get a cop to "ID" the guy you're gunning for. With this software you have to convince an IT guy to make the software ID the guy you're gunning for. I don't see the difference.
It's a limit on unreasonable infringement on the ability of citizens to enjoy their lives. We can all agree that a cop shouldn't be allowed to strip search you in the middle of the street just because you "look like you're up to no good". Not so much on things like red-light cameras, since they do not inherently constitute an unreasonable infringement.
I'm not sure what would be unreasonable about a computer looking at pictures and saying "this guy looks like he might be the one who robbed the liquor store last night; go question him". It doesn't seem to infringe on my rights in any way. If the cops then automatically haul me off and charge me even though I look absolutely nothing like the guy, THAT would be unreasonable... but that's a problem with the humans, not with the computer. They still need to exercise their own judgement instead of blindly relying on the machine.
Now that's an interesting objection. I'm not sure whether to agree or disagree.
On the one hand, it seems insanely perverse to suggest that we should waste money on intentionally making policing less efficient. It seems much more logical to make it harder for legislators to create stupid laws in the first place.
On the other hand, people don't seem to really have the attention span and willpower needed to reign in the politicians, so maybe your solution is more practical.
I've run out of hands, but if I had a third one I would point out that your concerns aren't really a solution either. If we can't stop politicians from creating stupid laws, we certainly can't stop them from rolling in this tech, either.
Consider a day when you, an innocent citizen are walking down the street and a spotter camera identifies you as Criminal Name. The police pick you up with their gentle presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and haul you off to the local jail for processing.
I don't have to imagine it; I've already experienced it. The only difference in my case was that I was ID'd by a gentle human who the gently hauled me off with his gentle presumption of innocence.
How long, if ever, before the police realize their mistake and release you?
In my case, about 2 hours. I suspect that this varies wildly across jurisdictions, but if you're worried about processing and hold times then that's a different discussion entirely.
Meanwhile, you can't go to work and lose your job and because you were in jail, you also lost your apartment because you didn't pay the rent. During your time in jail, you are treated with warmth and respect by your fellow inmates.
Again, these are so concerns about the criminal justice system, and have nothing whatsoever to do with facial recognition systems.
Your entire next paragraph is more of the same.
Do you need any MORE reasons to be concerned?
It would be nice if you could give at least ONE reason why you're concerned about this technology specifically, rather than tangential factors.
All the theorizing you're doing is interesting in an abstract way, but entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not cellphone signals actually cause an increase in cancer rates or tumors. If this were 1980 and the technology was still new, these would be the kinds of things you might want to consider before rolling out the tech for general use. Now, almost 40 years later we have something much more conclusive; large scale population studies looking at whether any effect actually exists after decades of increasing use.
That's a nice bit of hand waiving, but there are quite a few studies which show that marijuana use DOES in fact correlate with an increase in cancer rates. It's not like California is the only place in the world that's looking into this stuff, you know.
Why would that be relevant? People make false positives all the time, too, and presumably these are double-checked by the actual cops making the arrest, the prosecutor bringing the case, and the judge and jury involved in assessing his guilt.
Sure, if China was flying drones which had free-fire authorisation to gun down anyone identified as a criminal, then false positives would be pretty damn important. But when they're just picking suspects out of a crowd for a human cop to arrest? I don't understand your concern.
Takes a bit longer to crack, and pirating become less trivial / useful so it does deter a few users on the margin therefore the value isn't exactly zero.
I would argue the opposite. DRM often ends up causing playback issues even with purchased media due to various glitches and incompatibilities. This causes frustration and disgust amongst consumers, which could very well drive some of them towards piracy as a solution. Assuming they didn't already pirate before, they're quickly going to learn how easy and convenient it is, making them more likely to do it again in the future.
The people who think that fearmongering about WiFi is completely justified will list an equally impressive-looking bunch of reasons for why they believe it, and their list will be just as bullshit as yours. That's what happens when you ignore science and worry yourself into a panic over some nonsense you read on Natural News.
On the other hand, I pay $15 a month for 3 gigabytes of data and no phone number. For calls my VoIP service costs me about $3 a month for my normal usage.
You don't actually HAVE to spend ridiculous sums for basic service; most people just don't know any better.
There is a tangible difference in terms of morality. Terrorism is the use of violence, usually against civilians, in order to instill fear and affect a political change. It is the equivalent of a gangster breaking your knees for no purpose other than to frighten others into paying him "protection money".
Fighting against oppression by targeting military units and attempting to capture territory and strategic assets is a whole different thing. It's the equivalent of killing the aforementioned gangster and his cronies, or otherwise taking away their power over others. Instead of targeting largely powerless bystanders you target those who wield the power.
Now it's true that "Freedom Fighters" can use terrorist tactics. In which case they would also be terrorists. The two terms are not mutually exclusive. In such a situation their ultimate goals might be moral, but their tactics would be immoral. Whether or not you support them despite their use of immoral tactics would depend on your own moral code. If you believe that the ends justify the means, you would likely be OK with it. Far too many people DO think that way, but generally speaking in the civilized world we tend to organize our civilisations around the idea that unethical conduct isn't acceptable even in the pursuit of noble ideals. We're not perfect at it, but we're trying, and overall we keep getting better.
Didn't Watergate take a couple of years before Nixon resigned?
It took a couple years because they didn't get the "smoking gun" tapes until 2 years after the event happened. Once they had those, iirc he stepped down a month or two later.
Even without those tapes he would most likely have been impeached, but the evidence against him up until that point was much weaker.
Consider, "One person's Terrorist is another's Freedom Fighter."
I always found that phrase so vapid. One persons cult figure is another persons great leader. The fact that people are often delusional or mislead doesn't mean there aren't objective standards, or that words don't actually have real meaning.
I'm familiar with that model because I was actually looking for a Mexican SIM card, and Mexico has a similar setup for many of their carriers. Short version: mobile carriers sell data bundles by the gigabyte, as they do everywhere in the world, but they also sell "packages" on top of the data plans which can be applied to specific services. So, say you buy 3 gigabytes of data, plus pay an extra $5 for the "social media" package; you now have 3 gigabytes to use for whatever you want, plus you can use social media sites as much as you want on top of that; they don't get counted towards your total.
They're not limiting which sites you can visit, and they're not artificially crippling or boosting certain sites. The data plan you bought still gets you full access to the entirety of the internet. If you find that you use 6 gigs of data every month, and half of that is Facebook, you can absolutely buy a 6 gig per month data plan if you want. Or you can buy the 3 gig plan, plus the social media package. Your choice.
Nothing at all like what the talking heads want you to think it is.
Several groups finding barely measurable "results" which are statistically significant but not actually significant puts it squarely in the category of "there's almost certainly no effect, we're just not sure what we screwed up yet".
It's "a long shot" in the same sense that unicorn farts are a long shot at replacing gasoline for internal combustion engines. I don't encourage anyone to go on unicorn hunts.
Portugal's national ISP as an example forces you to pay for extra things they firewall or throttle down by default forcing to to a tiered la carte system. Want to watch Netflix? That will be $35 extra a month. Amazon video? ANother $25 a month etc.
That's just complete and utter horseshit. Portugal is in the EU and actually does have net neutrality laws in line with EU mandates. Claiming that they charge more for certain services is just a complete lie based on a tweet by some idiot politician who had no clue what he was talking about.
I can understand the talking heads on TV news saying such ludicrous things, but I'm truly surprised to see someone on Slashdot parroting their nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
And you can't do that by having undercover cops follow them around?
Of course you can. So how does this make the problem worse? Are you worried that instead of using it for targeted persecution, they'll just arrest everyone? That ought to work well. Nothing says "economic growth" like locking up 90% of your population.
The problem is once the cops go after the liquor store robbers, they'll start going after protesters and jaywalkers. Making their jobs harder limits the amount of idle hands available to be Satan's playthings.
Yeah that's what the other guy said. My answer is the same; it seems more rational to get rid of the stupid laws. And if you think that getting rid of stupid laws isn't possible, what makes you think it's possible to stop them from using this tech?
Fire 50% of the cops because their jobs are redundant due to increased efficiency? Doesn't work that way for parasites with powerful public employee unions behind them -- they'll figure out a way to lobby for new laws just to keep them relevant.
You don't even need to fire them if you think it would be a problem; you can transition them to "community policing". Walk around, help out people, change tires, take kittens out of trees. Just hire fewer recruits and let attrition bring down the numbers over time.
That's all assuming that this tech seriously lowers the need for police, which is unlikely. A computer picking out known felons in a crowd isn't going to have any effect on the vast majority of what cops do. You can't send a camera to deal with a robbery in progress, or a domestic dispute, or an accident scene.
A 1% false positive rate of a few billion peoples photos makes it common, around 10 million people false positives per case.
You better hire another 20 million cops to make all those arrests then.
Why are you dumb?
Because you're a victim of the Dunning Kruger effect.
How does this tech make that easier? Currently you can just get a cop to "ID" the guy you're gunning for. With this software you have to convince an IT guy to make the software ID the guy you're gunning for. I don't see the difference.
It's a limit on unreasonable infringement on the ability of citizens to enjoy their lives. We can all agree that a cop shouldn't be allowed to strip search you in the middle of the street just because you "look like you're up to no good". Not so much on things like red-light cameras, since they do not inherently constitute an unreasonable infringement.
I'm not sure what would be unreasonable about a computer looking at pictures and saying "this guy looks like he might be the one who robbed the liquor store last night; go question him". It doesn't seem to infringe on my rights in any way. If the cops then automatically haul me off and charge me even though I look absolutely nothing like the guy, THAT would be unreasonable ... but that's a problem with the humans, not with the computer. They still need to exercise their own judgement instead of blindly relying on the machine.
Now that's an interesting objection. I'm not sure whether to agree or disagree.
On the one hand, it seems insanely perverse to suggest that we should waste money on intentionally making policing less efficient. It seems much more logical to make it harder for legislators to create stupid laws in the first place.
On the other hand, people don't seem to really have the attention span and willpower needed to reign in the politicians, so maybe your solution is more practical.
I've run out of hands, but if I had a third one I would point out that your concerns aren't really a solution either. If we can't stop politicians from creating stupid laws, we certainly can't stop them from rolling in this tech, either.
Consider a day when you, an innocent citizen are walking down the street and a spotter camera identifies you as Criminal Name. The police pick you up with their gentle presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and haul you off to the local jail for processing.
I don't have to imagine it; I've already experienced it. The only difference in my case was that I was ID'd by a gentle human who the gently hauled me off with his gentle presumption of innocence.
How long, if ever, before the police realize their mistake and release you?
In my case, about 2 hours. I suspect that this varies wildly across jurisdictions, but if you're worried about processing and hold times then that's a different discussion entirely.
Meanwhile, you can't go to work and lose your job and because you were in jail, you also lost your apartment because you didn't pay the rent. During your time in jail, you are treated with warmth and respect by your fellow inmates.
Again, these are so concerns about the criminal justice system, and have nothing whatsoever to do with facial recognition systems.
Your entire next paragraph is more of the same.
Do you need any MORE reasons to be concerned?
It would be nice if you could give at least ONE reason why you're concerned about this technology specifically, rather than tangential factors.
All the theorizing you're doing is interesting in an abstract way, but entirely irrelevant to the question of whether or not cellphone signals actually cause an increase in cancer rates or tumors. If this were 1980 and the technology was still new, these would be the kinds of things you might want to consider before rolling out the tech for general use. Now, almost 40 years later we have something much more conclusive; large scale population studies looking at whether any effect actually exists after decades of increasing use.
*spoiler alert*
No, it does not.
That's a nice bit of hand waiving, but there are quite a few studies which show that marijuana use DOES in fact correlate with an increase in cancer rates. It's not like California is the only place in the world that's looking into this stuff, you know.
Why would that be relevant? People make false positives all the time, too, and presumably these are double-checked by the actual cops making the arrest, the prosecutor bringing the case, and the judge and jury involved in assessing his guilt.
Sure, if China was flying drones which had free-fire authorisation to gun down anyone identified as a criminal, then false positives would be pretty damn important. But when they're just picking suspects out of a crowd for a human cop to arrest? I don't understand your concern.
Takes a bit longer to crack, and pirating become less trivial / useful so it does deter a few users on the margin therefore the value isn't exactly zero.
I would argue the opposite. DRM often ends up causing playback issues even with purchased media due to various glitches and incompatibilities. This causes frustration and disgust amongst consumers, which could very well drive some of them towards piracy as a solution. Assuming they didn't already pirate before, they're quickly going to learn how easy and convenient it is, making them more likely to do it again in the future.
The people who think that fearmongering about WiFi is completely justified will list an equally impressive-looking bunch of reasons for why they believe it, and their list will be just as bullshit as yours. That's what happens when you ignore science and worry yourself into a panic over some nonsense you read on Natural News.
Scaremongering about GMO and cellphone radiation is the exact opposite of "progressive". Using that label for a bunch of luddites is very 1984.
It had to be California. Only the hippie state would come up with this kind of stuff.
I with they would jump in when I'm trying to place an order with Szechuan Palace. Could use a good interpreter.
Same setup here, but $15 per month. With VoIP costs included I'm up to $18 per month or less.
On the other hand, I pay $15 a month for 3 gigabytes of data and no phone number. For calls my VoIP service costs me about $3 a month for my normal usage.
You don't actually HAVE to spend ridiculous sums for basic service; most people just don't know any better.
If your morals boil down to "whatever benefits me the most", then yes, I suppose that's true. Not all of is are sociopaths, though.
There is a tangible difference in terms of morality. Terrorism is the use of violence, usually against civilians, in order to instill fear and affect a political change. It is the equivalent of a gangster breaking your knees for no purpose other than to frighten others into paying him "protection money".
Fighting against oppression by targeting military units and attempting to capture territory and strategic assets is a whole different thing. It's the equivalent of killing the aforementioned gangster and his cronies, or otherwise taking away their power over others. Instead of targeting largely powerless bystanders you target those who wield the power.
Now it's true that "Freedom Fighters" can use terrorist tactics. In which case they would also be terrorists. The two terms are not mutually exclusive. In such a situation their ultimate goals might be moral, but their tactics would be immoral. Whether or not you support them despite their use of immoral tactics would depend on your own moral code. If you believe that the ends justify the means, you would likely be OK with it. Far too many people DO think that way, but generally speaking in the civilized world we tend to organize our civilisations around the idea that unethical conduct isn't acceptable even in the pursuit of noble ideals. We're not perfect at it, but we're trying, and overall we keep getting better.
Didn't Watergate take a couple of years before Nixon resigned?
It took a couple years because they didn't get the "smoking gun" tapes until 2 years after the event happened. Once they had those, iirc he stepped down a month or two later.
Even without those tapes he would most likely have been impeached, but the evidence against him up until that point was much weaker.
Consider, "One person's Terrorist is another's Freedom Fighter."
I always found that phrase so vapid. One persons cult figure is another persons great leader. The fact that people are often delusional or mislead doesn't mean there aren't objective standards, or that words don't actually have real meaning.
I'm familiar with that model because I was actually looking for a Mexican SIM card, and Mexico has a similar setup for many of their carriers. Short version: mobile carriers sell data bundles by the gigabyte, as they do everywhere in the world, but they also sell "packages" on top of the data plans which can be applied to specific services. So, say you buy 3 gigabytes of data, plus pay an extra $5 for the "social media" package; you now have 3 gigabytes to use for whatever you want, plus you can use social media sites as much as you want on top of that; they don't get counted towards your total.
They're not limiting which sites you can visit, and they're not artificially crippling or boosting certain sites. The data plan you bought still gets you full access to the entirety of the internet. If you find that you use 6 gigs of data every month, and half of that is Facebook, you can absolutely buy a 6 gig per month data plan if you want. Or you can buy the 3 gig plan, plus the social media package. Your choice.
Nothing at all like what the talking heads want you to think it is.
Several groups finding barely measurable "results" which are statistically significant but not actually significant puts it squarely in the category of "there's almost certainly no effect, we're just not sure what we screwed up yet".
It's "a long shot" in the same sense that unicorn farts are a long shot at replacing gasoline for internal combustion engines. I don't encourage anyone to go on unicorn hunts.
The EM drive is going much the same route as Cold Fusion, which is no surprise to anyone except the cranks.
Portugal's national ISP as an example forces you to pay for extra things they firewall or throttle down by default forcing to to a tiered la carte system. Want to watch Netflix? That will be $35 extra a month. Amazon video? ANother $25 a month etc.
That's just complete and utter horseshit. Portugal is in the EU and actually does have net neutrality laws in line with EU mandates. Claiming that they charge more for certain services is just a complete lie based on a tweet by some idiot politician who had no clue what he was talking about.
I can understand the talking heads on TV news saying such ludicrous things, but I'm truly surprised to see someone on Slashdot parroting their nonsense.