Police state cometh.

[StriderX]

Met Police chief defends facial recognition from 'ill-informed' critics

Instead of, you know, actually doing their jobs, they wish to cry wolf to justify a gross overreach of surveillance and reduce their workload while the system 'just works'...

Look at how our dearest MET commissioner is framing it...

"If an algorithm can help identify, in our criminal intelligence systems material, a potential serial rapist or killer... then I think almost all citizens would want us to use it," she said.

"The only people who benefit from us not using [it] lawfully and proportionately are the criminals, the rapists, the terrorists and all those who want to harm you, your family and friends."

"In an age of Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, concern about my image and that of my fellow law-abiding citizens passing through [facial recognition] and not being stored, feels much, much smaller than my and the public's vital expectation to be kept safe from a knife through the chest," she said.

Disgraceful, that they continue down this path of reacting to crime rather than preventing it and presume the public is thick enough to not know the difference, risible. The only way for mass surveillance to be preventative is if we're going to be a police state, with no sense of privacy whatsoever, how is this acceptable in a free society?

No doubt though the language used will engender this police state into being because it's obviously sensible right...

If this comes to pass, i'll be wearing face coverings for the foreseeable out of spite.

 

[StriderX]

Isn’t it true that if you walk around London, particularly central London, you will be being picked up by a camera somewhere every single second?

Perhaps, but it's a different story altogether if one just lets algorithms handle the day job, where's the incentive for police to even exist?

I can totally foresee a future where a camera picks up an innocent person as a terrorist, an armed drone flies across, 'comply or die' blares out of the speakers to all and sundry... and thus we're slaves to this expectation of complying.

When this ****** system of reacting to crime continues to fail, yet more surveillance and harsher legislation will be called for (fOr tHe ChIlDrEn!?!)... and it continues.

 

[StriderX]

It's not robocop you know! Dead or alive you are coming with me.

Not yet, I wont be complying regardless, if they don't like it, they can do their jobs instead.

 

[StriderX]

On the other hand.

Perhaps some active policing involving targeted stop and search might prove rather more effective at "Preventing" somebody from getting a Knife in the chest rather than simply having the ability to track the perp after the deed has been done.

That doesn't work either, it really is as simple as the police interacting with the community, being present and being trustworthy.

You can't stop a burglary from the police station and neither will this ****** attempt to abdicate said responsibility.

 

[StriderX]

Bobbies on the beat cost a lot of money. If our illustrious Chairman and central committee feel there's cheaper and better options available then they know best.
In addition I trust they'll ban burkas, hoodies and face masks to give this sort a fighting chance as it gets rolled out across our glorious cities, Comrade.

Costs less to prevent something than react to it though, so it's a total false economy. I get that one cannot possibly prevent all crimes, but to not even attempt to prevent any crime, is rather agitating.

 

[StriderX]

So at the minute there's CCTV everywhere, which you could argue is a problem, but taking the extent of using AI to scan these images for known criminals is a problem, why?



People aren't going to be thrown in prison on the basis of AI though, they can simply flag up images for humans to review.

It very clearly sets in a standard of operation for the police, how long until they get sloppy and just blame it on the algorithm?

How long until it's just used as a political exercise to chest beat that a party is tough on crime because 'numbers' on a spreadsheet look good?

I also like how because the government hasn't bothered to regulate the likes of Twitter, Facebook and people's data in general, well it's justification to just go headstrong with more abuse of said data...

 

[StriderX]

In entirely relevant news... wrt to an institute totally not being useless...

City watchdog admits revealing customers' details

The UK's City watchdog has admitted that it inadvertently published online the personal data of people who made complaints against it.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said the names of the complainants, along with some addresses and telephone numbers, were accessible.

So what happens if you get wrongfully flagged as a criminal and that event leaks to your employer or potential employers? Surely that can't possibly cause issues, right? I mean the government is very competent right?

 

[StriderX]

Yeh that's fine. Let me know when you are free and I'll pass you over all the details. A camera doesn't do this.

But your analogy is wrong. A camera is to catch people who are already on a wanted list or to find people who they are looking for already.

Personally have little disagreement over cameras, they're a legitimate tool. An algorithm however is not, just look in the commercial world at Youtube and all the trouble their own algorithm has had - a total lack of responsibility, constantly running around putting out fires.

Of course the argument is that the scale of the platform (or in this case, public spaces) requires the algorithm, which is such a lame cop-out. We also have Facebook abdicating all responsibility of policing their platform onto governments because it's just 'too hard'. To imagine that facial recognition wont cause issues merely by existing is ignoring precedence.

We're going to finalise the politicisation the police with this and it's going to be a disaster, because no one will be at fault when things aren't quite working out as expected, you can always just fire the Home Secretary and pretend the problem is resolved because the public isn't paying attention. Any failure of the system will merely be used to say the system isn't large enough in scope, not that the system itself is inappropriate, inefficient or outright failing. No doubt to the glee of whatever contractor will supply the system, doubtless with friends in government incentivising more utilisation of the product, honestly that's probably the actual reason for it's uptake over any serious attempt to catch criminals.

 

[StriderX]

If you did your job, they wouldn't have to react to anything.
Yes, your job - You, The People... you, Society... Instead of acting like braindead masses, accepting anything in the name of liberty and tolerance, if you enforced a society and a culture where criminals actually feared to commit crimes then the Police might actually be able to cope a bit better. Whatever happened to things like parenting, teaching the yoof that it isn't acceptable to go round carrying blades and nicking peoples' stuff?

Until you stop rolling over and expecting groups like the Police, the schools and the ******** government you voted for, to do the jobs you're not willing to, you will have to be content with whatever half-assed schemes they concoct to try and cope.

I don't disagree, but you need to give people an example to follow, a moral authority and that seems to simply not exist in today's society. One might presume the government is that authority, but if that's the case, then they surely must enjoy this slide into immorality with how awful they are at it.

Perhaps it should just be accepted that this is the way of things, that the public's hypocrisy (snorting down £200 of cocaine weekly while they moan about people knifing each-other over it's supply) is an impossible barrier to overcome.

 

[StriderX]

Why do you need an example?
Is the general morality of The People itself not enough?
Once people are properly empowered to step in and deliver a corrective 'piece of their mind' without too much worry of consequence, I think you'll find things improving somewhat.

I dunno, I question that as well, but then what would happen if you took a new born child and isolated it for twenty years? Is the lack of examples a hindrance to it's development or not? A liberal amount of hyperbole, but we aren't that individualistic to just survive free of other's machinations.

Meanwhile you are all walking around, tagged by your phone, car or other gadget of choice. I say you because I currently own a dumb phone and car. So with the resources that the state have they can track or backtrack you almost anywhere.

Facial recognition from a van set streetside is relatively benign, (until you feature on a TV cam show called 'Spot the looney').

That is not justification for this, that is justification to regulate data privacy. To say that we give up, we aren't private anymore is so very easy...

 

[StriderX]

Since it's also relevant to the idealism surrounding this sort of security theatre. (US related and almost 5 years ago, but still)

Undercover DHS Tests Find Security Failures at US Airports

An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.

The series of tests were conducted by Homeland Security Red Teams who pose as passengers, setting out to beat the system.


According to officials briefed on the results of a recent Homeland Security Inspector General’s report, TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints.

It's laughable really, they're giving up their liberties to pick out 5% of criminals, similar levels of uselessness with these trials for facial recognition. Obviously the solution is less liberty for no security...

 

[StriderX]

Honestly the best way to rationalise not supporting this is how you'd feel if supposed megabad, ultra-marxist Corbyn was in the PM's seat while this was being pushed into operation...



The closer we get to a homogeneous control system, the easier it becomes to just suddenly take it all away with little resistance. It'll be an ID card system next...

 

[StriderX]

I think I might invest in shares of Aluminium foil companies, seems like its a growth area.

Sure, it's totally not as though we literally have a series of governments now that have tried to implement authoritarian practices, nah must be a conspiracy.

 

[StriderX]

This is a very valid point. My phone literally knows pretty much all there is to know about me and it goes off to some company in the USA to sell to who they like to influence my ways of thinking, alter my political leanings, exploit my vulnerabilities - yet no one seems to care all that much about this.

The moment the Government say that they want to do something which may encroach on a very very small number of people, backed up with fully auditable and very heavily scrutinised privacy policies - everyone goes berserk.

I can definitely see how it's unnerving to have facial recognition cameras out there, but the truth is, nothing we do is private anymore and 99% of my violated privacy is being used to try and flog me stuff that I don't need - at least the 1% that the Government violate is going towards catching criminals.

Maybe it's because we're waiting for the government to actually do something about the abuse of data, rather than give up and just decide it's time to join in the fun... with poorly crafted, thin excuses about 'criminals'. The language used to justify it is actually offensive to any reasonable person, to actually be fooled by this is ridiculous.

But i guess that people are just going to lay down and die because it's too hard. When the proverbial boot starts coming down harder, I'll just laugh as there's no point in arguing for more liberty, as opposed to less. The criminals always find a way around it (especially to supply the people pushing these technologies), while we're left in our own cowardly puddle of urine asking for more because it's not working as promised.

I can't wait for the usual 'lesson's learned' spiel.