
Biometrics leads to arrest of accused child molester on the lam 17 years - ZoeZoeBee
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/biometrics-leads-to-arrest-of-accused-child-molester-on-the-lam-17-years/
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philipkglass
I was somewhat surprised by how many negative comments there were on the Ars
article.

I think it's important not to knee-jerk in favor of everything that could help
to catch criminals. From my own post history on Ars (I use the same nym there)
you can see that I am strongly against dragnet communications surveillance and
strongly in favor of secure systems with no back doors for government access.
But I think it's also important to not knee-jerk _against_ every technology
that can increase the effectiveness of law enforcement.

This particular approach seems on balance positive to me: it's targeted at
catching already-known criminals. It's not invasive of the privacy of the
general public. It would be a bad tool to have in the hands of a totalitarian
dictatorship, but so would any effective law enforcement system.

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belorn
In this case it worked, but what are the false positive rate? Roughly 412
million images was scanned in this case. How many scans will this be per year
if used on all known criminals that goes on the run? What happens in the case
of a false positive, and at what rate will this cause major impact on an
innocent (ie, lost time to fight the false accusation, lost
jobs/relationships, swat team charging in with guns into someones home, and so
on). Is there a cost-benefit analyze that is favorable to run this kind of
biometric system over the more traditional hire-more-investigators approach to
solving more cases? If it was cost-effective, would it still be so if the
state provided a fair compensation to every harmed innocent?

Its not a knee-jerk reaction, but plain experience from reading the answer to
such question that studies have done on past biometric, data retention and
surveillance systems. A common theme that keep getting repeated are generally
high cost, high false positive rates, and low results.

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Johnny555
And how does one defend themselves after being falsely identified? I'm sure
there's more that one guy that lived in Indiana 17 years ago that looked kinda
similar to what that guy looked like then.

Having the FBI come into your workplace and arrest you is bad for your career
whether you're guilty or not.

I remember when I was doing online dating -- I had the same name, had lived in
the same area, and was about the same age as the brother of a serial killer
that was quoted prominently in the news. I told new matches that when they
googled me, that that guy was not me.

Not sure how to do convince my boss that when the FBI leads me out of the
office in handcuffs that it's just a case of mistaken identity.

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philipkglass
People have been identifying wanted criminals from photographs for a long
time. Sometimes humans identify correctly but often they are incorrect.

I would _hope_ that there is a less drastic/foolish procedure than "FBI
handcuffs person at work, investigates later" every time that someone thinks
their new neighbor looks like a criminal on a poster and phones in a tip. Just
substitute "algorithm phones in a tip" for "neighbor phones in a tip."

[https://www.usmarshals.gov/investigations/most_wanted/](https://www.usmarshals.gov/investigations/most_wanted/)

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milesf
For years "America's Most Wanted" helped capture criminals by showing photos
of wanted suspects and asking the public to call if they visually identified
someone.

What's the difference between that and having computers do the same thing?
CCTV cameras, Facebook, or any source of photos of faces could be automated to
search against databases of suspects.

Is this really a road we want to go down? I'm of two minds on the idea.

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ensignavenger
If each CCTV system did this on its own, I don't think there would as many
objections. If all or a whole bunch of CCTV systems aggregated their footage
into a central location where these types of analysis can be done, that would
be a very different situation. Someone having access to this system could use
it to do a lot more than just catch a known suspect.

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trhway
It is called intelligence fusion centers. There is already existing network of
them. And you're right - it is used for more than just catching of known ones.
Its main output is SARs - suspicious activity reports. Google Palantir for
(openly described) capabilities.

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imode
I'm in favor of this type of technology because ultimately images of my face
are public. you can just as easily scrape a photo of me walking down the
street.

if you aren't breaking into my home (or other property), or forcing me to hand
you something I would not normally hand you, then you can use whatever
information you want.

good on them.

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dozzie
We'll talk about it when this public images of yours will be you entering a
HIV/AIDS help center, AA meeting place, mental health hospital, or something
similar that bears social stigma. Somewhere that there's _absolutely nothing
wrong_ with you being there, but you'd rather not brag about.

This is what _privacy_ is for.

