

[London Riots] Help work out how to do facial recognition on the police photos - robhawkes
http://groups.google.com/group/london-riots-facial-recognition

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autoiq
It makes me very nervous, but how "ethical" or not this depends on who's
driving and participating in the effort.

A college friend of mine got charged with inciting a riot by standing on a car
and shouting "Don't burn our hood! Go burn some rich folks stuff! Follow me!"
According to him they didn't trash his stuff, and that was worth the hassle
with the courts.

If your shop or car got torched or your kids are afraid at night, this is
probably a great idea. Leveraging public data (photos) and off the shelf
technology to at least identify witnesses if not actual participants should be
done. If a friend of mine was in that situation and asked for help, I would do
everything I could. If a company asked me to consult on designing the solution
they could sell, I would probably pass.

I've been working in security, identity and privacy for over a decade and this
"ethical" question has loomed since before Orwell. Commercial packages are
marketed to law enforcement, today. Instead of disengaging or blindly sending
your leads to police, the ethical middle path is a publicly defined framework.
Using the riots as the catalyst, there should be public/web/community effort
for vetting the most incriminating images, aimed at shaping the rules of
public disclosure, law and evidence around facial recognition.

If this makes you queasy, get engaged. Saying "that's bad" or "they're wrong"
won't stop those driving the technology solutions forward. Advocacy can keep
the situation a little more honest.

------
JamesLowell
What inspired this idea? Most people would just leave these sort of efforts to
the police. I'm not judging, I'm a journalist and I'm legitimately curious.

~~~
robhawkes
I just hate to see technology lying around doing nothing when it could
genuinely help the situation. We have the data, we have the technology. Let's
put the two together and actually help the situation, rather than sitting
around moaning.

The police cannot use these methods, I believe, so if the public can do it for
them to help narrow down inquiries, then surely that's a good thing.

I think it's important to point out that a system like this would be to close
the net, not to be used as evidence.

~~~
pointyhat
So you're saying use technology to treat the symptoms and ignore the cause?
Retribution rather than prevention?

Help your neighbours, not the police, then shit like this wouldn't happen.
People are so ready to delegate responsibility for everything to technology
and a "higher authority" that they forget their own moral responsibility.

As for using it to identify people for questioning, it is strictly against the
DPA to collect this information privately without consent and supply it to the
police without a data controller and disclosure policy.

~~~
robhawkes
Are you being serious? This is nothing about the cause. Sorting that out is a
much deeper issue that needs to be carefully analysed and considered.

You're effectively saying that we shouldn't bother to help bring people to
justice.

Also, I would love to see further information about what you say about the DPA
(any links?). We're not wanting to bend the law here, we want to work legally.
If it turns out that this kind of work is completely unfesable by the law then
we will be forced to abandon it.

Please don't turn this into a moral debate between you and myself, I
appreciate that not everyone will see the use of technology in this way as a
good thing. At the end of the day I'm trying to do _something_ to help here,
rather than moan and argue online about it.

~~~
pointyhat
What I'm saying is that we should not have let society descent into this chaos
by our own ignorance and greed and now we are suffering for it. It's a kind of
apathetic karma. And now we're jumping up in the air calling for justice. It's
just hypocrisy.

Read this thoroughly, then register as a data controller:

[http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/data_protection/the_guide/key_definitions.aspx)

You will be recording and maintaining a database of individual details. You
need to provide access to this under DPA SAR regulations to individuals. If
you misrepresent the individual, you can and probably will be sued.

Sometimes, doing nothing is better than doing something bad or dangerous.

Oh and if I find out this is going ahead, I'll be ethically required to report
you to the ICO.

------
nodata
How many times have you heard this:

1\. This will be misused.

2\. But someone else will do it if you don't.

3\. Okay I'll do it then.

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opinonatedbloke
If you build it , some one with more ambition will take it from you and misuse
it. It might help here, no doubt, but it will be abused. Consider China doing
this to identify political deviants. Consider the invention of nukes , and the
on going struggle to keep them out of peoples hands who wish to use them.
Nothing good will come of this in the long run.

------
dan_g
<http://facebookjustice.wordpress.com>

------
zardiw
Screw taking pictures. Shoot Looters.....z

~~~
pointyhat
Yeah right: kill _people_ for taking worthless material things...

------
pointyhat
Please do not do this. It compromises people's right to privacy and will
artificially incriminate people who may not be participating but are
bystanding or trying to get home.

Technology is not the solution - it's part of the cause. Everyone is
automatically incriminated. Don't add fuel to the fire.

~~~
robhawkes
Can you expand on your argument against the use of technology in this way?

Nothing here compromises your privacy, and nothing will artificially
incriminate you. Everything is already public information.

A system like this would be exactly the same as photos being released to the
public by the police (which they have), and then random people ringing up
saying "That person might be XYZ" (which also happens).

This would be a simple automation of the process to help filter down who it
could potentially be (none of the results would be public). It would be up to
the police to work out who should be pursued.

Also, I entirely disagree with your statement that technology is the cause.
Riots happened before the Internet and social networks. People would be using
phones, radio, and word-of-mouth anyway.

~~~
throwaway32
No, it is not exactly the same, things have shifted a lot in the last 20 years
ago. It used to be "what a police officer happened to see while he was driving
down the street in his car", now it is rapidly becoming "what could have a
police officer possibly seen at any time and in any location, in all EM
wavelengths, tied into massive identifying databases". That is a massive shift
in power to the police, its important to proceed cautiously, a free society is
much more important than catching criminals.

~~~
robhawkes
Nothing like facial recognition would ever be allowed to be used as evidence,
especially in the way I envisage it being used here. It's about helping to
narrow down the options so the police can get on with their traditional lines
of enquiry, like gathering evidence, etc. There is no shift in power to the
police, they don't have access to any extra data, just the results.

We need to stop being afraid of the potential uses of technology, we'll never
get anywhere that way. Also, I am not claiming that this is a) the right
solution, or b) socially acceptable just yet.

We need to tackle those issues, rather than turn away from the technology
because of potential futures.

~~~
throwaway32
Lets take a hypothetical example, say every CCTV camera in London that is
available to the police is tied into facial recognition databases, then those
results are stored by the police; They then gain a massive database of the
movement of people that would otherwise have not been available. The important
thing here is that none of this requires additional data. Even if none of this
data is in any way admissible in court (it is and has been in the past), that
still gives the police massive leverage over knowing innocent (remember
innocent until proved guilty ) people's movements, without consent, probably
without knowledge. How you can claim an idea like this isnt a shift in power
to the police escapes me.

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riotforequality
Anyone who takes part in this is a fucking fascist. This is not just simple
rioting and looting, it is a backlash upon the failed establishment in the UK.
The young people can't find jobs and can't afford to go to school. They are
poor, hopeless, and destitute; oppressed by the ever growing disparity between
who is rich and who is poor. This is probably not a revolution or an uprising,
but it is the start of something. People are fed up with government and they
aren't going to be able to take it much longer.

~~~
pointyhat
Spot on. Listen to this person. This is the voice of most of London at the
moment other than the iPhone wielding, wine swilling, bugaboo shoving middle
to upper classes.

~~~
pointyhat
I think I might have hit a sore point there.

