
At least 11 cities use automated surveillance in the EU - n_kb
https://algorithmwatch.org/en/story/computer-vision-police-discrimination/
======
Barrin92
> _This is why, after decades of controversy, Google Translates still renders
> the gender-neutral “they are doctors” in German as “sie sind Ärtze”
> (masculine) and “they are nurses” as “sie sind Krankenschwestern”
> (feminine). Google Translate was not programmed to be sexist. The corpus of
> texts it received happened to contain more instances of male doctors and
> female nurses. [...] BriefCam’s spokesperson added that they used “training
> datasets consisting of multi-gender, multi-age and multi-race samples
> without minority bias,” but declined to provide any evidence or details._

Okay, will we at some point admit that we want machine learning algorithms to
be able to interface with symbolic rules rather than pretending that
everything is a data issue as if we're living in the era of 1930s
inductionism? It's clear that the misgendering issue here is not a stochastic
one that ought to be solved by 'balancing out' data, it's that we want to
impose strict linguistic rules and constraints on a system in a clear manner.

There really needs to be more work done in AI that makes it possible to
interface with the models we built rather than trying to reframe everything as
a data problem and then shove it in some end-to-end black box and then hope
that whatever comes out at the other end is correct.

The automated systems used in the article are supposed to make judgements
about _" Detection of body movements that constitute assault."_ This requires
genuine understanding and high-level capacity to reason rather than just
pixel-based inference from some camera.

~~~
Tomte
Google translates it that way because German nouns have grammatical gender,
and doctors are grammatically male, while nurses are grammatically female. It
has nothing to do with training ML models (except insofar as most training
input is grammatically correct).

Of course, some people are unhappy about it and experimenting with gender
stars and gender gaps and other creative orthography, but this _is_ the status
quo.

It's quite strange to demand that some ML model is more "progressive" than
society and speakers themselves.

~~~
Barrin92
The issue here is that grammatical gender is not useful information when
reasoning about the semantics of some sentence. Toothpaste in German is
grammatically female, that's not a reason for an ML system to make feminine
assumptions about toothpaste after it combs through data, it has nothing to do
with progressive values, it's that the ML system cannot distinguish between a
spurious correlation and actual meaning. Today many more medical graduates are
women, this will change the ratio in the future and the inference from
grammatical gender will be wrong. We should be able to tell an intelligent
system from the get-go to ignore something we know to be spurious rather than
fiddling around with the data.

And it's not strange at all to demand of an automated system that it behaves
exactly the way we want it to behave. It is not human, it has to be more
precise because it is rolled out at scale and it needs to do what we tell it
to do. When we use industrial machinery in manufacturing we don't go "ah well
humans are only precise down to a centimetre, guess we'll let it slide". An
automated car trained on speeding drivers must not learn to speed. Automated
systems are faster than humans, so errors compound, which requires more
precision on part of a machine. If a ML system accidentally learns that
ignoring someone wearing a green shirt is okay, and that is rolled out to a
million cars, you don't have an accident but a big disaster.

We need a way to interface with ML systems in ways that let us put precise
limits on when it makes inferences from data, why it made those inferences and
when to follow logical rules, and when to dispose of certain data.

~~~
hndamien
Why does grammatical gender exist for toothpaste? I honestly don't understand
this (English speaker).

~~~
Tomte
Every noun has a grammatical gender in German. It just does. There does not
need to be a (contemporary) reason.

Why does declination of nouns exist in German, is almost non-existant in
English, more pronounced in Latin, and even more of it in Ancient Greek?

Is one of these languages defective? Should they shed their cases?

~~~
hndamien
Maybe. I just can't wrap my head around what useful function they provide for
communication. I'd love to be enlightened.

------
iampims
* Brussels * Kortrijk * Prostějov * Prague * Mannheim * Marbella * Nîmes (FR) * Nice (FR) * Cannes (FR) * Roubaix (FR) * Marseille (FR) * Toulouse (FR) * Yvelines (FR) * Warsaw

~~~
yodsanklai
Any correlation with the local political color?

~~~
williamdclt
All the French ones are right-wing, 5/7 from Les Républicains (The
Republicans, a right-wing conservative party).

That doesn't say that much, as most of France is under right-wing leadership
at the moment (president is centre-right)

~~~
kaesar14
Curious, do the French people consider Macron a right winger?

~~~
three_seagrass
France has more than just two political parties. Macron started as a centrist
populist with his own party, but has leaned to the right with his actions
since coming to office.

~~~
kaesar14
I understand that there are more than two political parties. I'm not that
blind of an American. Just curious how most Frenchmen view their own leaders
on the spectrum.

~~~
three_seagrass
I didn't mean to imply that you didn't know that, just gave it as context that
it's more nuanced than right or left leaning.

------
Jon_Lowtek
Mannheim is running a "pilot project" called "Mannheimer Weg". It is video
surveillance + behavior analysis. The german state of Baden-Würtenberg, where
Mannheim is located, has already announced to expand "intelligent video
surveillance" to other large cities, starting with Heidelberg this year and
focusing on central train and tram stations.

There are many sources in german about this topic, some praising it, some are
more critical. Another such "pilot project" is run at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof and
that one got a lot more bad feedback, because they also "try" facial
recognition and tracking smart phone signals.

It should be noted that the european union invested into this technology
starting with the 7th Framework Programm in 2007 under the codenames INDECT,
ADABTS and SAMURAI. Expect to be flagged for "abnormal, possibly criminal
behaviour" in the future if you run or loiter at a large train station.

~~~
Jon_Lowtek
Germany: the city of Freiburg is also buying 18 new cameras for the area
"Bermudadreieck" and "Bertoldstraße". I couldn't find any information on how
"smart" that system is going to be.

In Darmstadt the central tram hub "Luisenplatz" is going to get modern video
surveillance, too. Bought from Dallmeier Electronic GmbH & Co. KG. The mayor
said no facial regocnition is planned, even if the vendor offers integration
with such systems. Its unknown if advanced behavior analysis is included. It
is likely that all cities buy from different vendors and may get very
different quality of automated video content analysis.

In Hannover the local police veiled their own cameras last year during a
demonstration against a new police law. The demonstration asked for that and
announced to go to a court and the police just complied without waiting for a
court order, as they wanted to show clearly that they are not interested in
filming and (possibly) personally identifying their political opposition. When
the city council in Darmstadt was asked for such a rule for the soon to be
installed cameras, they laughed and said both the police and the interior
intelligence agency can and will request demonstrations to be filmed on a case
by case basis and the people will not be told if the cameras are on or off.

Germany's federal police (BKA) and ministry of interior security ("Ministerium
für Staatssicherheit") are unhappy with these fragmented and diversified
solutions. They aim for a networked system that can find people nation wide on
any camera using biometric recognition when a search warrant is issued.

In the meantime Deutsche Bahn is experimenting with a "facial anti-recognition
feature" that replaces faces with fakes because they believe they can easier
share the data with third party data anaylsis providers if they do that.

------
fnord123
@mods, actual title is "Unchecked use of computer vision by police carries
high risks of discrimination" which is the big issue here.

~~~
deogeo
Yes, mass surveillance is A-OK as long as it's not _racist_.

~~~
fnord123
You have no expectation of privacy in public or on state owned areas (roads,
walkways, squares, parks).

~~~
gruez
So you're fine with your everyday movements logged and published online? After
all, to go anywhere you'll need to step public roads, so you have no
expectation of privacy.

~~~
three_seagrass
>So you're fine with your everyday movements logged and published online?

This comment will be downvoted, but this is hyperbole. Your everyday movements
are more than just your activity in public spaces.

Likewise any website publishing your activity in public spaces is not entitled
to linking it to your PII, because if they do deanonymize it, you now have
means to take it down.

~~~
whatshisface
Your activity in public places is personally identifiable.

~~~
three_seagrass
Again, any website publishing your activity in public spaces is not entitled
to linking it to your PII, because if they do deanonymize it, you now have
means to take it down.

~~~
whatshisface
Your activity in public spaces is PII, it's as unique to you as your face.

------
LatteLazy
Basically every city in the UK (not technically in the EU since Jan) have it,
that's 72 right there. Is this meant to be a secret?

~~~
fnord123
The article is about using Machine Learning on the video feeds, not that there
are video feeds. And the issue at hand is that ML algorithms can have racial
bias in the classifications.

~~~
ReactiveJelly
Seems like a red herring. They want you to assume that mass violations of
privacy are okay as long as they're not racist.

They're also ignoring classism - It's fine if the rights of the working class
are violated, as long as they're all violated equally. Never-mind the people
who can afford privacy on the free market.

~~~
jon889
I think as long as your in public then it's fine to assume you're being
recorded by CCTV. Obviously the government being able to access cameras in
your own house like 1984 is not ok. But CCTV in public does reduce crime and
help investigations. For example the Central line in London doesn't have CCTV
(unlike most of the other lines) and it has the most assaults.
[https://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/central-line-trains-
ha...](https://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/central-line-trains-have-no-cctv-
on-board-and-the-highest-number-of-reported-sexual-offences-1-5592640)

I think wether you can trust your government to not misuse it (eg tracking
minorities) is somewhat separate.

~~~
Silhouette
The idea that you should lose any form of privacy the moment you step outside
your home is an extremely dangerous one. The reasons we value privacy do not
suddenly cease to apply because you live a normal life.

Also, the evidence that CCTV is effective at deterring or solving crime is
debatable. There is a plausible alternative theory that it simply moves the
crime around. That is OK for you if you live and work in "nice" parts of town,
but not so much if you are in the districts where the crime and antisocial
behaviour get pushed to.

~~~
jon889
So if all the parts of town had CCTV then it would be better right?

~~~
Silhouette
Even from a security point of view, that's only true if they actually use it
effectively. From direct personal experience, this is not always the case:
just because a camera is there, that doesn't necessarily mean anyone will
bother to check it, even following the theft of a considerable sum of money.

I suppose in theory, if you blanketed the entire country with CCTV (just one
town is no good, the crime can move to the next town over) then you might have
a deterrent effect, but of course all the other concerns about mass
surveillance would still apply.

------
JoeAltmaier
US has more, per-capita?
[https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/Top-10-Countries-
by...](https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/Top-10-Countries-by-Number-of-
CCTV-Cameras)

USA has 1 camera for every 6 or 7 people?

~~~
keiferski
Is this actually a useful metric? Cities should be compared to cities.

Also, that link doesn’t seem to say whether cameras are owned by the state.
Presumably surveillance operated by the government is more totalitarian than
various private businesses.

~~~
the8472
"lawful access" interfaces can mean automatic access by the government. It's
outsourced mass surveillance.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In the movies and on TV, they always have to 'ask for the tapes'. Wonder how
it really works now - the NSA already has it all?

~~~
noarchy
If those cameras have any kind of outside accessibility over a network, the
NSA is probably just one of many with potential access.

~~~
strictnein
The NSA doesn't have access to US security cams and couldn't care less about
them. Come on people...

~~~
noarchy
>The NSA doesn't have access to US security cams and couldn't care less about
them.

The same NSA that has vacuumed up phone and internet data, including that of
US citizens?

