
UK police arrest man via automatic face-recognition tech - phowat
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/police-automatic-face-recognition/
======
daemin
I think the big thing people forget when they automate systems is that they
make them too strict. As in you're always expected to fit within the
parameters and pattern of behaviour that the system was built with. It
tolerates no deviation.

However as with all human things, it is better and less trouble to be able to
take shortcuts rather than have to stick to the rules 100%. For example people
crossing the road in the middle of the night with not a car in sight. People
reversing down the road a little bit to turn or get a parking spot. Being able
to cross the centre green patch on a high way at night because there won't be
a u-turn available for many kms. The issues with identical twins and not being
able to get IDs (basically the inability to override a system).

These sort of issues help remove stress and simplify things in our daily
lives, and help make the world function.

~~~
cpncrunch
What has that got to do with the article? Facial recognition isn't crime
detection...it's recognising someone who has an arrest warrant (or in this
case, perhaps also checking against a list of banned hooligans), i.e. it
either is the person or it isn't.

~~~
daemin
My comment was on people putting too much trust into computerised systems, of
which facial recognition is one. It also referenced comments other people had
made here for when the rules and programming in such a computerised system
broke down in the real world.

In the case of facial recognition there was examples of twins being rejected
for IDs because the system thought it was the same person applying under
different names.

I'd also be dubious as how well it can identify people based on grainy and low
resolution camera footage.

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jostmey
Let me wave my hand around a crystal ball and peer into our future...

"Cameras are everywhere and record every crime. Somewhere in the city a man
commits a murder. Computers register the crime. Later that same man steps into
a self-driving car. The man explains to the car that he wants to travel to the
other side of the city. The car doors lock and the vehicle takes off. But the
car is not going to where he thinks. Slowly the man realizes that he is being
taken directly to the nearest police precinct for booking. Desperately the man
tries to exit the car but the doors are locked. He lays down in the seat and
frantically kicks at the windshield but there is no time. The car has been
given emergency priority and begins traveling over 90 mph. The precious
seconds tick by...

Back at the precinct the cop takes another bit of his doughnut and reminisces
about the time when policing was not just a desk job."

That's enough of the crystal ball for today.

~~~
dingo_bat
Isn't this good? Fuck criminals. Anything that makes catching then easier is
good.

~~~
dwaltrip
The problem is trying to "automate" the justice system, and in the process,
accidentally creating a dystopian dictator's fantasy.

Mass surveillance provides unparalleled power to those who control it. It's
unprecedented in all of human history. I don't believe humanity knows how to
safely handle such power at this point.

One of the most fundamental concerns is the fact that, once collected, the
data is vulnerable to being misappropriated or weaponized for the entirety of
its existence, possibly for many decades or longer. By that point, laws may
have changed significantly and the entire political climate could be
drastically different.

Imagine being automatically put on a special list and thus denied certain
basic priveleges​ due to "questionable" posts you made in an online forum 15
years ago. We can imagine a wide variety of vague and controversial
definitions of "questionable content" for this thought experiment.

~~~
rtpg
But the police is explicitly _not_ the justice system.

Courts are of course complicated, and I imagine that police would abuse such a
network to arrest people without means to fight back... but at the end of the
day I can at least hope to be in front of a judge. And it's not like the
courts are the ones doing the dystopian investigating.

~~~
lawless123
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Six](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Six)

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dmix
So when a crime happens in public: in addition to a dump of all cellphones in
the area they'll also have access to all scanned faces and license plates (via
lidar) to reconstruct what happened. Plus potentially an always-on eye in the
sky via drones/planes which allows them to "rewind" peoples and cars movements
up until that point. Pretty scary to think how easy their jobs will be.

~~~
darkhorn
The'll have instant connection to any CCTV facing public places (including
hotel corridors) and any dash cam. After all, all the videos will be uploaded
to data centers via 7G.

Identification of humans, dogs, car plates will be in real time plus the
identities will be logged for 5 years.

The CCTVs will record in PetaHD, enough for fingerprint identification from
distance of 120 meters.

PetaHD © records use two cameras (for 3D) with auto zooming for moving
objects.

All cars will have black boxes with video and sound recording. Illegal turns
will be autofined (if you were able to turn illegally, because most of the
time your car won't allow you).

~~~
sfilargi
> Illegal turns will be autofined

I also expect the fines to get lower once everybody gets a couple of fines per
day on average.

~~~
mattmanser
No, they won't fine anyone until you protest against the state, and then they
will crush you with "the law".

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kough
> In the same statement, the police force turns a little more towards pre-
> crime. South Wales police and crime commissioner Alun Michael said: "Our
> approach to policing is very much centred upon early intervention and
> prompt, positive action; the introduction of facial recognition helps to
> support these aims by allowing us to identify vulnerability, challenge
> perpetrators, and reduce instances of offending within environments where
> the technology is deployed."

As spooky as automatic facial recognition is for finding and arresting
criminals, it's like they're parodying themselves with this statement. You
couldn't sound more evil if you tried.

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aub3bhat
I think the real battle is in Judicial reforms. Honestly we are at a stage
where the face recpgnition technology is just too easy to deploy. [1, 2]

There are also several legitimate use cases, e.g. Amber alerts, Public right
to record, etc. The society can delay dealing with technology for only so
long. Over the next decade we will see huge adoption of Autonomous cars,
robots, cheap drones essentially "Mainstreaming" of surveillance technology.
At this point the legal system would have to decide a sane framework to
resolve the challenges posed by technology. However given the paralysis in
Washington, and inability to deal with even the most basic questions of
algorithms and law (No-fly lists being the prime example) I am not too
hopeful.

[1] [https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Aface-
recognition&type=Re...](https://github.com/search?q=topic%3Aface-
recognition&type=Repositories)

[2] [https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/](https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/)

~~~
_coldfire
Done by a government with proper legal oversight it certainly has its place
and easily will be a net positive for society. Though lawmakers seem to be
oblivious to tech advances moving far quicker than they can, don't hold much
hope they can keep up.

Used by corporations it will be frustrating and take privacy intrusions to the
next level. In the end though, democracies will survive fine.

The real issue is tyrannical regimes getting their hands on facial
recognition, it's a terrifying prospect and likely to be used with great
effect.

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jimnotgym
Last night I watched the 'Total Recall' remake with he kids. I couldn't help
making connections between the film and the way technological policing is
progressing. I keep noticing that in dystopian sci-fi films there are far too
many parallels with the UK. I should stop watching sci-fi and finish some
coding...

~~~
Theodores
Meanwhile, back in the real world, I spent an hour waiting to speak to someone
in the police the other day only for the guy on the desk to say he needed
another 30-45 minutes with the lady at the desk and there were no other staff.
So, if you really do want to report a crime or some criminal behaviour that
has got to the stage where a little bit of community work by the police would
help, good luck to you. Maybe take an afternoon off work so you will have time
for the bureaucracy.

We are a long way from 'you have twenty seconds to comply' policing.

~~~
Silhouette
It seems to me that the danger is having no time for _anything but_ 'you have
twenty seconds to comply' policing.

Just look at the comments made by serving UK police officers in light of the
recent high-profile attacks, particularly about the relative lack of
intelligence now that there are so few officers assigned to basic community
policing and everything has become about reaction rather than relationships.

Compare and contrast those views with the recent comments by Theresa May about
how the problem wasn't really caused by a sharp reduction in the number of
police officers but instead must be fixed by regulating everything and
throwing human rights laws out the window if they happen to be inconvenient.

~~~
Theodores
My experience was definitely of this, the problem that you cite.

But as you mention, police, despite all accusations to the contrary, are not
stupid. They know what policing is and it is about communities and people
rather than enforcing the edicts of a given political party. It is strange how
police are always politically controlled, maybe in some do-gooding place like
Norway they are allowed to be professional without interference.

Along with 'twenty seconds to comply...' there is this instant execution by
police that happens. Nobody is shedding a tear for the three terrorists shot 8
minutes into their killing spree, however, would the police have been able to
apprehend them if they only had their batons?!? This was the situation in the
UK until recently, if you 'went postal' in some regional town it would take a
while before officers with guns would arrive. You would have hours to escape
bullets. But now? 8 minutes.

I also imagine a world where no terrorist gets tried in court. Death awaits
them before they get that far and the quaint notion of justice before a jury
goes by the by.

~~~
pja
You’re not going to get an 8 minute response anywhere but in the major city
centres, which have armed units on 24/7 standby.

I think those units have been around in London for decades at this point.
Probably ever since the ring of steel was installed as a response to the IRA
bombing campaigns of the 70s/80s.

~~~
pjc50
Exactly. Borough market is right next to London Bridge station, Guy's Hospital
and the Shard, all of which are obvious places to park rapid response units.

Similarly the area of Westminster around Parliament and the Palace will be
completely covered 24/7, extending out towards the nearby embassies and
Whitehall civil service buildings.

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iandanforth
If you're watching (or reading) The Handmaid's Tale, this is what an Eye van
looks like in real life.

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Evolved
Relevant.

[0] [http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-
sky/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/)

[1] [http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-eye-
sky/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/update-eye-sky/)

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tyingq
Anyone know what the false positive and false negative rates are with current
tech?

Edit: Assuming real world conditions where people don't pose for you.

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kirykl
tighten the rules by using technology and criminals will use technology to
break the rules - murders by drone

