We may need laws that treat these cameras as something like a wiretap. They can be there streaming their data to data stores, but accessing that data would require warrants that are limited in scope. The data could be used for answering specific, legally justifiable questions, not for everyday surveillance and profiling.
e.g. It would be valid to use these cameras to answer who was at a crime scene, when, and where did they go that day. It would not be valid to reconstruct a web of everyday associations stretching back months for someone just because an officer didn't like the way they look.
I think we need to understand and accept that this stuff is inevitable as the technology gets cheaper. If the cops don’t do it themselves, private industry will do it for them and sell it or hand the data over as a “public service.” The only way out of this is to make an affirmative series of laws that make the construction of anything resembling a tracking database illegal and heavily-fined, but we’re not there. Even privacy-friendly Europe isn’t close to putting those restrictions on its police.
No private industry will do anything without it being profitable. Handing it over as a public service would mean they are making money with that data in other ways. What would be those other ways? I can't think of anything that's not dystopian hell, so maybe to make that not legal???
The answer is that these databases are hugely valuable for targeted advertising and marketing, and if they’re relatively cheap to build then that makes everything even easier. Law enforcement gets access because in most countries the law allows them to make data requests to existing companies, and “we aren’t going to help the cops solve a murder” is bad PR when you’ve already collected the relevant data.
The police and government are also how they get permission, at least in London, so using law to prevent this ... doesn't seem like it'll be possible.
Although it does seem relevant. Given that these models run easily on phones 2 generations old (that's what they use in pubs, and if they use it in pubs, they use it everywhere), how will you stop it, even if you do get a law against it?
You can do this with a raspi and a cheap security camera using open source software.
It is effectively already free.
I’m sort of curious why people haven’t already done this, when user fed tracking networks for planes and boats exist. Presumably the much more clear invasion of privacy is a part of it.
First, in the US this type of thing violates the fourth amendment as the Institute for Justice will prove in court with ALPRs. It could be set up such that it does not, but for whatever reason these companies are greedy and make it broad rather than narrow in scope.
Second, I just won't patronize your establishment, shopping center, or municipality if you do. I'd like to go to the UK, but because of this policy I will not. Menlo Park pushed back against ALPRs: I'll go there. I went to a different ski shop because the one closest to me has an ALPR. And so on.
So, this may be different in the UK, but in the US a large majority of travel occurs in private cars, so omnipresence of ALPRs is close to collecting data on everybody and knowing what everybody is doing at all times.
One might assume from a game-theoretical perspective that this is no different from living in a village where essentially everyone knows everyone’s business, and the knowledge that that knowledge is mutual prevents people from acting badly with the information that they have. However, in the situation where a small minority of people have knowledge about everyone else, and not vice versa, this can give that minority unearned power over everyone else.
In practice, it doesn’t feel great. I hope this answered your question.
1. Data is retained by a handful of companies. If it is leaked, you'll have a lot of information on people that is suddenly fair game for anyone including insurance companies, PI, home invaders.
2. In the US, I'm not concerned about local government as much as federal when it comes to the fourth amendment. Suppose you have a rogue potus. He sends the national guard in to Atlanta, Chicago, and Downingtown to take over the systems of these companies. Now you say, "well I'll just remove my license plate!" But these companies are cataloguing make, model, color, bumper stickers, dents; so you can take off your plate in a situation like that but they are going to still be able to track you with a high degree of certainty. People were shocked by South Korea declaring martial law -- we've become so spoiled taking these essential laws for granted. (Sorry I don't know enough about British law.)
If they don't send all license plate data to the internet there isn't an issue. But they do.
People do have publicity rights for their image being used in some contexts such as an advertisement. But not sure what rights to your image would even look like in the context of random public photographs or video in general.
We need laws that restrict the tech that police can use in public to the same tech that existed when Katz v. USA was decided (no expectation of privacy in public), only film cameras for public surveillance
we shoudl have had them in place 20 years ago and an "anti Patriot act" meant to prevent police or government following us around with cameras; it only gets easier as tech gets faster and cameras more universal. This is the stasi's wet dream and that should tell one all they need to know about why public surveillance by the government is a truly awful terrible no-very-good idea.
A similar thing happened with automatic number place recognition. With no public debate the police built a nationwide network of ANPR cameras. The Information Commissioner opined that it was probably illegal. But rather than recommending prosecutions, he recommended that the law be changed to legitimise the police law breaking.
The neat thing about these databases is that you’ll never know. Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?
There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.
> Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?
> How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop?
Like all other PNC access, this gets logged. Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired for abusing the PNC. Random officers cannot randomly look up plates on ANPR: only traffic police or more senior officers can and it, like every other access, gets logged.
The Data Protection Act allows us to find out who has been disciplined, demoted or fired, and the Met for example answer those.
> The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?
Data brokers do not get PNC data in the UK. And you're imagining an unnecessarily fantastical, conspiratorial explanation of a stalker who "somehow knew where" some woman would be, when stalkers clearly manage this adequately by, like, ordinary stalking skills (and are rarely unknown to their victims in the first place; they usually have knowledge that was volunteered or was acquired firsthand). Women don't need this imaginary scenario to feel fear: old-fashioned hiding in a car and waiting will do it. More high-tech: hiding an AirTag will do it. Following on Facebook will do it.
Also imagining third party violence that happens due to police data access is irrelevant: police officers themselves commit violence. Probably start there.
> There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.
They are in the UK.
Are face recognition cameras a bad thing in the hands of the UK police? Probably sometimes yes. But these conspiratorial hypotheses don't need airing.
FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.
These facial recognition cameras cannot be instantly used on some big national police surveillance mechanism because in essence no such system exists: the vast majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are not operated by police at all.
Most cameras are operated by local and regional councils (access for which the police would need to issue warrants or make detailed subject/time requests) or private businesses (ditto).
And most of the huge number of cameras the police imagine aren't connected to anything more complex than Ring. Even with Ring footage, British police find that if they want to use doorbell camera footage, it is faster to arrange a time to visit the owner or at best knock on the door of the householder and ask for it to be emailed or copied to an SD card. They do not have broad instant access, much less broad, instant, warrantless access.
The biggest risk is not outright abuse but malfeasance/misfeasance overuse, much more dull-witted, instant and humdrum: for example some of the operators perceive the desire not to walk past one of them to be evidence of criminal intent, and they use that as a justification for a stop and search.
In the U.S., law enforcement misusing their access to existing surveillance technologies is already reality. Enlarging the capabilities they have access to, when they're proven to misuse what they have, isn't ideal.
But being sacked as a police officer in the UK is a fairly big deal. There's no Fraternal Order of Police to ease you into a cushy security job, and there's no macho culture of celebrating corrupt police. Being charged for misusing one's position would be pretty devastating. Policing in the UK is "by consent" and people don't take too kindly to stuff like this.
> FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.
Whilst the UK is not a «surveillance state» in the authoritarian sense, and they were certainly not the ones who invented CCTV, we must credit the British for pioneering the concept of ubiquitous CCTV as a tool of urban surveillance, which was complemented by a long-standing tradition of overzealous law enforcement – a legacy with undeniably robust historical roots. It is irrefutable that the UK was an early adopter of CCTV for security and policing purposes[0], much to the bemusement of the guests of Her Late Majesty and His Majesty now.
The British have certainly been instrumental – if not bestowing or spreading it (which is partially true, at least in the case of Australia and New Zealand), then at least influencing – in the widespread adoption of CCTV as a tool for urban surveillance in a large number of Western countries.
[0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/
Religious registries were a harmless little census thing in Germany... well until 1933 at least. Once the system is in place and the data collected you need very strong institutions to protect the people
The 23 and me fuck up is also a good example, data is forever, laws and morales are very temporary
I don’t know for sure since we don’t know who has access to that data, but if I were an auto insurance company, I would love to know which of my customers tend to go out in inclement weather, or after midnight when the roads are statistically more dangerous.
Took me less than a minute to think of that example. I’m sure there’s more ways that information could be used against my interests.
But you don't need access to ANPR for this, particularly.
You just ask the customer to tell you, perhaps with one of those driving monitoring apps/devices that people use to lower premiums. Pretty commonplace now.
FWIW, having worked on car insurance applications, most insurance companies do not much care about microtargeting consumers in this way. Beyond looking at their claims history and the kind of car they are driving, it is a large-scale numbers game, and the way you know which customers, for example, tend to go out more at night when it is dangerous is to look at their age (more likely very young) and gender (more likely male). And then you just make them all pay more. There's no particular reason to get any more forensic than that; it's more costly and it probably doesn't deliver much extra value.
And if young drivers complain, "hey, I am an excellent safe driver, I've done my advanced test, and I don't take risks", you say: "Great. Use one of our driving monitoring apps or devices, prove it and we'll happily give you lower premiums!"
I could tell you a couple of horror stories I am not going to repeat on the internet because they are old news now and times have changed, but I really must say, it's not necessary to imagine what government data could be used for in the hands of insurance companies: it's much more likely that insurance companies will simply incentivise customers to hand over the data. People who want lower premiums will jump through all sorts of hoops to get them.
It goes against the principle of living in a democracy. The government can only use it in ways that are detrimental to a fair and just society. It's assuming everyone is a criminal rather than being innocent until you do a crime.
Pretend you are in op sec for personal information and you'll quickly come up with a dozen examples. Ranging from individuals abusing access for nefarious reasons [1], institutions using it to reward hack kpis to what's happening in America with illegal ICE arrests.
At this rate they should just make everyone wear a big QR code containing our names and social security numbers on our shirts. A sort of license plate for people. Would save on processing power at least.
The US's first "Cop City", the $117m Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, officially opened April 29, 2025, despite years of opposition and a suppressed effort to get a referendum against it on the ballot. [0] Did not get any discussion here on HN at all. [1] characterizes it as "a massive, militarized police training compound in the Weelaunee Forest in the southeast outskirts of Atlanta" and lists its security partners as Flock Safety (automated license plate reader (ALPR) vendor, #58 fastest-growing company) and Motorola Solutions. [1] lists its Corporate and Nonprofit Foundation Donors and Sponsors: finance, real-estate companies, Acuity Brands, AT&T, Cushman & Wakefield, KPMG, McKesson, Invesco, Rollins, Synovus and others, Arthur Blank Foundation, The Bierenbaum Family Foundation, Connolly Family Foundation, The Goizueta Foundation, of Atlanta, Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, of Atlanta, O. Wayne Rollins Foundation, of Atlanta, J. Bulow Campbell Foundation and others.
(FYI the parent Guardian article is about England and Wales, not the US. There is a similar level of surveillance cameras but comparing use of force to the US, police in England and Wales only fatally shot 2 people in 2023/24 [2], 24 deaths in or following police custody and a further 60 fatalities defined as other deaths during or following police contact. for which [2b] is a report with demographics.)
I feel like law enforcement increasingly relies on automated surveillance , ie traffic cameras. But for brazen crime (ie duplicated plates) the fines and enforcement is spotty and weak. So the net result is very strict punishing justice for the regular public and a shrug of the shoulders toward determined criminals
Yes, this is policing. It's easier to hassle normal people who won't be a problem.
In my area, the police are all over teenagers for loitering in parking lots on the weekends, but do nothing about the very obvious drug dealers in the local trailer park.
This will make murder mystery shows harder to write. Even now they usually put in some line about how they don’t have traffic camera coverage in the critical area, and they ignore getting location data from suspects’ phones.
I have always thought that futuristic police state movies and shows underestimate how oppressive a fully capable, automated surveillance apparatus could be.
Movies like Minority Report try to show the surveillance state as being a struggle to overcome, but it is still always too easy. Computers don’t get distracted, scale perfectly, and can run 24-7. You can’t just sneak away with your head down, because the machines would have tracked you into a place, would know exactly who is in every building, and would be able to associate the person exiting a building with the person who went in. They wont forget.
Look at how quickly the cops tracked Luigi Mangione. It’s not clear how much face recognition (as opposed to manual search) contributed to that, but even for a person who wore a mask, all it took was a slip up where he took the mask off in one place.
I am not saying this is a bad thing in the case of a pre-planned murder. But it does make it obvious how hard it might be to evade notice in the future, assuming you are doing it for more legitimate privacy reasons.
If you go into a building and change clothes, they will not remember. Of course, we're assuming that the place you went into does not have cameras accessible to the system. At some point, building codes/permits will start requiring cameras specifically to feed into this system.
If the system sees someone exit a building and that person does not match someone the system saw enter the building, the person could be flagged and tracked as possibly being someone else who entered the building. Once the system accounts for everyone else who entered the building (by seeing when they exit), the system would be able to correlate that the unknown person who exited is the same as the only unaccounted for person who exited
If that building in an apartment building? Someone from an apartment building might not enter before leaving on the same day. How far back in the camera's history does the system look for that person entering?
until someone finds that certain cameras are unavailable, or that something has obstructed the view for a significant enough time to cause reasonable doubt
It doesn’t need to store video, just data about where the person is and there various identifying data… the system uses the recordings to generate fingerprints for everyone, then just stores data about where you were/are.
Well, then the system could flag you because it doesn't know who you are. Someone walks out of a building with a gait that doesn't match the gait of anyone known to have entered the building. It would follow the person to the next building and the next, until it figures out who they are via the process of elimination (or if it see you go back to your normal gait). Then, the system would note (and store forever) that you have multiple gaits, and would never fall for the trick again.
you have way more confidence in AI than I do. "never fall for the trick again" bwahahaha. it can't even tell the same answer twice, or tell you the correct answer the first time for everything.
This wouldn't have to be AI. I think you are underestimating how good tracking systems already are, and will continue to improve, and become cheaper and cheaper to deploy.
In Los Angeles, a firebug sets a morning fire. 4 hours later and 50 miles away, they set another fire. The firebug is apprehended late in the afternoon. Good policework, I wonder how they did that. /s
This isn't really surprising from the UK. If you go back 15-20 years, taxing a vehicle to drive on public roads used to involve displaying a "Tax Disc" in your windscreen, on the off-side of the vehicle.
They abolished this system in 2014 [1] because they'd long since reached saturation of permanent Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) readers [2] from >11000 cameras on UK roads, and scanning over 50 million vehicles per day.
It's also common to have 'Average Speed' systems on major roads and even country roads where the accident rate exceeds a threshold defined by the local councils. Those will issue you a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) and points on your licence for a moving violation if you exceed the speed limit. Beyond the 'Average Speed' infrastructure is a giant number of fixed cameras which measure speed and capture imagery of your vehicle, number plate, and the driver and automatically issue the PCN for speeding, and mobile vans operated by the authorities and deployed anywhere they consider a "hotspot".
All of this costs you money immediately to pay the PCN, costs you money over time because insurers hike their rates, and after 2-4 violations in 36 months, can result in you losing your ability to drive and trigger an extended "retake driving test" (after your disqualification period).
This is much more draconian than the United States where in many states a moving violation (like a speeding infraction) will only be processed by a policeman pulling you over for a chat.
I find it funny that the people that are outraged by ULEZ cameras as “control of the state” are always silent on issues such as facial recognition or Chat Control.
Idk, maybe people should start vandalising these cameras
This is unavoidable and the only way to mitigate the negatives is sousveillance.[0]
I reject claims by law enforcement that this will lead to making their lives less safe and that they will need to take steps to mitigate it including wearing masks and not giving out their names.[1]
In small towns of old every knew the police and judge, where they lived and which schools their children attended because their kids may have even sat next to them in class. This was fine and served as a moderating force for the worst impulses of law enforcement.
I don't think sousveillance will do a thing to avoid the following scenario:
The criminal underclass becomes even more 'under' as fairly large numbers (integer percentage of the population) of people are forced to avoid known camera locations. All of a sudden someone's kid can't take the bus to work/school because they have a failure to appear warrant stemming from apprehension in a flashmob or participation in a sideshow or some other 'lifestyle' crime associated with certain ethicities, which inevitably adds to the political spice level. Essentially everyone in certain areas will start wearing shiesties/masks, which is unlikely to ease tensions. Involvement with the criminal justice system will now carry even more of a 'weight' as being flagged by the system can happen anywhere, not just in traffic stops.
You'll have massive complaints when accountability comes crashing down on the significant population of Americans who are frequent fliers with the criminal justice system. This will be true even if cameras only alert on known faces in preloaded databases (e.g. active warrants), something that's going to be pretty hard to argue against with most of the standard arguments used against license plate readers — hard to argue a violation of privacy if it only alerts on known bad guys and doesn't keep any history.
And in terms of sousveillance, plenty of people would happily stand up and claim credit for a system that alerts only on known 'bad guys,' so deanonymizing them won't work. Further, it's really hard for politicians argue against it when the counterargument is "you literally want to protect known murderers, kidnappers, and child molesters from being apprehended."
When Yugoslavia disintegrated, and old ethnic hatreds flared up, neighbors for decades, would suddenly rat out or attack their neighbors. Same with Rwanda.
This was true of pretty much everyone in small towns of old, or even in city neighborhoods of old. Everyone knew each other, or at least knew a stranger when they saw one. People saw who was talking to whom, and gossiped about it.
Who gets to be anonymous and who doesn't? Cops or regular people? Mods or users?
And there's the separation between public and private conversation too. Where do we draw that line?
I had a post removed the other day. The moderator's identity (or psuedoidentity) remained hidden. Mine didn't of course. The conversation over his motive and actions remained hidden from public view too.
In Russia of all places, internet companies maintain the city webcams and locals can tune in on-demand. Had a Discord mate show it to me. Although from a hosting and technical standpoint, this is still squarely in the centralized ownership terroritory, but the idea is there.
Your chilling effect argument (2) is important, and it would be much stronger if it wasn’t sandwiched between a dubious assertion (1) and an irrelevant point (3).
How would it chill things that aren’t crimes without deterring actual crimes? This seems like a convenient set of assertions if you’re a priori against surveillance. You’re also missing the aspect of catching crime rather than deterring it.
The NYPD have used surveillance footage to go after people at protests before, and even people who proveably were just in the vicinity of a protest, but otherwise not participating. Frequently they issue basically bullshit tickets after the fact, things like blocking the sidewalk or breaking curfew after detaining protesters.
Do you really think there aren’t police forces that will use this in the furtherance of political goals?
Perhaps not coincidentally, that's the same thing that generally happens with gun control laws.
They're all built on a flawed principle - that criminals don't have and will not use workarounds. In reality, only law-abiding people have no workarounds.
Well... as someone living in a country with strict gun control laws who marvels at the dumb shit that goes on in America, I can say for certain that at least here the average run of the mill crazies don't have access to firearms and thank bloody goodness.
While men claiming to be ICE get to wear plainclothes and gaiters/face masks as they snatch people off the street without presenting identification or a warrant.
Let's not ignore though that there are some people with some control. These systems do not appear because of a small conspiracy but because a lot of people think they are OK and don't bother to understand the issues and organize to fight them.
I know an ex-policemen that is a good man but hated working in the police because the "public" was aggressive and were challenging them constantly (would not name the country or specific stories). From their point of view "automatization" would make police job safer and easier, and convincing them of the contrary has few chances.
The more "not-connected" is the society (with people not having a friend that is "a policeman", "a firefighter", "a teacher", etc), the more problems we will have no matter the technology...
Why would I want to be friends with someone who murders with impunity? Who considers “the public” someone to control? Who considers themselves above question?
> Why would I want to be friends with someone who murders with impunity? Who considers “the public” someone to control? Who considers themselves above question?
Because they're not all that way, and some of them still do genuinely try to "Protect and Serve"? And then you have the others mentioned "fire fighters", "teachers", etc, again many of whom are just tryin' to do some good in the world. Hunt all those good ones down and hold them up as examples of how the rest should be trying to do their jobs. Just complaining about the bad ones and acting like they're the only ones certainly doesn't make the situation any better for them or us.
Maybe they’re not all like that, but the person I responded to said one particular ex-cop was a “good man” who simply needed to ensure the public didn’t question him. This is not a good man.
It wasn't about simply questioning. I do not want to repeat his stories as I did not live them and it would defeat the purpose.
I just encourage you to meet people and talk to in person to them rather than think in "classes": "them", "the police", "etc". Some (or many?) are normal, reasonable people, and we need to find a solution together not only "fight" and "blame".
The Unites States just approved what, 20 billion, to build infrastructure for a new national police people identification unit? Just like the patriot act after 9/11, the giant new 'ICE' budget is going to transform America, and not in a good way. And that 20 billion additional for internal policing is never going away, just look at the TSA. And mission creep will set in, just look at FISA courts and 'parallel reconstruction' now being the norm and no one cares.
I tell my kids this isn't normal, this isn't what the US used to be like, but they don't know any different, so to them giving up just a little bit of this (like we did with the Patriot Act) isn't a big deal.
> I tell my kids this isn't normal, this isn't what the US used to be like, but they don't know any different, so to them giving up just a little bit of this (like we did with the Patriot Act) isn't a big deal.
That's why books like "1984" used to be required reading in grade-school Literature class (fully supported policy by the History and Civics class teachers), and the "messier" bits of our nation's history were taught openly as "mistakes to be learned from so that we never repeat them" way back when I was a kid and dinosaurs still roamed the Earth...
The idea was (as one teacher explained to me) that we would learn the dangers to watch out for, and as good little patriots, we'd always be ready to defend the freedoms of our great nation whether threatened from without or within.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. U.S., courts have generally given persons less rights to privacy when in public. States such as Illinois have an informed consent model of biometric data gathering.
closest thing we have workable day to day are gaiters (balaclavas imo don't work outside cold winter months, gaiters you can where in hot weather too - get it wet, it'll shed heat)
still doesn't help with the eyes. or your gait. and face masks have people rolling their eyes at you and likely will for the next 5-10 years, despite sorta working if you're sick.
"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success."
We may need laws that treat these cameras as something like a wiretap. They can be there streaming their data to data stores, but accessing that data would require warrants that are limited in scope. The data could be used for answering specific, legally justifiable questions, not for everyday surveillance and profiling.
e.g. It would be valid to use these cameras to answer who was at a crime scene, when, and where did they go that day. It would not be valid to reconstruct a web of everyday associations stretching back months for someone just because an officer didn't like the way they look.
I think we need to understand and accept that this stuff is inevitable as the technology gets cheaper. If the cops don’t do it themselves, private industry will do it for them and sell it or hand the data over as a “public service.” The only way out of this is to make an affirmative series of laws that make the construction of anything resembling a tracking database illegal and heavily-fined, but we’re not there. Even privacy-friendly Europe isn’t close to putting those restrictions on its police.
No private industry will do anything without it being profitable. Handing it over as a public service would mean they are making money with that data in other ways. What would be those other ways? I can't think of anything that's not dystopian hell, so maybe to make that not legal???
The answer is that these databases are hugely valuable for targeted advertising and marketing, and if they’re relatively cheap to build then that makes everything even easier. Law enforcement gets access because in most countries the law allows them to make data requests to existing companies, and “we aren’t going to help the cops solve a murder” is bad PR when you’ve already collected the relevant data.
https://www.flocksafety.com/devices/flock-nova
https://www.flocksafety.com/articles/flock-safety-secures-ma...
Sufficient tax breaks would likely do it.
This has already happened, and the police and others pay for access.
The police and government are also how they get permission, at least in London, so using law to prevent this ... doesn't seem like it'll be possible.
Although it does seem relevant. Given that these models run easily on phones 2 generations old (that's what they use in pubs, and if they use it in pubs, they use it everywhere), how will you stop it, even if you do get a law against it?
I think random hobbyists would get into this pretty soon, as the cost approaches zero.
There is no (good) way to stop things that are that easy to do.
You can do this with a raspi and a cheap security camera using open source software.
It is effectively already free.
I’m sort of curious why people haven’t already done this, when user fed tracking networks for planes and boats exist. Presumably the much more clear invasion of privacy is a part of it.
You make it punishable with heavy fines and long prison sentences as a deterant.
The War On Drugs has done that for half a century.
First, in the US this type of thing violates the fourth amendment as the Institute for Justice will prove in court with ALPRs. It could be set up such that it does not, but for whatever reason these companies are greedy and make it broad rather than narrow in scope.
Second, I just won't patronize your establishment, shopping center, or municipality if you do. I'd like to go to the UK, but because of this policy I will not. Menlo Park pushed back against ALPRs: I'll go there. I went to a different ski shop because the one closest to me has an ALPR. And so on.
How do you find out if a particular ski shop has ALPR in their car park?
You have no expectation of privacy in public. How does ALPR violate the 4th amendment if it takes place in public?
Genuine question, what's wrong with ALPR? (Coming from someone in the UK)
So, this may be different in the UK, but in the US a large majority of travel occurs in private cars, so omnipresence of ALPRs is close to collecting data on everybody and knowing what everybody is doing at all times.
One might assume from a game-theoretical perspective that this is no different from living in a village where essentially everyone knows everyone’s business, and the knowledge that that knowledge is mutual prevents people from acting badly with the information that they have. However, in the situation where a small minority of people have knowledge about everyone else, and not vice versa, this can give that minority unearned power over everyone else.
In practice, it doesn’t feel great. I hope this answered your question.
There are two key concerns:
1. Data is retained by a handful of companies. If it is leaked, you'll have a lot of information on people that is suddenly fair game for anyone including insurance companies, PI, home invaders.
2. In the US, I'm not concerned about local government as much as federal when it comes to the fourth amendment. Suppose you have a rogue potus. He sends the national guard in to Atlanta, Chicago, and Downingtown to take over the systems of these companies. Now you say, "well I'll just remove my license plate!" But these companies are cataloguing make, model, color, bumper stickers, dents; so you can take off your plate in a situation like that but they are going to still be able to track you with a high degree of certainty. People were shocked by South Korea declaring martial law -- we've become so spoiled taking these essential laws for granted. (Sorry I don't know enough about British law.)
If they don't send all license plate data to the internet there isn't an issue. But they do.
Reconstruction of social networks via physical movement metadata.
At the fictional extreme, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43817664#43818003
No shortage of non-fictional steps along that path.
> private industry will do it for them and sell it
This is already how it works in many cities.
One of the inevitable consequences of the legal conceit that images belong to the person who owns the camera, not the person who owns the face.
People do have publicity rights for their image being used in some contexts such as an advertisement. But not sure what rights to your image would even look like in the context of random public photographs or video in general.
We need laws that restrict the tech that police can use in public to the same tech that existed when Katz v. USA was decided (no expectation of privacy in public), only film cameras for public surveillance
we shoudl have had them in place 20 years ago and an "anti Patriot act" meant to prevent police or government following us around with cameras; it only gets easier as tech gets faster and cameras more universal. This is the stasi's wet dream and that should tell one all they need to know about why public surveillance by the government is a truly awful terrible no-very-good idea.
Turns out judges are for sale too
That was the NSAs legal theory, wasn't it? That they can collect all the data they want, but it only counts as "wiretapping" when a human looks at it.
It's a theory that turns my stomach, frankly.
A similar thing happened with automatic number place recognition. With no public debate the police built a nationwide network of ANPR cameras. The Information Commissioner opined that it was probably illegal. But rather than recommending prosecutions, he recommended that the law be changed to legitimise the police law breaking.
How are you harmed by it?
The neat thing about these databases is that you’ll never know. Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?
There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.
> Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?
Good news! Basically... yes! https://drndata.com
Lenders are already buying that data by the boatload along with everyone else throwing cameras up.
> Can a lender buy access to them?
In the UK (as in the case we're discussing)? No.
> How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop?
Like all other PNC access, this gets logged. Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired for abusing the PNC. Random officers cannot randomly look up plates on ANPR: only traffic police or more senior officers can and it, like every other access, gets logged.
The Data Protection Act allows us to find out who has been disciplined, demoted or fired, and the Met for example answer those.
> The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?
Data brokers do not get PNC data in the UK. And you're imagining an unnecessarily fantastical, conspiratorial explanation of a stalker who "somehow knew where" some woman would be, when stalkers clearly manage this adequately by, like, ordinary stalking skills (and are rarely unknown to their victims in the first place; they usually have knowledge that was volunteered or was acquired firsthand). Women don't need this imaginary scenario to feel fear: old-fashioned hiding in a car and waiting will do it. More high-tech: hiding an AirTag will do it. Following on Facebook will do it.
Also imagining third party violence that happens due to police data access is irrelevant: police officers themselves commit violence. Probably start there.
> There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.
They are in the UK.
Are face recognition cameras a bad thing in the hands of the UK police? Probably sometimes yes. But these conspiratorial hypotheses don't need airing.
FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.
These facial recognition cameras cannot be instantly used on some big national police surveillance mechanism because in essence no such system exists: the vast majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are not operated by police at all.
Most cameras are operated by local and regional councils (access for which the police would need to issue warrants or make detailed subject/time requests) or private businesses (ditto).
And most of the huge number of cameras the police imagine aren't connected to anything more complex than Ring. Even with Ring footage, British police find that if they want to use doorbell camera footage, it is faster to arrange a time to visit the owner or at best knock on the door of the householder and ask for it to be emailed or copied to an SD card. They do not have broad instant access, much less broad, instant, warrantless access.
The biggest risk is not outright abuse but malfeasance/misfeasance overuse, much more dull-witted, instant and humdrum: for example some of the operators perceive the desire not to walk past one of them to be evidence of criminal intent, and they use that as a justification for a stop and search.
In the U.S., law enforcement misusing their access to existing surveillance technologies is already reality. Enlarging the capabilities they have access to, when they're proven to misuse what they have, isn't ideal.
> Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired
So basically no punishment.
There are prosecutions too (the law has only relatively recently been tightened up):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-62729737
https://policeprofessional.com/news/pc-to-stand-trial-over-m...
But being sacked as a police officer in the UK is a fairly big deal. There's no Fraternal Order of Police to ease you into a cushy security job, and there's no macho culture of celebrating corrupt police. Being charged for misusing one's position would be pretty devastating. Policing in the UK is "by consent" and people don't take too kindly to stuff like this.
> FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.
Whilst the UK is not a «surveillance state» in the authoritarian sense, and they were certainly not the ones who invented CCTV, we must credit the British for pioneering the concept of ubiquitous CCTV as a tool of urban surveillance, which was complemented by a long-standing tradition of overzealous law enforcement – a legacy with undeniably robust historical roots. It is irrefutable that the UK was an early adopter of CCTV for security and policing purposes[0], much to the bemusement of the guests of Her Late Majesty and His Majesty now.
The British have certainly been instrumental – if not bestowing or spreading it (which is partially true, at least in the case of Australia and New Zealand), then at least influencing – in the widespread adoption of CCTV as a tool for urban surveillance in a large number of Western countries.
[0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/
Religious registries were a harmless little census thing in Germany... well until 1933 at least. Once the system is in place and the data collected you need very strong institutions to protect the people
The 23 and me fuck up is also a good example, data is forever, laws and morales are very temporary
They still log religion BTW, it's not really uncommon world wide.
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I don’t know for sure since we don’t know who has access to that data, but if I were an auto insurance company, I would love to know which of my customers tend to go out in inclement weather, or after midnight when the roads are statistically more dangerous.
Took me less than a minute to think of that example. I’m sure there’s more ways that information could be used against my interests.
But you don't need access to ANPR for this, particularly.
You just ask the customer to tell you, perhaps with one of those driving monitoring apps/devices that people use to lower premiums. Pretty commonplace now.
FWIW, having worked on car insurance applications, most insurance companies do not much care about microtargeting consumers in this way. Beyond looking at their claims history and the kind of car they are driving, it is a large-scale numbers game, and the way you know which customers, for example, tend to go out more at night when it is dangerous is to look at their age (more likely very young) and gender (more likely male). And then you just make them all pay more. There's no particular reason to get any more forensic than that; it's more costly and it probably doesn't deliver much extra value.
And if young drivers complain, "hey, I am an excellent safe driver, I've done my advanced test, and I don't take risks", you say: "Great. Use one of our driving monitoring apps or devices, prove it and we'll happily give you lower premiums!"
I could tell you a couple of horror stories I am not going to repeat on the internet because they are old news now and times have changed, but I really must say, it's not necessary to imagine what government data could be used for in the hands of insurance companies: it's much more likely that insurance companies will simply incentivise customers to hand over the data. People who want lower premiums will jump through all sorts of hoops to get them.
It goes against the principle of living in a democracy. The government can only use it in ways that are detrimental to a fair and just society. It's assuming everyone is a criminal rather than being innocent until you do a crime.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/brett-johnson-court-update...
Pretend you are in op sec for personal information and you'll quickly come up with a dozen examples. Ranging from individuals abusing access for nefarious reasons [1], institutions using it to reward hack kpis to what's happening in America with illegal ICE arrests.
Cities are banning face coverings too.
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-ski-mask-ban-bala...
At this rate they should just make everyone wear a big QR code containing our names and social security numbers on our shirts. A sort of license plate for people. Would save on processing power at least.
The US's first "Cop City", the $117m Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, officially opened April 29, 2025, despite years of opposition and a suppressed effort to get a referendum against it on the ballot. [0] Did not get any discussion here on HN at all. [1] characterizes it as "a massive, militarized police training compound in the Weelaunee Forest in the southeast outskirts of Atlanta" and lists its security partners as Flock Safety (automated license plate reader (ALPR) vendor, #58 fastest-growing company) and Motorola Solutions. [1] lists its Corporate and Nonprofit Foundation Donors and Sponsors: finance, real-estate companies, Acuity Brands, AT&T, Cushman & Wakefield, KPMG, McKesson, Invesco, Rollins, Synovus and others, Arthur Blank Foundation, The Bierenbaum Family Foundation, Connolly Family Foundation, The Goizueta Foundation, of Atlanta, Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, of Atlanta, O. Wayne Rollins Foundation, of Atlanta, J. Bulow Campbell Foundation and others.
(FYI the parent Guardian article is about England and Wales, not the US. There is a similar level of surveillance cameras but comparing use of force to the US, police in England and Wales only fatally shot 2 people in 2023/24 [2], 24 deaths in or following police custody and a further 60 fatalities defined as other deaths during or following police contact. for which [2b] is a report with demographics.)
[0]: "Atlanta’s controversial ‘Cop City’ training center opens after years of fighting" https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/at...
[1]: "The Companies and Foundations behind Cop City" https://afsc.org/companies-and-foundations-behind-cop-city
[2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/319287/deaths-during-or-...
[2b]: https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/our-work/research-and-stati...
I feel like law enforcement increasingly relies on automated surveillance , ie traffic cameras. But for brazen crime (ie duplicated plates) the fines and enforcement is spotty and weak. So the net result is very strict punishing justice for the regular public and a shrug of the shoulders toward determined criminals
Yes, this is policing. It's easier to hassle normal people who won't be a problem.
In my area, the police are all over teenagers for loitering in parking lots on the weekends, but do nothing about the very obvious drug dealers in the local trailer park.
This is intentional. "For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law".
Technology seems destined to bring everything to light. My only wish is that those in positions of power are the first to be dragged into the light.
Public facial recognition and ALPRS database. It would be chaos.
Power is protected.
So, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Bodycams on congressmen/women and senators? If you're on the job, the bodycam stays on.
This will make murder mystery shows harder to write. Even now they usually put in some line about how they don’t have traffic camera coverage in the critical area, and they ignore getting location data from suspects’ phones.
I have always thought that futuristic police state movies and shows underestimate how oppressive a fully capable, automated surveillance apparatus could be.
Movies like Minority Report try to show the surveillance state as being a struggle to overcome, but it is still always too easy. Computers don’t get distracted, scale perfectly, and can run 24-7. You can’t just sneak away with your head down, because the machines would have tracked you into a place, would know exactly who is in every building, and would be able to associate the person exiting a building with the person who went in. They wont forget.
Look at how quickly the cops tracked Luigi Mangione. It’s not clear how much face recognition (as opposed to manual search) contributed to that, but even for a person who wore a mask, all it took was a slip up where he took the mask off in one place.
I am not saying this is a bad thing in the case of a pre-planned murder. But it does make it obvious how hard it might be to evade notice in the future, assuming you are doing it for more legitimate privacy reasons.
If you go into a building and change clothes, they will not remember. Of course, we're assuming that the place you went into does not have cameras accessible to the system. At some point, building codes/permits will start requiring cameras specifically to feed into this system.
If the system sees someone exit a building and that person does not match someone the system saw enter the building, the person could be flagged and tracked as possibly being someone else who entered the building. Once the system accounts for everyone else who entered the building (by seeing when they exit), the system would be able to correlate that the unknown person who exited is the same as the only unaccounted for person who exited
If that building in an apartment building? Someone from an apartment building might not enter before leaving on the same day. How far back in the camera's history does the system look for that person entering?
This is the point... computers can watch 24/7 and never forget or get distracted. The system could look weeks back, and will never forget a person.
until someone finds that certain cameras are unavailable, or that something has obstructed the view for a significant enough time to cause reasonable doubt
Storing video footage from weeks back does not seem feasible. I assume footage would get overwritten after a specific time period.
It doesn’t need to store video, just data about where the person is and there various identifying data… the system uses the recordings to generate fingerprints for everyone, then just stores data about where you were/are.
Store hashes of the detected faces. Or store low framerate video, just occasional frames where people are detected
Changing clothes does nothing against gait recognition.
Change your shoes with a rock/tack in one of them. Tie your laces together. There's all sorts of ways to change your gait
Well, then the system could flag you because it doesn't know who you are. Someone walks out of a building with a gait that doesn't match the gait of anyone known to have entered the building. It would follow the person to the next building and the next, until it figures out who they are via the process of elimination (or if it see you go back to your normal gait). Then, the system would note (and store forever) that you have multiple gaits, and would never fall for the trick again.
you have way more confidence in AI than I do. "never fall for the trick again" bwahahaha. it can't even tell the same answer twice, or tell you the correct answer the first time for everything.
This wouldn't have to be AI. I think you are underestimating how good tracking systems already are, and will continue to improve, and become cheaper and cheaper to deploy.
I'm sorry, you must be new here. Everything here must be AI
All of which give you an abnormal gait that the system should immediately flag for immediate inspection as someone trying to hide their gait.
In Los Angeles, a firebug sets a morning fire. 4 hours later and 50 miles away, they set another fire. The firebug is apprehended late in the afternoon. Good policework, I wonder how they did that. /s
AI generated deepfakes solve this you can't trust the cameras footage now
This isn't really surprising from the UK. If you go back 15-20 years, taxing a vehicle to drive on public roads used to involve displaying a "Tax Disc" in your windscreen, on the off-side of the vehicle.
They abolished this system in 2014 [1] because they'd long since reached saturation of permanent Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) readers [2] from >11000 cameras on UK roads, and scanning over 50 million vehicles per day.
It's also common to have 'Average Speed' systems on major roads and even country roads where the accident rate exceeds a threshold defined by the local councils. Those will issue you a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) and points on your licence for a moving violation if you exceed the speed limit. Beyond the 'Average Speed' infrastructure is a giant number of fixed cameras which measure speed and capture imagery of your vehicle, number plate, and the driver and automatically issue the PCN for speeding, and mobile vans operated by the authorities and deployed anywhere they consider a "hotspot".
All of this costs you money immediately to pay the PCN, costs you money over time because insurers hike their rates, and after 2-4 violations in 36 months, can result in you losing your ability to drive and trigger an extended "retake driving test" (after your disqualification period).
This is much more draconian than the United States where in many states a moving violation (like a speeding infraction) will only be processed by a policeman pulling you over for a chat.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vehicle-tax-changes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
>This is much more draconian than the United States
There are also very big differences in road casualty rates[0]
The UK has 2.61 road deaths/100,000 inhabitants, 3.8/billion vehicle-km.
The US has 12.84 and 6.9.
The US dropping to the UK rate would be a difference of around 35,000 lives per year.
States vary a lot[1]. The lowest is:
5.7/100,000 for Rhode Island 7.1/Billion Vehicle-km for Massachusetts
Highest:
26.2/100,000 for Mississippi 20.8/Billion Vehicle-km for South Carolina.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_road_de...
> Those will issue you a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) and points on your licence for a moving violation if you exceed the speed limit
That seems good? Either we think speed limit laws should be enforced or we don’t.
In the bay area where the speed limit seems to be infinity the effective speed limit is around 80mph even if the posted limit is 65.
With that battery of cameras and seemingly inevitable negative outcomes for speeders, it's unusual how many people continue to speed blatantly.
I find it funny that the people that are outraged by ULEZ cameras as “control of the state” are always silent on issues such as facial recognition or Chat Control.
Idk, maybe people should start vandalising these cameras
What is this slippery stuff on this slope?
https://archive.is/2wkD0
Will they ban all types of face coverings? I couldn't imagine this happening in the UK, it's too culturally sensitive.
In which case, what good does it do?
Plenty of criminals don’t bother covering their faces. Even when they plan their crime in advance and know there are cameras.
What about gait recognition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_of_Silly_Walks
https://xkcd.com/1105/
Yes, except "law" enforcement. In scare quotes because there will be no law.
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This is unavoidable and the only way to mitigate the negatives is sousveillance.[0]
I reject claims by law enforcement that this will lead to making their lives less safe and that they will need to take steps to mitigate it including wearing masks and not giving out their names.[1]
In small towns of old every knew the police and judge, where they lived and which schools their children attended because their kids may have even sat next to them in class. This was fine and served as a moderating force for the worst impulses of law enforcement.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance [1] https://calgaryherald.com/news/calgary-police-service-doxing...
I don't think sousveillance will do a thing to avoid the following scenario:
The criminal underclass becomes even more 'under' as fairly large numbers (integer percentage of the population) of people are forced to avoid known camera locations. All of a sudden someone's kid can't take the bus to work/school because they have a failure to appear warrant stemming from apprehension in a flashmob or participation in a sideshow or some other 'lifestyle' crime associated with certain ethicities, which inevitably adds to the political spice level. Essentially everyone in certain areas will start wearing shiesties/masks, which is unlikely to ease tensions. Involvement with the criminal justice system will now carry even more of a 'weight' as being flagged by the system can happen anywhere, not just in traffic stops.
You'll have massive complaints when accountability comes crashing down on the significant population of Americans who are frequent fliers with the criminal justice system. This will be true even if cameras only alert on known faces in preloaded databases (e.g. active warrants), something that's going to be pretty hard to argue against with most of the standard arguments used against license plate readers — hard to argue a violation of privacy if it only alerts on known bad guys and doesn't keep any history.
And in terms of sousveillance, plenty of people would happily stand up and claim credit for a system that alerts only on known 'bad guys,' so deanonymizing them won't work. Further, it's really hard for politicians argue against it when the counterargument is "you literally want to protect known murderers, kidnappers, and child molesters from being apprehended."
Not sure how well that would work.
When Yugoslavia disintegrated, and old ethnic hatreds flared up, neighbors for decades, would suddenly rat out or attack their neighbors. Same with Rwanda.
This was true of pretty much everyone in small towns of old, or even in city neighborhoods of old. Everyone knew each other, or at least knew a stranger when they saw one. People saw who was talking to whom, and gossiped about it.
Who gets to be anonymous and who doesn't? Cops or regular people? Mods or users?
And there's the separation between public and private conversation too. Where do we draw that line?
I had a post removed the other day. The moderator's identity (or psuedoidentity) remained hidden. Mine didn't of course. The conversation over his motive and actions remained hidden from public view too.
And that seems bad to me.
So ya, that line.
The sousveillance GP suggests seems to address exactly that kind of asymmetry, if even just partially. Or do I misunderstand what you're getting at?
People will be more likely to carry surveillance capitalism devices than devices that store data for some idea of public good.
This world being us closer to the solution: build ecosystems where data is stored in s way that is owned by the community rather than a company.
In Russia of all places, internet companies maintain the city webcams and locals can tune in on-demand. Had a Discord mate show it to me. Although from a hosting and technical standpoint, this is still squarely in the centralized ownership terroritory, but the idea is there.
Tyranny can always come. All you can do is be ready for it to come to you.
This will achieve 3 things:
1. No reduction in crime
2. A huge chilling effect on the innocent population, further subduing people and paving the way for more authoritarianism.
3. Large amounts of profit for a private company
I don't like these cameras, but it's worth noting they have had some use:
> The Met arrested 587 people in 2024 with the assistance of the live facial recognition cameras of which 424 were charged with offences.
Of those arrested, 58 were registered sex offenders in serious breach of their conditions and 38 have been charged.
How many people were tracked how many times to achieve that result?
How many of those arrests were possible ONLY by the use of these cameras?
The denominator very much matters here.
Absolutely, so that needs to be the discussion — a claim that the cameras achieve nothing isn't correct and would be ignored by politicians etc.
Your chilling effect argument (2) is important, and it would be much stronger if it wasn’t sandwiched between a dubious assertion (1) and an irrelevant point (3).
How would it chill things that aren’t crimes without deterring actual crimes? This seems like a convenient set of assertions if you’re a priori against surveillance. You’re also missing the aspect of catching crime rather than deterring it.
The NYPD have used surveillance footage to go after people at protests before, and even people who proveably were just in the vicinity of a protest, but otherwise not participating. Frequently they issue basically bullshit tickets after the fact, things like blocking the sidewalk or breaking curfew after detaining protesters.
Do you really think there aren’t police forces that will use this in the furtherance of political goals?
https://apnews.com/article/nypd-george-floyd-protests-settle...
https://www.nyclu.org/press-release/face-lawsuit-nypd-ends-r...
Perhaps not coincidentally, that's the same thing that generally happens with gun control laws.
They're all built on a flawed principle - that criminals don't have and will not use workarounds. In reality, only law-abiding people have no workarounds.
Well... as someone living in a country with strict gun control laws who marvels at the dumb shit that goes on in America, I can say for certain that at least here the average run of the mill crazies don't have access to firearms and thank bloody goodness.
While men claiming to be ICE get to wear plainclothes and gaiters/face masks as they snatch people off the street without presenting identification or a warrant.
False positives for this tech is absurdly high and law enforcement treats it like it’s perfect. That’s enough of a reason to make it illegal.
Let's not ignore though that there are some people with some control. These systems do not appear because of a small conspiracy but because a lot of people think they are OK and don't bother to understand the issues and organize to fight them.
I know an ex-policemen that is a good man but hated working in the police because the "public" was aggressive and were challenging them constantly (would not name the country or specific stories). From their point of view "automatization" would make police job safer and easier, and convincing them of the contrary has few chances.
The more "not-connected" is the society (with people not having a friend that is "a policeman", "a firefighter", "a teacher", etc), the more problems we will have no matter the technology...
It's a big problem that the people who police a communitily are frequently not a part of the community.
Is it? Wouldn't corruption be more likely if policing were generational in a small town?
Why would I want to be friends with someone who murders with impunity? Who considers “the public” someone to control? Who considers themselves above question?
> Why would I want to be friends with someone who murders with impunity? Who considers “the public” someone to control? Who considers themselves above question?
Because they're not all that way, and some of them still do genuinely try to "Protect and Serve"? And then you have the others mentioned "fire fighters", "teachers", etc, again many of whom are just tryin' to do some good in the world. Hunt all those good ones down and hold them up as examples of how the rest should be trying to do their jobs. Just complaining about the bad ones and acting like they're the only ones certainly doesn't make the situation any better for them or us.
Maybe they’re not all like that, but the person I responded to said one particular ex-cop was a “good man” who simply needed to ensure the public didn’t question him. This is not a good man.
It wasn't about simply questioning. I do not want to repeat his stories as I did not live them and it would defeat the purpose.
I just encourage you to meet people and talk to in person to them rather than think in "classes": "them", "the police", "etc". Some (or many?) are normal, reasonable people, and we need to find a solution together not only "fight" and "blame".
The Unites States just approved what, 20 billion, to build infrastructure for a new national police people identification unit? Just like the patriot act after 9/11, the giant new 'ICE' budget is going to transform America, and not in a good way. And that 20 billion additional for internal policing is never going away, just look at the TSA. And mission creep will set in, just look at FISA courts and 'parallel reconstruction' now being the norm and no one cares.
I tell my kids this isn't normal, this isn't what the US used to be like, but they don't know any different, so to them giving up just a little bit of this (like we did with the Patriot Act) isn't a big deal.
> I tell my kids this isn't normal, this isn't what the US used to be like, but they don't know any different, so to them giving up just a little bit of this (like we did with the Patriot Act) isn't a big deal.
That's why books like "1984" used to be required reading in grade-school Literature class (fully supported policy by the History and Civics class teachers), and the "messier" bits of our nation's history were taught openly as "mistakes to be learned from so that we never repeat them" way back when I was a kid and dinosaurs still roamed the Earth...
The idea was (as one teacher explained to me) that we would learn the dangers to watch out for, and as good little patriots, we'd always be ready to defend the freedoms of our great nation whether threatened from without or within.
Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Carpenter v. U.S., courts have generally given persons less rights to privacy when in public. States such as Illinois have an informed consent model of biometric data gathering.
too bad im not a female who wears a burka.
closest thing we have workable day to day are gaiters (balaclavas imo don't work outside cold winter months, gaiters you can where in hot weather too - get it wet, it'll shed heat)
still doesn't help with the eyes. or your gait. and face masks have people rolling their eyes at you and likely will for the next 5-10 years, despite sorta working if you're sick.
What say all of you who worked on the AI that powers this?
"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success."
- Robert J. Oppenheimer
If they didn't, others would have.
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