Not surprised by this move, the UK is preparing to silence dissent, for a very simple reason: tough times ahead. Guardian reported yesterday the UK might face food shortages, their young are increasingly burdened with supporting the triple lock through their taxes, and people are making exit plans rathert than be milked for their hard work.
London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
391–400 of 511 posts
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the thing that absolutely fucks me off about all of this, is that we don't even get a lawful society in exchange for all of this. On one hand, there's no privacy anywhere. On the other - have your car stolen or a bike? House broken into? Phone snatched out of your hands? Good luck getting anyone to care about this in the slightest. You'd think with all the surveillance tech we'd be living in a nightmare panoptico…
I mean, violent crime and homicide is essentially at all time lows (or at least since we all started living in dense cities after the war) in the UK.
That has been the trend for decades in lots of other developed countries as well. It doesn't have to be in any way because of increased means of surveillance.
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes actual crack is pretty popular among that demographic, the UK has a very good relatively low cost supply of cocaine. The classic combo is Afghan buj + crack but synthetic opioids are starting to make an appearance now the CIA isn’t producing heroin anymore. It’s nowhere near as bad as the west coast of the US obviously, that’s a whole other level. I would normally use a different word than crackhead but I thought…
Interesting. I always thought it was opioids that were the main problem in Europe.
No, it's metric. Our schools are flooded with 30cm rulers. You'll see kids as young as 8 with 330ml drinks. Some even count in decimal - there is no end in sight
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#394It’s a moot point. I’m saddened at the invasion of privacy and the intrusion on an individual’s civil liberties, but anonymous travel on the London Underground died when they made bank cards and contactless the primary way to get through the barriers. I’m not saying that “this doesn’t matter because it’s slightly worse than before”. I’m saying the frog has been boiling for a long time. I don’t want people being surpr…
> Being an anonymous citizen in the UK has been an impossibility for at least 20 years.
Its still just about possible in rural areas as long you dont go into cities or on motorways.
When they outlaw cash that will be the nail in the coffin.
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I wanted to steal something, surely I'd do it before getting to the self checkout counter.
Primary theft at them is where you scan N cheap items and just bag Y expensive item without scan and walk out, plausible deniability/psychology at play, a lot less deniability if you shove a whisky bottle down your trousers.
In Spanish supermarkets, it's tins of shellfish in the anti-theft boxes. In English ones, it's razor blades and menstrual pads. Spirits are often tagged in both countries, but not as consistently as the mejillones and the tampons.
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
About 8 or 9 years ago I saw a self checkout pos provider demo a camera/screen system that would do basic images processing constantly to try and take pictures when people are clearly visible. A couple of low res, low colour palette, cropped images per user are much much easier to store. This was at a security conference.
Fair enough, sounds like a reasonable compromise, but I still question the entire premise of having these cameras in the first place, especially since they do not film the area where items are being handled. Tallying a loss of stock to a specific person would seem to be really quite difficult to do with only a set of photographs of the faces of everyone who utilised the self-checkouts within a certain period.
Which is again, a fair question with a reasonable answer:
Stores have loss 'prevention' (more like tracking) software which the security team can use. They are able to attach images of people stealing, but its hard to identify a person from a camera 15ft away when they are bent over a shelf; so they attach images of them stealing and of them passing through choke points - e.g. checkouts and entrances.
Tying them together is laborious, and is currently in its own little model rush - it's a technique called re-identification.
However, the next question is why doesn't it happen in practice? Well the stores have found police to be uniquely annoying on that they won't arrest and the state won't prosecute despite clear evidence.
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely the deterrent is the possibility of being caught? If you're more likely to be caught due to the surveillance, logic would dictate that it's the greater deterrent.
My brother had his window smashed and bag stolen under a cctv camera in London. The police never even investigated. I would hazard to say that wouldn't have happened had a police officer been stood there instead. Some major shops in the UK have photographs of police officers on the door, because it reduces theft!
I think this says more about dwindling police budgets than about the efficacy of surveillance or bobbies on the beat.
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#398What if I wear adversarial makeup which fucks up my facial vectors ?
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called anarchy-tyranny, where the government fails to enforce basic laws and keep people safe from real criminals (anarchy), but instead uses its power to tightly control, tax, and punish ordinary, law-abiding citizens (tyranny). There are various conspiratorial theories for why this happens but I think the simplest explanation is that an ineffective government cannot deal with criminals and goes after the easie…
Why anarchy = criminal?
"Anarchy" in that phrase is fucking wrong. Unsophisticated people assume that anarchy means "no rules", which is false. It means no rulers, not no rules. (More precisely, it means no non-rulers.)
A better term would be "warlordism", if you want to emphasise the lawlessness of the financial class, or maybe "feudalism" to emphasise that the financial class and the political class are congruent.
Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces
#400The hubris for surveillance in UK is staggering, what will they do next - roll out the social score system so you'll be banned from taking the tube if you express too much non sanctioned thoughts online?
> The hubris for surveillance in UK is staggering
Yet the UK doesnt have private systems such as Flock like the US does.