Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects • Hacker News Board

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#101

Post by pmlnr » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:12 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #3

I get why human rights orgs would want to speak against this technology, from a Western philosophy and law perspective. China does not have the same philosophical or legal lineage. They will have to find out on their own whether the cons outweigh the pros. Theoretically, if the system is not corrupted by misinformation (false or incomplete information), it has the potential to keep the streets free of wanted criminal…

> Theoretically, if the system is not corrupted

Just like you, I believe we will achieve this some day. The problem is that if the system is corrupt - and it very much looks like it is, anywhere in the world, not just in China - these tools allow that corrupt system to live on, without correction.

Technology has long passed the advance of society and individual human minds, and that is a major problem, for which I have no solution for - nobody does.

Please let society catch up, let basic income become reality (essentially let us not worry about lowest level of the Maslow Pyramid), and only after that have this level of control. There is an incredible difference between a thief who steals food because of hunger, and someone who steals from banks for the thrill and fun, but this level of tech will only be useful on the first, who'd instead deserve help.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#102

Post by test1235 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:23 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #23

akira2501 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's so different about mounting it on a police officer's head? I'm not even mad at the implementation in general, the article implies that the officer first identifies a suspicious person and then engages the technology to make an identification. However, it's probably due to the fact that China is a country where your religion can get you arrested or kidnapped by the state.. so, it's still unsettling.

still, it's not like they couldn't do it before, with security checkpoints and face recognition cameras everywhere.

So why bother with this new tech? Obviously so they can do it more.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#103

Post by zeep » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:26 AM UTC

globuous wrote: post #6

Rob Lake's comment is pretty spot on (I'm taking the liberty to repost w/o his authorization): ""The app brings up the suspect’s vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address." Presumably version 2 of the app will also pop up the person's social credit score." That being said, this will definitely come to the west sooner or later. I mean, doesn't London already have cameras at every street corner f…

In the US, many counties/cites have license plate readers installed already... Not quite as bad as facial recognition but....

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#104

Post by gideonparanoid » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:39 AM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #58

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #46

All these reports have the feelings of small rumblings or rumors of purges and famines that leaked out of the Soviet Union in the 30’s. The dismissal of all of them due to China’s size and growth really strengthens the analogy too. Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I mean the definition for loitering is so broad that alone gets most people. The ad-t…

> Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I think that is the big issue we will see and have seen recently. Surveillance tools are better than ever in history. Many times, laws were created as deterrents to some behavior, that maybe shouldn't be laws, because it wasn't easy to nab everyone doing it. Back then cops, judges and more weren't as locked into f…

Were that the case, there's unlikely to be the resources to act on every crime. However, having some 'dirt' on everyone means that it'd be easy to take action on any particular 'problem' person.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#105

Post by gideonparanoid » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

zeep wrote: post #103

globuous wrote: post #6

Rob Lake's comment is pretty spot on (I'm taking the liberty to repost w/o his authorization): ""The app brings up the suspect’s vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address." Presumably version 2 of the app will also pop up the person's social credit score." That being said, this will definitely come to the west sooner or later. I mean, doesn't London already have cameras at every street corner f…

In the US, many counties/cites have license plate readers installed already... Not quite as bad as facial recognition but....

We have ANPR[0] in the UK. Makes it very easy to follow vehicles around the country on main roads.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recogni...

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#106

Post by b6 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #11

allthenews wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe that the will of the Chinese Government is representative of the will of the Chinese citizenry?

Yes and no. By that I mean, I understand they don't have a political say. They don't get to "vote on the issues" like others might [the party makes those decisions]. At the same time, I would tend to think if you put the question to your Chinese on the street over there they will favor this technology (and its use) with a few conscientious objectors who will be few and far between.

The people you ask will likely give very different answers to a stranger than to someone they know well.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#107

Post by charlysl » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #46

All these reports have the feelings of small rumblings or rumors of purges and famines that leaked out of the Soviet Union in the 30’s. The dismissal of all of them due to China’s size and growth really strengthens the analogy too. Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I mean the definition for loitering is so broad that alone gets most people. The ad-t…

Privacy is about individual freedom, and in all societies there is a tradeoff between this and social cohesion. True liberalism aspires to achieve a stable society with minimal encroachment on personal freedom.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#108

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 11:52 AM UTC

Face recognition exists, is becoming trivial and this has implications.

I saw a demo of sorts about 6 years ago, and heard rumors of various research projects @ FB. Banner tracking in malls that link banner "views" to "conversions" using a camera armed cash registers. Hi-res cameras on streets that collect data like wildlife tracking collars. A stadium cam that can id all the people at a match. A smart building that knows who's inside it & where. Casino cams that dispatch cocktails waitresses to VIPs wherever they are. Casinos've been using face recognition since early days, for persona non grata identification. Coffee shop loyalty stamps. School attendance. Prison monitoring, with relationship graphs and ML conspiracy detection. Traffic Analytics....

There are a ton of applications, commercial, security, intelligence or general nosiness. IMO, the best way of thinking about face recognition is: Google Analytics will now work for physical reality.

All this stuff just exists. FB (and many others) have an enormous, proprietary set of tagged photos. You could probably create your own set just scraping social media and google image search. Some applications don't even need it. Face recognition works. Cameras are high-res & cheap. The software is fast. Customers want it. It will happen.

We (our generation) has not shown the political will (or competence) required to create new rights and limitations on power sufficient to moderate this kind of technology, thus far. The only thing preventing wide-scale & unlimited use is creepiness feelings and that is temporary.

Putting the technology onto AR robocop glasses is just an illustrative way of demonstrating implications. If this is well implemented, every police force will want it in some form. Fugitives are needles-in-haystacks and I suspect this will turn up a ton of them. It's probably a genuinely useful police tool, unlike the dragnet digital snooping they do.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#109

Post by mahrain » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 12:10 PM UTC

drawkbox wrote: post #58

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #46

All these reports have the feelings of small rumblings or rumors of purges and famines that leaked out of the Soviet Union in the 30’s. The dismissal of all of them due to China’s size and growth really strengthens the analogy too. Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I mean the definition for loitering is so broad that alone gets most people. The ad-t…

> Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I think that is the big issue we will see and have seen recently. Surveillance tools are better than ever in history. Many times, laws were created as deterrents to some behavior, that maybe shouldn't be laws, because it wasn't easy to nab everyone doing it. Back then cops, judges and more weren't as locked into f…

The Dutch police issued 9.2 million traffic fines on a population of 17 million. Most of this is a fully automated system from connected speed traps, to an 'invoicing system'.

I feel that if these things are fining apparently widespread behavior at such a scale the laws should change.

Last week a judge ruled that the Student Loan administration can use mandatory personal RFID equipped train tickets to detect scholarship fraud.

A mechanism no-one but the strongest privacy advocates had imagined would be used in this way.

Re: Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects

#110

Post by arkh » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 12:59 PM UTC

> The system is part of China’s efforts to build a digital surveillance system able to use a variety of biometric data — from photos and iris scans to fingerprints — to keep close tabs on the movements of the entire population.

Currently in some country people pay to live in cities or neighborhood with better security theatre. I can imagine 50 years from now when you'll be recorded and traced everywhere people will pay for the privilege of living in closed neighborhood with no sensor inside.