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

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

#131

Post by wu-ikkyu » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

meri_dian wrote: post #50

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…

You yourself are admitting that terrible evil can be done by governments without any of the advanced technology that some fret over. It's not about the technology. It's about the will of the government. Think about all the horrendous evils rendered upon the citizenry of early nations and empires in the distant past. No advanced technology there. Just a twisted view of right and wrong. What this tells us is that regar…

Why are you so eager to ignore the effects of technology? You'll notice in history that the biggest wars/massacres were committed with revolutionary technologies.

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

#132

Post by RepressedEmu » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #130

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…

This is exactly what comes up when the police run a plate. The only difference is facial recognition vs numbers and letters. Querying for more invasive information such as medical history, sexual orientation, online accounts, "undesirable people" they are acquainted with) is a simple as a DB connection string and a select statement.

Except that not everyone has a license plate but everyone has a face. So its a much bigger intrusion.

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

#133

Post by RepressedEmu » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:13 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #95

rikkus wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After watching various films where organisations are able to pull up feeds from cameras absolutely anywhere in the world, I'm wondering how long it will be before there's a mandatory internet connection and back door on all 'security' cameras sold.

The backdoors are already there. Most surveillance cameras are sold with hardcoded user accounts.

Checkout Shodan where you can look into thousands of cams around the world from parking garages, shops, and even baby cams.

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

#134

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #116

drawkbox wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> If we had arrested everyone that used cannabis half the > country at least would have a record. That idea seems deeply troubling if you're a White American. Meanwhile, this is the daily reality of Black Americans, because the police have been systematically enforcing these laws against people of colour. Now we face a world where that same disproportionate enforcement may be applied to Democrats, or the young (who d…

Blacks and Latinos are already overwhelming Democrats... And the overzealous law enforcement is usually at the hands of Republicans.

Not sure why you feel the need to throw political affiliation into the conversation.

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

#135

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:31 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #125

mahrain wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scholars…

>I feel that if these things are fining apparently widespread behavior at such a scale the laws should change. You don't even need the law itself. If you've got the infrastructure to fine everyone who exceeds the speed limit in a place that it's not a big stretch to use dynamic speed limits set to the 90th percentile speed with only a little bit of lag.

Or just force cars to only be able to drive the speed limit. I don't like this option, but I feel like it's better than turning citizens into rolling ATMs.

Eventually, law enforcement will become dependent upon the speeding revenue, but the people will wise up and slow down to avoid the fines. Then how are they going to replace the lost revenue? Especially if it is "needed" because of onerous contract termination agreements agreed to.

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

#136

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

subsubsub wrote: post #84

smackay wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If everyone has a record then they can be detained whenever the authorities feel like it.

Do governments who use this kind of 'selective justice' really need the pretext of an actual law being broken? I think what carlmr is saying is quite relevant to more democratic countries.

Look up 'mortgage headshot'. It's a type of fraud that is very common, but that is only prosecuted when it's necessary to compel a person to work with law enforcement.

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

#137

Post by deadbunny » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

noonespecial wrote: post #128

deadbunny wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 0.01% decide to lock up 100% of their political opponents supporters. The War on Drugs was started by Nixon to target hippies and blacks, those who supported his opponents. I can imagine a War on X being brewed up by either side to do the same if they have the means to automatically enforce it.

Ahh but that we can actually call "wrong" the former is "democracy".

I'm pretty sure Nixon was elected in a democracy.

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

#138

Post by chr1 » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #117

dalbasal wrote: post #108

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…

A bit of a strong idea, but what if we just outright say that face recognition is unethical? I have a hard time finding any use that is positive for society. Advertising and surveillance. Given that, what if we try to convince as many people as possible to not research this tech, nor work for any company working on this. You wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer, maybe the same metrics need to be applied to adtech…

You can't make people forget technologies you don't like selectively. The more we advance in adjacent technologies (like in autonomous driving) the easier it will become to advance in face recognition, to the point where just a tiny group of people can develop it.

Fighting technology with artificial bans have never worked, and privacy or ethics based arguments won't work now either. The only hope is better technology of controlling the government: better ways to vote, better ways to monitor financial dealings of politicians.

If, people lose their privacy, but government loses it's privacy too, ordinary people will be the ones who benefit the most.

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

#139

Post by rebuilder » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

meri_dian wrote: post #50

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…

You yourself are admitting that terrible evil can be done by governments without any of the advanced technology that some fret over. It's not about the technology. It's about the will of the government. Think about all the horrendous evils rendered upon the citizenry of early nations and empires in the distant past. No advanced technology there. Just a twisted view of right and wrong. What this tells us is that regar…

I worry that technology can leave no room for anything except dystopias. For example, it seems privacy is going to become a thing of the past, and there's little we can do about it short of smashing the looms.

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

#140

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Feb 08, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #117

dalbasal wrote: post #108

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…

A bit of a strong idea, but what if we just outright say that face recognition is unethical? I have a hard time finding any use that is positive for society. Advertising and surveillance. Given that, what if we try to convince as many people as possible to not research this tech, nor work for any company working on this. You wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer, maybe the same metrics need to be applied to adtech…

Would that be useful?

First, arms industries and even mercenaries don't seem to have much difficulty operating. So, whatever boycotts individuals might practice don't really do much. Even tobacco companies find employees, and no one likes them.

Second, we (in practice, eg eu cookie laws) rarely define these effectively. Is face recognition the problem? Let's ID people based on some other markers. You'd probably need very broad, principled, constituion-esque language. It is illegal to de-anonymise, store data or somesuch. My guess is that this will be almost impossible politically with bootleggers and Baptist's left right and centre.

There are just very few examples of what we would need, in modern legislation.