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Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

arstechnica.com

71–80 of 92 posts

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#71
post #11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Declare facial recognition inadmissible, and its use will drop off. no, they will just use it for parallel construction instead

But that's at least illegal. If it's inadmissible, they won't likely get funded. And if they try that, it's fruit of the poisonous tree and a good lawyer should be able to ferret that out. I didn't say it's a perfect solution. But it might at least help.

> But that's at least illegal.

What makes you think that?

What do you think about how the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 applies to parallel construction of evidence?

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "social credit" system does the UK have? We don't even have identity cards...

Maybe gp is referring to the extremely classist nature of UK culture? One of my best friends who got his Bachelors in the US but then did his masters at Cambridge explained to me that egalitarianism basically doesn't exist in reality there. They denied him his application for PhD, while the professor who read it stole his idea and made it his own... and this was to a dual American/British citizen. When I visited, I w…

> for example, imsi catching in The City stole my GPS signal for a few hours at one point

I'm going to need an explanation of how you think GPS signals are mediated by an IMSI catcher, because they aren't.

Maybe you're thinking of the A-GPS information that cellular providers typically send? Missing that won't harm anyone's GPS, it will just take a bit longer for a first fix.

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#74

When facial recognition is ubiquitous we will all wear masks.

Okay, let's jump forward in time a little ...

When FR is ubiquitous, we'll need a different mask for each section of the journey to prevent being tracked end to end.

Also Gait-DNA will soon be ready to implement, of course it'll be tested on existing "footage" first ... then it's not a huge jump to mapping your current disguised journey (say from home to work, at regular intervals) to some saved recordings from when you we're unmasked.

Fine for those who can change their routine perhaps, but less so for the great majority.

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#75
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I smell a market for facial prosthetics (good ones) and sunglasses. Maybe large hats.

They'll simply pass a law making disguises/obfuscation illegal in public. Because why would anybody who's not a criminal or up to no good have any issue with the tracking, right?

already a law where i live

https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-16/chapter-1...

for historical context, this was not passed historically to combat the KKK, who have a storied history in this state. Nor was it passed under national security hysteria. It was passed very recently, to arrest guy fawke's mask wearers at the Anonymous Million Mask March.

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll simply pass a law making disguises/obfuscation illegal in public. Because why would anybody who's not a criminal or up to no good have any issue with the tracking, right?

Plastic surgery will likely remain legal. I could see a future where people avoid recognition by simply changing their features like a custom video game character.

Plastic surgery might remain legal, but you would likely be required to submit before and after photos. Making it pointless.

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#77
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This not a trial, in terms of what a real trial should be. It is a deliberate wedge strategy that has been employed at least once in the UK before. (I couldn’t find a source right now, will report back when I can.) The goal is to be able to say to higher powers that «we reached out to the public and they didn’t mind.» And then it’s made permanent.

I smell a market for facial prosthetics (good ones) and sunglasses. Maybe large hats.

As someone in the field, I recommend sunglasses and those filter masks common in Asia.

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic surgery will likely remain legal. I could see a future where people avoid recognition by simply changing their features like a custom video game character.

Plastic surgery might remain legal, but you would likely be required to submit before and after photos. Making it pointless.

If the tech reaches the point where you can do it at home, that won't matter.

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#79
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you met a bunch of arseholes tbh. Sorry about them. We are not all like that. The only people who I have experience with who are overly classist, tend to be a bit older (50+) and consider themselves above other people, and are as mentioned arseholes. The vast majority of people think this whole thing is old fashioned, out of date, and disgusting. It is not something that people (at least myself, and th…

That is the impression I had too (that it was overstated), until I visited and experienced it firsthand, from Birmingham to Oxford to London. Perhaps the countryside is different. Of course it's true the same can be found in the US, but my experience with that is that the rich in the US only care if you are rich, whereas in the UK it seems much less than about just the money.

Was there another common factor that linked these people? You mentioned that the one's in Oxford were from the university? They tend to be a bit older and to think they're better than other people (joking!!). And old institutions do tend to drag a bit.

But you are right there is a 'class' element, like how you speak, where you went to school, that isn't just money. It does seem to be going, luckily.

Sorry again for your bad experiences!

edit - made statements clearer

Re: Central Londoners to be subjected to facial recognition test this week

#80
post #24

I prey we can get facial recognition to the public and we can start publicly tracking politicians and they can own their political decision anywhere they go. Have a CEO that wears fur coats, well facial recognition now knows he eats at starbucks every friday lets go there then and protest. A corrupt politician, oh facial recognition detects them at a conference lets go interrupt it. There will be no hiding in the fut…

Do you think that anyone could run SQL queries on that database? Only government people will have access to it, the politicians can add a new law to exclude themselves from the database searches.

No, but it doesn't matter: trivial and quick to make your own database, and with cellphone cams getting better and better, it'll be more and more accurate and good luck detecting someone doing this.
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