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China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

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Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#21

Post by AngryData »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #5
rtpg wrote: post #4

It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. After WW2 the University of Tokyo banned weapons research from happening in its research labs. I think we can be drawing more lines on research like this and take a stand agains…

Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.

Maybe im naive but I don't see anything positive coming from facial recognition. Its two main uses are targeted advertising and finding dissidents. It could help find a handful of criminals, but considering the high level of false positives, the inevitable abuse like every other police technology, and the fact that I live in a police state where im unknowingly breaking any number of laws at any given moment, I don't see how it helps more than it hurts. Might as well require people to carry papers at all times and submit to police checkpoints at every street corner.

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#22

Post by TaylorAlexander »

AngryData wrote: post #21
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.

Maybe im naive but I don't see anything positive coming from facial recognition. Its two main uses are targeted advertising and finding dissidents. It could help find a handful of criminals, but considering the high level of false positives, the inevitable abuse like every other police technology, and the fact that I live in a police state where im unknowingly breaking any number of laws at any given moment, I don't…

Face recognition as a technology won’t go away. What’s important is preventing governments and private groups from using face recognition in abusive ways. A legal framework for what is and is not okay must be established.

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#23

Post by roenxi »

zaroth wrote: post #11
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.

Technology itself is always amoral. Even splitting the atom can be used to achieve wonderful and horrific outcomes. So of course “facial recognition” per say is not the problem. But in this particular example, we see how facial recognition combined with a couple hundred million surveillance cameras funneled into a massive government data processing pipeline can be extremely effectively used for persistent tracking an…

> There’s a reason we don’t implant GPS trackers into babies at birth just because they might get lost one day.

What reason are you thinking? I wouldn't support it myself, but I don't usually represent public opinion.

GPS didn't really burst into the public imagination before 2007 and the iPhone; in a sense the technology is only about a decade old or so in the public sphere. Prior to 2000 the US government's official position was something like "this is a military technology".

As the cost of sensors and radio chips goes down, we might reach the point where we do put a GPS sensor on everybody. Law enforcement would love it and on the small scale it would probably save lives and reduce crime.

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#24

Post by lysp »

> For ordinary people we will only extract their data when they need our help.

> When they don't need help, we won't gather their data and it remains only in our big database.

In the same sentence:

"We won't gather their data"

and

"The data that we gather remains in a database".

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#25

Post by pacala »

zaroth wrote: post #11
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.

Technology itself is always amoral. Even splitting the atom can be used to achieve wonderful and horrific outcomes. So of course “facial recognition” per say is not the problem. But in this particular example, we see how facial recognition combined with a couple hundred million surveillance cameras funneled into a massive government data processing pipeline can be extremely effectively used for persistent tracking an…

The situation in China is dire. USA is not far behind. Does your neighbor have a Ring camera? Well, that watches the whole street and it is connected to a massive corporate data processing pipeline that is used for persistent tracking of advertisement subjects. Only need to tweak it a little bit for vastly different purposes. Oh, and we work hard to improve our far-field microphones connected to the same pipeline. To offer you a better service [TM].

You make a critical point. Technology itself is always amoral. We are enamored by technology for technology sake, while we drifted away from our moral roots.

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#27

Post by convivialdingo »

pishpash wrote: post #19
devoply wrote: post #15

As people in Hong Kong have shown, it's as easy to tear all this shit down as it is to put it up.

Not really. At this point the HK government doesn't care to go after the people tearing "all this shit down", but it wouldn't be hard. Protestors have the fantasy that they are invincible, because they know nothing is actually going to happen.

Agreed - up to some breaking point at least. As long as they can reliably put hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets, they are almost invincible.

China can handle thousands. Tens of thousands becomes a real problem. More than that and it’s impossible without serious damage.

HK would never be governable again after a bloody crackdown of that scale. It would either descend into hell and come out worth nothing, or it could spread into the mainland.

Both are unlikely events - I think China is simply waiting it out and ramping up the pressure. Visuals of army training and troop transports are having the desired effect.

I think the likely next steps would be to cut services and if that doesn’t work some rationing/price inflation of food and water. Start making the poor resent the rich, and ramp up the propaganda.

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#28

Post by goblin89 »

dmix wrote: post #7

> China has the largest monitoring system in the world. There are some 170 million CCTV cameras across the country I wonder how this compares to the UK per capita considering how massive China is.

I suggest that it’s pointless to compare entire countries, since stats would vary by region wildly (at least, in China). Here is a recent comparison by city: https://www.comparitech.com/vpn-privacy/the-worlds-most-surv...

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#29

Post by edejong »

dmix wrote: post #10
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition itself isn't the problem. Arresting good people based on bad laws is the problem.

I've never fully agreed that when you're in public all data collection on you is fair game. These are governments that we are setting up to benefit ourselves, this seems far more in the interest of gov interests than citizens. If they were strictly limited to criminal investigations and required a warrant to scan the images that might be a different story.

IMHO, publicly gathered information should automatically be made publicly available. That should give people something to think about.

Re: China’s CCTV network took just 7 minutes to capture BBC reporter (2017)

#30

Post by zrobotics »

DuskStar wrote: post #17
rtpg wrote: post #4

It's not just about this, but given all that is happening in the space of facial recognition, I think it would be really valuable for researchers to start looking at it like they would weapons research. Almost entirely nefarious applications. After WW2 the University of Tokyo banned weapons research from happening in its research labs. I think we can be drawing more lines on research like this and take a stand agains…

The University of Tokyo could afford to do that because another nation had taken over responsibility for their defense. Who's going to be that protector for the US?

Postulate: how does the US being able to more accurately track people via facial recognition make me meterialy safer as a US citizen?

Because for me, that argument has a whiff of 'think of the children'. I don't think the NSA has done anything to make me safer, and I haven't seen any convincing proof to show they have done anything to help my safety.

At this point, what is actually accomplished by the US military getting even fancier ways of killing people? From how things are shaping up, even if things come to blows b/w US & China it won't be a shooting war. It's looking like it will be similar to the cold war: neither adversary can dare attack the other, so we end up with a series of proxy wars and nitpicking at the adversary.

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