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Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

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Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#61
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead we should increase the risk of death and injury instead of safely picking people up once things deescalate? I don't think that's lazy by any measure.

is it literally not the job of the police to stop events like this? of course their safety needs to be considered to a degree, but any perceived threat isn't a reason for them to just act as a glorified clean up crew

Policing in North America as we know it today arose in the south from Overseer's and slavery. [0][1]

Their job has always been to protect the rich, keep minorities and the lower classes oppressed.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-... [1] https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a...

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition has a disturbing habit of "catching" the wrong people. "We have video of a crime, arrest these people", is how facial recognition is advertised (and you bought the story). But it keeps being used as "there is a 87% chance that this person walking down the street in Atlanta is the person who robbed a liquor store in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 2006, go arrest that guy"

That's a problem with police procedures and training of those who use facial recognition, not facial recognition per se.

Yes? Cities banned facial recognition use because police have proven unable to create effective procedures and training to prevent the problems.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#63

When it comes to distributed/local technologies, does a ban really accomplish anything? I'm dubious that facial recognition technology will disappear because some random governments passed laws against it. Especially because it's nearly impossible to punish when police can just use parallel construction. "We received an anonymous tip and followed it up." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction The solutio…

You could require the software to have a warrant number entered in order to do FR. This means you need probable cause first and you need to be able to convince a judge it is warranted.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#64

A ban is ineffectual without consequences. Criminal prosecution of police chiefs is what's needed, IMO.

There are more types of consequences than just penal ones. For example, I imagine if they are indeed banned, and a case against a defendant is built around the usage of the technology, then that case would get dropped. That is a consequence in of itself as it wasted valuable prosecutorial resources, department resources, etc.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#65
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it literally not the job of the police to stop events like this? of course their safety needs to be considered to a degree, but any perceived threat isn't a reason for them to just act as a glorified clean up crew

Policing in North America as we know it today arose in the south from Overseer's and slavery. [0][1] Their job has always been to protect the rich, keep minorities and the lower classes oppressed. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-... [1] https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-a...

Give me a break. Enough with this 1619 style revisionist history that views the history of the world through the lens of black people being slaves. It doesn't even pass the sniff test. It's way too lazy to assume that everything has such a simple answer.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#66
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we let these events continue until they die down, wouldn't that create more of a risk that a death happens than the police intervening to try to stop it?

It's a tough decision to make, police getting involved to break up crowds often escalates the violence from that crowd, look at all the protests here in the US that were mostly peaceful and get escalated by police response. Now there's a new thing to be mad about and it's unlikely to go away because the police are hard to disengage once they decide they should.

That is 100% on HOW the police do it.

In the BLM protests, the police were entirely the aggressors, looking for a fight.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but there's a difference between reviewing evidence and using mass facial recognition software to scour literally everything.

Oh, it definitely is. Going through public material or videos provided as evidence, even using facial recognition, after a crime is IMHO ok. Preemptively recording everything, and using facial recognition right from the bat, is very different. The latter shouldn't be acceptable in a free and democratic society.

Absolutely agree with your second point, but still not sure I'm comfortable using it 'post crime' so to speak.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re allowed to do that too

They're allowed to lie to suspects, not the courts where parallel construction happens. A defense attorney can't get evidence stricken when it came from dubious sources when they lie in court about the source.

> They're allowed to lie to suspects, not the courts where parallel construction happens.

That's only true in theory. In practice, police lies are one of the pillars of the US "justice" system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_perjury

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/nyregion/testilying-polic...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/police-testilyin...

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#69

A ban is ineffectual without consequences. Criminal prosecution of police chiefs is what's needed, IMO.

There are more types of consequences than just penal ones. For example, I imagine if they are indeed banned, and a case against a defendant is built around the usage of the technology, then that case would get dropped. That is a consequence in of itself as it wasted valuable prosecutorial resources, department resources, etc.

Unfortunately, you have situations where cases are started using inadmissible investigation tactics, but presented to a jury without them.

In those situations, the prosecution may succeed, which actually adds incentive to conduct the illegal investigations.

Re: Police Say They Use Facial Recognition Despite Bans

#70

A ban is ineffectual without consequences. Criminal prosecution of police chiefs is what's needed, IMO.

Police in the US don't enforce the laws against other police or other powerful figures in governments, for the most part. This results in two different sets of laws, one that applies to police and government officials, and a much broader set that applies to you and I.

The idea that the law is applied equally is a total fiction.

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