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Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

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Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#51
In itself this is a storm in a teacup.

The important question, only important question IMHO, is how they handle positives. Do they go all guns blazing and arrest the person on the spot? Or do they use a restrained approach and first nicely ask the person if they have any ID, etc? That's the important bit.

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#52
post #22

The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology that people once decried China for. Whether or not this is ethical or useful, I wish the hypocrisy would be acknowledged. The OSA, the Apple encryption demands, LFR, …, it’s clearly a trend. Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?

Cynically, it's just another form of infrastructure we are behind the curve on.

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#53
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thousands of children aren't being assaulted, unless you count by Jimmy Saville and his friends.

The comment you're replying to isn't greatly helpful, but neither is yours. Rotherham alone, a town of ~250k people, had an estimated 1,400 victims. Then there's Rochdale, Oxford, Telford, Huddersfield, Derby...

Yes, it's well known that UK police and politicians have abused children at scale, hence why Saville was able to get away with what he did. He was protected by the crown. There are even pictures of Ghislane Maxwell and Kevin Spacey sitting on the throne (can google it).

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#54
post #22

The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology that people once decried China for. Whether or not this is ethical or useful, I wish the hypocrisy would be acknowledged. The OSA, the Apple encryption demands, LFR, …, it’s clearly a trend. Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?

Well, China got away with it. More than got away with it, actually... they prospered. There has to be an incentive to not do these things as a government. There is none in the UK.

>There has to be an incentive to not do these things as a government. There is none in the UK.

The only incentive governments ever have to not do bad shit is that the people will hate it so much that the government will wind up with less power than they started with.

But, decisions are ultimately made by individuals or small groups of them who have interest (profit, legacy, etc) in doing what the people wand and what is good for the people.

If enough people in government's personal interest is aligned with that of the people you get more outcomes that are aligned with the people.

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#55
post #22

The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology that people once decried China for. Whether or not this is ethical or useful, I wish the hypocrisy would be acknowledged. The OSA, the Apple encryption demands, LFR, …, it’s clearly a trend. Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?

Suppose it depends on what it's used for. We could trust the government to be good, but governments are made from people, elected by people. And people are often shitbags to each other.

For all the CCTV in London I've been mugged twice and nothing was captured on CCTV nor were the police all that interested in doing anything about it. As an outsider living here I think the UK has huge social problems that are neglected in favour of retaining classism. America has the same problems but at least it's more "ah, what can ya do about it huh" rather than "we are a perfect polite society British values bla bla".

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#56
It appears that the kosher way of doing this by US standards is to partner with a for-profit company(ehm Palantir, Meta, Google etc.) to do it for you or you become a surveillance state.

Not saying to bash on US, it's just a curiosity of mine. In a similar way USA&UK diverge from most EU by not issuing national ID cards and not having central resident registries but then having powerful surveillance organizations that do that anyway just illegally(Obama apologized when they were caught).

I don't say that Europeans are any better, just different approaches to achieve the same thing. The Euros just appear to be more open and more direct with it.

The tech is there, the desire to have knowledge on what is going on is there and the desire to act on these to do good/bad is there and always has been like that. Now that it's much easier and feasible, my European instinct say that let's have this thing but have it openly and governed by clear rules.

The American instincts appear to say that let's not have it but have it with extra steps within a business model where it can be commercialized and the government can then can have it clandestinely to do the dirty work.

IMHO it is also the reason why extremist governments in US can do decade worth of work of shady things in few months and get away with it when in Europe that stuff actually takes decades and consumes the whole career of a politician to change a country in any way.

Also, the Brits are usually in between of those two extremes.

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, China got away with it. More than got away with it, actually... they prospered. There has to be an incentive to not do these things as a government. There is none in the UK.

>There has to be an incentive to not do these things as a government. There is none in the UK. The only incentive governments ever have to not do bad shit is that the people will hate it so much that the government will wind up with less power than they started with. But, decisions are ultimately made by individuals or small groups of them who have interest (profit, legacy, etc) in doing what the people wand and what…

> The only incentive governments ever have to not do bad shit is that the people will hate it so much that the government will wind up with less power than they started with.

Well, that's the trick, isn't it? You have to give people a way to reduce government's power if the government does something the people don't like, but do it in a way that keeps society from flying apart.

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#58

In itself this is a storm in a teacup. The important question, only important question IMHO, is how they handle positives. Do they go all guns blazing and arrest the person on the spot? Or do they use a restrained approach and first nicely ask the person if they have any ID, etc? That's the important bit.

Then what happens if you don't have ID on you (which, for now, is entirely legal in the UK)? What if you're hours from home? Do you then need to completely cancel your day to spend it with the cops instead satisfy some shit algorithm that misidentified you as some known threat? What if you refuse to cooperate because you have better things to do than waste your time with the police? I'm sure that'll go well for you.

What if your child falls victim to a false identification, and then given that children are far less likely to have some form of ID on them than adults, they're stuck for much longer?

Do you trust the British police to take good care of your child? Or will they strip-search her and threaten her with arrest like they did with the then-15-year-old Child Q because they decided that she "smelled of weed"?

Do you really want more unnecessary interactions with the police for yourself or those you care about when your "suspicious behaviour" was having an algorithm judge that your face looked like someone else's?

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#59
post #22

The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology that people once decried China for. Whether or not this is ethical or useful, I wish the hypocrisy would be acknowledged. The OSA, the Apple encryption demands, LFR, …, it’s clearly a trend. Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?

Suppose it depends on what it's used for. We could trust the government to be good, but governments are made from people, elected by people. And people are often shitbags to each other. For all the CCTV in London I've been mugged twice and nothing was captured on CCTV nor were the police all that interested in doing anything about it. As an outsider living here I think the UK has huge social problems that are neglect…

I commented about this on another thread, and probably most around here disagree with my general point there, but this fact amazes me. We have gotten all this tech creating a surveillance state but then it isn't even used to give better policing. You will just get mugged on camera by someone with ten prior charges and then be ignored by police.

Re: Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

#60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small mindedness (to use your words, though I think other sets of words are perhaps more descripitive) is a condition that spreads like the plague. If you don't constantly stamp it out through ostracizing and marginalizing the infected and those who intentionally create the conditions for it then you will be overrun.

Are your ideas not good enough to persuade?

If "just persuade them with your good ideas" was a workable solution it would've worked at least once by now, instead the means of persuasion are owned by psychopaths who continually convince the public to vote self-destructively. The enshittification of society continues.
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