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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

#311
post #3

The couple of times I’ve even done as little as fly through Heathrow it has been apparent to me that the UK is on its way to becoming an unfettered surveillance state, and I never hear anyone talking about it.

You say "on its way" as if it hasn't been at the forefront of this for decades. Until China and post-9/11 US ramped up facial recognition and CCTV projects MASSIVELY, the UK didn't just have more CCTV units per capita than anywhere else on Earth, they had the most in absolute terms. Even now last I checked the UK has about 1 camera for every 11 people.

Singapore should have that beat. I’m not saying the UK isn’t nuts for CCTV, it’s just that Sg feels like it is on another level.

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

#312
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CCTV can absolutely be made to be effective and protect citizen's privacy at the same time. A legal requirement to store only encrypted data, which can only be decrypted via a court warrant (so a similar standard to searching your home or tapping your phones, not the blanket panopticon they wish to create), plus enforcement and heavy fines + prison time for anyone caught storing unencrypted data. You need political w…

This is the kind of techno-utopian fantasy that keeps authoritarianism looking respectable. “Just encrypt it and only decrypt with a warrant” sounds lovely on paper, but in practice you’ve still built the infrastructure for a 24/7 panopticon - you’ve just wrapped it in a legal fig leaf. Governments break their own rules all the time, warrants get rubber-stamped, and “heavy fines + prison time” magically evaporate whe…

Because if you build it, they will come and use it for any purpose they can think of in the end!

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

#313
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?

> Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?

There is always a danger that the ruling class may not stay in power forever, unless the others are nailed to the ground.

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

#314
post #33
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largest empire in history in 1920 to small isolated island speedrun any %. It's a good modern historical example of how you cannot take anything for granted on a long enough timescale (wink wink USA), and it wasn't even that long, no matter how good or bad things are looking right now all it takes is a couple of generations to radically change the situation

That's because empires don't work. In order to make them work what's needed is to have the center of the empire maintain infrastructure on the borders of the empire. The center grows when you get an empire, but ... it's an absurdly small growth compared to the border growth. Hence empires exhaust themselves attempting to guard borders and you start seeing absurdities like military fortresses manned by 5 unarmed (beca…

>But you can't have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure because you can't defend it, you can't build, you can't pay for it.

Rome figured this out I think. It didn’t fall. It silently converted into a church. More reach, less defending walls.

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

#315

Isn't UK a democracy? Why then have the people not rejected the initiative? Ah, right - they haven't even been asked.

I think you'd be surprised how large the public support for these initiatives actually is. E.g. few on HN would guess it aligned with what the public wanted, yet it's hard to find a poll saying that's the case. And I don't just mean "of sleazily worded polls", even when the poll explicitly calls out the privacy concerns or other side effects more want to try the law than not.

"What do I care, I've got nothing to hide."

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* The UK has had an insane number of CCTV cameras for as long as I can remember.* Per-capita it’s less than the US.

But with the smaller space for the population, it's nearly total coverage from multiple angles vs the wide distances separating the equivalent number of cameras in the US.

And generally people speak about London specifically and not about rural UK areas.

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

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking it through, and I've arrived at the puzzling conclusion we shouldn't make it too hard for people to break the law.

Isn't that precisely the point. If there are so many laws that are so easily broken, you have a reason to pickup anyone of interest at any time.

Eh, I see what I wrote was ambiguous. I meant "not hard to defy the law", you're on "not hard to be tripped up by the law".

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

#319
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be sure, in the original context of Popper's writing, I believe "intolerant" meant something like "committing violence against others for disagreeing with you", and "tolerate" meant "refrain from intolerance". The full quote is below: "Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those w…

> I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; Sounds like speech suppression with force because (later in the quote) the speech may later give way t…

As you say, it's because the speech may later give way to force. It does go farther than American free speech law permits: the latter draws the line at something like "threats of immediate criminal action", whereas this would attack "propagating ideologies that one thinks will eventually lead the followers to criminal action". There are certainly deep problems with potential implementation here: e.g. the main American political parties would probably both accuse each other's ideology of eventually leading the followers to criminal action. One would want high standards for that (of, say, what percentage engage in what magnitude of criminal action; as well as evidentiary standards), and want it to be established in a mega-trial, or by a supermajority of Congress declaring war on an ideology; and even that might not be enough. I'm not necessarily in favor of Popper's approach, except in emergencies.

However, I think that, when most people use the word "intolerance" today, they include things like speaking racial slurs or expressing any negative emotion towards a demographic group. There are contexts in which these things are done, and manners in which they are done, in which, yes, they do give a significant signal that the speaker is the type who would cheerfully escalate to aggressive violence towards the targeted group; but also contexts and manners in which they do not give such a signal.

I think there is a distinction to be drawn here, between "always tracking whether this is likely to escalate to criminal action" and "just attacking anyone who vaguely resembles a known 'intolerant' group". The latter is essentially an autoimmune disorder, which has led to massive collateral damage and its own discrediting. The former ... has a danger of turning into the latter, certainly (which has an interestingly meta angle to it), but is there any version of it that is well-protected against that fate? I expect there's room for improvement compared to earlier versions. I don't know if it can be done well enough to be worthwhile.

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

#320
post #250
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?

> Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things? From the article: > Under the plans, 10 live facial recognition (LFR) vans will be used by seven forces across England to help identify "sex offenders or people wanted for the most serious crimes", according to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. I guess it depends on how dangerous these criminals are. If there was someone offing kids randomly in…

I'd bet good money "sex offenders and people wanted for the most serious crimes" end up being just a tiny fraction of the use to which the systems are put to in practice. The age verification law was supposed to be protecting children from adult content, but on the very first day they used it to lock down video of political demonstrations.
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