Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.sky.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 636 posts

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

#511

Post by burkaman »

varenc wrote: post #231
burkaman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly a pretty good point, the US already has "facial recognition vans" on the road in the form of Waymos that will provide video to police upon request. In most states, I think police could also just buy a Tesla, have an officer drive it around and set up a system to continuously upload video to a facial recognition service.

> the US already has "facial recognition vans" on the road in the form of Waymos that will provide video to police upon request. These seem meaningfully different than UK's facial recognition vans. The government has to request the footage from Waymo for a specific place/time. I don't think they can put in requests like "analyze all Waymo video data for this particular face and tell me where they were and when". It's…

It is definitely different. I do think they could put in a request like "give me all footage between these hours in this area", and then do the facial recognition themselves.

It's conceptually pretty similar to cell tower dumps, where they ask for all data from a cell tower during a particular time frame. This was recently ruled unconstitutional (https://www.courtwatch.news/p/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-...), but they used it for like 15 years before that (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/how-cell-tower-d...). I can imagine blanket car footage dumps working for a similar amount of time.

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

#512

Post by HPsquared »

pmarreck wrote: post #206
orra wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Must be a truly dangerous place... I don't know if you're awaee, but the number of arrests for terrorism has skyrocketed in recent months, in the UK. Sounds terrifying, until you realise people were arrested as terrorists for holding placards. (That fact is of course terrifying, but in a chilling way).

It still arguably complies with the Paradox of Tolerance. Terrorists (as well as their supporters) are intolerant and non-pluralist. Therefore, for a pluralist society to survive, it must be intolerant of one thing- intolerance.

Aka the "fundamental contradiction of liberalism".

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

#514

Post by graemep »

bookofjoe wrote: post #478
graemep wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I would expect it not to bother anyone on a busy street, but I would expect to told to stop it in a library, and to be kicked out in a theatre.

Phones on silent in a theatre yet with a sea of bright silent phone screens surrounding you as people watch TikTok, text, etc., the movie won't be very entertaining. Why I stopped going to movie theatres about 10 years ago.

I meant a theatre as in stage, not cinema. Rare for phones to be used even on silent in my experience.

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

#515

Post by HPsquared »

xg15 wrote: post #230
pmarreck wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still arguably complies with the Paradox of Tolerance. Terrorists (as well as their supporters) are intolerant and non-pluralist. Therefore, for a pluralist society to survive, it must be intolerant of one thing- intolerance.

The paradox of tolerance isn't wrong, but it's also invoked awfully quickly in the last years, often by people who weren't tolerant to begin with. I'd at least like to know who defines who is a "Pluralist" and who is a "Terrorist". Also: The paradox of tolerance can legitimately be used to call intolerant behaviors of individuals. When you use it to define entire population groups as "intolerant", and therefore not w…

"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception."

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

#516

Post by PKop »

Stevvo wrote: post #499
liampulles wrote: post #490

Is there a public conversation in European countries about the value of liberty? I don't mean arguments about how liberty can lead to more economic prosperity, I mean how liberty is valuable on its own terms. Without this value, the state can continue to erect legislation in the name of "safety", or any other perceived inequity in society, until you can no longer move. How perverse that English law used to be a basti…

In the EU we have different liberties to the US. That doesn't necessarily make Europeans less free. For example, wlthe EU has free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across borders. None of which are present in the USA. Does that make Americans less free than Europeans? Some would argue so, but I don't see it. The UK however, maybe. Brexit was a real dumb idea.

> free movement of goods, capital, services, and people across borders

What in the world are you talking about? The US has all of this internally. If on the one narrow point you want to claim that EU has open-borders to the rest of the world, no you don't and that's not something that's good to have anyways. Both US and European citizens are fighting their own governments to decrease immigration as polling shows large opposition to current immigration levels for many years now. A big part of the crackdown on speech in the UK is to restrict criticism of immigration policy.

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

#517

Post by arrowsmith »

impossiblefork wrote: post #505
arrowsmith wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palestine Action broke into a British military base and sabotaged millions of pounds' worth of equipment. What did you expect the government to do exactly — shrug it off? What kind of message would that have sent? The Terrorism Act 2000 gives "serious damage to property" as one definition of terrorism so I find it hard to argue that the government was doing anything more than neutrally applying the law here. Those pr…

Personally I expected prosecutions for sabotage rather than for terrorism. The UK has very broad terrorism legislation, but conventionally terrorism is something directed at civilians, and it's not something we usually tar, for example, resistance groups with. I think you even have to be able to kill people in internal political conflict without being called a terrorist. There are many circumstances during which such…

FWIW the specific activists who entered the base were charged with "conspiracy to commit criminal damage" and "conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK", not terrorism. [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dp5158720o

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

#518

Post by miningape »

varispeed wrote: post #113
MaxPock wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever they accuse China of is always a projection.

At least China has manufacturing, jobs and thriving middle class.

I wouldn't be so sure about the jobs and thriving middle class.

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

#519

Post by tiahura »

liampulles wrote: post #490

Is there a public conversation in European countries about the value of liberty? I don't mean arguments about how liberty can lead to more economic prosperity, I mean how liberty is valuable on its own terms. Without this value, the state can continue to erect legislation in the name of "safety", or any other perceived inequity in society, until you can no longer move. How perverse that English law used to be a basti…

The law has always distinguished between public and private. These vans are in public places.

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

#520

Post by mystraline »

kypro wrote: post #240
orra wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Must be a truly dangerous place... I don't know if you're awaee, but the number of arrests for terrorism has skyrocketed in recent months, in the UK. Sounds terrifying, until you realise people were arrested as terrorists for holding placards. (That fact is of course terrifying, but in a chilling way).

You forgot to mention those people are holding placards in support of an illegal "terror" group whose objective is to protest the unnecessary human loss of life in Palestine by spray painting British military equipment. Obligatory legal notice that I obviously do not support said group, but historically terrorists would actually need to commit acts that instil a sense terror in people to further their political objec…

> You forgot to mention those people are holding placards in support of an illegal "terror" group whose objective is to protest the unnecessary human loss of life in Palestine by spray painting British military equipment.

Yet more false equivalence.

You can be for Palestine.

You can be for Hamas.

You can be against ethnic cleansing.

You can be against genocide.

These are all different things. And note, this smearing of things like equating 'genocide to Hamas so they deserve it' doesn't make genocide better.

This smearing terms together is also being done by Israel as well, by trying to equate Israel with Judaism, and all Jews across the world. And that any denouncing of actions done in a genocide or ethnic cleansing is somehow antisemitic.

All of these false equivalence arguments are basically just motte-and-bailey fallacies.

Post reply on HN