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London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

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Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#101

Post by dofm »

_fw wrote: post #61
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK stopped being a democracy a long time ago. In the UK if you keep your mouth shut during an investigation, it may harm your defense. There is zero right against self-incrimination. It is also the place where you can be jailed for not providing the PIN to your phone. I could go on.

You WILL be charged for not giving the PIN to your phone in an investigation. It’s a strict liability offence which means there’s no legal defence. The only realistic protection here is a “decoy” partition, a partition that provides access to a separate installation of the OS. That gives the device owner plausible deniability that their real system even exists.

> You WILL be charged for not giving the PIN to your phone in an investigation. It’s a strict liability offence which means there’s no legal defence.

Again, no, not just "in an investigation".

It has to be an investigation that has reached the point where they have gone to a judge and got permission to serve written notice. The judge will ask them if there is a necessary and proportionate reason. There is then a timeframe in which you have to respond.

Police can't simply demand your PIN and charge you if you don't comply.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#102

Post by ValentinPearce »

Levitating wrote: post #60

I don't see how this is any different from how traffic cameras are used. Hot take, but as long as the systems aren't abused by law enforcement I don't see the big deal.

> as long as the systems aren't abused by law enforcement I don't see the big deal

The amount of recent cases in the US is enough for me to not place any faith in the fact that this system would not be abused.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#103

Post by dofm »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #55
steve_gh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a technology. What you could do with it, and what you should do with it are completely different things. If you follow the links there is a lot of information about the trial, including a whole series of documents identifying the legal framework that authorises LFR, including rationale under GDPR, Data Protection etc. Of course, this technology could be used for bad purposes. But within a democracy, policing hap…

The UK stopped being a democracy a long time ago. In the UK if you keep your mouth shut during an investigation, it may harm your defense. There is zero right against self-incrimination. It is also the place where you can be jailed for not providing the PIN to your phone. I could go on.

> In the UK if you keep your mouth shut during an investigation, it may harm your defense. There is zero right against self-incrimination.

By "may harm your defence" what is meant is that Miranda was modified to inform people who are arrested that magistrates and juries are fully allowed to infer that you might be seeking to mislead the court if you didn't tell the police something significant that you later rely on as a defence in court. You're still allowed to do it, and they are allowed to conclude it is sketchy. That's the point of the modification.

Juries do and did this anyway.

The modified Miranda doesn't say you have no right against self-incrimination; it now warns you that if something is crucial to your defence it might be in your interest to mention it so the jury doesn't think you are trying to shine them on.

It's important to understand that this happens in the context of a country that does not have a plea bargaining mechanism. Cases go to court if it is in the public interest that they do (and the police don't decide this). But you can still no-comment your way through an interview and you aren't going to be bullied by a prosecutor into accepting a plea deal.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#104

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

HelloUsername wrote: post #48

Not really related to the written topic of this page, but I noticed there is a sideways red button with "Leave this site" that redirects you to ' https://www.google.co.uk/ '. What could be the incentive behind this? Why not just close the tab?

If you are about to be watched by an abusive person, it may be better to immediately switch the browser to an innocent page rather than possibly closing it down which may look more suspicious.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#105

Post by Schiendelman »

dofm wrote: post #91
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting political here a bit, but: > We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations. (And the most long-term and persistent of those threats was Irish republican terrorism bankrolled by Americans, for that matter) Did it ever cross Britain's mind that the whole IRA debacle is of its own doing? Can't you just leave Ireland for good and let them be?

> Did it ever cross Britain's mind that the whole IRA debacle is of its own doing? Can't you just leave Ireland for good and let them be? That people still ask this question betrays only that they aren't well-informed about what actual issues led to the Troubles.

Tell us more! I don't know anything about it either. Couldn't the UK have ceded it to Ireland? Or would the problems just have gone another direction?

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#106

Post by fragmede »

dofm wrote: post #57
_heimdall wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you exit the tube?

It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality. If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less. A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence. But I think the idea that face…

Last one was in 2017 though.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#107

Post by deadbunny »

Simulacra wrote: post #35
Oarch wrote: post #15

How will this handle face masks? Hijabs or Niqabs?

I can't speak to other nations, but given the present issues in Britain with two tier policing, they will receive a religious exemption. Which may result in everyone wearing a hijab just for privacy.

Do you have some examples of "two tier policing"?

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#108

Post by ChrisRR »

Traster wrote: post #13

I really don't understand why they do trials for this. What would be the failure case for the trial? "We carried out the trial for 6 weeks over X period of time, we arrested Y people, at that rate we've decided this is not compatible with modern liberal democracy, we would've traded a free society for Y+2 arrests over X period but we just didn't quite get there"? As suggested by other people - this is just going to b…

Because I guess if it's not proven to be effective if they use some known test cases, then they won't roll out to the whole network

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#109

Post by kypro »

iamnothere wrote: post #99
kypro wrote: post #42

For what it's worth, as a Brit, I assure you no one cares about this, and it's likely that most people, if asked, would support it. The UK doesn't value liberty for liberty's sake like the US does. In the US there seems to be this notion that freedom is a universal good, where as in the UK people are quite comfortable with liberties being revoked if it means they feel safer or fewer people are doing things they don't…

I wonder what makes it different than Japan. Japan, also a large island nation with a developed economy, is also socially conservative in most areas—but the people rely on each other to enforce social norms instead of the law. The government is famously hands off, and tends to release statements and public service campaigns about what citizens should do rather than dictating to them what they must do. And the people…

> the people rely on each other to enforce social norms

This is probably the difference.

Here's a video of a leading UK MP (whose party largely represents upper-middle class white-Brits) reacing to someone doing something he doesn't like on public transport:

https://www.facebook.com/libdems/videos/stop-the-headphone-d...

Note the passivate aggression, then the threat to use state force to stop it.

British people are too polite to tell people to stop doing things. We prefer that to be a responsibility of the police.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#110

Post by iamnothere »

kypro wrote: post #109
iamnothere wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what makes it different than Japan. Japan, also a large island nation with a developed economy, is also socially conservative in most areas—but the people rely on each other to enforce social norms instead of the law. The government is famously hands off, and tends to release statements and public service campaigns about what citizens should do rather than dictating to them what they must do. And the people…

> the people rely on each other to enforce social norms This is probably the difference. Here's a video of a leading UK MP (whose party largely represents upper-middle class white-Brits) reacing to someone doing something he doesn't like on public transport: https://www.facebook.com/libdems/videos/stop-the-headphone-d... Note the passivate aggression, then the threat to use state force to stop it. British people are…

The thing is, Japanese are also typically very polite! For minor violations of social protocol, you’re most likely to get a polite request or indirect reminder from someone. (It would be rude to make someone lose face, even someone who is violating a norm!) Yet somehow it works.
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