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London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

btp.police.uk

471–480 of 517 posts

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add: same happened in russia around 2018 on a couple of subway stations in St.-Pete and in moscow at first the result? faster tracking and arrests of people for checks who were deemed too problematic + (i.e. with anti-war protests in 2022) the cameras were used to track or threat tracking almost everyone who protested, and lowering the load on the police by coming to the dwellings afterwards in the next several da…

It's worth pointing out this is specifically not mass tracking. LFR scans faces against an existing database of outstanding wanted suspects. If a match is made, it alerts the officers who are manning the camera there and then. It doesn't store anything that wasn't a match.

This is fair, but it feels like it pushes another finger into the door of mass surveillance. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a few toggles away in the station software.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the thing that absolutely fucks me off about all of this, is that we don't even get a lawful society in exchange for all of this. On one hand, there's no privacy anywhere. On the other - have your car stolen or a bike? House broken into? Phone snatched out of your hands? Good luck getting anyone to care about this in the slightest. You'd think with all the surveillance tech we'd be living in a nightmare panoptico…

Dude monitoring if your neighbor has paid their car taxes is some real Stasi shit.

....are you ok? That's an insane comparison to be making in this situation. Unless I don't know, you're from a country that doesn't value social cohesion?

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 37% foreign criminals Why is this statistic relevant?

> Why is this statistic relevant? More people, low wages, no taxes, no infrastructure for said people. So very relevant, no?

More incorrect than relevant - I suspect you parsed the wrong line.

I'm seeing:

   At the end of the first quarter of 2024, there were 87,869 prisoners in England and Wales.
and:

  76,869 British nationals were recorded in the prison population at the end of the first quarter of 2024. The remainder of the population was made up of 10,422 foreign nationals, making up 11.9% of the total population
The math checks out: 10,422 / 87,869 x 100 = 11.86%

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#474
post #363

To provide clarity, this isn't (yet) (publicly) hooked up to the whole CCTV network of London Underground stations. Instead they use these temporary portable stations you can see at the end of the linked article. I went to Victoria station where they were doing this yesterday and the police seemed quite unhappy with me taking photos of them operating the facial recognition station and confronted me almost immediately…

It's of course partly selection bias, but the number of YouTube videos where UK police are upset at someone filming in public, and not even focusing on people, is incredibly ironic.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#475
post #270
post #53

It’s a moot point. I’m saddened at the invasion of privacy and the intrusion on an individual’s civil liberties, but anonymous travel on the London Underground died when they made bank cards and contactless the primary way to get through the barriers. I’m not saying that “this doesn’t matter because it’s slightly worse than before”. I’m saying the frog has been boiling for a long time. I don’t want people being surpr…

Reminds me of a story I read long ago. (And Snowden's point that even if the current government uses such powers responsibly, a future government may not be so kind...) --- R.E: What about those who decided they didn't want to go along? D.L.D: Somewhere in there it was that… because this is a "New Authority" and it represents a change, then, from where your allegiance was presumed to be, people would be called on to…

"Why don't you have pronouns in your bio?" - 2022

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#476
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two largely different concepts/epochs separated by more than 40 years. The negotiations and partition of Ireland and the establishment of Northern Ireland as a self-governing province (rather than being governed from Britain): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Ireland And then the Troubles, which were a sectarian conflict between Catholics and Protestants within Northern Ireland itself, that stemme…

This does not answer my original question: why doesn't Britain give the north of Ireland back to the Irish? Why does it cling to it? Didn't Britain cause enough suffering for the Irish already?

It does answer your question, or at least the linked articles do.

To get any further into it, you'd need to characterise your understanding of Northern Ireland and the Northern Irish in 2026. There is no way to answer your question otherwise.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#477
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this comment actually contribute? Please go read the guidelines [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ya got a loiscense for that comment, mate? You can report rulebreaking comments to hn@ycombinator.com.

I don't want want you reported (or even to follow the rules for their own sake) I suggested you go read/consider the guidelines as they are a good write-up on internet etiquette in general.

Engaging in a positive way on the internet requires more from us than blindly posting every arbitrary thing that pops into our heads and I think it's right to hold each-other to account. Sorry if that seems sanctimonious

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#478
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All fine and dandy, but in the case of self -checkouts the cashier work is done by myself, and I'm not a machine.

I scan and bag while I shop, so self-checkout is just paying. It's barely a shift of work from cashier to me, because I have to pick things up and place them in my bag/basket/trolley anyway, scanning them as I do is barely an increase in work.

You describe mobile handheld scanners that are a form of self-checkout in some stores, but not the norm. Most of the commenters here probably associate self-checkout with a station with touchscreen, scanner and bagging area.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the deterrent is the possibility of being caught? If you're more likely to be caught due to the surveillance, logic would dictate that it's the greater deterrent.

My brother had his window smashed and bag stolen under a cctv camera in London. The police never even investigated. I would hazard to say that wouldn't have happened had a police officer been stood there instead. Some major shops in the UK have photographs of police officers on the door, because it reduces theft!

Because it’s hard to investigate that with old cctv tech. Unless the person on the video was easily identifiable, it’s hard to do anything to follow up. With the new networked AI tech you could search for the person across the whole network to find out where they went / get a better view of them.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add: same happened in russia around 2018 on a couple of subway stations in St.-Pete and in moscow at first the result? faster tracking and arrests of people for checks who were deemed too problematic + (i.e. with anti-war protests in 2022) the cameras were used to track or threat tracking almost everyone who protested, and lowering the load on the police by coming to the dwellings afterwards in the next several da…

It's worth pointing out this is specifically not mass tracking. LFR scans faces against an existing database of outstanding wanted suspects. If a match is made, it alerts the officers who are manning the camera there and then. It doesn't store anything that wasn't a match.

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