Live data from Hacker News

Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

dailymail.co.uk

51–60 of 190 posts

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#51
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that, ultimately and generally, the government does what a majority of people wants (or at least tolerates). Why are we tolerating this loss of freedoms? The only answer I can arrive at is "because it doesn't inconvenience people enough to do something about it". Protesting against something takes a lot of energy, and inconveniencing you only a little (or very much but extremely rarely) doesn't make most…

Because "doing something about it" requires violence. Americans have gone soft--we aren't demanding our rights be protected. Until we send a clear message, they will continue to walk all over us. Rights are won by force and no other way. I'm sorry if that offends you, but pick up a history book and read and you will see that I am correct. The above is why there is a full-court press to ban guns in the USA. They know…

This is inaccurate. Great strides in civil rights have been made through non-violent campaigns to change minds. We've had a slow, civil change to fighting our battles in the court of public opinion rather than on the dueling grounds.

Appeals to tradition aren't effective, we don't need to make the same mistakes as our ancestors.

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#52
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You don't implement your Baghdad style checkpoints in Manhattan. You do it in the Bronx. The rich (the people who's non-disapproval you need) get told by the official statements (that the newspaper regurgitates) how it's the best thing since sliced bread while not actually being negatively affected by it themselves. The fact that you've got a bunch of rich people who never see the downside of each step towar…

Your assumption is that the government is not controlled by the very wealthy already, so that their disapproval of the very thing they are engineering is possible. It's not designed to target them. It's for their benefit. There's no downside for the wealthy with this tech, it's all upside since it gives them greater control.

Controlled is an odd word in this context. It's both controlled by them and seeking to diminish their capacity to resist it at the same time. I think there's some tragedy of the commons here since you've got many people advocating for more government control in specific cases and it adds up to a police state.

>There's no downside for the wealthy with this tech,

Wealthy people break petty laws (the kind of stuff these systems make it possible to crack down on) all the time. There's a reason you never see the cops running a DUI dragnet at the rich people boat ramp. The wealthy do not want to be subject to surveillance dragnets because while many people can pull strings to get out of trouble very, very, very few people can afford to pull string with the regularity that would be required if the rich were subject to a police state.

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#53
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "doing something about it" requires violence. Americans have gone soft--we aren't demanding our rights be protected. Until we send a clear message, they will continue to walk all over us. Rights are won by force and no other way. I'm sorry if that offends you, but pick up a history book and read and you will see that I am correct. The above is why there is a full-court press to ban guns in the USA. They know…

> The above is why there is a full-court press to ban guns in the USA. I'm skeptical of this claim. I think many opponents of private gun ownership are motivated by concerns about their use for crimes against regular people, not because it lowers the ability to resist tyranny.

Exactly correct. I think most gun owners (or just people who have fired a fun) understand that they'd be dispatched quickly by anyone who's job is to be proficient with firearms.

There are many more cops, sheriffs and other LEOs than sovereign citizen types. It would be a short battle.

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#54
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started to ask if the GDPR applies here, I realized you're in the UK so it wouldn't apply, but have the question anyway: Does the GDPR prevent this?

GDPR most certainly does apply in the UK? We haven't left the EU yet - if we ever will and even if we do we'll still have GDPR like rules in place.

EU laws don't directly apply in member states, afaik.

The UK wrote their implementation of gdpr into UK law: general data protection act 2018. It's the law unless parliament changes it, Brexit or no Brexit.

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason they're doing it in London first. In a wealthy city like London you can get away with going full "law and order" because the ratio of rich to poor is better (i.e more rich people) and the rich generally view this as no threat to them. Then once it's normalized they roll it out to Liverpool, Belfast and everywhere else that the poors are less under the thumb of the government. You see this in the US.…

If there is one place where the authorities might take a bit of care around implementing new surveillance technologies you would hope it would be Belfast.

That's basically what I was thinking. I figure as soon as the system is sufficiently "mature" they'll use it there.

I hope they totally screw it up and touch off the kind of "civil unrest" that you need in order to remind the government that people have rights.

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#57
post #38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What identification exactly? You don't have to own a passport or a drivers license in the UK, nor do we have ID cards.

most people here in the UK would have a credit or debit card on them. almost everyone have a driver's licence, but bank cards are a must even for those that dont

As true as it is that most people have them, they're not a form of identification...

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#58
post #38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What identification exactly? You don't have to own a passport or a drivers license in the UK, nor do we have ID cards.

most people here in the UK would have a credit or debit card on them. almost everyone have a driver's licence, but bank cards are a must even for those that dont

This is entirely untrue.

Re: Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

#59
We haven't really even come to terms with the false positive rate associated with just looking at people. When law enforcement wants to check ID all they have to do is say they thought you looked like someone. The high rate of false positives is a feature not a bug. You could set up an empty box with a lens drawn on it with a motion detector aimed to go off 4% of the time and the result would be almost as useful to law enforcement as a facial detection system that actual did something. The facial detection just increases the efficiency of the "papers please" checkpoint.
Post reply on HN