Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by Teever » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

chuckgreenman wrote: post #51

turk73 wrote: 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…

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.

Those strides made through nonviolent means are only feasible because the implied alternative of violent means.

Martin Luther King understood that his methods were viable only because they were much more palatable to people than those of Malcolm X for instance.

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

#62

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

chuckgreenman wrote: post #53

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Also civil disobedience in the face of state violence tends to attract a different sort of reporting and public opinion than riots and violence, which usually - not always - generates the opposite.

Violent action usually ends up as a PR gift for the status quo.

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

#63

Post by lapinot » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #12

> The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”. That's why it's called "erosion of rights" and not "outright nullification of rights". Unfortunately, it works, and it's entirely unsurprising that face surveillance will become normalized.

Also called: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

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

#64

Post by moron4hire » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

>> After being pulled aside, the man told police: 'If I want to cover me face, I'll cover me face. Don't push me over when I'm walking down the street.'

Jesus, it's a good thing cops in London don't have guns. Can't imagine how this would have ended in one of the whitebread suburbs here in the US with our 'roided-out school-yard-bullies-turned-pro.

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

#65

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

dominicr wrote: post #3

vixen99 wrote: post #2

For those who prefer not to go to the Daily Mail directly: "Camera cross-checked photos of faces of passers-by against wanted database. One man covered face before officers stopped him and took his picture anyway. He was fined £90 at scene in Romford by police who arrested three other people Police say they know of human rights concerns but want to make London safer"

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recogniti... (Adding a link to a news source from the other side of the aisle to the Mail.)

Less other side of the aisle than the Mail being an issue for having a long, long history of inaccurate and plain made up "reporting".

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

#66

Post by pjc50 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #37

dalbasal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. I'm a populace (even a plurality, some days) that overwhelmingly believes it is not ok for the government to operate a surveillance dragnet. How does this translate into practicalities? What laws do I want Westminster or London Assembly to enact? The point I was making earlier is that the distinction between dragnet and regular policing is eroding, as this technology becomes widespread. Presumably it's ok for pol…

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 has a huge law enforcement exemption. The only relevant EU law is probably the ECHR(+) right to privacy.

(+) Yes I know this isn't exactly the same

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

#67

Post by shawabawa3 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

Slight correction: It seems he wasn't exactly fined for hiding his face. Police asked him to uncover his face and he told them to "piss off", for which he was fined.

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

#68

Post by asark » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #47

turk73 wrote: 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.

Are there documented, successful uprisings any time in the last 100 years that hinged on private firearm ownership? People say "yeah well look at Iraq and Syria" and so on, but all the examples I know of of even a sort-of successful resistance involve one or more of: part or all of the military siding with the revolutionaries; foreign governments shipping in arms and/or providing assistance like no-fly zones; an opponent that for political (see: foreign intervention) or moral reasons won't do anything nasty enough to win (decimation, 500-for-1 reprisal killings, hostage taking, starvation, that kind of thing) which one supposes some hypothetical super-evil US government would do in a civil war.

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

#69

Post by pjc50 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #54

arethuza wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Brexit act grants huge powers to amend law through statutory instrument ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_(Withdrawal)_Ac... ), although I'm not quite sure whether that applies here.

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

#70

Post by cbovis » Thu, May 16, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

cbovis wrote: post #27

Very interested to understand what sort of metadata is being stored from these cameras. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the cameras are being used to build a database of individual’s movements, whether deliberate or as a side effect of logging. Any more information on this from a better source than the DM?

Did a little more digging around this and discovered https://www.met.police.uk/live-facial-recognition-trial/ through Reddit.

“Live Facial Recognition uses NEC’s NeoFace technology to analyse images of the faces of people on the watch list. It measures the structure of each face, including distance between eyes, nose, mouth and jaw to create facial data.

The system detects a face, creates a digital version of it and searches it against the watch list; where it makes a match it sends an alert to an officer on the scene.

The officer compares the camera image and the watch list image and decides whether to stop and speak to the person. We always explain why we’ve stopped someone; we also give them a leaflet that explains how they can contact us to ask any questions afterwards.

The system will only keep faces matching the watch list, these are kept for 30 days, all others are deleted immediately. We delete all other data on the watch list and the footage we record.”