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posted by janrinok on Friday May 24 2019, @10:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the facing-up-to-it dept.

Until recently Americans seemed willing to let police deploy new technologies in the name of public safety as they saw fit. But crime is much rarer than it was in the 1990s, and technological scepticism is growing. On May 14th San Francisco became the first American city to ban its agencies from using facial-recognition systems. That decision was profoundly unpopular at the police conference. Jack Marks, who manages Panasonic’s public-safety products, called it “short-sighted and reactive”. The technology exists, he said; “the best thing you can do is help shape it.” Other cities, including Somerville in Massachusetts, may soon follow San Francisco’s lead all the same.

Companies are under scrutiny, too. On May 22nd Amazon saw off two challenges by activist shareholders. They wanted the board to commission an independent study to determine whether Rekognition, its facial-recognition platform, imperils civil, human and privacy rights. The activists also wanted to ban the firm from selling Rekognition to governments until the company’s board concludes, “after an evaluation using independent evidence”, that it does not erode those rights.

Senior police officers argue that the technology is a useful crime-fighting tool. Daniel Steeves, chief information officer for the Ottawa Police Service, says that a robbery-investigation unit spent six months testing a facial-recognition system. It lowered the average time required for an officer to identify a subject from an image from 30 days to three minutes. The officers could simply run an image through a database of 50,000 mugshot photos rather than leafing through them manually or sending a picture to the entire department and asking if anybody recognised the suspect. Other officers stress that a facial-recognition match never establishes guilt. It is just a lead to be investigated.

Yet officers sense that the technology is in bad odour. A deputy police chief from an American suburb with a security system that uses facial recognition around the local high school says: “We knew that facial recognition wasn’t going to fly, so we called it an Early Warning Detection System.”

[...] Chris Fisher, executive director of strategic initiatives for the Seattle Police Department, recently oversaw the building of a data system linking previously siloed streams of information, such as emergency-call records, stops based on reasonable suspicion, and police use of force. This let the department know precisely where disparities occur. Before, says Mr Fisher, they often relied on guesswork and anecdotal evidence to fill in the blanks. “Now we can know: in how many of our dispatches did it end up that a person was in crisis, and in that subset, how often did we use force?”

Axon, which makes body-worn cameras and Tasers (the police weapon that gave the firm its former name) is building a system for managing records. Jenner Holden, the firm’s chief information-security officer, says that “what we can do to help officers improve most isn’t the sexy stuff. It’s helping them be more efficient and spend more time on the street.” 


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday May 24 2019, @11:10PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 24 2019, @11:10PM (#847405)

    I would agree with and extend your remarks such that my example of stealing the Declaration of Independence ("National Treasure" movie plot) is unlikely, the more likely trajectory would resemble private red light camera fundraising abuse... the software says you were seen on camera buying weed last week, you can either pay your ticket or we can send you to collections or put out a warrant and you can rot in jail for a couple weeks at which point you might be innocent, but wouldn't it be easier to pay protection money to make it all go away? Its your choice.

    Maybe some strange civil forfeiture stuff too. Software says this was you walking around drunk downtown, supposedly drunk, anyway, and the video shows someone getting into a car and driving away, so now your car is our car under forfeiture rules, too bad. Maybe in court you can prove that wasn't you, wasn't your (well, now its our) car, maybe you can prove you were not drunk... probably not. We'll enjoy your car, too bad for you. Don't complain, either, or we'll shoot your dog or kid for "resisting arrest".

    So yeah I do think the thin edge of the wedge will be similar to red light cam enforcement or civil forfeiture laws.

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