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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 02 2019, @03:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the think-of-the-children! dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

She Was Arrested at 14. Then Her Photo Went to a Facial Recognition Database.

The New York Police Department has been loading thousands of arrest photos of children and teenagers into a facial recognition database despite evidence the technology has a higher risk of false matches in younger faces.

For about four years, internal records show, the department has used the technology to compare crime scene images with its collection of juvenile mug shots, the photos that are taken at an arrest. Most of the photos are of teenagers, largely 13 to 16 years old, but children as young as 11 have been included.

Elected officials and civil rights groups said the disclosure that the city was deploying a powerful surveillance tool on adolescents — whose privacy seems sacrosanct and whose status is protected in the criminal justice system — was a striking example of the Police Department's ability to adopt advancing technology with little public scrutiny.

Several members of the City Council as well as a range of civil liberties groups said they were unaware of the policy until they were contacted by The New York Times.

Police Department officials defended the decision, saying it was just the latest evolution of a longstanding policing technique: using arrest photos to identify suspects.

"I don't think this is any secret decision that's made behind closed doors," the city's chief of detectives, Dermot F. Shea, said in an interview. "This is just process, and making sure we're doing everything to fight crime."


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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 02 2019, @04:33PM (11 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Friday August 02 2019, @04:33PM (#874700)

    That's an interesting statement, but leaves me wondering what you're thinking, what would you envision for a better society?

    I personally think policing has gone too far, but it seems that it's been going too far, since, well, forever. But I don't know how to fix it. I think too many cops get into that profession for very wrong reasons- they love power and control- as we've seen far too many times in video evidence. Again, how to fix it? It seems that you need some of the toughest people to be police, but with it comes that domineering chip-on-their-shoulder personality. Certainly they're not all that way, but how to clean it up?

    Anyway, hopefully people will share some insight here.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday August 02 2019, @05:21PM (2 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday August 02 2019, @05:21PM (#874718) Journal
    I'm not him but;

    "I personally think policing has gone too far, but it seems that it's been going too far, since, well, forever."

    Sure, it's a dialectic, society needs someone empowered to keep the peace, to protect life liberty and property from criminal actions. Yet the people so empowered are then in a position to imperil all that they are being paid to protect. When the police break the law with impunity respect for the law is destroyed, and civil policing is built on the concept that the law is respected, that you don't have to enforce everyone, just catch the *occasional* lawbreaker and punish them to maintain the respect for the law that keeps most people from breaking it.

    If you destroy respect for the law (as has been done in many areas) then a civil police force can no longer function. It either gives up and withdraws, or it turns into something more like an occupying army, attempting to cow a population which does not respect them by resort to brute force.

    This is a horrible situation, and I don't point it out to down or diss the police. In my experience most cops are relatively decent folk trying to do a job that needs to be done. But the system itself is less than well.

    "Certainly they're not all that way, but how to clean it up?"

    That's going to be a very hard problem, because the culprits are so deeply institutionalized. You know why many departments refuse to hire higher IQ applicants? Bean counters say they're more likely to find another job and move on. Well, yeah, that makes sense, no doubt it's true, it's a cost that has to be paid. If it's not paid by the department, it's paid by the populace that are supposedly being protected.

    That's something that could be pretty easily reversed if people were aware of it and made it an issue. The culture of impunity is another problem, and it would be much harder to dig out. If you're assaulted by some random street criminal, and the police happen to be there, there's a good chance they'll intervene for you. If you're assaulted by a crooked cop, with other cops present, they'll claim to be blind, if they don't join in. And if one of them does the right thing, the prosecutor won't prosecute, and that cop will be run out of the profession. If the prosecutor does decide to prosecute, they're all too likely to find the police suddenly quit coöperating with them generally and their other cases fall apart immediately. And even if the case is so bad and the evidence so clear it gets prosecuted despite all those factors to discourage it, juries almost never find cops guilty of anything anyway. All of this is seen by some people as being GOOD - because it empowers the cops and people instinctively want powerful protectors. Understanding that the law actually rests on respect, not force, and that empowering cops to break the law only weakens it, seems to be difficult for some people.

    It almost seems like the problem is too rooted to be changed without drastic action. You might have the FBI go full bore on the locals to try and root it out, but what makes you think you can trust the FBI to do that?

    And who's going to police *them?*

    It's one of the tougher problems of human civilization I would say, and one of the most important.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 02 2019, @06:37PM (1 child)

      by RS3 (6367) on Friday August 02 2019, @06:37PM (#874779)

      Agreed on all points. I think you can call on state cops if the locals are giving you trouble, but you might not be able to if they handcuff you. Then the FBI.

      > And who's going to police *them?*

      Well, it's supposed to be We The People. But wait, we're not allowed to. "Move along, nothing to see here." "Don't impede or interfere with police investigation." Fortunately most citizens have cell phone / cameras and capture abuse on video, but the victim is still hurt or killed.

      Prosecuting criminal cops needs to be easier, especially when there is hard evidence. There have been too many cases of cops being let off, if they're prosecuted at all.

      A friend's son recently got into some trouble and I have a fair amount of detailed knowledge of the case. The criminal "justice" system is horrific. I'll call it fully corrupt. Most who go through it are so scared, and so glad to get out, few try to reform it. It's all about deals, and keeping score of favors, and games. The cops do what.ever.they.want and the poor "innocent" person is SOL (unless they're RICH.)

      Congress could fix it, but they'd have to hear from We The People, and most people just don't know (or care) what's going on in the courts.

      SN user exaeta has written (horror stories) about how broken the US court system has become https://soylentnews.org/~exaeta/journal/ [soylentnews.org].

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:48AM

        by Arik (4543) on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:48AM (#874902) Journal
        "I think you can call on state cops if the locals are giving you trouble"

        Sometimes, but it depends on the specifics and may vary by state. Some states have a 'State Police' force that at least in theory would have jurisdiction to investigate local cops. Others have a 'Highway Patrol' that probably doesn't have any such jurisdiction, but they may have e.g. a separate 'State Bureau of Investigation' that could do this instead.

        "Prosecuting criminal cops needs to be easier, especially when there is hard evidence. There have been too many cases of cops being let off, if they're prosecuted at all."

        Absolutely, this is that culture of impunity, that 'thin blue wall' bullcrap. A lot of people will literally let cops get away with murder, because it makes them feel safer. It shouldn't, though, it just destroys the respect for law that made civil society possible.

        "The cops do what.ever.they.want and the poor "innocent" person is SOL (unless they're RICH.)"

        You get all the justice you can afford. Usually.

        "Congress could fix it,"

        But they're far too busy expressing their outrage at mean tweets to deal with that stuff.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by legont on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:15AM (2 children)

    by legont (4179) on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:15AM (#874931)

    The solution was there for a very long time. In general, people who have more authority should take more responsibility by law.

    A crime that is say 10 years of prison for a regular citizen should be mandatory life term for a cop. Right now it is exactly the opposite.

    Second, armed police should have no right to be afraid. Any claim "I shoot him because I felt threatened" should result in capital punishment for the cop. She has no right to shoot or use any force because she is afraid. That' the price for being a cop (or a solder for that matter).

    Third. Any crime committed by a cop, his boss should be punished and punished more than the cop in question. 10 years for a cop? 25 for his super mandatory.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @12:51PM (#875090)
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:54PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:54PM (#875124)

      Strong stance and I agree on all points.

      ...Any claim "I shoot him because I felt threatened"...

      What bugs me about the videos we've all seen is that the cop could back off, hide behind the cop car or something, but no, they approach the suspect and start shooting right away. I'd love to be in a court and ask: "why did you approach the suspect if you were afraid? Why didn't you retreat, hide, and wait for backup?"

      My core concern is that most cops select the job because they look forward to shooting someone someday, and there's plenty of evidence of them having sports team like rallies with someone coaching them to "get out there and crack some heads."

      Time to move to a more civilized country...

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:29AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:29AM (#874997)

    What I mean is that doing EVERYTHING to fight crime is just like the paperclip optimiser. You end up destroying the world to accomplish your singular objective. If you truly wanted to 100% eliminate crime, the most reliable way would be to kill everyone.

    People need to identify the point of diminishing returns and stop there.

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:31PM (3 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:31PM (#875112) Journal

    The key insight here is that legal != moral and illegal != immoral. Now, it *should* be this way; the law is a tool, a piece of emergent social technology that springs from morals. It is, you might say, the execute branch to the human race's collective legislative branch (morals).

    The problem is, too many people don't care about this distinction or, what's more likely and much worse, don't even see how or that it exists. Too many people knee-jerk assume that all laws are moral statements, and that breaking a law is a breach of morality. This leads directly, naturally, and inexorably to concentration of power in the hands of law enforcement, and *that* leads to dictatorship.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:58PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:58PM (#875125)

      Amazing insight and wisdom, as always. My take on it is that the system has become more of a game and the players get caught up in the game play, rules of the game, tweaking the rules, dealmaking, etc. I know someone who recently got caught up in something illegal and knowing the details of the "justice system" is worse than watching your own operation. It's not only sickening, but frightening.

    • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:40PM (1 child)

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:40PM (#875148) Journal

      Durkheim said in order to measure how advanced a society is, look at the things they outlaw. a primitive, disorganized society might outlaw murder, but care less about where you park your car. an advanced one will regulate how you add a deck to your own house.

      a corollary here might be, you can measure how corrupt and ripe for revolution a society is by measuring how divorced from the polity its laws are.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:18PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:18PM (#875263) Journal

        I have a slightly modified version of that: you can measure how corrupt a society is by how close to 90-degrees-orthogonal a society's legal axis is from the moral axis. We're looking pretty goddamn tilted, as things stand...

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...