The Unblinking Eye

McAdder writes: "The LA Times is running an article about how Tampa police scanned the faces of BowlGoers as they passed through the turnstyles, and compared the images to images of people with criminal history. I wonder if they'd frisk me if I wore one of those Nixon masks ;>" It seems the story first appeared in the St. Petersburg Times.

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

after all, it's for the public good, right?

No, it's for the children!!!

--

Re:Where will it stop?

This type of automated surveillance system creates both quantitative and qualitative differences from the mere presence of police officers. On the quantitative side, it makes it feasable to place surveillance in literally all public spaces. This is something which is just not going to happen by hiring police officers. There is a difference between knowing that occasionally you might pass a policeman on the street who sees you and knowing that your every public move is being watched.

This type of system also allows qualitative differences in the types of video surveillance it allows. Sure, right now it is billed as a system which only looks for felons. However, it is a trivial extension to have it watch everybody all the time. Every time you go out in public, the "eyes" will watch your every move. Imagine the benefit to a totalitarian government of having accurate lists of everyone who was within a certain radius of a demonstration or police shooting. Imagine the chilling effect on people knowing that there is no longer safty in numbers. Even if you have a large group of people, you will all be identified and dealt with individually later on.

Right now, it's pretty easy to act in an "acceptable" manner in public and reduce your chances of being hassled by a cop to almost zero (at least for white people(meaning that minorities are often "profiled" as criminals, not that minorities are incapable of behaving in public). Behaving in public is part of living in a society. However, with this type of surveillance your behavior won't be judged by your fellow citizens. It will be judged by an invisible and anonymous computer system. Your every move will be tracked and compared to statistical norms. Any deviation from normal behavior will flag you as someone worth investigating.

If you really think that such a system is impossible to abuse, I suggest that you think about it some more. If you really think blanket, invisible, omnipresent surveillance is LESS intimidating than the occasional officer on the beat, I have to wonder what you're smoking.

Re:Nothing wrong with it

No biometric technology is 100% accurate, and the potential for false positives are not non-existant, especially for something that's working in near-real time from data as complex as imaging of faces of people who aren't looking straight into the camera. It's entirely possible for someone, like say, yourself, to be detained when they register as someone they resemble, and that would suck.

Re:Where will it stop?

How do you "lose your rights" by getting your damn picture taken when you enter a private building of your own volition?

Sort of like when you lose your soul when your picture's taken.

-elf

Now how to prank 'em

Maybe make some easily removed masks of various wanted criminals. Walk past the cameras nice and slow. Discard mask. Repeat. Give the good officers a serious hard on to think that 8 of the 10 most wanted were in there...somewhere....

Nothing wrong with it

I'm usually against anything like this, but I can't really find anything wrong with this. The people who run the place have said OK, and it's not violating anybody's rights because they are only trying to find people with outstanding warrants and arrest them immediately. Now if they started using it to track where people went, then I'd have a problem!

The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

Do you think our democracy "worked" as you describe for the folks of darker complexion who were discouraged from voting in Florida by police checkpoints near the polls, or the ones who were unceremoniously dumped from the rolls because a database (built by a company closely allied with one and only one of our two major political parties) said they were felons?

Terrible shit is happening all around you! Whatever shall you do? Both of these things are overmanipulated stories that are part of media sensationalism.

UK, land of the infamous Terrorist Act that allows you to be held without bond and interrogated for, what is it, 7 days

Umm, we here in the US have this stupid thing call Secret Evidence (tm). The FBI holds people for years without having to disclose the evidence they have against them. Ever hear of a guy named Mazen Al-Najjar? (Sorry I can't find any links to any articles that don't want $$ to show them). He was finally release on bail in December after being held for 3 years, without trial, because of some secret evidence the FBI had against him.

yeah? so?

hmm. let me get this straight. so the big deal is that you are being seen when you are in public.

so?

ok, i can understand that there is a Big Brother concern in some people minds that they are being watched by camera, and that this may be stored for long term use. what I don't understand is what people are REALLY getting so concerned about. how is this significantly different than having a still picture of you taken (i.e., with a shutter-action camera) when you are on the street (as has been done for years)? What is so bad about it?

do NOT invade my home.

do NOT invade any other parts of my private life.

But when I'm in public, I'm public. If I don't like it, well, tough shit, because I can't reasonably expect to not be seen when I'm at a football stadium.

Weylin Piegorsch
[e-mail]

I like Fascism. Fascism keep me safe and happy.

Great quote from the article:

Oakland Raiders Senior Assistant Bruce Allen agreed with the need.
"Whatever they want to do to protect this country, I'm for. . . . So anything we can do to help, I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with that."

Riiiight... "whatever they want to do to protect this country..." Let's just implant microchips in everyone and track their every move. Let's start with Oakland Raiders Senior Assistant Bruce Allen, cuz that quote just scared the hell out of me, and I'd like to know when he comes within 100 miles of me.

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

Do you think our democracy "worked" as you describe for the folks of darker complexion who were discouraged from voting in Florida by police checkpoints near the polls

From what I've read, those claims were fairly baseless; the police checkpoint was a mile and a half away from the polls, and was a response to crime committed in the area. That being said, your overall point about "choice" in American politics is legitimate: we got to choose between the son of a former president and the son of a former senator, and for all intents and purposes it was a tie, perhaps justifying Nader's observation that there were no real differences between the two.

Conan O'Brien already addressed this

In his opening monologue he made a joke to the effect of: yeah they didn't actually find any criminals until they pointed the cameras onto the field.

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

For what it's worth, Hoover was never elected. He was appointed in the 20's, and because he had dirt on all the Presidents (basically up until Gerald Ford) was kept around.

And, as has been posted earlier, MLK was not trying to unseat the government. He was seeking greater political, economic, and social equality for blacks, not overthrow of the governemnt (or any political office, for that matter...)

No different from going out in public anyway

As pointed out by the law professor quoted in the article, "People have no reasonable expectation that when out in public, they cannot be photographed."

If you've got a criminal record, don't go somewhere where somebody might recognize you. Duh.

Now if they started KEEPING all those photographs against a possible future need, that'd be a different thing altogether...

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

> If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out.

Tell that to Martin Luther King, Jr. He worked to protest the government in power and was trying to unseat them by peaceful and lawful means. However, those in power liked being in power and didn't care for his activities.

First, they labeled him a Communist (not that a free society can ever "outlaw" something like that). Then they began the investigation. They bugged his phones. They discovered that he was having an affair. They sent him a letter urging him to commit suicide to avoid having this information leaked.

J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of the FBI at the time. For the most part, Hoover's actions today are considered by the mainstream to be excessive. Nevertheless, the main FBI headquarters are named after him, so I don't know how much "mainstream" thinking pervades the FBI.

This wasn't the work of a military junta running the country, these were just ordinary, elected Americans. Imagine if someone really unscrupulous were elected.

The LAPD, until very recently, made a habit of keeping phone taps and files on celebrities. You never know when that might come in handy.

Nixon used the IRS to harass his opponents. He felt compelled to resign after covering up a break-in of his (mainstream) political opponents headquarters.

Either through clerical error or massive corruption, the Clinton White House had detailed FBI dosiers on prominent Republicans. And Clinton was never voted out of office. Even after his Attorney General burned to death a religious cult. The accusation alone that the cult leader was molesting children was enough to convince most Americans that Koresh got what he deserved.

In a democracy, you do NOT give the ruling power the means to destroy any political opposition. While you've removed "crime" by 70%, you've virtually guaranteed that any political opponent can have his every move tracked.

But at least your property is safe, I guess...

Re:Where will it stop?

The problem is that it becomes more and more invasive. The authorities can watch you in any public place. Originally this meant a policeman could look at someone, say "thats the guy on the wanted poster", and make an arrest. In the future it could mean that whenever you walk in a public place (including private property which the public has access to) then you are identified and your movements logged.

Which is fine as long as the authorities don't object to anything you do. But maybe one day you want to oppose something. Maybe City Hall is planning a waste incinerator upwind from you, and you suspect that the relationship between the builders and the politicians is a mite closer than it ought to be.

So you start being a nuisance. You write letters, you get articles in the local press, you organise demonstrations. At some point you become sufficiently annoying that someone decides to take some extra-legal action. A list of your comings and goings for the last few months might be very interesting. Have you been in any bars where drugs get traded, for instance? A few examples, taken out of context, could easily be used to get a search warrant to turn your house upside down. A search of computer data could be tacked on to the end of such a warrant, enabling them to take your computer. And so it goes on.

The bottom line is: knowledge is power. If you let them have knowledge about you then you let them have power over you. The danger (and it is a very real danger) is that they will abuse this power.

Paul.

Re:Where will it stop?

How do you "lose your rights" by getting your damn picture taken when you enter a private building of your own volition? If you wanted to set up a camera to take pictures of people on your property, shouldn't you have the right to do that? If so, then why doesn't that right extend to other property owners?

If you would deny property owners the right to protect their property by imposing draconian limitations about what they can and cannot do on their own property, I submit that it is you that is infringing on essential liberties, and you that are advocating a dangerous, authoritarian police state.

The Transparent Society

The truth is that security cameras and other surveillance technology is ubiquitous and the technology behind them is only going to improve and get as cheap as dirt. The question is, as a society are we going to do about it? Judging from how the discussion has gone so far, i can only shake my head. Lets move the discussion passed, the police surveillance is "good vs evil" stage.

For those who believe that having the police check every ones face as they enter the gate at the Super Bowl is a good thing, are you naive? How do you know that your not? I'm sure they kept the camera's secret because It would creep people out to know that they were being scanned against known criminals, yet they did it anyway. How do you know that they are just looking out for your interests, what did they do they deserve this level of trust from you? This is a very powerful tool in the hands of the police that can be used for both good or ill. What's to prevent them from betraying this trust in the future?

For those who are apposed to this kind of Technology, lets get past the 1984 analogies. Let me remind you that, You don't need technology to create a very chilling authoritarian state, and technology only played a minor role in the book. For better or worse the technology exists and fortunately the picture of the future for most of us is not a "boot stomping on a human face". In fact surveillance can act in reverse, making the police much less likely to beat someone if they believe that they themselves are being
watched. Watching the watchers watch may one key to preventing the abuse of this technology.

Someone who has put a great deal of thought on the matter is David Brin, and I'm quite surprised that is lucid thoughts on this matter has not yet come up in this thread. This short piece [wirednews.com] in Wired and this Discussion [lycos.com] are a good place places start. From what I can tell, many of you have not been exposed to these ideas yet. I put these in the "must read" category.

Enjoy.

Question:

Have you ever noticed that the Unblinking eye is alot like crossing the desert? -H. Simpson And now, the paddling of the buttocks....

Hey! Wait a minute....

At Raymond James Stadium, surveillance system cameras were focused only on people entering at turnstiles. No cameras were used inside to pan the fans inside.

They spent who knows how many bucks to install cameras, high-speed data lines, a control center, and links to municipal, state, and federal databases of bad guys. And positively identified no known perps.

Because they were looking in the wrong direction, perhaps?

The middle linebacker of the Ravens, Ray Lewis, is presently on probation as a result of his plea bargain in two homicides a year ago. The news media made quite a stir a while back about the alarmingly high percentage of NFL players with criminal records. A former receiver for the Carolina Panthers, Rae Carruth, was just convicted of felonies for his involvement in the death of his wife; Mark Chmura, formerly of the Green Bay Packers, is presently on trial for sexually molesting his 17-year-old babysitter.

Why are the cops looking at the fans?

Where will it stop?

The problem with this is not the initial application, but how it progresses.

We lose our rights by a thousand little slices. Fingerprinting was only for criminals, now we get fingerprinted for drivers licenses. Metal detectors were only for airports and high schools that had riots. Now, it's for any government building.

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

You have to be incurably paranoid to have a problem

But this is slashdot. 99% of the posters here are incurably paranoid; it's part of the enterance requirements.

To those who are whining about it: would it be wrong for police to look at pictures of known criminals, and then keep a lookout for them? Of course not; that's essentially what they do all the time. So what's so wrong about having them use technology to do their job better and more effectively? It sometimes seems like slashdotters can't realize that law enforcement is a good thing. We should try to fix its problems rather than try to destroy it at every turn.

Ah, but the innocent have nothing to fear..

...that's what my mother would say. "I'd gladly give up a minor freedom if it would help catch criminals."

Of course, she's never had her door broken down by cops with the wrong address in the middle of the night, without so much as a semblence of an apology, either.

She's never had her car confiscated because a pot seed (from her nephew's friend) was found in her vehicle.

She's never had her boat drilled full of holes because an invited guest's son was being watched by the Coast Guard.

She's never been stopped and had all of her cash "impounded" because she matched a "profile."

She's never been questioned because she bought an airline ticket with cash.

Of course, she's a Republican, too, so your mileage may vary...

This technology doesn't work and can't work

I happen to know some members of a card counting team. They are naturally not welcome in many casinos, including some known to use this photo scanning system.

This technology was originally developed for use with mug shots, which are taken with calibrated camera position and lighting. Maybe they even work under those conditions. The idea is supposedly that they measure features like the distance between your eyes and ratio of that to mutual distance to your mouth which can't be altered by disguise. In fact, though, my friends continue to play relatively unmolested. They have been nailed by this tech a couple of times, but not nailed by it countless other times, even at places known to use it.

I am also completely unconvinced that this system won't produce errors -- especially when used with photos taken in public space, with uncalibrated lighting and uncontrolled camera angles. There are just too many people in the world and the resolution of the photos is too poor that there won't be some schlep whose nose, eyes, and mouth will all be dimensionally similar enough to mine to cause us to raise each others' alarms.

I figure this tech will last until the first bona fide innocent tourist is roughed up by cops who are convinced he is a big-time felon, then the Big Brother types will go back to dreaming of tracking us with implants.

I wonder -- the article says they identified 17 wanted pholx in the crowd. Did they act on this "discovery?" If not, how do we know these 17 lawbreakers were ID'ed accurately? Answer: We don't. If they really thought this was such hot shit they would have demonstrated its utility by making a few arrests, and it would have certainly made this article. But they aren't quite as stupid as they sound. They know it isn't perfect, and I'm betting even the developers know it never will be.

Re:What is the difference ..

A little less paranoia would go a long way

Let's see how far it would go...

POTENTIAL BOSS: I see from your DoubleClick profile that you surf several porn sites. Geekporn.com? Isn't it bad enough that you surf porn, but geek porn? You disgusting pervert. And salon.com as well - a bunch of dangerous free-thinkers, if you ask me. We block them at the firewall.

YOU: that wasn't me...it was my next door neighbor using my computer...

BOSS: According to our police check, you have seven speeding tickets - automatically deducted by the drive-through EZ-pass system when it detected that you must have been speeding to go from entrance to exit so quickly. Scofflaw as well! And here's a picture taken from a traffic light that shows you jumping the light. My my.

YOU: it was only a few miles an hour over the limit...

BOSS: What about this? Police camera records show that you are often in an area of the city associated with deviant lifestyles.

YOU: It's near a subway stop I use...I only pass through...honest!

BOSS: They also show that you had lunch FIVE times last month with a married woman who is not your wife.

YOU: She's a coworker...

BOSS: I'm sure. Perhaps we could ask her husband what he thinks of that. Also...I see that your medical record shows that you had a prostate exam five years earlier than is recommended for men. Do you have some sort of problem that we should know about? Also, a genetic test showed a positive marker for early heart-disease. That's too bad - we like our workers healthy.

YOU: I was merely being cautious, and that gene doesn't mean that I'll GET heart disease...

BOSS: Whatever. Your credit-card buying records show that you subscribe to Playboy and also take karate lessons. The only thing worse than a pervert is a violent pervert.

YOU: Karate's just a hobby...

BOSS: Your credit report is bad as well - you paid 30 days late 3 times in 5 years. That's not the sort of person that we want representing our firm. I've gotten the picture of a lawbreaking, immoral pervert who probably belongs in jail. I'm sorry, you're an untouchable.

YOU (silently): (maybe I should have been a little more paranoid!)

What is the difference ..

.. between having cameras taking pictures like this and having dozens of real live policemen standing at the entrance, looking at people "manually?" How, precisely does this constitute an "invasion of privacy" or a "sacrifice of liberty?" Jesus H. Christ, if I'm going to plunk down $2,000 for some ticket up in the shitty nosebleed seats, the very least I can ask for is some assurance that I'm not going to wind up between Hannibal Lecter and Heidi Fleiss. Well, Hannibal Lecter, at least.

Oh, I suppose there is the possibility that "Big Brother" might take the pictures of you entering the Super Bowl and use them to control your life. Imagine how it might end up wrecking an otherwise-successful job interview:

BOSS: Well, Ted, I must say that I am very impressed with your skills.

YOU: Thank you, sir .. that is very kind of you to say.

BOSS: We'll be in contact. I can't make any guarantees, but in all likelihood we'll be extending you a ridiculously lucrative offer within the next 24 hours. Furthermore ..

The boss's assistant comes in and gives him a sheet of paper.

BOSS: Wait just a damned minute, what is this?

YOU: (shifting uncomfortably in chair)

BOSS: Is this a picture of you entering Super Bowl XXXV?

YOU: (hanging head in shame) Yes.

BOSS: Get the fuck out of my office.

Use your heads. A little less paranoia would go a long way.

Re:Where will it stop?

and what rights do you lose by walking through a metal detector? the right to blow away a couple dozen employees of your hated "gub-mint?" settle down mcveigh-boy. metal detectors are a pain in the ass, but they are a necessary evil and are *not* any sort of loss of rights.

Yes, a metal detector at the door would have stopped McVeigh from driving the truck into the garage.

Increased security would have prevented the TWA 880 bombing...ooopps..it was a wiring fault.

Why not strip search everyone comming out of a store to protect us from theft? Or making everyone use chopsticks to eat on plane because a fork and knife can be used to kill. What about handcuffing everyone into their seats because some nut might break into the cockpit?

BTW forget the ID checks at airports. If my sister was able to get a fake ID at 16 to go drinking; I think that a terrorist could get one.

Re:Been done here for ages, and it works.

Also, the computer can observe peoples behaviour and alert a human operator if one of them is doing something suspicious, such as breaking into a parked car.

I would really love to see the software that is capable of determining that I am breaking into a car rather than, say, wiping birdshit off the windshield before entering it. This makes the facial recognition thing look like ELIZA for the TRS-80 by comparison.

Its just a question of trusting the authoriteies. If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out. That is what a democracy is for.

You really should pay more attention to American politics. Do you think our democracy "worked" as you describe for the folks of darker complexion who were discouraged from voting in Florida by police checkpoints near the polls, or the ones who were unceremoniously dumped from the rolls because a database (built by a company closely allied with one and only one of our two major political parties) said they were felons?

I suppose your city doesn't see it as a major problem if a few people get stopped by the cops and questioned for a few minutes because some computer in a basement fucked up. But if your genes had the bad taste to give you a similar facial profile to some Genuine Bad Dude (tm) so that you got stopped all the time your personal self, I bet your attitude would change quick. Especially in the UK, land of the infamous Terrorist Act that allows you to be held without bond and interrogated for, what is it, 7 days? Yep, I'm sure you wouldn't mind being dragooned every time you entered a new city where you weren't personally known because this shit had become universal, after all, it's for the public good, right?

Been done here for ages, and it works.

Here in the UK, this sort of face scanning software has been used for some time. In the city of Glasgow, which is about 1 million strong, the entire town centre is saturated with CCTV systems. They have computer systems that can scan the faces of people walking in the street and compare with a national database of wanted people. Also, the computer can observe peoples behaviour and alert a human operator if one of them is doing something suspicious, such as breaking into a parked car.

Crime in Glasgow city centre has fallen by some 70% since this system was introduced, and the city has become a much safer place to socialise in.

These types of systems are permeating the UK at an amazing rate, and they are really showing results. As long as they are controlled by the police, and used in a responsible manner according to the law, I really have no problem with it at all. You have to be incurably paranoid to have a problem, I think. Its just a question of trusting the authoriteies. If they abuse this power, unlikely, you can just vote them out. That is what a democracy is for.

You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-