As UK Police Deploy Facial Recognition, Questions Raised About False Positives (apnews.com) 127
"When British police used facial recognition cameras to monitor crowds arriving for a soccer match in Wales, some fans protested by covering their faces," reports the Associated Press.
"In a sign of the technology's divisiveness, even the head of a neighboring police force said he opposed it."
The South Wales police deployed vans equipped with the technology outside Cardiff stadium this week as part of a long-running trial in which officers scanned people in real time and detained anyone blacklisted from attending for past misbehavior... The real-time surveillance being tested in Britain is among the more aggressive uses of facial recognition in Western democracies and raises questions about how the technology will enter people's daily lives. Authorities and companies are eager to use it, but activists warn it threatens human rights....
If the system flags up someone passing by, officers stop that person to investigate further, according to the force's website. Rights groups say this kind of monitoring raises worries about privacy, consent, algorithmic accuracy, and questions about about how faces are added to watchlists... The North Wales police commissioner, Arfon Jones, said using facial recognition to take pictures of soccer fans was a "fishing expedition." He also raised concerns about false positives....
"In laboratory conditions it's really effective," said University of Essex professor Pete Fussey. He monitored the London police trials, which also used NEC's system, and found a different outcome on the streets. He co-authored a report last year that said only eight of its 42 matches were correct. The London program has since been suspended. "The police tended to trust the algorithm most of the time, so if they trust the computational decision-making yet that decision-making is wrong, that raises all sorts of questions" about the accountability of the machine, he said.
The article reports that 19,000 faces were scanned at a Spice Girls concert in May, and identified 15 people on a watchlist. Six of them were arrested.
Nine others had been identified incorrectly.
"In a sign of the technology's divisiveness, even the head of a neighboring police force said he opposed it."
The South Wales police deployed vans equipped with the technology outside Cardiff stadium this week as part of a long-running trial in which officers scanned people in real time and detained anyone blacklisted from attending for past misbehavior... The real-time surveillance being tested in Britain is among the more aggressive uses of facial recognition in Western democracies and raises questions about how the technology will enter people's daily lives. Authorities and companies are eager to use it, but activists warn it threatens human rights....
If the system flags up someone passing by, officers stop that person to investigate further, according to the force's website. Rights groups say this kind of monitoring raises worries about privacy, consent, algorithmic accuracy, and questions about about how faces are added to watchlists... The North Wales police commissioner, Arfon Jones, said using facial recognition to take pictures of soccer fans was a "fishing expedition." He also raised concerns about false positives....
"In laboratory conditions it's really effective," said University of Essex professor Pete Fussey. He monitored the London police trials, which also used NEC's system, and found a different outcome on the streets. He co-authored a report last year that said only eight of its 42 matches were correct. The London program has since been suspended. "The police tended to trust the algorithm most of the time, so if they trust the computational decision-making yet that decision-making is wrong, that raises all sorts of questions" about the accountability of the machine, he said.
The article reports that 19,000 faces were scanned at a Spice Girls concert in May, and identified 15 people on a watchlist. Six of them were arrested.
Nine others had been identified incorrectly.
Small wonder "1984" was written in Brexitannia. (Score:1)
Re:Small wonder "1984" was written in Brexitannia. (Score:5, Interesting)
Stalin and Hitler could learn a thing or two from the crimes the empire committed through its history.
They did. The concentration camp as a form of extermination was invented (at least partly accidentally - but certainly without any real care for the victims) when the Brits interned the Boers. The entire idea of the German Reich covering the world was pretty much to catch up with the British Empire. You could do much worse than Orwell's other writing to understand the psychological damage inflicted by empire. For example "shooting an elephant".
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Further the death rate in British camps in South Africa was pretty much the same between inmates and jailers due to gross incompetence in supplying the camps. Further when it became known back in the UK what was happening there was a public outcry. There was never any intention to kill people in the camps, that it happened was done to gross incompetence rather than design and attempting to conflate the British or even Spanish camps with Nazi death camps is extremely offensive.
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Re: Small wonder "1984" was written in Brexitannia (Score:2)
Concentration Camps are bad, but Extermination Camps are another thing entirely
Dumbass, "concentration camps" are extermination camps; you've confused with "internment camps," which are not.
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That's the way that the phrase is understood now, but it originally meant something more like the Indian reservations in the US.
Being sentenced to a year in the Spanish gold and silver mines of the Americas used to be pretty much guaranteed death as well. Slaves were brought from Africa because they had worked all the Caribs to death in the gold mines of Hispaniola and needed labor (and since imported slaves were expensive they had to treat them better). It wasn't until they were running out of people to
Defending Britain (Score:2)
The part I emphasize makes all the difference. Though victors have always mistreated the losers throughout history, the British did not deliberately kill the Boers — the camps weren't designed to kill the prisoners.
Not all German camps had mass-murder implements, but none of the British one did. The Yad Vashem museum in Is
I feel sad (Score:3)
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You'll find a perfect 100% of people whose only crime was to enjoy the match did so without issue, including all those false positives that resulted in a brief check and then no further incident.
Enjoy your game. This won't affect you.
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I'd hate to be that guy, being constantly harassed by the police for not valid reason.
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It happens now without facial recognition, just ask any black resident of New York City.
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It is a stroke of bad luck, that your countenance looks similar to that of a criminal suspect. But it is no worse, when a camera finds you rather than a human policeman.
You seem to have a rather low threshold for what constitutes "harassment".
Tens of thousands scanned, six actual criminals arrested, nine people "inconvenienced" by additional checks —
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it'll probably happen every time this technology is used.
You don't think that there'd be a feedback loop on how to fix false positives? Software developers are constantly at work. False positives like this are wonderful test cases with which to test their software.
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So you don't feel being briefly stopped and questioned is a concern?
Absolutely not. I would be rather concerned if I looked similar as a person of interest and someone did *not* actually question me on the off chance that they make a mistake.
Policing has involved the process of stopping and questioning people as a discovery tool since time began and it is the most effective process they have. As for being "that guy *constantly*" you're not that guy constantly. You may be that guy rarely, or in some cases that guy briefly.
Incidentally your use of the word "harassed" speaks v
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It says they don't trust the police to be benevolent. Your response says you do. History shows that both of you have good reasons for feeling the way you do.
Now, whether you'll acknowledge that is a separate question.
And it's legal (Score:2)
"Section 21(1) of the 2007 Act allows a constable to stop and question a person for as long as is necessary to ascertain that person's identity and movements. This power can help the PSNI to prevent crimes and bring offenders to justice, by ascertaining individuals' identities and why they are in a particular area."
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/199875/Final_version_of_the_Code_to_be_printed_for_laying_before_Parliament_13MAY2013.PDF [service.gov.uk]
Re: And it's legal (Score:2)
This power can help the PSNI to prevent crimes...
It's never about "preventining crimes," you historically-ignorant dimwit; it's about power and control.
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I suspect, actually, that the dimwit is the person who didn't notice the quotes around the text which was lifted from the document linked directly below it.
But your opinion may vary...
A matter of framing (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe how both the police and the media frame the tech's deployment is skewing our perception of it. I wouldn't take any offense if the police stopped me for an ID-check with something along the lines of "Excuse me, sir, can we see an ID? You were flagged as a match for a wanted person, and we want to make sure we're looking at the right guy." - it's simple, it's clear, and it's courteous, nothing wrong with a double-check.
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Until the 19th century there was the Black Act [wikipedia.org] that made covering or blacking one's face punishable by death.
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No, face paint doesn't work with this technology, generally skin color is either ignored or a very minor-ranked consideration. **Some** makeup can confuse the cameras if applied correctly, but that takes professional makeup artist talents to do.
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Paper masks or camo face paint should solve the problem.
At least in the US, concealing your face to prevent identification is a felony in some states.
https://www.richmond.com/news/... [richmond.com]
Re:A matter of framing (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's the "papers please" mentality that is so offensive. You've done nothing wrong, and now you're put into the position of defending your innocence.
So why, if you want to do anything in the UK, is everyone allowed to ask for papers except the police?
It took me a day's work to collect the paperwork required in order to open a savings account at a local building society, including more than one trip there over some distance, trying to get the local authority talking to the building society (because my street address was not in the society's database), and the branch manager eventually having to hack the society's computer in some way to allow me to j
Re:A matter of framing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: A matter of framing (Score:1)
Re: A matter of framing (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you've done something wrong, how will it ruin your life?
Someone needs to make a false accusation against you, then you can ask that question again.
Re: A matter of framing (Score:2)
You've clearly lost the plot (Score:2)
Re: A matter of framing (Score:2)
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The obligatory question!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: A matter of framing (Score:2)
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So why, if you want to do anything in the UK, is everyone allowed to ask for papers except the police?
They shouldn't be.
Your bank account example is because of the "hostile environment" policy as part of the government's war on immigrants. It's morally wrong.
While ID is sometimes legitimately required and reasonable to ask for you should not have to carry it at all times in case the police demand it. That's one key difference - you are asking the bank for a service, the bank can't demand you produce ID when an employee sees you walking down the street. Also the police have much more power to abuse so should
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Wrong the bank account is a "hostile environment" policy to target money laundering. It has nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants and is morally right.
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They're very clear here in the US that it's to target illegal immigrants. Money laundering is **big** business, over a Trillion Dollars (yes, with a T) gets laundered through just the US banking system every year. That will never get controlled at the level of millions of dollars, as CitiCorp, Credit Suisse, and the rest get 10-15 percent of that money for performing the service. The only "money laundering" businesses that ever get cracked down on in the US are the small storefronts that people use to se
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It's the "papers please" mentality that is so offensive. You've done nothing wrong, and now you're put into the position of defending your innocence.
So why, if you want to do anything in the UK, is everyone allowed to ask for papers except the police?
Your bank isn't allowed to shoot you - yet.
Because that stuff is unnecessary (Score:2)
You're going out of your way to engage a private entity and if you don't agree with their terms you can walk away. Not so with the police. Then it's resisting arrest or obstruction of Justice.
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So why, if you want to do anything in the UK, is everyone allowed to ask for papers except the police?
Characterizing the encounter as someone "asking for your papers" is disingenuous.
An agent of the state seized these people and ordered them to provide identification. If a random citizen had done that, then at least in the US they would have committed a crime.
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It's the "papers please" mentality that is so offensive. You've done nothing wrong, and now you're put into the position of defending your innocence.
We must have law and order, citizen! Be happy we said please. If you don't want stopped and interrogated, stay at home. Although, that is suspicious as well. We'll be by later for you to answer some questions.
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Quit with the grandstanding, please. You're not defending your innocence — the police still have to prove your guilt.
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The police don't proof your guilt, that's for the courts. The police can hold you for a couple of days, tell a Judge you're a suspected criminal and the Judge can remand you into custody pending trial, or set bail conditions that you have to meet to not be remanded into custody. Perhaps a year later you will get your day in court to argue that you are not guilty, hopefully you can afford a good lawyer because otherwise you will be faced with deciding to do a plea bargain or gamble that you can proof your in
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You've done nothing wrong
Prove it. You look like someone who did. But let's play a game. Prove it without providing any documentation to the fact that the police have you mixed up with someone else. After all that would be "papers please".
I for one do not take offence to proving that I am not someone that the police are looking for. The world is a big place, I'm sure you too look like someone else who is wanted for murder.
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Come on, you know you don't need any courtesy.
The so-called airport "security" will kill a few days from the life of a typical citizen, and take them through a bunch of degrading performances for no good reason every time they board and disembark a plane, yet there is no public anger to keep it in check, despite the numerous proofs of its lack of efficiency.
People will always trade the illusion of "dignity, freedoms and rights" for the illusion of convenience, safety and a full stomach.
The only thing tha
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Gets kind of tedious when it's the 37th time because you happen to look a bit like some other person or because the algorithm doesn't work very well with your dark skin.
Certain people are going to suffer this a lot more than others. It was the same with Stop & Search in London, and it quickly became a tool for harassment too. I'm sure it's not hard to manipulate this system or just lie and say the algorithm selected whoever they are targeting.
Also in the UK we don't have a national ID card or any legal
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Gets kind of tedious when it's the 37th time because you happen to look a bit like some other person or because the algorithm doesn't work very well with your dark skin.
You know what? You're right.
I was writing under the possibly-false assumption that the false positive gets fed back into the system to improve the detection rate. If that does not take place, the algorithm will not improve, and you will keep being flagged. Which does get really old really fast.
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How about asking a muslim office manager or an black financial adviser how they feel about being stopped regularly because they had a wire sticking out of a bag or were driving a car that seemed too expensive, how they feel about getting put on flight blacklists because someone with a similar name is seen to be a threat, and how they'd feel about being stopped even more often because a) facial recognitio
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Is there something special about a Muslim look? Something visual, which, combined with the wires, would raise an alarm?
This is a separate outrage all its own — nobody should be put on those lists, they simply mustn't exist. If a person warrants being blocked from flying, he warrants being arrested.
That's simply government's mission cre
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Don't know about England, but the police in the US are seldom "clear" or "courteous". The phantasmagorical "terrorist watch list" here is used to harass people traveling in the US. Democratic senator Ted Kennedy used to get stopped every time he got on a commercial flight throughout the entire Bush Madministration, because a guy with a similar first and last name (different middle name) had been a minor member of the IRA during the 1970s. People who have made contributions to groups like PETA or the Pale
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Tell the people who spent a week in jail, lost their job and car, and now have a felony arrest on their record about how their perception is skewed when they were falsely identified.
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.co... [phoenixnewtimes.com]
Seems fine as long as people realise limitations (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as the police are aware that most of these are still innocent, and act accordingly - perhaps verifying by manually checking against a database, then this seems like a useful tool.
Re:Seems fine as long as people realise limitation (Score:5, Interesting)
this seems like a useful tool.
Which is the whole point. It's a very useful tool. It's a useful tool for catching criminals, but they tend to be quite careful about hiding their faces. It's a much more useful tool for catching political opponents especially those that stand up and protest peacefully. Imagine this system being used in Hong Kong. There's no problem with the fact they searched six criminals. There's not even a problem with the fact that they searched 15 people - including 9 falsely accused. It's normal in a criminal investigation that you have several falsely accused people.
The problem is that they illegally photographed, temporarily stored, processed and searched the images of the faces of 19,000 innocent people. That's over 3000 innocent people for each crime they prosecuted and is completely disproportionate. Each of those 3000 people has been put at risk that, if a Fascist regime takes over in the UK and starts to hunt enemies they can be easily identified and selected for oppression.
What's really bad is that there are no real public controls over what happened. We know that many members of the police have been caught using surveillance for criminal ends - stalking girlfriends, infiltrating peaceful political groups, identifying targets for demanding bribes. If the public aren't able to check which identities were searched for we can never know how the police chose the 15 people they thought they had identified.
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they tend to be quite careful about hiding their faces
I take it you don't know many (or any) criminals. They're not criminals because they got bored being rocket scientists, they're criminals because they're lazy and stupid. The criminal masterminds in the movies are pretty much all fiction, the reason why crime is a viable way to make a living is because the cops generally aren't much smarter.
What "illegal photography"? (Score:2)
With very few exceptions, whatever can be legally seen, can also be legally recorded. There is no expectation of privacy in a public venue. If you insist on the validity of the "illegally photographed" term you used, please, cite the law violated.
Why would attending a soccer match be d
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It's a useful tool for catching criminals, but they tend to be quite careful about hiding their faces.
I think you way over-estimate criminals. The types of stories we hear about on a daily basis are the kind where criminals drop their wallet with their ID while robbing a gas station or breaking and entering. The kind where they tend to hurt themselves by running into things during a getaway. The kind which try to steal a wallet from grandma only to get their arses kicked by said grandma.
Or my favourite, the guy who removed his disguise in order to carry his loot: https://abc7chicago.com/man-us... [abc7chicago.com]
Criminals a
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As long as the police are aware that most of these are still innocent, and act accordingly - perhaps verifying by manually checking against a database, then this seems like a useful tool.
Verifying against what? As long as you're going by visuals alone computers are now considerably better at this than humans - we still hold a weak lead on face detection under heavy occlusion/makeup/blur but on recognition/verification they're better - it wasn't true five years ago but it's true now. Whether it's security camera tracking (identical), contemporary tracking (hair/facial hair/makeup changes), age-independent tracking (is this the kid kidnapped 10 years ago), casual or adversarial (sunglasses/ma
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As long as the police are aware that most of these are still innocent, and act accordingly - perhaps verifying by manually checking against a database, then this seems like a useful tool.
And you think that is going to happen?
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This reminds me of when DNA fishing expeditions were popular. Someone was assaulted so ask every white male age 18 to 50 to provide a DNA sample to "rule them out". The police aren't going to manually follow up every lead and check individuals just to make one arrest.
They had to stop doing it in the end because it was so widely abused, and also because it didn't work. Often it failed to find the perpetrator and the police had allowed other leads to go cold or failed to properly collect other evidence.
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This reminds me of when DNA fishing expeditions were popular. (...) They had to stop doing it in the end because it was so widely abused, and also because it didn't work. Often it failed to find the perpetrator and the police had allowed other leads to go cold or failed to properly collect other evidence.
The one-time catch-and-release from everyone in the area searches are mostly dead. But here in Norway they passed a law that said everyone convicted of a crime (not misdemeanors) will be added to the DNA registry for life, it started out as sex crimes then violent crimes and now it doesn't matter if it's for tax evasion. Supreme court has said it's okay, if the European court of justice agree it's final and that'll leave the whole EU free to do the same.
Currently 90k of 5.32 million or 1.8% of the populatio
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Facial recognition will always have one of four outcomes.
1) Person is not wanted; AI determines person is not wanted. GOOD outcome.
2) Person is wanted. AI determines person is wanted. GOOD outcome.
3) Person is not wanted. AI determines person is wanted. PROBLEMATIC outcome but solved with human ID verification.
4) Person is wanted. AI determines person is not wanted. BAD outcome as no one double checks that.
Form (Score:2)
What.. (Score:2)
'Spice Girls concert in May, and identified 15 people on a watchlist'
Football hooligans are one thing, but how the heck can someone get banned from a Spice Girls show. The bigger question is after being banned, what type of person would return.
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'Spice Girls concert in May, and identified 15 people on a watchlist'
Football hooligans are one thing, but how the heck can someone get banned from a Spice Girls show? The bigger question is after being banned, what type of person would return?
"Stalkers".
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Stalkers
By now, anyone stalking the Spice Girls is doing so using a Zimmer frame.
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The Spice Girls are still doing concerts? I'll have to see if they're coming anywhere near us.
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Naa, the thing with these "watchlists" is that they are used to fake "success". The trick is to just put enough people on them, and since there is effectively no oversight and no appeal, they can basically put people at random on them. As soon as the list is large enough, you will find some "people on a watchlist" at any event with a larger number of people and the average moron will believe this whole thing is a good thing and works.
Remember the "security forces" and the "authorities" are not in the busine
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I would think people dressed unfashionably would get you banned from a Spice Girls show....or having musical taste.
Re: What.. (Score:2)
....or having musical taste.
WTF are you talking about?? They're even better than S Club 7...
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Privacy? (Score:2)
Rights groups say this kind of monitoring raises worries about privacy
Who the hell expects privacy at a football match? For a start, you are likely to appear on the TV sports channels as the camera covers the crowd.
Misplaced hysteria. (Score:3)
False positives are a massive problem if the ultimate decision lies with an algorithm. It doesn't. The decision still lies with a person. It could have a 90% false positive and the result is still no innocent person being arrested.
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If you think that a "person in the loop" in any way prevents or even significantly reduces the effects of false positives, then you are deranged and singularly ignorant of relevant history. The computer is never wrong, after all.
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If you think that a "person in the loop" in any way prevents or even significantly reduces the effects of false positives, then you are deranged and singularly ignorant of relevant history. The computer is never wrong, after all.
So what you're saying is the addition of a computer system makes it not worse but better since people aren't able to identify false positives?
Or are you saying that the police stopping and questioning people was invented in the age of facial recognition?
Or are you gweihir and just tin-foil hatting something completely unsubstantiated?
Take your pick. I think it's the last one though, that makes the most sense.
Re: Misplaced hysteria. (Score:2)
The decision still lies with a person.
Yep; a bobbie with an IQ of ninety. Good fucking point.
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Yep; a bobbie with an IQ of ninety. Good fucking point.
Yep, as in the same type of person who has done this job of identifying people for the best part of 500 years since King Louis XIV stood up the first police force. And look how society has crumbled since /epicfuckingsarcasm.
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There's enough to dislike about the use of this kind of techno
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False positives are not an issue in a police state (Score:4)
In fact, they are desirable. They make it clear to everybody that the police can destroy you anytime they want, with no real consequences whatsoever if they get it wrong. After all (which gets conveniently overlooked these days) the primary purpose of the police is to keep the unwashed masses under control and to enforce whatever deranged "morality" those in power want to see established using as much violence as needed. All that "serve and protect" stuff is just PR, not reality.
serve and protect (Score:2)
You misunderstand. The police are there to serve the police union and protect the status quo.
In USA, ."..and Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court has declined to put police and other public authorities under any general duty to protect individuals from crime."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales/ [wikipedia.org]
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You misunderstand. The police are there to serve the police union and protect the status quo.
In USA, ."..and Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court has declined to put police and other public authorities under any general duty to protect individuals from crime."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales/ [wikipedia.org]
That's a ludicrously bad misreading of that opinion. What the opinion says is that police are not financially (or criminally) liable for bad things happening to individuals. If a cop sees someone beating you to death and decides to simply wait until you're dead and then arrest the perp -- or even let the perp walk away -- the cop cannot be sued by your family for wrongful death. The cop's department may well fire the cop for failing to do the job -- or not -- but that's not a question for the courts to d
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40% reliable is much better than 80% reliable (Score:3, Insightful)
If the system is only 40% reliable (at least 9 wrong in 15), the police know they can't assume the people it flags up are guilty; they have to find corroborating evidence. If it was 80% reliable, they'd probably trust it even if they had their own doubts, and therefore arrest 3 innocent people in every 15.
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+1 insightful.
Future editions of this technology will improve accuracy to the point where law enforcement will detain everyone flagged, and at some point, oversight by human law enforcement personnel will be deemed unnecessary.
If you object, you're acting guilty. If you run, the drones will neutralize your suspicious resistance.
Other way (Score:2)
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I'm also interested in the false-negative counts. How many people that ought to have been flagged managed to slip through the detection network? It'd be relatively easy to devise an experiment
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But if your net only catches 1% of the bad guys it's meant to be detecting - then it's just providing a false sense of security at the cost to law-abiding citizen's time & privacy - in addition to the cost to run the system in the first place.
It's not like this is triggering arrest. (Score:2)
...obviously, there will still be human evaluation needed.
But if this system can cull away 80-90% of the certainly-nots, that would leave stretched police resources quite a bit less stretched examining the actually-might-be candidates.
I'm all for it.
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...obviously, there will still be human evaluation needed.
But if this system can cull away 80-90% of the certainly-nots,
But did it? All we can say is that it culled out 80-90% of possibles.
Here in the U.S. (Score:2)
Don't just focus on accuracy (Score:2)
It's a mistake to focus on accuracy. These systems will get more accurate with time. If you make a big deal about them being inaccurate, then a few years from now the police will be able to say, "There, we fixed the problem you were worried about. Now there's no reason not to use them."
We need to be talking about what limits to put on mass identification even if it's 100% accurate. Should it be impossible to walk down a public street without being photographed, tagged, and having your movements recorded
Spice Girls (Score:2)
The article reports that 19,000 faces were scanned at a Spice Girls concert in May, and identified 15 people on a watchlist. Six of them were arrested.
It was a Spice Girls concert - they should have arrested everyone.
Article Missing Important Info (Score:2)
TFA is significantly better than TFS that misses the point but both are missing some important information:
1) Britain has been using facial recognition for decades. What's "new" is, in real-time, actually acting on that data at an event's checkpoints. The tech isn't new. The usage of it isn't new. Pulling people aside because of a hit on the WL as they are walking in the door is new (or at least being public about it is).
2) They need to clarify which "Watchlist" they are using because it makes a BIG differe
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