I know a lot of people here are talking about the tech and how of course it makes too many false positives. But are we not going to talk about IF this type of thing is even okay? I for one don't think so. Too Orwellian.
And still citizens are searched at our train stations and other public areas here in Australia based on that kind of (in)accuracy.
[1] https://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/sniffer-dogs...
I'm going to make up a number. Keep in mind that I know it's a made up number, but I hope that it will illustrate my point. Let's imagine that 1 out of every 100 bags contains drugs that a sniffer dog can detect. If the dogs have an 80% false positive rate, that means that in 100 bags they will indicate the 1 bag carrying drugs and 4 other bags not carrying drugs.
If that bags carrying drugs (1:100) were correct, and I'm not saying it is, then of 100 bags, 4 bags were searched fruitlessly in order to find the 1 bag with drugs. That means that 4% of bags were searched fruitlessly. That sounds a lot more encouraging for the dogs.
Another way to look at it is to say that when the police get a bag that was indicated by a dog, their chance of finding drugs is 20%. With our 1:100 scenario (still not trying to say it's true) their chance would be 1%. So the chances of finding the drugs increases by a factor of 20 at the cost of inconveniencing 4% of the people.
Of course, I'm being a bit silly. We don't know how many bags the dogs checked so we have no idea how effective the dogs are. However, I suspect that relatively few people carry drugs in their bags (surely less than 1%? Maybe I'm wrong), so this 80% false positive rate sounds pretty effective to me. It potentially disrupts a tiny percentage of people and potentially increases the odds of finding drugs pretty dramatically. Without more information, there is no way to say what's going on, though (which is why I hate newspaper articles like that).
While to me it is obvious that using a trained drug-sniffing dog in a suspicion-less search on unopened bags cannot be used to generate the probable cause required for a human to open the bag and search it manually, for some reason, the judges have so far seen fit to dance around that and come up with legal excuses to allow it anyway.
The problem is not that the dogs are bad at identifying drug bags. The problem is that dogs should not be employed in the first place, unless the cops already have a good reason to search the bags. I.e. they saw a suspected drug/money mule go in with a bag and come out empty-handed, but are having trouble identifying which bag was his. They then have reasonable suspicion to perform the search with the dog, and the dog gives reasonable suspicion to open the bags the dog marked. Just going around with a dog, sniffing every bag that comes within range of that nose, should not be allowed.
The face recognition and license plate scanners are the same to me. They may not technically be a search, but they are still breaching the pseudo-anonymity one enjoys by being out in public. Strangers know you're there, but they don't necessarily know who you are, what you are doing, or where you are going. You are likely unnoticed or quickly forgotten. The cops are using this technology to fight crime, but they end up harassing a lot of innocents in the process. They are essentially using the mechanical assistance to follow everyone, all the time, and remember the details for a long, long time. And that sort of behavior is precisely what prompted the 4th Amendment in the first place. The technology has brought back general warrants, worse than ever, and the cops are concealing or lying about what they are doing with it, because it has been illegal in the US for over 230 years.
In your scenario, they've searched 100 people with no probable cause (what is a sniffer dog doing, if not a search?), and then done a much more intrusive, stressful, and embarrassing personal search of 5 people, also with no probable cause or presumption of innocence, in order to catch one person.
Being basically accused of a crime and physically searched by men with guns is much more than an "inconvenience" in my opinion.
A system that accuses 4 innocent people of a crime for every guilty person it catches, is in my opinion a broken system that should not be employed.
My opinion of course, you may be happy with a much higher level of police intrusion into your life. Gotta stop those dangerous drug users!
Bull. And even if it did you are literally suggesting that one can't change their mind.
That's the thing, as the other commenter pointed out: for all practical purpose, there was no "debate" or "conversation" (outside the tech community, and a few wonky policy discussion forums). It has been basically presented as a fait accompli.
The "powers that be" chose public safety over personal privacy.
That may be the rational for (some of) the customers.
But I'm sure you know all too well that the vendors of this technology are (overwhelmingly) motivated by the pursuit of one thing, and one thing only. And it certainly isn't your safety or mine.
Historically speaking, the "if I didn't build X - someone else would have" argument -- well, we all know what that has led to.
And the idea that the tech is more dispassionate and therefore fairer than humans is a step on the road to hell. I guess you never had an anomalous credit or insurance rating yet. (Notably GDPR has a clause for precisely the ability to review automated decision making where it can have a material effect.)
This isn't a sorting algorithm where there is a simple provable solution, this is putting heuristics in a computer.
I'd hedge that a little. Because I think there are a lot of people who are just naive and think that using data that is historically racist will result in racist outcomes.
Not saying that the person creating the algo is racist, but for such a harsh accusation you need enough substantial evidence. That, or we dilute the term.
I like this: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.09847
Obviously the designer could make this data set racist on purpose, I was just saying that an AI that judges on race might be due to stupidity and not malice. Hanlon's Razor.
[1]Not realizing that there are other parameters that correlate with race
(a) the technology is being deployed in specific environments where there really is a credible threat of criminal behaviour, and
(b) it is being used only as an initial filter prior to normal, lawful police action (or inaction) with normal safeguards, and
(c) the target data set used for comparisons is generated on a lawful and justified basis
then I'm not sure there is anything inherently unethical about this sort of technology. Is it really any different to having police officers at the entrances to a stadium with mugshots of known hooligans who have been identified while discussing trouble-making online ahead of the match?
Whether it is technically capable enough to be useful and cost-effective is a different matter, and it's also a test that might give a different result tomorrow.
Whether it is possible to have sufficient safeguards that a system could reliably meet the standards above is also a different question.
And whether the public would trust that those safeguards existed and have confidence that the standards were being met is another question again.
"Indigenous Australians account for 15 times as many offensive language offences as would be expected for their population."
http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AltLawJl/2004/53.html
:sigh:
FTFY
> (a) the technology is being deployed in specific environments where there really is a credible threat of criminal behaviour,
You need to define what credible threat is, pretty exactly. Just a thief? A terrorist? I think we all agree that this would be nice if there was foreknowledge of an imminent attack. BUT I think there still is a danger in setting them up for only that kind of use. We know that if we give police (or anyone really) tools, they will use them (why wouldn't they?). So having the ability uses to more abuse of use. But also as time goes on and people get used to it, the regulations relax.
So in this terrorist scenario I would be okay with bringing in cameras, or hooking into the already existing system, but it would need to tear down and be required to only come out when time is of the essence.
As we say in America, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be stripped of their freedom.
As we say in America, I'd rather a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be stripped of their freedom.
Anyways, I always wondered if the discretion allowed to police engenders more societal problems than it solves. I imagine this would have a similar effect.