That is not how we made our legislation work.
That is not how we made our legislation work.
Wasn't it, though? I mean, laws are ultimately decided by vote (directly or indirectly). People are free to agree or not with death penalty, but it's hard to deny that being personally affected by a crime can influence our opinions on the subject. That's why death penalty still exists in several states.
Same with facial recognition tech. Despite the legitimate concerns about potential abuse from a government, people can acknowledge that it is an extremely valuable tool for crime investigation and thus law enforcement.
So in the end, it all depends on how bad people want an efficient police, and that can definitely depend on our individual experiences with crime.
Limiting the polices technology and resources is an argument that doesn't make sense to me. Especially coming from open source advocates. Smells of hypocrisy.
People want justice, but they also want individual liberties to not be violated. Particularly in the US the Constitution is filled with stuff to keep a government seeking 'justice' from getting out of control.
Innocent until proven guilty, and police gathering evidence of a crime and scene to find, catch, interview and potentially prosecute a suspect. If that proves more expensive, spend enough on policing to achieve adequate deterrence and conviction rates.
The problem with any mass trawl or systemic facial recognition is it makes it utterly trivial to abuse the rights of those who happen to be in a minority group, or to actively look for crimes with which to persecute someone disliked. This is policing the wrong way round.
I hold just the same views about traffic enforcement. Cameras and automatic fines worse than a police officer in a patrol car. The officer can let someone off with a chat if there were clear extenuating circumstances - cameras can't. The officer can catch bad or dangerous driving that happens to be at legal speeds - cameras can't.
I see no hypocrisy here.
You know we have the technology to monitor people location and conversations in real time, we can put those monitoring bracelets on everybody , promise not to use them until a crime is happening and we want to see who was where.
This will solve crimes but it gives a big oppressive tool to the state, is your point that all possible tech should be used if is not too expensive so we reduce crime to 0? This may mean cameras on private properties, mandatory personality checks, social score etc.