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Comment by cedivad | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't sound too bad to me. I mean, moral implications aside this is a fairly successful technical achievement.

I'm not an expert, but doesn't this mean that they actually captured wanted people? Even with an abysmal rate, it's a more-targeted snatching of people walking by, resulting in arrests of known criminals?

The created technology is totally unfit for it's purpose, so no, it does not count as an "achievement."

If they wanted to spend money on something that doesn't work, they should have purchased darkpuma™ brand divination rods.

They could just buy some military surplus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651) as police is often wont to do.

That depends on what the purpose is. Assuming very few suspects in a large crowd, it sounds like it's acting as a pretty strong filter, especially if it has few false negatives. "5x the number of actual suspects" seems like probably a practical number to sort through manually.

That's not to say that I have particular confidence that the system is being deployed effectively, much less ethically, but your dismissal is unsound.

> That's not to say that I have particular confidence that the system is being deployed effectively, much less ethically, but your dismissal is unsound."

If it cannot be deployed ethically (which you seem prepared to concede), then it's not fit for purpose and is therefore not a real accomplishment.

My dismissal is that the error rates make it unsuitable for real use by real police officers. So no, my dismissal is not unsound. If it hasn't already, the purpose in practice of this machine will devolve into confirming the unfounded biases of police officers harassing the innocent (e.g. ADE 651, as mentioned by another user.) In the real world, devices like this are not fit for police work. Full stop.

I am willing to concede that it perhaps cannot be deployed ethically, but for reasons unrelated to its accuracy. It may be that being able to find anyone put on a list is too big a concentration of power, even in light of the benefits. That's every bit as much a problem if the system is 100% accurate.

If "find the people on this list, with near 100% accuracy" is something we're willing to accept, I think it's possible to build a system around this technology that doesn't deserve additional objection (outside detailed analysis of cost effectiveness or whatnot).

That outputting "there's a 20% chance they're on the list" might be used to deliberately harass those who aren't on the list is an argument that you didn't make in your first comment. Certainly safeguards against such behavior would be a necessary component of appropriate use of the technology - but it doesn't seem technically or socially implausible. There's a wide margin between a system that outputs "we think this person is sketchy" and a system that outputs "we think this person might be that specific person."

The root of the problem is that you simply cannot expect your average police officer to have a working intuitive knowledge of bayes theorem.

Ideally, procedures are not designed by "your average police officer."

All of this said, I agree that there's reason to be skeptical and keep close watch to ensure rights aren't being trampled. That's the case without this tech as well.

May I suggest that you up whatever success metrics you have because a 19% success rate is abysmal. I swear we have no quality standards in our industry, let alone strong ethics.

Ah but this is government procurement, so the fact its running at all makes it a success, and only 2 years late and 3x over budget.

The purpose of the system is to aid police in finding people on a wanted list. On average someone using this system only needs to look at 5 photos to spot someone, whereas without it they would need to look at thousands. The police are probably quite satisfied with the system's 19% hit rate.

>>The police are probably quite satisfied with the system's 19% hit rate.

lol, I am sure the police are, we as a society however should not be allowing the police to dictate what is and is not a "success". They have a MASSIVE conflict of interest here

The police would be happy with a 1% or even less hit rate

If you had a system that picked the winning lottery numbers 19% of the time, you'd be a very wealthy man.

If I had a system where 19% of my coffee refills were toxic I’d be a dead man.

My point is, in some cases false positives are ok, in other cases they are not.

I believe ethics were thrown out the door once our industry adopted the distrupt everything attitude.

We could also install cameras in every home and require people to wear a forever listening microphone at all times that the government can access at any time. This would stop a lot of crime. But I wouldn't call it successful. I guess my point is we need to have higher standards then this tech is preaching and since it is nothing like it seems, this is nothing more then a magic black box that the police would love to be able to use to pick people out of a crowd.

We could also install cameras in every home and require people to wear a forever listening microphone at all times that the government can access at any time.

Between cell phones, Amazon Ring, and Nest Cam, we're there.

All of those are voluntary, cell phones being the "least" voluntary but there are not laws requring one to have one, network effect makes it semi-required but...

Voice Assistants and Cloud Connected Camera however are no where near a requirement for participation in society

Until they stop being.

You see, that would inconvenience everyone equally and this be quickly turned down by the populace...but image recognition places the burden on colored folks so people don’t care as much.

That this would be allowed in a modern civil society is atrocious yet the public went along with it despite incident after incident: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_C...

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