Has TraffickCam ever made a match on Sex Trafficking?
Whats to stop it's use for other crimes, like an Asian countries government using it to track meetings of the opposition? Or the location of a refugee.
And who is running this? Where does the $ go.
Traffickers would need to post photos to advertise their trafficking. Those photos could then be matched and traced. Secret government opposition meetings have no need to post photos. Indeed, if you are taking photos at all at your secret government opposition meeting, you are doing it wrong.
To quote Stringer Bell "...are you taking notes on a motherfucking criminal conspiracy???"
They have it. The incentive to use it "catch" people they know are criminals is great. So they use it. Why not, we're only using it to put away the "bad" people.
A photo of a hotel room, at nonspecific times and without people in it, seems as close to harmless as can be. And there is apparently a law enforcement use case for it that makes sense and does not violate anyone's rights.
I am so tired of reading this same slippery slope comment posted hundreds of times per day to HN. It seems like HN will settle for nothing less than law enforcement operating with the same tools and technology they had in 1776. This is very far outside what most people want, and in my opinion, by agitating against things like this for no clear reason helps to keep debate about other more real and significant privacy concerns we are dealing with today on the fringes.
Install now "scapegoatfinder" app. and kindly help a prosecutor with his political career to find travelling latinos and blacks available in the area
Some people were being jailed because a non-whit... err, a similar people appeared in a blurry video doing a crime. Now you can help police to track you and do part of the job for free.
Not to mention that police has yet a written report with the list of people that went to a place of interest in the week of interest (obligatory by law for all hotel owners if I'm not wrong). All that they need is to take a look to the facebook of this people to find plenty of photos and then discretely match it with their own photos. Maybe book a weekend to be extra sure. Facebook could perfectly make some additional profit selling this info (if is not doing it yet).
Policemen do not need this apps. There are several police agents in each village, the 95% of the territory could be covered in a weekend just paying a visit to the five local hotels in the city, all at the same time. For bigger cities it would just take more time but is not an unfeasible task. Secret police could just book as travelling salesmen in any place of interest and silently comb the place for hours registering each crack in the tiles and each stain in the wooden floor.
As most hotels buy in mass furniture, pictures and machines, a combination of common objects will appear in all rooms. To make a database covering the 98% of hotels opened to public would not take more than two years probably, specially if they forget about pictures on the wall and focuse in rarely changing furniture or machines. To cross the database with vendors of some air conditioner model is not an unreachable goal. To estimate the area max of a room (or the size of a bed) in a photo showing a crime, can be done as long as you have enough pictures in the video. Tiles came in standard sizes. Maybe even a IA machine could be developped to search for a crack with the form of a particular broken polyline in the filtered results. Maybe police has it yet since 10 years ago... I don't know.
And there is facebook also to achieve a finer grain definition in particular areas.
Therefore the only thing new that the app adds to the equation is "you". You and the aspect of your room when you were using it.
The app is just an excuse to lure people into agreeing to be tracked, (maybe hoping that they forget about it later?). Moreover, to be tracked unnecessarily (it would only take a further visit to the place of interest to confirm the info, as I said. Policemen visit hotels in their area routinely).
But this info and agreeing can bite hard later the user in many unpredictable ways of course. For users is a "loser" situation.
Great question. As it appears now, it seems like a case of building a product without any validation of results.
https://www.foster.com/duff-on-hospitality-law/guest-room-pr...