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Comment by pointyhat | Hacker News Reader

Please do not do this. It compromises people's right to privacy and will artificially incriminate people who may not be participating but are bystanding or trying to get home.

Technology is not the solution - it's part of the cause. Everyone is automatically incriminated. Don't add fuel to the fire.

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Can you expand on your argument against the use of technology in this way?

Nothing here compromises your privacy, and nothing will artificially incriminate you. Everything is already public information.

A system like this would be exactly the same as photos being released to the public by the police (which they have), and then random people ringing up saying "That person might be XYZ" (which also happens).

This would be a simple automation of the process to help filter down who it could potentially be (none of the results would be public). It would be up to the police to work out who should be pursued.

Also, I entirely disagree with your statement that technology is the cause. Riots happened before the Internet and social networks. People would be using phones, radio, and word-of-mouth anyway.

No, it is not exactly the same, things have shifted a lot in the last 20 years ago. It used to be "what a police officer happened to see while he was driving down the street in his car", now it is rapidly becoming "what could have a police officer possibly seen at any time and in any location, in all EM wavelengths, tied into massive identifying databases". That is a massive shift in power to the police, its important to proceed cautiously, a free society is much more important than catching criminals.

My point entirely. Thank you for such an elegant description.

Nothing like facial recognition would ever be allowed to be used as evidence, especially in the way I envisage it being used here. It's about helping to narrow down the options so the police can get on with their traditional lines of enquiry, like gathering evidence, etc. There is no shift in power to the police, they don't have access to any extra data, just the results.

We need to stop being afraid of the potential uses of technology, we'll never get anywhere that way. Also, I am not claiming that this is a) the right solution, or b) socially acceptable just yet.

We need to tackle those issues, rather than turn away from the technology because of potential futures.

Lets take a hypothetical example, say every CCTV camera in London that is available to the police is tied into facial recognition databases, then those results are stored by the police; They then gain a massive database of the movement of people that would otherwise have not been available. The important thing here is that none of this requires additional data. Even if none of this data is in any way admissible in court (it is and has been in the past), that still gives the police massive leverage over knowing innocent (remember innocent until proved guilty ) people's movements, without consent, probably without knowledge. How you can claim an idea like this isnt a shift in power to the police escapes me.

I think if you analyse your statements and compare them to a sensible set of morals which put a person above the state, you can answer that question yourself.

https://www.eff.org/issues/privacy

Thank you for the link, it's important that this issue is discussed in the open rather than people getting scared of the technology and possible repocussions.

However, I also think it's important to note that I am not a lawyer in privacy. I am a developer who wants to help out. I'll leave the legality and policy behind privacy to the professionals.

At the end of the day I would have absolutely no problem with my publicly accessible profile image being used in facial recognition in these circumstances. Imagine if I was a potential witness of something? Is it then OK to use facial recognition in that case?

Why using face recognition on witnesses to get them to tell what they know? If they do want to help the police, they will, if they don't want, how can that help?

And what else than "potential witness" will you identify? None of these pictures could be used as evidence.

HN is definitely full of capitalist muppets if you're downvoting eff privacy. WTF is wrong with you peoople?

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