Met Police UK Live Facial Recognition | Hacker News Reader

Met Police UK Live Facial Recognition

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148 pointssacrosanct194 comments

It never ceases to amaze me how comfortable people here in the UK are with state-funded busy-bodies filming and monitoring them 24/7.

It's gotten so bad that if I were to write some offensive rap lyrics here I could be visited by the police to "check my thinking", or worse I could prosecuted. This applies regardless of whether I've actually offended anyone, if the state feel what I said could hypothetical be considered offensive then it's illegal. Similarly, if you are actually trying to be offensive, but your offense is directed to groups or individuals the state doesn't like, you'll be fine.

I'm sure a similar approach to enforcement will be applied here. If the state decides they don't like you, perhaps because your protesting the wrong things, they'll likely use this technology to keep you in line.

Literally no one here cares though. Brits tends to hold the opinion that if you just don't say or do the wrong things you'll be fine.

The UK is much authoritarian than people give it credit for. Official state media, convicting comedians for offensive jokes, laws restricting speech...

But most Brits will say all of the above is fine, even necessary. It's eerie how similar these conversations are to ones I've had with people from countries generally considered authoritarian in the west.

The general conclusion I draw is that people will justify and put up with a fair amount of authoritarianism if they feel it targets the right people, or maintains the kind of society they want to live in. If you're a "good citizen" and it doesn't effect you it's hard to be principled if it's mainly targeting people you consider dregs.

EDIT: changed "State run media" to "Official state media" per conversation below..

To be clear, despite efforts of BBC News since 2016 to demonstrate otherwise, the BBC is funded by the license fee, with the exception of the world service. It is not controlled by the state.

You're right, "state-run" is perhaps a clumsy term to use, and doesn't quite capture the dynamics between the BBC and the government.

"Official state media" is more correct

"Public service broadcaster" is even more correct.

Your original comment had truth to it but bundling the BBC in undermined that, however you define it here.

What's the difference? Your term sounds like mine but dressed in less neutral, more positive language.

I don't think it's less neutral - your (non-standard) definition conveys the idea of government mouthpiece which supports your original comment but doesn't reflect the BBC's history or mission.

Didn't intend to convey it was a mouth piece for the government. But it's definitely official, and definitely a state institution, even the tail wags the dog a lot more than say XinHua.

"Public Service" is plainly a positive term though. It lends an air of altruism. Not particularly interested in what nomenclature is standard (according to who? 7 etc etc).

Under the Westminster system (UK, Australia, ...), the public service is supposed to be apolitical, 'frank and fearless’ and non-partisan. "Government run" isn't supposed to be equated with biased and partisan. The public service is there to serve the people rather than members of parliament.

Sadly, this ideal of the Westminster system has been under attack for the last decade or two. Secrecy has been broadly imposed on the public service and non-partisan department heads are sacked and replaced with political lackeys. The ideal isn't dead though. There are people in the public service who are trying to keep it non-partisan, and those efforts should be supported rather than it all being written off as a hopeless case.

[1] https://sef.psc.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government-context/the-westmi...

The public service are un-elected, largely unaccountable, very expensive and wield a tremendous amount of power.

Westminster type systems are arguably hybrid oligarchies. Australia is a good example - look how it continues to function in largely the same way, on largely the same trajectory, despite having 5 prime ministers in the last 10 years.

What do you mean? The PM is a function of what the governing party wants, and in 10 years we've mostly only had a single party in Federal government. But either way, this isn't really true of state governments which have differed quite a lot over the past few years.

But ultimately the government decides who is in charge of the BBC, with only minor indirection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Board

And everybody who worked there was vetted by MI5 for political opinion: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43754737

I guess being a nonce isn't "subversive".

Even as official state media it doesn’t quite capture the complicated relationship between the BBC, it’s reporters, management, and the government. Take for example how it covered the Northern Ireland Troubles

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/oct/22/how...

I grew up watching BBC Northern Ireland and also the Irish equivalent of the BBC, RTE and witnessed at least two different versions of reality every evening. Many competing interests were involved and many on all sides were genuinely acting in good faith within their respective systems.

As a point of contrast, I feel like US mainstream news is even more beholden to special interests, including that of the government, than either the BBC or RTE ever were. So being nominally free of state control doesn’t mean a whole lot in reality it seems to me.

I am moving from Hong Kong to UK and I’d say most of these are not fine. Sadly it is probably the only route to escape Hong Kong that is accessible to most people here.

As a US citizen I am completely on the side of freedom of press but I wish there was SOME means of holding Fox News accountable especially since they're an unregulated propaganda machine of the extremist republicans…

accountable for what specifically? or do you just want more rigorous reporting in general?

TV is a dying medium, is it not? I'd say this problem of sensationalist TV news solves itself within a decade.

> accountable for what specifically?

For mis-selling entertainment, opinion and a poorly written soap opera as the "facts" or even "news".

TV is being replaced by even more sensationalist and less accountable youtubers.

And still, when I think 'low-quality and probably life-destroying yellow press', I do not think United States, I think United Kingdom. Fox News feels almost liberal compared to the likes of the Daily Mail or (shudder) the Express.

I dislike all of these organizations, but they're all peas in the same awful pod. Debating whether one is more liberal than another is like trying to figure out which of Himmler, Goering or Hitler was the least fascist. You might be able to get an answer but it doesn't mean anything given how terrible they all were.

Part of that is that the private media are actually more authoritarian than the state one. Remember the "enemies of the people" headline?

For a while as a minister Boris Johnson was paid more by the Times than his ministerial salary. Johnson gave Lebedev a peerage for using his papers, the Evening Standard and the Independent, to promote him. One of the few papers still defending him in his half-resigned state is the Daily Mail. The press have very much been calling the shots until now.

> convicting comedians for offensive jokes

If that's referring to the case I think it's referring to, I'm very ok with that. There's no such thing as ironic racism.

I can remember foreign owned private media (The Sun) trying to frame a football match as an extension of World War II. I also remember when that same foreign owned newspaper boasted about manipulating the results of our elections.

I mention "foreign owned" twice because I don't think those that don't have a stake in our country should have so much influence on how it is run and definitely shouldn't be trying to stir up non-existent trouble with our allies.

Personally I'm OK with a public service broadcaster that's charged with being politically neutral.

I think they want it actually. They are very subservient to their government -- perhaps not the prime minister of the day if thy sit on the wrong side, but the bureaucrats and the whole government machine -- they see it as a benevolent protector and provider.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925

They want to be protected from people such as this, because they don't feel they can protect themselves from him. Not sure where Prince Harry dressing up as a Nazi falls on the spectrum, but I assume the ruling class is above the laws of the commoners either way.

I think all western countries including USA are going down the same road though. It's not a choice I would personally make, but I suppose I can understand why people think this way.

Careful, this comment might be deemed a “non-crime hate incident”.

> Literally no one here cares though. Brits tends to hold the opinion that if you just don't say or do the wrong things you'll be fine.

I after ten years of police incompetence, failure, sheer ineptitude and negligence of the police to deal with abusive heroin/crack addicts did my own survaliance and with all the evidence, they still failed to do a thing. Even predicted drug dealer activities and events before they even happened and then with fair and sound warning, they still failed. Even with evedence they failed to even offer any up against the offenders in crown court and they walked. I could write a novel at the failures they have done, from passing witness satments onto drug dealers to bending over backwards for them. Even predicted and warned about danger of life to others and they were allowed to just die.

So yes, you can say and do what you like without being held to account as long as your a criminal who can play the system and get away with it.

Which is why I'm in the process of making it all public and shame all those failures in the open. Already have the Met Police on special measures. Already flagged and raised two major security flaws in their systems to entities higher and dare say I'm not even scratching the surface here.

Hence your comment about "litterally no one here cares" rings true too me of the police themselves who have for all effect enabled crime and victimhooded the real criminals at the expense of innocent lives and with that. I dare say they will find a way to charge and arrest me once I do it but damit, this can not carry on and the levels of failure are so deep and wide, it is the right thing to do.

Any suggestions about releasing such whistleblowing level of data to augment what I have inplay would be welcome though.

To get started, simply buy a domain and host it via blogger. Create a new blog entry every week.

Well, duristiction of domains (also hosting) can be a factor as well and looking at ways to curtail it being easily removed and with that - out of reach of parties involved.

I would avoid sharing information like that without solid effort to prevent you being identified as the source. I’d start with anonymous drop-box for a newspaper, from a throwaway laptop, using tor, etc…. and see if they publish enough. Just don’t put yourself in harms way, and you probably know how wide that is since you’re investigating their incompetence and negligence.

Alas that is kinda hard and really impossible in this matter, but wise advice and if was an avenue, it would already be done. Really is a case of dammed if I do and dammed if I don't and picking which flavour of dammed I go with and with that, I choose the one that helps others iraspective of impact upon me. Not ideal but then, sometimes in life you just have to do the right thing whatever the personal cost involved.

lots of claims, no evidence. You sound like a busybody with a beef until you share your smoking gun. I hope that I'm just being a bit insensitive and you prove me wrong, good luck.

No that's a fair observation given the what you have to go on (a single post) and kinda the case of need to get the smoking guns out, which is what I'm in the process of doing. Thank you.

This is about right.

A friend of mine was hit by another car two weeks ago and was injured in the crash. The other driver drove off without stopping. Police didn't turn up for the accident. They handed 360 dash cams over to the police. The registration plate was clearly visible. It checks out on DVLA and MID as taxed, MOT'ed and insured. Police have managed to do nothing so far with any level of competence, have note even attempted to contact the vehicle owner and have managed to lose the video evidence and half of the case notes so far.

That and a few other cases over the years including an attempted stabbing, burglary and car theft has given me a really bad opinion of the police. They have not managed to actually help me once.

The stupid one was the car theft. The policeman who turned up said they know who did it and where the car was. Then 4 weeks of silence followed by an apology letter.

Well, hopefully the climate will change and others will come forward once it gets traction as a lot of things just get glossed over and burried to the stage that it does nobody any good and just enables bad actors more than is right. Don't even get me started on the court system which hands out weak sentences and then gives a 50% discount - even today that the whole deterant it was is nolonger the case as it has become so watered down that it casts a mockery of it all and that's just the instances in which it even gets and goes to trial.

I think you underestimate the amount of bureaucracy they can muster to avoid acknowledgement and change. But I live in hope.

Oh I'm fully aware of what they can do in their ability to dismiss, ignore, false flag and can be akin to kicking you in the nuts and feeling that their right to focus upon their hurty ears as you scream in pain, is very much a playbook used by so many in many walks of life. Hence looking at multiple avenues of release to curtail much of that.

That's what the IPCC is for, surely. Talk to them. Don't just give up.

Yeah, with the help of the IPCC they can get two apology letters.

It's always failure with you people, born to lose (but whine on HN in the meantime).

We're not born to lose, we're experienced at failures.

"you people" is never a good place for debate, more so when you glibly dismiss it in a derogatory manner, but then many police etc have that level of arrangance that does them and everybody else no good. You might want to look at things from the other way around perhaps, would you be happy with such a dismissive glib response? I'd say no, and who would.

I'm ok with the apathetic and negative so long as they don't try to infect others. I've no time for whingers, I've a lot of time for people who try - and they may fail (I've had my share of that), but at least they tried.

They tried and were failed and to dismiss that as not the IPCC's fault without knowing the nuances is an easy solution. Whilst nothing is perfect - who polices the people who police the police is perhaps the question. More so given that much of their work is done by...the police themselves. Sure the IPCC now changed to IOPC though still the same issue of not being as indepentant as purported.

Now if it was truely independant with investigations not pulling in and using the police for way to many instances, well - the word independant would carry some weight beyond name only.

As it stands, they are not as independant as people think and who do you esculate to after that? So yes, can see why many have nothing left open to them beyond what some would say winging but when you look at the whole structure. Is being unfairly treated winging or vocalising unjustice, well I'd say the later over jumping upon the former would be a far more fairer go to given all the facts.

This is a good, constructive post, thanks.

OK, I know something about handling stuff like this. The first thing you do is escalate it to your MP. The next thing is to publicise it - organisations just hate being embarrassed in public so you push it to the papers. I know this first hand.

You are right, I don't know the nuances and when you start to look into some people's stories, stuff starts to fall apart often enough and the injustice isn't what it seemed, or may not be there at all, it becomes just grudge. But I do want a better sciety, and I really wish we had a more constructive discussion - HN's threads are sometimes the nearest we get to a perpetual motion machine, forever turning but nothing changes.

Thanks again.

Yeah, do you know that's run by the police. Indeed here is a good example somebody I know experienced. They gave statments to the police about somebody, the police then inturn handed those statments to that person who was able to prove to the dealers that wasn't their fault and get them back in the next day. Complaint to IPCC was dismissed completely.

But that's just one example.

Yet they find the time to prosecute offensive posts on twitter. Anarcho-tyranny

Haven't the police in the UK been chronically underfunded through a decade plus of austerity policies? I get the feeling they are so under water, they can only deal with the most serious crimes.

I feel like this is exactly correct. Police are so underfunded that outside of London they won't even come out to speak with you unless the crime is very serious. But break ins, car/bike theft, petty issues - forget it, no time or resources to do that.

In part but still so many examples of them failing when no excuse to fail that it just don't carry as much water as you would think.

Though mindful the bigger issue would be prosecution just being so epicly fail and a whole raft of lawyers who know the law way better and the tricks that anybody who does go to court and gets sentence kinda needs to be so blantantly guilty to get past the most liberal minded of easily maniplated jurys by lawyers that even those get pithy sentences which get an automatic discount.

Real issue is prisons that are akin to social/networking clubs for criminals and absolutily no deterant at all.

Let alone failing that are more common than people realise like this example: https://www.businessinsider.com/desperate-letter-details-sui...

Another small example would be https://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/18250633.shoplifter-jaile... in that instance he got let out after two weeks which he was able to still get paid benifits and the joy of being banned from wearing a face-mask in shops just prior to the whole COVID pandemic - what geniues. Heck - how many can get away with calling a judge a Witch and get such a pithy sentence of 6 weeks yet out in 2. Let alone the charges. Hardly a deterant, more holiday club.

So if anything - the whole prision and sentencing system as well as financially propping up the whole prosecution needs to be addressed first as they fail the police who inturn fail everybody else. After all, police hands so tied with things that they are so exposed to being sued for saying even a hurty word to a criminal who has lawyers with skills that sure I can accept some level of blame outside the police, but equally, very mindful of so much failure above and beyond that within their remit that the whole system a stumbling joke to many.

So austerity, not the issue when the ones you have fail so hard and with that, demoralise and push out any that are good. Needs serious overhaul and some serious questons and mistakes admitted to. Cuckooing, it's not all that it seems, far from it, but that's best covered when I get it all public.

Its all intelligence lead now a days, so much meta data from mobile phone's you can track most people quite easily. Lifespans of drug users are drastically shortened, and with todays global population which has doubled since 1970's planetary resources are scarce, so are most people bothered if a spipce user is locked in a time vortex?

I noticed that this post appeared on Reddit the other day, suggesting people should start wearing woolly gimp masks to avoid facial recognition, which started in China. Have to wait and see if it catches on in the UK. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/umoflx/wearing_balac...

>>The stupid one was the car theft.

I know someone who had their car stolen in Manchester, basically the police said they don't even have the time nor the resources to come out, they gave him a case number and said to let his insurer handle it.

And the thing is, two days later he actually found his car sitting in a parking lot of a supermarket somewhere, rang the police, and they said "....ok? what do you want us to do?". He said that he would expect them to come out and look for prints or whatever - they said they don't have anyone available to do this, if he still has the keys he should take the car and be happy it was found.

I honestly think in UK unless it's an actual murder your chances of getting a successful intervention from Police are close to zero. They are just way too underfunded and understaffed, I do remember reading that some places like Manchester have like one policeman for 100k people. It's impossible to do effective policing with that kind of force.

> I honestly think in UK unless it's an actual murder your chances of getting a successful intervention from Police are close to zero.

There was the old joke about someone ringing the police to complain about someone burgling their garden shed.

  Police say, we'll send someone tomorrow to have a look.

  Homeowner replies, well I've got a kitchen knife and I'm going to stab this guy unless he leaves without taking any of my property.

  Police immediately send round officers to deal with the incident.

I'm never quite sure if the police are supposed to sending someone to deal with the bugler or to arrest the homeowner.

Well that's something I've heard too - if you are calling about a break in, make sure to mention that you think you saw them carrying a gun/knife. Then they will actually send someone within 5 minutes. Otherwise? They will be gone long before anyone turns up.

And no, I'm not talking about purely hypothetical situation here - my sister was alone at home when two drunk guys were trying to break in, throwing rocks and bricks at the windows, shouting that they are going to come in and get her, she locked herself in her room and rang the police.........they arrived 45 minutes later. If one of the guys didn't cut himself badly on the glass and decided to give up(and the other one bailed then), it could have ended extremely badly, but an active break-in is apparently not enough to send the nearest PC to the scene right now.

I'll mention two examples:

One in which dealers with guns, packages of heroin and cooking up crack cocaine, police be like ok we will put on our intel system, begged to send somebody nowt. I mention egads I might as well just kill myself was joking but once said that the operator wasn't going to let it go without the police checking upon me. Who then wasted their time and they still ignored what was going on in flat below.

Another one was they with lanlord knock on their door, they had dealers in, and waitied 5 minutes - could hear them flusing the toilet 3 times as they flushed all the drugs and only once got rid did they enter and go nothing to see here, didn't even bother checking the system tank etc - pure joke.

Was saying that the local police were akin to the keystone cops, though honestly they made the keystone cops look like the SAS.

But those are just two examples and far bigger and wider than that with too many to go thru, but helps when you do your own intellegence gathering and with that about 4TB of stuff to get out and far far worse.

If you intend to release data and want it out: https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop

That is a good suggestion - thank you, certainly a suitable platform to get things out. Appreciete the suggestion.

The Met in particular are a disaster: https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/what-does-it-mean-...

British people want to say God save the Queen, hang nonces, and watch the football, we have almost no spirit of liberalism anymore

If your right to it isn't guaranteed by law, your lack of right to it will be weaponized against you. Even if it is guaranteed to you by law, it still might.

> Literally no one here cares though. Brits tends to hold the opinion that if you just don't say or do the wrong things you'll be fine.

Well, not just Brits, roughly whole world holds the same opinion. The difference I see is one group tries with using laws to ban wrong things other group uses hectoring and shaming social media companies to do "right thing" by banning wrong speech. And then partisan hacks jump in, claiming how one of this is obviously right thing to do.

Sounds like whataboutism to me. Boycotting speech you disagree with is better than banning speech you disagree with.

But on the other hand, you have the ability to launder money to your heart’s delight, or resign from work by staying and building a new cabinet. Win some lose some!

The thing about the UK is that the state doesn't use the technology to harass people "they" dislike. And the thing about the US is that the same (and worse) is done by completely unaccountable corporations. What's worse? And moreover, what's the alternative?

Doesn’t use the technology against opponents much, yet.

Alternative is not to use the technology.

You say worse is done by corporations, do you have any examples?

The problem with this thinking: and what if in 20 years you get a government that does abuse the powers?

Surely, being the party of law and order, the tories have had time enough to sort all this out? Or they will do.

They're adding internet censorship to the mix: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/04/new-law-woul...

"Nadine Dorries ‘will have power to censor the internet’"

("Party of law and order" always means more surveillance and authoritarianism, whichever country you're in)

One of the problems is that it isn't just Brits.

Face tracking is being implemented throughout Europe: https://www.wired.com/story/europe-police-facial-recognition...

The rest of Europe has the same laws as the UK when it comes to 'offensive rap lyrics'.

This is a general issue, framing it as "Brits don't care" does nothing but make people believe it couldn't happen to them if they are outside the UK.

Some examples of people in the UK who do care: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/ https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/

Edit: Forgot to mention originally but lets not forget the general attitude towards E2E encryption in the UK and throughout Europe:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/eff-tells-eu-commissio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

There is a general movement against privacy, this isn't a localised issue.

So I've lived in the UK for 12 years now and yes, to an extent you are right - it's shocking how little people care about surveilence. I've met more "if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to fear" people here than anywhere else in the world. Every time I mention to someone that the Snoopers Chapter makes all ISPs record your browsing history and a huge number of agencies can just look through this data without a warrant(including the department of agriculture for some crazy reason), people just go "so?".

It's a losing fight, really. Even my friends who are very technically minded don't seem to care at all.

However - for all of this nonsense, I feel like some people(your post included) have an exaggerated sense of how bad it really is here. No, "thought crime" isn't being prosecuted. The rare police intervention that happens because someone got offended is usually resolved without any criminal charges. Yes it still shouldn't happen at all, but it's more of an anomaly than a rule.

I say all of the above because where I'm from(Poland), ostensibly there is not as much surveilence as in the UK, yet the government and the police are far happier to prosecute the things you are worried about. Insulted the wrong politician online? Jail. Insulted the church? Jail. Went to the wrong protest? Jail. Made a comment online that could be seen as offensive to the church? Jail.

I think my point is - yes, there is a lot of unnecessary surveilance in the UK, and a lot of people don't care about it......but you guys still don't know how good you have it. Of course two wrongs don't make a right.....but you need to have perspective on this.

> people just go "so?"

its fascinating how most people would be at least annoyed if they found someone looking in their windows every day. even if that person was someone official looking who didn't look like they were going to rob or murder them. even if they were standing across the street from their house taking notes on them and not causing any harm, people would still want to know what they were doing.

but when it comes to the same thing happening to them online the reaction is mostly just "so what?".

it probably didn't help that everything online and in 'the cloud' is so much more abstract and harder to understand

I think you are misrepresenting a bit.

Would you have a source that people in Poland got jailed for "insulting" the church or politician? Or peaceful protest? Prosecutions I know are for something else; spraying on centuries old statues, throwing stones and so on.

"Thought crime" in UK is not criminal offense, so there are no criminal charges. You get knock on door, invitation to police station and a fine. "Hate crime" is another level. Some guy did stunt with pig fat. He died in prison, authorities put him into maximum security prison with radical islamists. "Insulting religion" in UK is serious offense punishable by death!

You mean you haven't heard about those cases? It's not spraying centuries old statues - it's the catholics complaining about being offended again:

https://wiadomosci.wp.pl/wroclaw-obraza-uczuc-religijnych-w-...

https://oko.press/podlesna-zatrzymana-matka-teczowa/

Not to mention that a whole bunch of things just got criminalized online if they offend the church, like........mentioning that it's the leading source of pedophiles in this country:

https://aszdziennik.pl/138364,10-sposobow-na-obrazenie-kosci...

The number of police interventions for people being offended online due to religion has been going up steadily every year:

https://prawo.gazetaprawna.pl/artykuly/8053551,przestepstwo-...

>>"Insulting religion" in UK is serious offense punishable by death!

I am aware of that case, like I said, it shouldn't happen and two wrongs don't make a right. But I definitely feel like you are far more likely to get into trouble for this in Poland than in the UK, and it has nothing to do with the level of surveilance in society.

So one pending case and some opinion pieces. Do you have actual person who did time in jail? I can provide some for UK....

> mentioning that it's the leading source of pedophiles in this country

Ehm, Rotherham...?

> two wrongs don't make a right

You claim Poland is much worse. I want similar case from Poland...

> I definitely feel like you are far more likely to get into trouble for this in Poland than in the UK

Poland is a post communist country, there is a big aversion to totalitarian govs. Comparing LGBT activism in rural Poland and ultra liberal parts of London, is not valid. Go to Luton or Yorkshire and see what happens...

> Comparing LGBT activism in rural Poland and ultra liberal parts of London, is not valid. Go to Luton or Yorkshire and see what happens...

Oh, you mean like Pride in Luton (https://prideinluton.org/) or Yorkshire Pride? (https://www.yorkshire.com/inspiration/features/yorkshire-pri...)

> However - for all of this nonsense, I feel like some people(your post included) have an exaggerated sense of how bad it really is here.

It literally hasn't been a century since the Europeans went full Nazi. We have no idea where the world will be in 25 years, but we do know there are a lot of plausible scenarios where this technology will get people killed.

The government keeping detailed records of who went where, when should be completely banned, totally off the table. This is just laying the groundwork for the next time the fickle voting public decides to try authoritarianism again.

>>The government keeping detailed records of who went where, when should be completely banned, totally off the table.

I completely agree with you.

> It literally hasn't been a century since the Europeans went full Nazi.

The "Europeans" didn't go full Nazi. Germany went full Nazi. Italy went full fascist. Their allies conformed to various degrees. But it was also Europeans who fought and died in their millions to overcome fascism. Most of the Jews and others who died in the Holocaust were Europeans.

> The rare police intervention that happens because someone got offended is usually resolved without any criminal charges.

But they are often recorded as a "non-crime hate incident," an innovation instigated by the police and not by legislators. Fortunately, there seems to be some pushback against this frankly dystopian practice.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/02/polici...

Brits also pride themselves on not having to carry any Id with them. It actually seems to come from some sense of civil liberty. This was all good in XX century but things have changed and I wish that civil lerby focused people understood the tech a little better, I think they would then oppose it

I'm not surveillance but ...

> here I could be visited by the police to "check my thinking", or worse I could prosecuted.

Good luck getting the police to do or investigate anything in the UK, nevermind turning up proactively.

The reason the state is so keen on surveillance is belief it helps the chronically underfunded police service.

It's always interesting how you can tell people's political alignment by which examples they cherry pick to call "authoritarianism", and who they find a sympathetic victim.

The UK does have a really nasty tradition of anti-democratic violence and literal political prisoners, but that's all in Northern Ireland and supposedly in the past. There's also a very long list of police abuses by the Met aimed at the black community as well as violent public order policing in general. And the infiltration of environmentalist groups (the "spycops" scandal).

I don't see too many other HN commentators picking up those examples for some reason.

> It's gotten so bad that if I were to write some offensive rap lyrics here I could be visited by the police to "check my thinking", or worse I could prosecuted.

If you ever listen to drill music from the UK you'll see how bad it is, all the censored parts are not for radio suitability as they don't censor swear words they're from police orders..

I used to work in a company that made similar tech for some other country. And boy, did I both hate and love my job! I wanted to quit a lot of times, but every time my manager would stop me. “If you ain’t gonna do this job, some other engineer will pick it,” they said. And it is true. I loved my coworkers, I loved technical challenges and all the features we were implementing. How blown off I was seeing results of facial search I made myself. Just imagine — I take a picture of you right now or find it somewhere in your Facebook or Instagram, upload it to the system and a second later I’ll be already knowing what exactly, where exactly and when exactly you were doing or going. Tech-wise it was amazing. But I betrayed myself and everyone around me. I hated how I worked against myself and my fellow citizens. And I have no idea how to prevent others from working against ourselves.

I always hate that excuse. “If you don’t do it, someone else will.”

Great, let them try. We need the people with morals to stand up against doing this kind of work. At the very least it shrinks the talent pool and hopefully stymies efforts to get state surveillance off the ground. Working on it because someone else would “get the chance to” is really just tantamount to completely selfish disregard.

Imagine doing something amazing that wasn’t used to oppress people…

> We need the people with morals to stand up against doing this kind of work. At the very least it shrinks the talent pool

Very much this. But taking a stand first requires some agonising self-searching, educational leaps, being able to talk to others about it. It requires no less than a change in culture. But it is the most promising counter to tyranny. As Stalin sound in the Soviet Union, without the engineers it all falls apart. This is what I mean by "digital literacy 2.0". I hope some of you will read "Ethics for Hackers" when I get it out, and that we can get technical civics and ethics as part of every CS course.

I was one of these people, a moral ethics voice operating as the principal engineer of a leading enterprise FR system (ranked in top 5 by FRVT multiple years). I received major pushback on my opinions, had orders to no longer make professional contacts outside the company, and was given overworking deadlines when opportunities to influence deployments or expectations arose. My big issue with FR is the lack of training, such that high school educated operators are given the impression the software is far more accurate than it is, and that the software has an authority it does not. For these reasons, and the generalized software work/life balance abuse that industry demands, I quit a few years ago.

This argument could and was used endless times here when it became clear that companies like google and especially facebook are not OK in any meaningful way, and never will be. Few left, but most enjoyed that sweet 300k+ paycheck even if the know very well they can't buy morals for any amount of money. You don't hear about these companies struggling to find talent, so unfortunately its not that effective.

There is only one way to live if you want to be long term happy with who you see in the mirror, and countless ways otherwise...

“Just following orders”

"some other engineer will pick it", and CEOs are paid hundreds millions because "nobody can else could do their job"!

I think it is usually accompanied by an implication that your replacement may have fewer reservations than you do, constructing a moral dilemma.

It's like when a political figure resigns for ethical reasons. Does the message of the resignation really have more impact than having someone inside the organisation working for what they believe in, however futile it may be? There's never a shortage of sycophants.

> but every time my manager would stop me. “If you ain’t gonna do this job, some other engineer will pick it,” they said.

Your manager knew about the ethical issues and pressured you to continue to do this type of work. Your manager is a bad and manipulative person.

If you are having a moral dilemma, the next guy will probably have one too. We are all human and all have moral dilemmas. If there was no manager, who's super power is manipulation, the job might have never been completed.

This is how aerospace engineers justify working at missile companies. "Well if I don't do it, someone else get paid to do it". Maybe just don't make unethical tech. Start a hotdog stand instead, more useful to society.

I did this work, knowingly, because how else is one to know the true nature of these technologies if one remains outside? How else to know if the industry has ethically minded leaders or is corrupt to the core. Well, it is mixed, of course, but there are ethically minded people in high places, trying to do the right thing.

Plus, I now know a huge host of circumvention techniques.

Already going wrong, and no surprise that people of colour are bearing the costs again.

https://twitter.com/g__ferris/status/1545096247425605634

https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/stop-facial-recogni...

As with many other related things, this excellent early 2010s TV series was prescient: Person of Interest [1], I highly recommend it.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/

That was a great show. Not as accurate in its depiction of computer engineering as a series like Mr Robot, but the “prescient” aspects of Person of Interest were frighteningly disturbing, and proved to be all too true.

Each time I wonder if moving out of the UK was the right choice it gets justified whenever I look over in its general direction.

If you don't mind me asking, where did you move to? I sometimes think the same thing in the time since I moved to Czech Republic. It's quite far from a utopia here but I feel like the most visible problems at least can be overcome. To me the UK feels subtly broken in an unfixable way - the main parties seem to believe that the problems are bad, but the causes are actually good.

Some day, a remote maybe, a nation will realize it's greatest goal is the education of it's population. A generation into this realization, that nation will begin to threaten the global status quo. But being a nation of educated individuals, and not a nation led by educated manipulators, the manipulators efforts will appear childish and immature. That is what our civilization is today: immature and childish.

We are large enough that political economics dictates the quality of our lives. Yet, we are immature enough that we still cling to religion and physical violence to achieve our goals. I wish I could sleep for a few generations, and wake to see a mature human race.

Probably a good move, we are about to enter a Labour government, I am afraid...

You are saying you're afraid but I think if you look at the decisions the Tory government has made and the policies they've enacted then I don't think you are being very logical.

The conservative government has seen:

* Wide spread fraud (£££ contracts for friends of ministers + covid loan fraud)

* Wide spread law breaking (covid lockdown laws) * MPs being charged with sexual offences ranging from assault to rape

* Brexit policies, negotiations, and treaties that are chaotic and highly damaging to the economy

* Inefficient social welfare programs that leave disabled people starving to death

If you pay tax in the UK then I don't honestly see how you could be worried about a change in government. The conservatives are only capable of 'governing' by giving large amounts of tax payers money to private companies that extract a large amount of profit while delivering the minimum possible for the money.

Whatever government that is less likely to raise my taxes!

Though you are right, Conservatives are not better than Labour these days.

Everything tends to converge on some safe centre-left.

>Whatever government that is less likely to raise my taxes!

"I'm alright, jack"

> Wide spread law breaking (covid lockdown laws)

Under a Labour government there would have been much more covid laws to break. The conservatives have been terrible, but socialist governments around the world have been much more tyrannical.

All this facial recognition deployed during protests. Our rights to protest are being trampled. So much effort in entrapping every day citizens. Crime is still on the rise. The met police are useless.

When did this page go live? If you want to bury news it doesn't get much better than today

Interesting theory, but the wayback machine has this page archived back to Jan 2022 [0].

Interesting banner at the top of this archive page, that calls out dates and locations for the future planned use of LFR. If I suspected that I was on any kind of list, I would know when and where not to show my face. I wonder how often they keep that up to date.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20220128133110/https://www.met.p...

Seems similar to the 2017 test in Berlin https://www.dw.com/en/facial-recognition-surveillance-test-e...

From the test strategy document "Cohort subjects will be drawn from two sources (i) an actor’s agency and (ii) an under 18 cohort of volunteers from the Police Cadets. 400 Cohort Subjects will be needed to achieve the Trial Objectives."

In Berlin it was 300 and people could volunteer.

If I remember the Berlin setup correctly the train station was used to have a high number of random, non repeat people, as the goal is to recognize people from a small subset

The document doesn't list the location (Westminster) so where the test is done must have been a separate decision.

The berlin sudkreuz test was a disaster, by the way.

* Moving your head more than 15deg away from the camera was enough to slip through.

* false positive rate was 0.67% - you can calculate yourself how that works on one of the largest train stations in Berlin serving close to 100k people per day

(German language source, can't find en translation) https://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2018/debakel-am-suedkreuz

> * Moving your head more than 15deg away from the camera was enough to slip through.

Which can be solved by adding more cameras so there's no angle in which your face is not in full view.

Live facial recognition in Moscow subway have been used to arrest people video recorded at protests.

Them = Bad

Us = Good

Foreign protesters = Good, innocents expressing civil discourse

Domestic protesters = Bad, renegades out to disrupt society

to understand what is bad and what is good, you can compare for example criminal punishment handed down to protesters just for participation in a protest.

Seems like an odd metric but ok, Ashli Babbitt was good or bad?

Ashli Babbitt wasn't prosecuted. She was shot during a riot. It is very unfortunate situation. Pretty much in any country forcing your way upon armed security in a top government building would lead to something like this. I specifically suggested to compare punishment for a mere participation in a protest, which is basically generally recognized as a human right while pushing yourself upon armed security guards isn't.

In response to the comment below. I don't see any character assassination. What I read about her seems to indicate a pretty genuine person, a patriot who acted upon her beliefs. Nor her beliefs, nor actions fit reality and law unfortunately.

Pretty much in any country forcing your way upon armed security in a top government building would lead to something like this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_Student_Movement#Occ...

In 2014 political activists in Taiwan occupied the legislative yuan (something like congress or parliament). No one was killed.

My position is shooting and killing an unarmed protestor entering a government building is abhorrent, full stop. Doesn't matter if you disagree or agree with their motives.

My position is that it is good that most people are capable of employing more nuance than your position (accounting for violent insurrection, for example), and do so

Nuance is a very weaselly way of saying "it's a peaceful protest when people I like do it, it's violent insurrection when people I don't do it".

that's just a longer, more weaseley, and oddly-specific way of saying "nuance", as in, "people capable of nuance can usually differentiate between a protest and an insurrection"

In most of the western world, there is usually no criminal punishment, but there often is a gassing, a beating, an arrest, and a detention. Followed by no charges getting filed, because nothing illegal was done.

This kind of extra-judicial justice isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the system, either.

Seeing things like this make me extremely glad to be moving to an area where any attempt at this would (literally) be shot down. I'm already subject to intense surveillance, at least have the decency to be subtle about it.

Out of curiosity, what area would that be? I know a few cities in MA have banned facial recognition for surveillance but there are many loopholes.

Illinois has been very litigious about facial recognition, and has passed laws against it - while simultaneously creating a new state ID photo policy that requires you to remove your glasses and not to smile, in order to maximize utility for facial recognition.

Anybody thinking that they're safe from this is wrong. Maybe there's an incorruptible politician in Iceland somewhere.

I know of at least one country that has had 'no face coverings & neutral expression' for ID photos for many many years, before computer facial recognition was really practical, possible or existed at all.

Appalachia, hence my aside about it being literal.

I have recently begun to think that people will start migrating (like, literally, over borders) because of stuff like this and because of Government/state officials over-reach. There are still some pockets inside of the US where there's a semblance of normalcy left, but I'd say most of the EU (from where I'm from) has already gone too far on that road to ever come back.

I'm currently in upstate NY, and I am moving because of my state government. My immediate family all moved to Europe. I want to be left alone and enjoy life with people I like. New York is no longer compatible with that goal.

Recently, it became a felony to own a bulletproof vest in NY. My (middle-class) neighborhood has gunshots on my street regularly during the summer. That's absurd, and I'm not sticking around to find out how much worse it gets.

Welcome to 1984

Hypothetically, what would a charter look like that preserved citizen privacy and prevented schemes like this? If there were a there there, it might be worth doing something about it.

It would look to me like the founding articles of a new nation well-worth living in or dying for. The only thing that might discourage me from thinking so is that after all the struggle to live and take on the risks of dying, in a short few hundred years some mass of ungrateful descendants will be running around justifying some subset of the rights being violated, in some set of nearly ubiquitous contexts, for some disgustingly partisan vision of the "greater good". Hell, I think prohibitionism in the US counts as this well before our time.

Prohibitionism didn't work because the USA was infected with a drinking culture since the beginning. It was about a thousand years too late.

That's one way of putting it. I think trying to destroy long pre-existing cultures in a society by overruling people's basic freedoms in certain cases is generally a bad idea.

UK is not a democracy. George Orwell knew that when he wrote 1984.

Why is it only used in Westminster?

High concentration of crooks. Particularly near Portcullis House and the Houses of Parliament.

not enough near Traitor's gate

We are already in an authoritarian state, most people haven't realized it yet.

Time to start wearing my PII protecting, GDPR respecting balaclava when I go outside

And this is the starting point of full trqcking throughout the UK. Just got to slowly boil the frogs

yeah slow boiled frogs isn’t a thing

With a lid it is.

> The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.

Niether is Goldilocks, but you understand the point.

Why does a police force need “Remarketing” cookies?

This whole site makes me sad for my country. :(

Why does the site need Capcha before it even displays anything at all?

No one cares that 1984 was a warning against all of this.

It looks like the Bad Guys have won.

Unfortunately.

And I get Cloudflare captcha trying to open the site... how ironic.

Which also could use face recognition

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1602255

Not to mention that if you don’t accept the cookies and click the bottom “leave this site” red button you’re redirected to google.co.uk.

Cook Notice Blocker extension and similar are worth installing!

I didnt see the notice at all!

I had to complete two rounds, each with two grids of photos.

I personally think it's a good thing. The downsides are minimal when compared to the upsides of catching criminals. Though I do hope politicians would require detailed numbers on how many crimes were prevented as a result of using such systems.

Very slippery slope, especially around the definition of “criminal”

A "Slippery slope" argument is a fallacy; when the thing we don't want to "slip" to comes, there is absolutely nothing stopping us from simply, well, stopping.

What you're really saying is that you don't have any problem with this. One thing at a time!

> when the thing we don't want to "slip" to comes, there is absolutely nothing stopping us from simply, well, stopping.

Yes there is: live facial recognition.

It's safe to say that TameAntelope deeply trusts the invigilators, and believes with high confidence that any undesired "slip" can be prevented; that the power afforded by heightened mass surveillance won't be used to coerce it into enactment against the will of anyone important to them.

Pardon? Where did I say any of that?

I said it was safe to say about you, I did not say it was your exact statement about yourself.

But, if I had to point at just one instance of your past behaviour from a cursory glance to help make that connection more apparent...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31809385

In the linked thread from 17 days ago, you are carrying water for enormous corporations to be able to collect and sell data on people using their extremely broadly adopted platforms - the sort which I personally would prefer not to use in part due to the level of data collection that takes place, but would begin to feel societally disenfranchised if I did not. You even go so far as to boast of contacting your local representative to campaign against the opinion that these big tech platform's information dealership ought to be regulated! You say "I love the iPhone and App Store, and Apple has earned my trust with their stewardship of it". I'd feel bad for you if those corporations didn't love you too, since you're so willing to pave the way for further data collection.

And in this thread, today, you are talking against concerns that a government running Live Facial Recognition could result in overreach as the "Slippery Slope Fallacy". So has this government also not earned your trust based on which groups of people it will and which it won't leverage this information against? Aren't the people who speak against it only making "irrational" arguments, and therefore not worthy minds of great concern to you? Why regulate power when it suits you, be it consolidated in a corporation or a state?

> And in this thread, today, you are talking against concerns that a government running Live Facial Recognition could result in overreach as the "Slippery Slope Fallacy".

I did not do this, you inferred my position, but all I wish to discuss is whether or not the person I replied to had a problem with this already-happening use of facial recognition, or if they were indeed okay with this use, but not some other, imagined, use.

> there is absolutely nothing stopping us from simply, well, stopping

Inertia is as much of a thing in politics as it is in physics.

And a precedent will always be misused.

I'm not sure if I buy this argument; the legislature need not, and generally does not, work on the basis of previous precedent. There are two main responses to the idea that we ought not to do X because it's a slippery slope to Y in political theory: firstly, people disagree about how bad Y is (unless Y is made patently absurd); secondly, slippery slopes require justification.

It's evident that one can't simply allege the existence of any slippery slope - for example, the 'slippery slope' of legal gay marriage leading to adult-child and human-animal relationships. So there must be some work put in to justify the existence of a slope which is claimed to exist.

In particular as it relates to issues of free speech and 'facial recognition', I have seen no evidence presented to justify this slope as a rhetorical or political device.

If only that were true!

In reality it just isnt!

It's the 'thin end of the wedge' as they say in England!

Or, in HN language, it's Scope Creep.

You could try and claim that Scope Creep is a fallacy, because all you have to do it stop, but you know that in reality the deliverables change and the scope widens!

A substantial part of my job is to eliminate scope creep, so yes you absolutely can “just stop”.

Irrational people can use things like momentum and inertia in their arguments, but that’s quite easily stopped by a rational argument outlining the differences between the thing that was allowed and the proposed thing.

if people could "just stop" before the creep happened, your job of eliminating said creep would be extraneous

I'm honestly confused about what your point is, because so far it seems like you're suggesting that since people sometimes act irrationally, there's no such thing as the logical fallacy called "Slippery Slope"...

They are saying that your job is about preventing a slippery slope phenomena as pertains to scope creep, where adopting one large change can increase the propensity to consider another. I think you could also more accurately refer to it as a "sunk cost fallacy", a concept which you should also be familiar with. Rather than keep the product at its current size and risk an underwhelming release, we've already gone this far, why not give the sharks in the tank the frikkin' laser beams Dr. Evil once suggested?

I think the sunk cost is an example where there is a slope that actually is slippery due to to psychological biases. In the case of the live facial recognition, we are instead talking about a slope that is slippery because it gives power to the state, where governments are known for using their existing power to consolidate yet more power.

It is unfortunate that you are confused, friend, but I stand ready to answer any questions you have, if you wish to rectify that situation.

You can't stop it if you're not the one in power. The slope is the abuse of power. There is no fallacy, but apparently naivete.

If your legislature does not listen to you (because you're "not the one in power") then that's a far more serious issue than facial recognition by any metric. If the government is abusing power, that's not the same thing as doing it with the support of the populace, as the 'slippery slope' argument supposes.

Devil's advocate: Why must facial recognition necessarily set us on the the slope to abuse of power? What precedent is there to suppose that?

Nothing, and I mean nothing, has done so much to damage our thinking as the idea of the "Slippery Slope Fallacy", it's allowed people to suggest a self-evidently absurd idea, that precedent does not have any impact on political, socio-cultural, or legal realities, but avoid having to make such a ridiculous assertion nakedly.

Instead, they can hide behind "that's the Slippery Slope Fallacy", and as far as they're concerned, they've invoked a magic incantation, the word "Fallacy", that defeats any and all human reason or experience.

If I had a time-machine, my only goal would be to prevent this noxious, damaging concept, from ever invading the popular culture, it has damaged our thinking far more than it has ever aided it.

You can’t hate the slippery slope fallacy out of existence; it’s real, it applies here, and it means the argument being put forward, that allowing one thing must mean we allow something similar but worse, is not a valid one.

It’s not magic, it’s simply rational. Allowing something doesn’t mean you must then allow something else, that isn’t how it works, and it’s probably more noxious and damaging to society that such a thought is allowed to propagate such as what you’ve written here.

There's a reason we have the phrase "crossing the Rubicon". You can sneer and say that crossing a river doesn't have anything to do with the fall of the Roman Republic all you like.

Not the same thing, but it does explain your confusion.

It is an ironic image, to think that the development of the idea of a slippery slope fallacy could be itself a slippery slope.

Not if you think in systems with positive feedback loops.

For example: lets stop the military and industrial complex.

The loop in this case is a government can more easily arrest anyone who opposes the government with “probable cause” or equivalent. For example a journalist.

Policymaking is not frictionless. Certain important concepts serve as Schelling points where resistance can be focused, and once policy moves beyond that point, those harmed by various subsequent changes will have narrower coalitions supporting their side.

In the same vein, people make a big deal about Caesar crossing a particular river, despite there being an infinite number of places to turn around between the Rubicon and Rome.

So we do not need serious policing in super markets. Ordinary people are no criminals. The random rare thief is not making any serious damage.

The problem is that you have no actual principles or tangible goals so it is impossible to negotiate with you. It is like negotiating with a bully who promises to only take half of your lunch money, and then the next day you negotiate with him to only take three-quarters of your lunch money.

It is a slippery slope when there's no defined stopping point. Your arguments can still be applied after you've implemented your "solution".

Exactly!

The definition can change overnight!

One day you are researching getting an abortion. The next you are a criminal.

The Patrol Cars computer flags you as a potential criminal as you are walking down the street. You get stopped and searched, you protest, you get arrested. Suddenly you are in jail...

It legitimises profiling by claiming the computer told officers to accost you.

Technically everyone is a criminal.

>how many crimes were prevented

Is this really a reason to give up so much autonomy and let the government know your every whereabout?

Think about the implications. No government ever in the history of the world has been trustworthy. Giving the government this much power simply to 'reduce crime' looks more like a cliff than a slippery slope.

And how do you count things that didn't happen?

By comparing rates with civilised societies that don't treat their populations as tax slaves that need to be constantly monitored so they don't get ideas above their station.

What autonomy are you giving up by "allowing" the government to collect and analyze publicly observable information? What power is the government getting? Sure, this may be used to limit your autonomy. Much like a police officer could shoot you for no good reason. Ergo police officers shouldn't carry pistols? If you can limit potential abuses only by handicapping the government you've already lost.

This doesn't let the government's know your whereabouts though?

So you're quite a fan of that Minority Report movie?

We should just arrest everyone and put us all in home detention, then we'll never have crime! That's a big win, right?

And we'll be monitoring the Politicians and Police with this too right?

> And we'll be monitoring the Politicians and Police with this too right?

And what will you do when you find corruption among them? Even when symmetric, surveillance benefits those with power.

Coastguard?

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