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Comment by km3r | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one that is OK with CCTV + facial recognition? Seems like a great way to tackle crime without having to involve potentially deadly encounters with police. Ya there are ways it could be abused, but I assume I have no privacy (as does the law) when I am in a public space. A lot cheaper than cops too. Put laws and systems in place to keep the data secure and require warrants to access the data.

(No lethal weapons on drones please though, although I could see a case for riot control drones, not sure where you would draw the line on what is a weapon.)

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> but I assume I have no privacy (as does the law) when I am in a public space.

I think we may need to slightly retweak our concept of public and private. There are very few truly private spaces, from the perspective of an entity that can see every public space simultaneously.

We have nest cams and doorbell cams. We get very clear pictures of the person stealing packages off of our porch, but local rules (where I live) don’t allow us to apply facial recognition to those pictures to stop the madness.

Try a bomb package. I forget what it’s called, but the moment they lift it a loud-ass alarm goes off and freaks them out. We had the same problem in Seattle and then my wife took care of it with one of those. They never came back.

There’s one guy in particular that does a tremendous job making them. I can ask her for details if you’re interested.

> We had the same problem in Seattle and then my wife took care of it with one of those.

Ya, I'm in Ballard and I've thought about decoys and other sort of proactive ways of discouraging this. I wish we could wire up some action when cameras detect someone scoping out our house at 1AM in the morning (we live at the end of a long driveway so it is always someone checking our car door or something).

But with all the data, well, it is the same people who are doing this (it only changes every few months or so), so it seems relatively straight forward for the police to do something about it. But there is no way to aggregate the data from all the cameras everyone has set up to do something about this.

seanmcdirmid says " ...local rules (where I live) don’t allow us to apply facial recognition to those pictures to stop the madness."

Most cases of "stealing packages" won't be investigated at all by the police. But insurance companies prefer that you report them to the police.

And facial recognition isn't good enough for use in our legal system:

https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/facial-recognition-n...

It's not something you get instead of cops, when technology is developed for policing it's always always in addition. So it's not cops vs facial rec it's cops with facial rec.

American police have never been given a power that they have not chosen to abuse for personal or political reasons, and used against dissidents and the dispossessed. The abuses aren't theoretical they are inevitable and at huge scale.

> Put laws and systems in place to keep the data secure and require warrants to access the data.

When? Who writes warrants? Who enforces these rules and punishes transgressions of them? None of these would be actual practical restrictions, and they don't exist anyway. If you give them access to it they have access to it your only chance to influence that was before you gave it to them.

I agree with the idea that American police abuse their resources, and would abuse this resource if given the chance, and I think you mentioning it here is a great lesson for me and everyone else to remind us of the current situation for police.

Where I fall short however is the resignation that this is how things must be, or that we'll forever be unable to change these things. If we can get this police abuse under control, then the idea of using technology to help discover bad actors seems like a sound one to me.

The punishments we dole out for committing crimes are disproportionately large at least in part to improve their deterrent effect given that many people who commit crimes may get away with them. If we can suddenly catch every single person who commits a crime, then the punishments should become less severe.

Not just crime. It's a good way to tackle whistleblowers and investigative reporters. It's a good way to tackle peaceful protesters. It's even a good way to tackle undesirables and fugitives.

Superhuman police powers (which is what pervasive surveillance is), sound great when the cops are worried about retrieving your stolen car or bicycle. But they become nightmares quickly when the police are more concerned with crimes the public doesn't care about or think are crimes.

And the cops have been like that for decades. We should be downgrading their abilities, not upgrading them. I don't think it's completely out of the question that they only be allowed single-shot handguns where they must pull the brass with their own fingernails and reload before firing again. Honestly, there shouldn't be any cameras other than those on their bodies and in their cars used to collect evidence for trial. I'm on the fence on whether they should be allowed much electronic technology beyond that (and maybe radios).

Yeah! Why would we be frightened of constant surveillance if we have nothing to hide?

It's not as if states are writing any laws that criminalize women's healthcare, gender identity, or sexuality. And it's not as if law enforcement would ever misuse access to carry out personal vendetta. And it's not as if laws are only being enforced and prosecuted depending on who you are or what you believe.

So let's get going and put all criminals in jail and a bunch of protesters as well.

But if you decide to take packages off my porch, don’t you obviously have something to hide. Ya, my doorbell camera has a clear picture of you taking the package, but no, the police can’t do anything about it because it isn’t a priority for them and technology can’t be used to make matching a picture to a name due to law. So you get to pirate as many packages as you want.

They just don't care. They could probably find the person.

Facial identification is not what's preventing them from catching your package thief. If that were the obstacle it would be about two court cases before all thieves are wearing a bandanna in front of your ring camera.

You've chosen to constantly surveil yourself and, without their consent, your visitors, sending all of that to Amazon. Now you want to force a similar apparatus to constantly watch all of us everywhere, so you can buy things more conveniently. No thanks.

People need to be able to operate outside the constant surveillance of the state. Our society is not built for 100% compliance, and that's where we go if we have constant tracking.

For one, many laws are enforced with discretion and rightly so. Second, people need to coordinate action against their government from time to time.

No, phone data and localized CCTV are not equivalent.

It sounds completely surreal to have cameras and face id everywhere, but this is already done by our phones (face recognition) and GPS tracking, full surveillance of any messaging activity (with rare exceptions) for no good reason other than selling ads. Having less gun violence and deadly police interactions can actually use this technology for something better than just ads served by corporations (and also sell this data to anyone who pays). We should be careful about who can access these systems though.

Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm - New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recogni...

Additionally, traffic cameras should replace most traffic cops. Cameras don’t shoot people, cops do at routine traffic stops. It is also safer for police as well, since they will be in fewer dangerous roadside situations.

Most high speed chases can be replaced by cameras too. You don’t need to pursue the suspect. There is nowhere for them to hide. Arrest them once they’re stopped.

If you think it’s dystopian to have traffic cameras sending speeding tickets then 1) maybe the actual speed limit should be higher, but enforced and 2) getting a fine is better than getting shot.

Not really. A lot of us are ok with it, especially if we live in high property crime areas. Something had to be done, and it doesn’t seem like policing is working very well, so why not try technology instead?

Because it still relies on police doing their jobs, which by your admission they already aren't.

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