UK passport images database could be used to catch shoplifters
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/21/co-op-boss-u...
As far as the article goes, I’m opposed to using these data sources for anything other than their original purpose, as it’s the same logic that would be used to test for example medically collected DNA against crime databases just in case.
It's so easy to deal in absolutes. There are enough of people who are shoplifting not because they need to eat. As someone who was on the government support, you really should do nothing to be in need to shoplift to sustain yourself.
What is easy is to pretend that a simple issue is a complex and ambiguous one, and so, we don't need to ruffle feathers.
If not, then it must sometimes be moral to steal.
That is not the same as shoplifting luxury goods, clip ons, apple products, shoes or whatever.
You are very focused on rights, but everyone has rights, and there is a limit to where your rights can go, based on when they start to infringe another person rights. Also in basically all western countries there is support structure in place to feed the poor, so that no one should go hungry.
There is no such support structure in the UK. There are the informal 'food banks', but they are overstretched and ad-hoc. So, unsurprisingly, people do go hungry. So, prima facie, there must be cases where the shoplifters are right and the law is wrong, at least until you have put an adequate foodbank system in place.
And of course all of those problems are intensified for minorities or other out groups.
In wide enough use, there will be false positives including any proximity filter. The question is, is the system unbiased enough to protect innocents?
There is a reason that every suspected crime photo isn't broadcast wide 24-7, even with human recognition, the false alarms would cause a massive churn and misguided justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Michael_Wiwchar
Slightly different case in nature but analyzing all the passport photos for duplicates is a no brainer move and led to at least one arrest and extradition in Canada. They allegedly paid drug addicts to file false applications in their names with different photos.
I'd also imagine that another significant chunk of shoplifters are people who are struggling to get by financially, and if they're struggling to pay for food, they're not likely to be jetting off abroad on holiday and so unlikely to have paid £82 for a passport they don't need.
In the past 100 years the UK had front-row seats to multiple surveillance states in Europe that were as bad as it gets, yet somehow refuses to learn absolutely any lesson from it. With our new technology, the new generation of surveillance state is much worse. Governments naturally accumulate power and hardly ever give it away without violence. Keeping that accumulation to a minimum trumps almost any other concern that can be solved without violence.
Comments like yours, essentially saying "I'm fine with a surveillance state if it solves crime" make me lose hope. Maybe the UK going fully unhinged is a good thing. It can serve as a warning to the rest of the continent, reminding us what we have and why it is worth protecting.