Police in Austin, San Francisco skirt facial recognition ban | Hacker News Reader

Police in Austin, San Francisco skirt facial recognition ban

washingtonpost.com

81 pointsrntn103 comments

> "Police officers’ efforts to skirt these bans have not been previously reported and highlight the challenge of reining in police use of facial recognition."

NO! They highlight a systemic issue in the US.

Where day to day corruption and cutting corners is a sport. Where much of the population celebrates these forms of "ingenuity" (whether they agreed with the bans in the first place or not.) Even the press - like in this case - considers this minor matters: worth an article on someone's resume but not much more. Sometimes a whole series of such articles (see NSA affairs) - but again not much more.

See also "parallel construction"

See also private groups such as associations of chiefs of police, sheriffs, etc.

On the matter of "sport", perhaps that's because it is: US education celebrates winning at sports, by hook or by crook. And guess which fields favor jocks?

Democracy is a gift that keeps on giving.

> SFPD spokesman Evan Sernoffsky said these requests violated the city ordinance and were not authorized by the department, but the agency faced no consequences from the city. He declined to say whether any officers were disciplined because those would be personnel matters.

Police departments should have a requirement to be transparent about disciplinary actions with a citizen review board that ensures reasonable enforcement. Budgets should be tied to the findings of the review board. This should apply to every PD.

Unless the board were anonymous, which wouldn't be very fair to the officers, that board would just be rife with intimidation and corruption. There is a reason Grand Jurys are secret, but they don't have any direct impact on the cases they hear. They can only move them on to the next step.

> Unless the board were anonymous, which wouldn't be very fair to the officers

What? How so?

There is a reason our justice system is set up so that you must know who your accusers are. If the board were able to discipline or fire officers, it would not be fair to them to not know their accusers.

Our justice system is completely distinct from employment hiring/firing decisions. The latter isn't considered at all in the right to confront your accuser, nor right to an attorney, nor freedom from self-incrimination.

Not speaking as a lawyer, not legal advice, etc., I would love it if this weren't the case, at least for cops, but your reply and the several siblings to your reply suggesting this are all unfortunately at least a bit wrong. I disagree with parent and think the more ability we have to discipline police the better it will be for society, but courts have other ideas. When it comes to many public employees, including and especially police, courts including the Supreme Court have regularly held a variety of due process and other constitutional rights, including some of the ones you listed, to exist for internal disciplinary matters.

Many states also have their own stricter codified procedural protections for disciplining public employees, and of course that's before you get into cop union shit, though obviously the whole premise of the argument here is that we would be changing those state/local rules. But that stuff is a whole other can of worms. I'm just saying that even if you change state/local law/rules, even if you abolish cop unions, any police disciplinary body trying to operate this way they would definitely lose a lawsuit from the first cop they disciplined. I've personally seen multiple fucking volunteer firemen win constitutional due process challenges over getting demoted (like, from assistant chief to secondary assistant chief of what is mostly a social club) because they were disciplined without a formal hearing that afforded them procedural due process.

Unlike parent I'm not saying this is good or that to change it would be "unfair", just that what we're describing here -- that is, making it practically possible to discipline cops -- is disallowed under our current system of laws as we understand it. It would take a variety of substantive changes in how we legislatively and judicially structure procedural rights at every level of government from the top down.

The justice system and workplace discipline are two entirely different things. This false equivalence is similar to how people say getting banned on Reddit for posting racist stuff violates their 1st Amendment rights.

The accuser is the person making the accusation. They can't be anonymous because otherwise you wouldn't be able to investigate their motive or uncover their bias and undermine their credibility if they're making a false accusation.

The review board would be acting as the judge or jury.

Ignoring issues that others have pointed out, I have to ask: Why would we need to bend over backwards to be "fair" to police who abuse their power to commit crimes? They're already immune to prosecution, this is just about removing them from positions of power after they've abused it. There's no need for any sense of "fairness".

People often lament loopholes, but understand that the correct course of action is to fix the loopholes, not to expect eg someone to pay more tax than they are legally required to. I don't think it should be any different for police officers - if a city really doesn't want them using facial recognition, then ban the practice, close the loopholes, and put real consequences in place for violating the policy.

I'm glad that the man 'charging toward someone with a knife' was apprehended with facial recognition technology. In general I favor its use for catching violent criminals.

'Austin police officers have received the results of at least 13 face searches from a neighboring police department since the city’s 2020 ban — and have appeared to get hits on some of them, according to documents obtained by The Post through public records requests and sources who shared them on the condition of anonymity. “That’s him! Thank you very much,” one Austin police officer wrote in response to an array of photos sent to him by an officer in Leander, Tex., who ran a facial recognition search, documents show. The man displayed in the pictures, John Curry Jr., was later charged with aggravated assault for allegedly charging toward someone with a knife, and is currently in jail awaiting trial. Curry’s attorney declined to comment.'

Yeah, having police say, we could find out who the guy charging towards someone with a knife is, bland we have the technology, but we can’t do it is not likely to be a winning political argument.

If I have to chose between a state where that dude with the knife is still at large, and a state where people are too afraid of dissent because they're worried about their attendance at a protest showing up on their public record, I'll take the dude with the knife.

Well, in many places in the US, you already have both.

Now go type "facial recognition arrest false positive" into your favorite search engine.

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/police-say-a-si...

> And in New Jersey, police wrongfully arrested Nijeer Parks in 2019 after face recognition technology incorrectly flagged him as a likely match to a shoplifting suspect. An officer who had seen the suspect (before he fled) viewed the face recognition result, and said he thought it matched his memory of the suspect’s face.

I bet this officer also sent the same email: "That’s him! Thank you very much," before arresting an innocent man.

False positives are the main problem here, exactly. We'd all feel a lot better about facial recognition technology with police reform that ended/compensated the widespread harm being done to mere suspects, as well as fixing courtroom standards of evidence to take into account that things like facial recognition are essentially pulling signal out of noise. If facial recognition turns police onto a suspect who is then found to possess the stolen items, the latter is corroborating evidence that they've found the right person. If facial recognition turns police onto a suspect who then merely looks like what eyewitnesses remember, that part of the witness's recollection is inherently correlated to how the suspect was picked and so it needs to be disregarded.

seems likely that face recognition technology and cameras could reduce the frequency of police-civ interactions

You will get false positives with eyewitness identification as well. But if you only use one identification method you'd never know if another would disagree.

> But if you only use one identification method

I'd like to emphasize that this is arguably the same method (facial similarity) being attempted twice, rather than two different and independent methods. While a marginal improvement, each attempt could go wrong for shared or similar reasons--for example, facial-recognition AI can also suffer from the "all those minorities look alike" problem.

Consider the contrast between:

1. "A human who saw the culprit's face believes your face matches, and a computer looking at video-footage agreed."

2. "A human who saw the culprit's face believes yours matches, and your car is the same color and model as the car the culprit drove off in."

I would be very curious which of the above options is more accurate, I don't think it is open-and-shut that the 2nd would be.

Obviously computer + car make would be the best combo?

good thing eyewitness identification is very accurate, it'd be a shame if the status quo approach caused more false arrests than the alternative

Wait, having a computer saying that your face matches a video does not prove that you are the person on the video. Sure, the police can talk to you, but that is not a sufficient piece of evidence.

people have been convicted and sentenced to decades in prison on the basis of less evidence. see Anthony J. Broadwater, for instance

Okay, in that case, the victim (as sole witness) said that she recognized the defendant as the perpetuator. I am not a lawyer, but not sure if nowadays you could go to jail just because a victim (and sole witness) recognize you ? That seems rather slim evidence, and could be weaponized.

This would be a fantastic circumstance to absolutely not speak to any law enforcement personnel, by the way.

I am also in favor of catching violent criminals. And as such I join you in the downvote fest. Of course, no one puts forth a cogent argument about why catching violent criminals with this technology is bad. Can it be abused? Yes. Was it abused here? No. Luckily, we live in a democracy where we make the rules. If we want a policy that law enforcement can't buy these systems, make that the law. If we want a policy where law enforcement can't use these systems in any capacity, then make that the law.

The correct response to this sort of behavior by law enforcement is sousveillance.

We as a society need to start coordinated programs of sousvaillance on law enforcement and any time they step out of line society can just spill some of their greasy secrets like which corrupt cop is cheating on their wife or whatever.

Do this publicly, name and shame and explicitly state what actions these individuals took that brought about this sort of reaction.

This is a start to correctly identifying and and modifying unacceptable behaviour from law enforcement.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

I get why this idea has appeal, but unless you're able to get a large group to do it with great operational security (probably not achievable), I think this story leads to the organizers being endlessly harassed by the police, charged with terrorism, dying mysteriously, or some combination thereof.

And if there are enough people willing and able to conduct this sousveillance, maybe their efforts would be better organized by just trying to directly shrink police budgets.

The thing is, that this kind of sousveillance is what we the people should be doing by default. All people in positions of power should be watched by everyone else to ensure that they're not abusing those positions of power.

That's the first step to shrinking parts of police budgets that are excessive and improving parts of their budgets that aren't.

I agree with you that this leads to harassment and more from the police but I can't imagine there's any way to deal with them that doesn't involve that outcome.

Like that's just what bad people do, and they do it more when you try and stop them from abusing positions of authority.

> spill some of their greasy secrets like which corrupt cop is cheating on their wife or whatever

> Do this publicly, name and shame

I think these are the parts that are most likely to trigger dangerous retributive action. I think a less dramatic approach is to make sure everyone's on the same page about how much cops take from our communities and how little they add.

I sometimes look at the pay information for my city. A lot of the people making over 400k are cops whose overtime pay is significantly more than their salary. But whenever I see cops, they're just standing around chatting. Even "responding" to some situation, there will be 3 cop cars blocking traffic so 5 of them can chat while one talks on the radio looming over a homeless person in cuffs on the sidewalk. And they take forever to do anything. I watched them take a whole day to try to get a trespasser off the roof of a building across the street. Eventually they ordered several pizzas told the trespasser that he could have some food and ice water if he came down. Then the cops just ate and chatted with each other while blocking traffic and causing a scene for multiple more hours. But sure, they're all legitimately doing 60 hours a week of overtime that's totally necessary police work.

This is the kind of thing that can get moderates and conservatives annoyed: those cops are probably making more money than you as they hang out and gab, and they're causing traffic and transit delays. Tell your friends.

It sounds like you're already doing the sousveillance that I'm talking about, and it sounds like you're willing to share the information that you learn from it to people on the internet.

The next step would be to assign some faces and names to the people in your stories and publish (anonymously if you prefer) it in a place where it's likely to gain traction in your local community with those moderates and conservatives.

Yes I have pics of cops eating pizza. No, I will not post the faces of particular pizza eating cops, because they are still people carrying guns in my neighborhood who can probably kill and get away with it. I don't benefit from attacking specific cops.

But every time someone complains about transit delays, I can share an anecdote about three cop cars parked on the light rail tracks, totally disrupting service while they chat around a person in handcuffs. And every time someone mentions the ridiculously expensive bathroom, I can point out that it ended up costing a lot, but less than one sheriff's deputy with overtime but not counting benefits. We can popularize the understanding that cops are an expensive source of problems, even if you're not a target.

People are generally supportive of the use facial recognition by police, according to a Pew poll from 2021 https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/03/17/public-more-...

'[M]ajorities of the American public believe widespread use of facial recognition would likely help find missing persons and solve crimes, but majorities also think it is likely that police would use this technology to track everyone’s location and surveil Black and Hispanic communities more than others. In terms of potential impact, 46% of U.S. adults say widespread use of facial recognition technology by police would be a good idea for society while 27% believe it would be a bad idea. An additional 27% say they are unsure whether it would be a good or bad idea for police to widely use facial recognition technology.'

> People are generally supportive

> 46% of U.S. adults say widespread use of facial recognition technology by police would be a good idea for society

I wouldn't say the first statement can be reasonably derived from the second, since most people in that poll think it is not a good idea.

> I wouldn't say the first statement can be reasonably derived from the second, since most people in that poll think it is not a good idea.

46% good, 27% no idea does not imply majority supportive

But it also doesn't mean "most people think it's not a good idea", which in colloquial English would be majority bad idea.

That's fair.

Statements:

A. majority think it's not a good idea

B. majority do not think it's a good idea

C. majority think it's a bad idea

Usually, A and C would be read as equivalent. I was using A and B as equivalent. But I understand that it's not very clear how I meant it. Certainly B is what's supported.

funny how this is truly a common point between Texas and California...

I mean if it was anywhere besides Austin sure

It's really not just Austin anymore. All the big cities (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso) are considerably more left-leaning than the rural parts of the state, https://www.texastribune.org/2016/11/11/analysis-blue-dots-t... .

This is an old map, RGV has turned substantially more Republican since

I mean, depends on your definition of "substantially", but yes, there was a big rightward shift, especially of Hispanic voters, in the RGV in 2020 compared to 2016, https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/texas/.

There was a ton of hand-wringing and speculation about why this happened. My best guess is because there was a ton of press near the end of the 2020 campaign about Biden saying he would "transition from the oil industry." It obviously has to happen eventually, but this was the case of "a gaffe is when you say the truth out loud". In the RGV many of the best jobs (if really the only good jobs for lots of people) are working in the oil industry and on offshore rigs.

Also, obviously, these folks have to deal with the brunt of the migration crisis.

There was a lot of talk about Spanish descended Hispanics in RGV preferentially voting for Trump

> There was a ton of hand-wringing and speculation about why this happened

that's one thing that is really annoying about the left, they don't treat their voting blocs as individuals.

even the most progressive act like the entire voting bloc - each one that's not a white male - is oppressed, woe is me, and would therefore prioritize democrats no matter what else is happening in the country and the world.

they're like "don't they know what's good for them!?" when anything besides their expected outcome occurs. its like a mental barrier of ever considering anything else, I've seen it all over the nation and far flung extremities of the US.

talk to the actual human beings and its "foreign policy" "fiscal policy" "local economy" but the patronizing voices on the left don't even realize they are saying "no, silly, leave that stuff to the white man! you focus on these issues"

its embarrassing. talk to the actual humans.

I'm not quite sure why you find this more annoying about the left than the right.

The fact is that politicians slice and dice their constituents by demographics largely because it works. People are individuals, yes, but politics is no different than marketing, and there is good reason advertisers spent billions for "highly targeted" marketing.

I think the issue you point out is just what happens when any party starts to take their voting blocks for granted.

I didn’t say “than the right”

but the individuals that matter may prioritize something self serving for the next 4-6 years though that involves the right though, and it may be an accurately objective decision. if the left wants to win friends and influence people, the patronizing mystery about large swaths of minorities goes away and relevant topics return.

AOC was screaming about this

Well a common point between Texas police and California police. Police don't change much across the country though, they're their own insular culture.

Who's gonna police the police?

Also as a US citizen I am totally unsurprised to hear about multiple law enforcement agencies continuing to conspire with eachother to violate rights and break laws with no consequence.

I would love to see a federal ban on any law enforcement using facial recognition for the near term at least until it becomes much more accurate. This, abolition of qualified immunity, mandated body cameras and the demilitarization of departments would be a great step in making this country safer.

> demilitarization of departments would be a great step in making this country safer.

there needs to be a qualifier attached to that comment: safer from police. It won't make the country itself safer. demilitarizing the police will not prevent schools/churches/movie theaters from getting shot up by someone. demilitarizing the police will not stop gang violence. by all means, reign in the out of control over weaponized "peace" officers, but please, let's be realistic on what that will actually do to overall safety.

I do not agree that it needs a qualifier. My opinion is that safety as a whole would improve with those four suggestions implemented.

You can disagree, but if you think it would make safety worse you probably should point out how those changes would result in a more unsafe country not just that it wouldn't solve all problems.

I just listed how. I stipulated it would make it safer from police, but then listed how other things would not be improved. I do not believe I wrote it in a confusing manner. You not willing to accept that improving on type of danger does not make all danger safe. By all means, move the needle, but don't paint with a wider brush than what the needle is actually moving.

It seems I read your comment as more anti-demilitarization than it was. It seemed like you were implying the US would become less safe by implementing the suggestions. If your intent was only that improving safety in one specific way does not merit being called safer in general, that point was not adequately separated from a pro-militarized police position.

I would guess most people are ok with the implication from "better on metric X in some way" -> "better on metric X". If that is a particular issue for you, you probably should make a specific effort to make that point clear.

> by all means, reign in the out of control over weaponized "peace" officers, but please, let's be realistic on what that will actually do to overall safety.

> By all means, move the needle, but don't paint with a wider brush than what the needle is actually moving.

If you compared these lines from both of your comments, the first can be interpreted to imply that overall safety will actually go down if the suggestions are implemented whereas the second seems hard to misinterpret from what I believe to be your position.

were you confused by the use of scare quotes? when someone shows up in full military armor with automatic rifles, "peace" is not the word that comes to mind. I'm really not sure where a "pro-militarization" from anything I've written could be inferred.

>demilitarizing the police will not prevent schools/churches/movie theaters from getting shot up by someone. demilitarizing the police will not stop gang violence.

Militarizing the police hasn't really done a good job of preventing those things, either. A militarized police responds to those incidents, usually well after there have been plenty of casualties.

I have been in the boonies, lived in the "hood" and seen plenty of illegal activity in younger days. Throughout all that crime and poverty the most dangerous people I encountered were the boys in blue. Holding cops accountable for their actions and taking their long guns and tanks away will certainly move the "safety needle" far more than any other single thing in the US today.

It's not even about accuracy, it's about the erosion of privacy

Theres already no expectation of privacy in public. Its fine, the panopticon already exists.

Democracy is great we can elect legislators that enact laws that align with our values. The trick is making sure that the "law enforcement" actually does what it says on the box and simultaneously to punish overreach of law enforcement the same way we punish any other crime.

> we can elect legislators that enact laws that align with our values

Not really, though. Here in US, most of the time, best case is that we can elect legislators that won't enact the laws that horrify us the most (but they will still enact plenty of nasty stuff).

Yes this is true mostly because we as a country have become more and more disengaged from policy discussions and active participation in politics in general. This combined with older people being much more likely to vote and to vote conservative has led to the sort of multi-decade-incumbent ridden congress we have now.

This can pretty easily be solved by younger people voting more and enacting ranked choice voting. America is so cool because nothing (except maybe the bill of rights) is set in stone, we can change how it is!

Younger people voting more in the primaries would help a great deal.

With respect to ranked choice, that would certainly help a lot, except that both parties by now have realized that it is a threat to their dominance. You kinda expect that from Republicans, but there have been a slew of pieces critical of ranked choice and basically everything other than winner-takes-all from the left as well lately, accusing it of being racist etc.

Yeah its pretty gross that the left is against ranked choice and it also somewhat validates the whole Trumpist "uniparty" conspiracy theory. I do think its coming in the future as most younger people I know are totally supportive of it if I bring it up with them. I also think it would increase voter turnout in younger demographics as well.

All in all I think its important that we as a society bring more people into the political conversation. I want conservatives and liberals in the same room disagreeing more. I think that would help more than any other single thing.

What's worse, is they don't even use it to solve crimes. People will send police ring camera evidence of crimes and the police often ignore it

So you know this will be used selectively, when they want to, and only then.

But, be assured the feds will not give it up. They keep on renewing their spying powers over Americans and will not give those up either --which is a worse violation of the US constitution.

> demilitarization

Can you explain what that term means in this context?

I'm not sure of exact timing and laws that are in place but basically since 2003 actual military equipment has made its way from the armed forces to local police departments all over the country. I believe in many cases it has come free of charge. As a result you see cops in small towns armed like they're going to war in Fallujah.

Yep, easy to google, I'm not sure why folks want us to summarize and explain it all here for them. It's been going on for years and when you have stuff like that, you unfortunately tend to find a reason to use it.

Things that are political or politics-adjacent often mean different things to different people (e.g. "defund the police"). Someone asking someone else for a definition of their own meaning helps prevent a shouting match.

Personally it means taking their long guns and any type of armored vehicles away. I dont want to see cops with SBRs, APCs, night vision equipment, kitted out rifles or any of the other trappings of military special forces or death squads. I could see perhaps some exceptions but not just for any municipal PD.

Along this line but to a greater extreme that I dont actually think is possible right now is taking all their guns away. Generally the argument for cops having guns is so they can defend themselves from armed and violent criminals. This implies using those guns to shoot said criminals before they can hurt cops. I am against this because I believe in the rule of law and that is circumventing the entire judicial system by making the officer capable of being judge jury and executioner. This is wrong and undermines the entire judicial apparatus.

I would have guessed the primary argument for armed police would be to scare criminals and dissuade them from violent crime. I'd guess some people would argue that having N fewer incidents of cops murdering suspects isn't worth having X% more crime overall. But I'd also expect it's really hard to build a statistical model for how cause and effect would work.

Would you say that this is a topic where there's a clear utilitarian winner, or not?

Well theres a couple ways to come at this first theres the idea that as you put it N fewer incidents of cops murdering people is proportionate to some decrease in crime deterrence. Then theres my preferred perspective which is that the strength and legitimacy of the rule of law tends to be a greater force in benefitting society than any % increase or decrease of the other factors. I think weve done a great job creating the framework for a generally equitable and reasonable justice system (especially considering that its not set in stone and we can adjust it to be more effective as we see fit) and just have done a less than great job at implementing it.

To answer your question I dont think theres a clear winner but as I generally believe in the forward march of civilization I do think we can simultaneously disarm cops and reduce crime while also making the judicial system more focused on rehab and less on punishment. I'm bullish on empathy, freedom and peace!

What do you think?

That makes sense to me. However, I live in an area with very little crime, so I might be biased towards an approach that centers on the legitimacy of the rule of law, without me needing to worry much about law and order being the result of that commitment. I wonder if you consider El Salvador to be an exception to your rule, or if you think Bukele is actually restoring effectual rule of law. Ecuador is another similar case.

Do you think Bukele is a "good leader"?

I have a pretty low opinion of Bukele in general. I think the tactics used for the seemingly miraculous suppression of gangs actually weaken the rule of law in an abstract way.

I think law and order rest on a contract with the governed. Robert Peel probably got much (though not all IMO) of this right and as far as El Salvador goes I think 5th and 6th of his Peelian principles are the most trampled in Bukele's El Salvador. Something about Bukele's regime somehow reminds me a bit too much of Italy in the 1920s.

I would like to think that the rule of law can be so strengthened and engrained in society and the citizenry so moral and educated and resources and care so abundant and given freely that down the road we wont need cops.

Let them keep the long guns (of reasonable calibers; not, say, .50 BMG). It doesn't make much of a difference in terms of lethality, but long guns are much easier to shoot accurately, and the average American cop is very bad at that as it is.

- "at least until it becomes much more accurate"

You imply that you would support universal panopticon surveillance of public life, and your main concern is that it isn't good enough?

A time-series database of every person and their life's worldline, the coordinate path they traced across the planet's surface? In order to make crime impossible, to guarantee perpetual safety?

...the Republic will Be reorganized... into the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE

for a safe... and secure... society

applause

It's not too soon to read Vitale's "End of Policing," which was a hot read during George Floyd, and has not grown less relevant.

"Police officers in SF and Austin circumvent city bans on use of facial recognition."

If I recall correctly the ordinance only barred the city's police from "acquiring or using" the software without approval and reports to a committee. Merely asking someone else to use it on their behalf is probably ok (per the ordinance). Its kind of hard to actually ban any particular technology, if it is useful, people will find a way to use it.

Ordinance version 3 starts "Ordinance amending the Administrative Code to require that City departments acquiring surveillance technology, or entering into agreements to receive information from non-City owned surveillance technology". But after that it's 21 pages and I don't know if that's the version that was adopted.

then

"(d) Notwithstanding the provisions of this Chapter 19B, it shall be unlawful for any Department to obtain, retain, access, or use: 1) any Face Recognition Technology; or 2) any information obtained from Face Recognition Technology. A Department’s inadvertent or unintentional receipt, retention access to, or use of any information obtained from Face Recognition Technology shall not be a violation of this subsection (b), provided that: (1) The Department does not request or solicit its receipt, access to, or use of such information; and"

So asking the neighbors to use theirs does seem barred. (But then again it's 21 pages.)

Note that the section you quoted was unanimously amended to only apply to SF city-owned devices (https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/o0286-19.pdf). To see the current version of the surveillance ordinance see Admin Code 19B.2 (https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s...)

Thought experiment: if murder is illegal, what is it called when you ask someone to murder on your behalf?

“Probably ok” does not spring to mind.

I live in Marin and police in my small town frequently arrest criminals using automatic license plate scanners that guard every road that leads into town. Most of them drive from SF over the bridge after committing various crimes. Our town is a very safe town. I feel safe leaving the front door unlocked or keys inside the car in the driveway. Unfortunately everything changes as soon as I cross the bridge.

So the question is this: if your house got robbed and/or you family got hurt, wouldn't you want technology to be on your side?

Your question is a cop-brained false dichotomy. The real world isn’t divided into good guy/bad guy “sides”.

It’s not an either/or - we can and should address crime while also respecting civil liberties.

Yeah, that's a good question.

Another good question is "What if we spent these resources on actually eliminating the cause of this sort of crime instead of further cementing a police surveillance state that may actually paradoxically cause the increase in crime in the first place."

Another good question is "What would nightmare scenarios from the application of this kind of technology look like and how could they affect me personally?"

Imagine what this guy[0] could do to your family if he had access to the kind of technology you're promoting.

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

I support technology in law enforcement. For example body cams that exonerate officer behavior in extreme situations. Non-lethal restraining mechanisms.

From what I’ve seen of facial recognition technology at this time, I think it’s extremely unreliable and more likely to cause harm to innocent citizens (by way of police) than to protect innocents. This technology can lead to false positives, kinda like Swatting, and then non-criminals (like you) get hurt.

Also, I believe you mis attributed the safety in your town to the technology used. In fact I would wager it’s based on many other factors like, race, socio economics, population density, etc

what you are asking for is a gated community. If you want that, then you have to pay for your own maintenance.

I wished I lived in a tower as ivory as yours.

Besides the other remarks, in the case of the fine article, it's a matter of the police going out ot their way to deliberately violate local law. Not ingenuity.

Is it on your side? It looks like your already very low crime rate had been going down steadily for many years before these scanners were installed: https://data.marincounty.org/Public-Safety/County-Sheriff-Re.... What do you think changed in the last few months that made the scanners necessary?

I'm sure I'm missing some local context, but from an outsider perspective it looks like there's no evidence the cameras are helpful in reducing crime and pretty strong evidence that they will be used to commit crimes: https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/legal-docket/lagleva-v-doyle....

Funny how when one of us finds a workaround it's regarded as a hack and clever and a sign of how talented and 'relentlessly resourceful' we are. When a cop does it, oh god no the sky is falling. Asking a neighboring dept for an assist is within the law and from this own reporting not abused at all. It was used "at least 5 times" (ok, that is lazy, what is the upper bound?) and "no matches were returned". It's not some crazy surveillance state. It's cops trying to catch criminals. Which we need

What matters is whether the "workaround" is harming people.

The article mentions a guy "charged with aggravated assault for allegedly charging toward someone with a knife". I'd say getting that guy into trial is good for NOT harming people

> Funny how when one of us finds a workaround it's regarded as a hack and clever and a sign of how talented and 'relentlessly resourceful' we are.

Indeed. Which is why when somebody gets pulled over for speeding and points out that because of the theory of relativity speed limits are meaningless without a frame of reference, but the law doesn't explicitly specify one, and laws are required to be interpreted most favorably to the accused in a criminal case, the police always let them go instead of giving them a ticket.

> It's cops trying to catch criminals.

Corporations dumping mercury in the river are "businesses trying to create jobs". Muggers are "disadvantaged youths trying to put food on the table". They're supposed to do the second thing but not in that way.

Your first bit isn't an example of a legal workaround, it's an example of attempted sophistry for illegal behavior. Are you implying that the cops in this case broke the law? I don't think that is clear.

Cops should be able to do what is within the law, and if we don't like that then we should change the laws.

> Your first bit isn't an example of a legal workaround, it's an example of attempted sophistry for illegal behavior.

This is exactly what the police are doing.

> Are you implying that the cops in this case broke the law?

Are you implying that it's illegal to drive with the flow of traffic? That seems like an unreasonable interpretation, it would imply that everybody is constantly breaking the law! The interpretation where the speed limit is relative to other traffic makes much more sense, because the main issue is speed differences. If everybody is driving 70 that is much safer than some people driving 25 and some people driving 115, so the law sets a maximum speed difference, e.g. if the speed limit is 55 and some people are driving 40 then you could drive up to 95 but 100 is too fast. This is clearly much more in line with observed behavior.

Anybody can come up with reasoning to justify whatever. You can say that we should follow the letter of the law and let people get away with it if they can find a loophole, or that we should have judges reinterpret what the law actually says to try to get the result the legislature intended, but don't try to say we should do different ones for different people.

Again, more sophistry. Take the argument head on. Do you believe the cops are breaking the law, yes or no?

Thanks for all the downvotes with no cogent argument against my points. I will explain it very simply why you are engaging in nothing more than sophistry:

- My original post puts forth an interesting double standard, where when a non-cop finds a workaround to achieve their aim it's considered a 'hack' and a sign of being 'relentlessly resourceful' (a fundable, valued attribute!). When a cop uses a workaround to achieve their aim, which is to find criminals, it's considered grounds for outrage.

- Rather than engage on this point, you put forth analogies that don't address the hypocrisy, but rather use fine sounding language (relativity!) to make a completely different point that all laws should be treated in the spirit of how they were written, and not by what they actually say. And this takes some thinking on the reader's part to get there, as it's diverged significantly from the thrust of the first post, which, again, was to point out an interesting double standard.

- I try to get clarification on your now changed point

- You double down on the speed analogy, even further removed, with whataboutism and the logic that 'everyone is breaking the technical law so we need wide latitude in how laws are interpreted'. It was so far from my original observation that I don't even know why I responded. Perhaps you were trolling, IDK.

It's also interesting to me that my initial post got a couple quick upvotes and then got buried 5 min later. I don't claim foul play or anything. Just interesting. Kinda reminds me of the post against applying to YC that rocketed to the front page and then got flagged for removal. It's quite amazing how hiveminded this place is. And you know, I really have to question the value that I've gotten from this site in 15 years of reading it. I am positive that my life would be richer without it. So so long. This last part has nothing to do with you, just doing some reflecting. I'll see myself out.

> My original post puts forth an interesting double standard, where when a non-cop finds a workaround to achieve their aim it's considered a 'hack' and a sign of being 'relentlessly resourceful' (a fundable, valued attribute!). When a cop uses a workaround to achieve their aim, which is to find criminals, it's considered grounds for outrage.

That isn't a double standard. People are constantly complaining about "loopholes" when someone other than the police have found one, and law enforcement are constantly claiming that the one you've found isn't allowed.

The real double standard is not police and everybody else, it's normal people and people with power. Apple doesn't have to pay taxes because they can use some complicated shell games, but you can't do the same thing because it's reserved for international megacorps with fancy lawyers. It would be much better if we were consistent and always allowed "loopholes" to be used by everyone, so that the law had to be fixed instead of ignored or selectively enforced. But the police wouldn't be the beneficiaries of that, because they're in the group with power.

Notice how the police who did this are being berated rather than incarcerated.

I'll also add that I think it's a bad law if everyone breaks it, yet police look the other way. The beauty of a democratic republic is our elected leaders can change laws and pass new ones! So, just like this case where the people have a choice in what cops can do with surveillance tech, the people also have a choice in what our highways are limited to. The ideas are all really quite simple, and you don't have to go reaching for arguments about Einstein's theories to engage with them.

> The beauty of a democratic republic is our elected leaders can change laws and pass new ones! So, just like this case where the people have a choice in what cops can do with surveillance tech, the people also have a choice in what our highways are limited to.

That isn't actually how it works.

There are in practice multiple constituencies. Some people want higher speed limits, because they prefer to waste less of their time in a car. Other people want lower speed limits, because they believe them to be safer. Politicians have learned how to lie to people in the most adaptive way: You lower the speed limit but don't vigorously enforce it. Then you can tell the people who like lower speed limits that they've won, while the people who want higher speed limits don't actually slow down.

This deceitful compromise is also supported by the police, because when everybody is constantly violating the law they always have a pretext to pull over anybody they want. So the status quo is sticky. But it's also unreasonable. It's just not something that democracy is well-suited to fixing.

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