US gives local police a face-scanning app similar to one used by ICE agents
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Something like: [Android App – Kotlin + CameraX + ML Kit] -> [HTTPS/mTLS] -> [AWS API Gateway -> Palantir Foundry middleware] -> [NEC face match + NeoFace] -> [DHS IDENT/HART (Thales fingerprints)] -> [PostgreSQL + Splunk audit]
Here was my reading/watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1PSAB3DvwY
https://uip.nec-help.com/latest-onprem/Release-Notes/Version...
https://www.milestonesys.com/technology-partner-finder/nec/n...
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD1018010.pdf
https://www.sita.aero/pressroom/blog/embracing-the-change-an...
Resources:
https://www.thetrace.org/2020/01/police-data-documentation-p...
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/jul/12/five-easy...
Singapore is safer in the dead of night than New York City is in the middle of the day. (Population is smaller than NYC but bigger than LA.)
And no, Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time - he took credit for rail improvements started before he took power and then led his country into disastrous wars that destroyed it.
To put it another way, it would take two months of living there to match a single day’s risk of being murdered in NYC.
Of course this does not mean fewer rights leads to more safety. Under a bad government, you get nothing in return for your rights. But we should be explicit that there is a tradeoff to be made.
2. Singapore has a very different firearm regulation regime than the US (or even New York State or NYC). Your argument could make sense as an argument in favor of more tightly restricting firearm ownership in the US.
3. Your argument doesn't even attempt to generalize to other authoritarian regimes. One could equally compare NYC's murder rate with that of Japan or Switzerland, which did not have to use authoritarianism to achieve low homicide rates.
- Singapore is authoritarian and has a low homicide rate
- Venezuela is authoritarian and has a high homicide rate
But let's also compare Homicide and GDP[0]. There's multiple interesting things to say from graphs like this. Though I still wouldn't conclude a causation here.
People love data when it confirms what they already believe but people don't like putting in the work needed to interpret data. Granted, the latter is not easy. But maybe if we're not math lovers we probably shouldn't claim to also be data lovers.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?x...
2. One person’s “firearm regulation” is another’s authoritarianism. A regulation simply means one’s ability to have a firearm will be taken away in some cases i.e. fewer rights.
3. There is no point where freedom ends and authoritarianism begins. It’s a matter of the types and number of rights which are protected by the government. Anyone who believes removing the right to bear arms in some circumstances agrees that there can be a tradeoff between freedom and safety which was the core of my argument, that the US is becoming less free while becoming no more safe.
You are just cherry picking. There is very little correlation between democracy and homicide rate, no matter how much you might wish it.
You didn't mention any rate prior and you provide no supporting evidence, multiple sources for each is preferred. Is this supposed 60x higher rate per day or per person?
and as others have said, comparing a city (urban) to a whole country (mixed) is silly
Singapore is a city and NYC is a city. Of course no comparison will be perfect, but the significant difference in safety will not go away through clever accounting.
not going to believe a stranger from an internet forum saying 60x
severe punishments are more likely the defining factor than gov't type
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Did you read what I wrote? There is no "tradeoff". Authoritarianism doesn't guarantee crime reduction and it certainly is not the only way to achieve it. I live in a vibrant democracy with low crime and an almost totally unarmed police force (thanks to strict gun control and a public health care system).
At this level it's almost a tautology. Liberal governments choose not to do things because they would be illiberal, and illiberal governments don't mind.
It doesn't mean illiberal governments are better - on average, data would probably say otherwise, causation or correlation.
But undoubtedly, there are illiberal governments that achieve very good outcomes for their residents through illiberal means - surveillance, "streamlined" decision making etc. You can push the envelope of what the gov can do, at the expense of liberal values, and still achieve something else that's objectively good.
And the US is pushing this envelope for no benefit for its citizens, it would seem.
Also, you're the only one talking about Mussolini.
There's a whole range between "reduces" and "eliminates", and introducing the "elimination" argument is a strawman.
Authoritarian regimes do cut down on crime committed by the oppressed masses. It's a side effect of the heavy handed control that allows those in power to stay in power. Severely punishing crime is one more means of exerting more power and control over that population, the leaders can't afford to let regular people get away with flaunting authority. But the upper echelons will always commit crimes or abuses especially against those they control because they can afford to get away with it.
That this doesn't translate into benefits for you personally or the citizens generally does not mean the system is not working very efficiently right now.
"Efficient" is a word that has a positive connotation, but in the context of authoritarianism it means something very very bad for liberty, freedom, civil rights, and democracy -- all things that get in the way of authoritarian efficiency.
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs....
Autocracies are like communist centrally-planned economies. If the autocrat isn't all-knowing and all-good, they can't possibly know enough to run things - or even to make enough decisions to avoid being a bottleneck. One of the great advantages of democracies is that the people affected have power - they have a seat at the table. They know what's going on and what they need. If you want to plan flood relief for a town in Mississippi, ask the people there what the problems are and what they need. If you want to regulate software development, developers get input.
That goes for social, political, financial, economic, foreign affairs, and all other policy.
Regarding crime, the autocrat and servants commit plenty of that. Generally, thieves don't break down your door in the middle of the night, kidnap you, and imprison and torture you for years without trial - or just seize all your assets and prevent you from working. Also, what source do you have on crime levels in autocracies - where could reliable information come from? And as another commenter said, I don't see a correlation between crime and democracy.
(Singapore's very unusual nature makes it a poor example.)
This is how much of UAE and to the extent Singapore is one, does it.
The dictator will basically let the free market operate and then interfere a few percent off the top of that. They are not torturing enough people to destroy their economy.
The way I understand that is they allow some freedom and thus receive some of the benefits. They still are far behind democracies socially, politically, economically, militarily, etc.
China did the same for awhile, starting small when Deng Xiaopeng took power and expanding until Xi took over.
Freedom of individuals, which allows a country to harness all of their talents and imaginations, is an enormous advantage. People forget that freedom is the most powerful thing in the world.
Correlation != causation.
Bullshit. There’s ample evidence of facial recognition failing in the presence of, for instance, underexposed imaging, particularly for individuals that are also dark in complexion.
I think some localities do a better job than others of ensuring a transparent process, either through the municipal legislative body or a police commission, of decision-making.
But it's telling that, at the end of the day, when we have an actual group of armed people in our cities, acting as though they are beholden to no laws (and even declaring as much at some times and places), our police forces are largely standing down rather than defending the populace and enforcing the laws.
I can understand a few days of wrangling with municipal legal departments over the particularities of the supremacy clause, but once it became clear that ICE was acting wildly out of scope of their duties, and violating state and local laws in the process, it became the obvious duty of local police officers to effect arrests and refer charges to local district attorneys.
What is the underlying reason that's not happening? I'm mostly an abolitionist - I believe that the economics of slavery persist through the prison system and that we can't really craft a new slavery-free system until we dispense with the notion that some people have greater law-enforcement authority than others, or the right to be more armed than others.
But it is just simply a matter that police will always fall in line with federal (or perhaps even global?) say-so, regardless of the laws? Is it a follow-the-money thing?
We've now had ICE agents kidnap US citizens, recklessly discharge firearms, invade every unit of an apartment building with no warrant (not that any warrant providing for such an invasion would be constitutional anyhow), etc. etc. - things that, if anyone else did, they'd be charged without a doubt.
How far does it go? If ICE sexually assaults someone in broad daylight, can they simply tell their employer they'd prefer not to be charged with a crime?
I'm not even sure that'd be an escalation at this point; they've already done things that are just as damaging to society.
it's done through elections, and DOJ efforts in the next admin, sort of? (this has all become even more political the last 5 years)
It's bizarre (and not at all in keeping with the western legal tradition) that particular people can essentially not be named as defendants in a civil matter depending on their employer.
Even the "benefit of clergy" claimed by the perpetrators of the Boston massacre did not, as far as I know, preclude civil proceedings against them.
Elections are not a good tool to determine which civil matters may proceed, and particularly blunt if the mechanism is based on who changes state employment status on their basis.
We're going to need to do some serious work to shore up the gaps and rough edges of the constitution that have been exposed by the current regime
Aren't fingerprints way more easy to match correctly? Or is it about checking the faces with social media databases etc to see where the person is coming from?
I'm sure there are lots of existing (pesky) laws about grabbing people and force-taking their fingerprint, or similar, while maybe not so many of those laws against taking a quick picture of a "suspects" face.
[1] I'm not sure if REAL ID means the feds get access to driving license details or if there's just a lot of states that share this data voluntarily.
It's my understanding they don't need a warrant for biometrics upon entering the country.
Ostensibly, if ICE are acting within the scope of their duties, there are limits to the ways in which they can be charged with violations of state laws. An baroque system of identification allows them to claim they were acting in that scope.
In this way, it is perhaps similar to the widespread acceptance of drug-sniffing dogs which are no better than a coin flip (see Florida v. Harris, for example), and which can be trained to signal whether drugs are present or not.
The government likely has pictures of many more people than they have fingerprints of.
Let me explain why:
Law enforcement can only investigate people based on certain provisions. The typical one is of "reasonable suspicion" of a crime. This also has to be articulated, at the latest in the police report.
With a face-scanning app, people who are registered, are no longer anonymous. The cops know who they are. However had, what legal basis would they have to know who is who at all times, without suspicion of a crime? This basically bypasses protection in the legal system. It will be interesting to see whether the high court will allow it, because if so then they can also discard the last ~80 years of legislation here. So I am pretty certain that Trump will lose this one eventually. Meanwhile he achieves that the ICE gangsters will do so against "suspected migrants", which is all the MAGA base wants to achieve.
The following is a genuine question, not a statement: Would known statistics/tax info for a particular region pass "reasonable suspicion"?
Basically, the laws requiring people to identify themselves are a trap set to snap on low IQ people. It's a cruel status quo, it doesn't need to be this way. Arguably the best solution would be to change the laws which require people to identify themselves. The obvious counter-argument is that this would greatly inhibit catching people who have outstanding warrants.
Face scanning tech could have the effect of disarming this trap. Instead of arresting everybody who refuses to give a name, the police can get your name through an app, learn that you have no warrants, and then tell you you're free to go instead of arresting you for no reason other than your stubborn attitude.
Overall though, I disapprove of this technology for it's potential to be scaled into massive comprehensive dragnet surveillance, very similar to what is already happening with license plate detection and traffic cameras.
"Stop and identify" states: If police have reasonable suspicion that you're involved in a crime, you can be required to state your name. Refusal can result in arrest.
Non–stop-and-identify states: You generally don't have to provide your name unless you're lawfully detained or arrested.
It's not illegal everywhere to refuse, but, as you said it can escalate the situation.
However, from a civil liberties perspective, people do explicitly choose to refuse in order to assert their rights and/or protest unlawful stops. You can certainly choose to be a high-IQ person, always give your name, and contribute to the eroding of your own rights over time. Face scanning tech just removes that option and automatically eliminates those civil liberties.
Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wyoming, plus Washington D.C.
and then
- You must be detained on reasonable suspicion; a casual chat (“consensual encounter”) never triggers the duty.
- Verbal name only—no law forces you to carry or hand over a card.
- Driving is separate—every state requires a license on traffic stops.
- Lying is illegal everywhere (false ID to police is usually a misdemeanor).
- Filming police is protected nationwide; identifying yourself is unrelated.
that potential has become kinetic, we're living it right now