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Privacy United States Your Rights Online

Pinellas Puts Facial Recognition in Patrol Cars 36

Posted by michael from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
Isomorphic writes "Despite criticism by rights-advocates, the meltdown of a similar system used by the nearby Tampa Police (previous /. story here), and a zero-hit two-year track record, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office is putting facial recognition systems into 50 patrol cars. Even more ridiculous is the claim that the system is voluntary."
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Pinellas Puts Facial Recognition in Patrol Cars More

Pinellas Puts Facial Recognition in Patrol Cars

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  • how long... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by perlchild ( 582235 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @01:07PM (#9453834)
    With Law enforcement demanding more and more tools, and tools that are more and more bigbrotherish each time, how long until we actually have laws that say people who mindlessly use tools without using their heads do jailtime equivalent to the judicial error they cause? (You accuse wrongfully someone of second degree murder because you didn't do a proper investigation, you do second degree murder time). Oh, and let's put it in the books that if a police union(or police department) tries to cover up something like this, not only do they commit a felony, but they share the punishment too.

    Maybe this way everyone will be happy. We'll be giving law enforcement tools, but they'll actually be afraid of using them(and messing up). Fear of messing up seems to be underrepresented IMHO.
    • how long until we actually have laws that say people who mindlessly use tools without using their heads do jailtime equivalent to the judicial error they cause?
      Never. Incompetence is not and will hopefully never be against the law. If incompetence kills someone, it in and of itself will not be what gets an individual or group of individuals into trouble. It's the death or injury to some one that caused the trouble not the incompetence.

      Tools like this are actually a good thing! Do you know how many thousa

  • what would probably make people safer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dcocos ( 128532 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @01:20PM (#9453992)
    What would probably make people safer is if they took that money and applied to hiring a neighborhood officer who walked the area and actually knew and talked to the people in his area.
    • That would have felt safer, not be/make safer. The British goverment is doing the same mistake. They have this slogan "Bobies on beat" which is exactly what you wrote. Does it reduce crime? No way. Bad guys just wait until the constable walks away. On the other hand, the perception of being safer has increased. With the same money, they could have employed someone to sit in a patrol car, ready for action or get some more helicopter time where they can actually follow the culprit when the guys on the beat ca
    • yeah but thats not the trend, basically buy techonology to replace the efforts of officers. This way they can cut back their budgets. So give us a couple years and all our speeding tickets are going to be electronically computer by sensors on the side of the road, and you whereabouts will be tracked 24/7

  • No mystery here. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sevn ( 12012 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @01:24PM (#9454043) Homepage Journal
    When something that is proven not to work keeps getting bought by a govt agency:

    * It's not their money. It's yours.

    * someone is doing someone else a favor, or cashing in.

    Follow the money.
  • You have the right to wear this burka, if you choose not to wear this burka you will have facial recognition software troll through our database.

  • Voluntary like the Income Tax? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bob_Robertson ( 454888 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @01:57PM (#9454497) Homepage
    Grant any power to government in order to control your neighbors, and that same power will be used to control YOU.

    In order to be free, you must guarantee the freedom of the least desirable member of society as well. Anything else is tyranny. If you don't think it is tyranny, it's only because your particular choices which define freedom for YOU haven't been restricted ....yet.

    Liberty is not safe, it is not comfortable, it is not easy.

    Slavery is very safe, and very easy. Just relax and give in. Do as you're told. Step out of the car and identify yourself when told. All very easy.

    Bob-
    • No, voluntary as in they ask you for permission before running you through the database.
      • This is like searching your car. They have no probable cause, so they have to ask:

        "Mind if I search your car?"

        "You may not."

        "Refusal is probable cause that you're hiding something. Step out of the car and put your hands on the hood." They then search your car.

        If you don't like it, take it up with the judge (who happens to work for the same people the police do, and is rated by CONVICTIONS).

        Bob-

  • "It's all part of an $8-million Department of Justice grant designed to boost community policing. Of that, it will cost $250,000 to equip the cars, plus an additional training period to teach deputies how to take good photos. At least one car outfitted with the equipment is already on the streets, and others to follow shortly."

    I was under the impression that Community-based policing meant:

    • Getting more police out in the community on foot and on bicycles rather than behind desks or otherwise isolated from

  • From the article... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Grrr ( 16449 ) <cgrrr@nOSpaM.grrr.net> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @03:37PM (#9455781) Homepage Journal
    Sheriff Everett Rice on Wednesday said his deputies are not [*] being instructed to search for criminals and that the photos would be taken only if there was "cause to arrest." ...
    Deputies are not [*] supposed to use the technology to take random pictures of people in public, said Rice. ...
    "We don't [*] force people," he added.

    * = yet

    <grrr>
    • Sheriff Everett Rice on Wednesday said his deputies are not being instructed to search for criminals and that the photos would be taken only if there was "cause to arrest."

      If they arrest you, they already take your picture. If you appear on a wanted poster and are seen, you would hopefully at a min. be questioned if seen. If recongized, you'd be arrested and booked. During the booking process, guess what. Your picture is taken.

      It would be very helpful if they had instant access to your driver lic. pictu
      • I agree with a lot of what you said. Certainly the rollout of this app, as intended, is a useful tool. Perhaps it's even worth it despite the abuses which will occur (whether discovered or not) in any situation where humans are involved.

        By throwing in all those specious "yets" I was thinking of two other things. I know of very, very few situations, where surveillance has permanently decreased.
        If there's a good reason to scan everybody entering a stadium or an airport or a mall... or scanning every license
        • but I'd rather be wrongly arrested than voluntarily be added to more databases.

          As I understand it, they aren't adding any one that they photo to a database. They are checking the database for known people that they are after. I know alot of family members that have the same opinion as you. They'd also rather be arrested than have their photo taken by family members for the family photo. I'd be against storage of this data. The only time that I'd want to have storage of the data is if some one was arreste
          • Yup, they may not be saving the photos (uh, yet), their motives may be unimpeachable and the higher-ups in the police department don't care at all about the photos of non-criminals.
            Again, it's the unintended "audiences" not initially anticipated that concern me more. Digital data, once captured, is so much more easily stored and indexed... more easily copied, merged...
            Manipulated.

            Are these photos in the public record? (Surely they're not all considered to be "work products of an investigation" ?!?)
            Will t
  • The small airport at which the system is operating has never identified a wanted criminal. The system at the sherrif's office is much more useful and is used during booking during which matches occur every day.
  • ...let them stay home? We've got automated radar guns, automated facial recognition, biometrics... Hell we could just give the cops pagers that go off when the computers are finished doing their jobs for them so they could show up to make the actual arrest. The rest of the time they could just sit in their Barca-loungers and we'll just mail them checks for doing nothing.

    This is different from welfare... how??
  • This article used the phrase, "Officers should not . . ." far too often for my comfort. The point of legal safeguards on the police and judicial proceedings is to prevent abuses from occurring in the first place. I don't trust the police to use the system in the way the article says it was intended without real protection, as opposed to the toothless policy that seems to be in place.

  • Even scarier than the facial identification scernario, the article contained the following tidbit:

    [The SOP] also states that a field interview report must be filed if a picture is taken, and that cameras can be used to record evidence not usually collected by forensic investigators.

    I can't wait until digital camera "photos" of "evidence" that forensic investigators don't find interesting begin to show up in court. I will be very curious to see how the chain of evidence is preserved for a digital image, a

  • In Japan it is common to wear a surgical-style face mask when one has a flu. Muslim women wear scarves over heads. Various cultures have various accepted ways to cover one's face. Why not pick and use some of them as a stopgap countermeasure?

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