How Amazon's Facial-Recognition Technology is Supercharging Local Police (richmond.com) 86
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post:
Deputies in this corner of western Oregon outside ultraliberal Portland used to track down criminals the old-fashioned way, faxing caught-on-camera images of a suspect around the office in hope that someone might recognize the face. Then, in late 2017, the Washington County Sheriff's Office became the first law enforcement agency in the country known to use Amazon's artificial-intelligence tool Rekognition, transforming this thicket of forests and suburbs into a public testing ground for a new wave of experimental police surveillance techniques. Almost overnight, deputies saw their investigative powers supercharged, allowing them to scan for matches of a suspect's face across more than 300,000 mug shots taken at the county jail since 2001. A grainy picture of someone's face -- captured by a security camera, a social media account or a deputy's smartphone -- can quickly become a link to their identity, including their name, family and address.
More than 1,000 facial-recognition searches were logged last year, said deputies, who sometimes used the results to find a suspect's Facebook page or visit their home... "Just like any of our investigative techniques, we don't tell people how we catch them," said Robert Rookhuyzen, a detective on the agency's major crimes team who said he has run "several dozen" searches and found it helpful about 75% of the time. "We want them to keep guessing...
But lawyers in Oregon said the technology should not be, as many see it, an imminent step forward for the future of policing, and they frame the system not as a technical milestone but a moral one: Is it OK to nab more bad guys if more good guys might get arrested, too? "People love to always say, âHey, if it's catching bad people, great, who cares,' " said Joshua Crowther, a chief deputy defender in Oregon, "until they're on the other end."
The article acknowledges that no one's challenged their arrests on the grounds of a mistaken photo match -- but it still feels a little creepy. "In one case, an inmate was talking to his girlfriend on a jailhouse phone when she said there was a warrant out for her arrest. Deputies went to the inmate's Facebook page, found an old video with her singing and ran a facial-recognition search to get her name; she was arrested within days." And the article also notes that Amazon's doorbell camera Ring "applied last year for a facial-recognition patent that could flag 'suspicious' people at a user's doorstep.
"A Ring spokeswoman said the company's patent applications are intended to 'explore the full possibilities of new technology.'"
More than 1,000 facial-recognition searches were logged last year, said deputies, who sometimes used the results to find a suspect's Facebook page or visit their home... "Just like any of our investigative techniques, we don't tell people how we catch them," said Robert Rookhuyzen, a detective on the agency's major crimes team who said he has run "several dozen" searches and found it helpful about 75% of the time. "We want them to keep guessing...
But lawyers in Oregon said the technology should not be, as many see it, an imminent step forward for the future of policing, and they frame the system not as a technical milestone but a moral one: Is it OK to nab more bad guys if more good guys might get arrested, too? "People love to always say, âHey, if it's catching bad people, great, who cares,' " said Joshua Crowther, a chief deputy defender in Oregon, "until they're on the other end."
The article acknowledges that no one's challenged their arrests on the grounds of a mistaken photo match -- but it still feels a little creepy. "In one case, an inmate was talking to his girlfriend on a jailhouse phone when she said there was a warrant out for her arrest. Deputies went to the inmate's Facebook page, found an old video with her singing and ran a facial-recognition search to get her name; she was arrested within days." And the article also notes that Amazon's doorbell camera Ring "applied last year for a facial-recognition patent that could flag 'suspicious' people at a user's doorstep.
"A Ring spokeswoman said the company's patent applications are intended to 'explore the full possibilities of new technology.'"
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
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You failed to make your case (Score:1)
Yes, all very nice, but what makes this _needed_? I don't see it.
Worse, I can see a clear case for people saying "yes, very advanced, but we still prefer police work to be done by humans, thank you".
Re:We need this (Score:5, Insightful)
We most definitely do NOT need this. The only thing that makes our modern society even remotely possible to live in is that law can't be enforced 99.999% of the time. It's supposed to be difficult to catch and jail people breaking the law so that law enforcement must be prioritized for cases which are at least somewhat worth it.
You almost certainly wouldn't have made it to adulthood without a record if these kind of technologies were allowed to law enforcement and your children won't if you tolerate it now.
Seriously, how do you feel about this being combined with the what 4 or 5 cameras you've willingly placed in your home on devices like your TV and laptop by now?
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He's an authoritarian. He believes that Big Bother will never come for him because He agrees with Big Brother. You're wasting your time trying to convince him otherwise. No doubt one of his "solutions" to your proposed problem is less laws. Of course he also doesn't believe that Big Brother will ever object to repealing anything reasonable, and if Big Brother does object, then Big Brother had a very good reason.
*Note: The words in italics are subject to interpretation of both the person using them and the p
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"Seriously, how do you feel about this being combined with the what 4 or 5 cameras you've willingly placed in your home on devices like your TV and laptop by now?"
Not being a cretin I use monitors instead of TVs and my laptop camera is disabled because I don't require it for business and consider vanity contemptible. Faces don't convey data. Text does so precisely. I don't need anyone else to watch me. I don't give a shit if they want to because I don't belong to them.
Failure to control your own devices is
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"my laptop camera is disabled"
I work in security at the moment and I strongly advise physically obstructing your laptop camera. The drivers can be repair and the camera enabled remotely. Just stick a piece of tape over it or some vaseline. Also, do the same for your smart tv.
Microphones are another matter entirely, even distortions in the vibrations of your drive platters and fans can be used to reconstruct audio these days.
"Your life, your choice, your responsibility to understand tech. Neglect at your own
Faces don't convey data? (Score:2)
Haven't read the article, have we now?
Amazon's software is rapidly becoming more advanced.
The company last month announced a Rekognition update that would, among other things, improve the accuracy of the system's "emotion detection" feature, which automatically speculates on how someone is feeling based on how they look on camera.
It includes "7 supported emotions: 'Happy,' 'Sad,' 'Angry,' 'Surprised,' 'Disgusted,' 'Calm' and 'Confused.'"
Not sure what data your face is conveying right now, but I'm willing to make a wild guess that out of the "supported emotions" it is showing that you are neither "Happy" nor "Calm".
Also... the entire post above is akin to arguing that only stupid people should fear facial recognition - and since you're smart laws or policing techniques won't apply to you.
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https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229/
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Do you realize that having engaged in oral sex or anal sex is illegal in most states, including while married? Convictions have been upheld both in the military and at least Louisiana.
There are 20 felony crimes that are more common than others in the United States. They are as follows:
Drug abuse violations.- EVER try drugs?
Property crimes – these include auto theft, burglary, larceny, arson, and theft. - EVER accidentally walk away with someone's pen, grocery cart, etc? The groceries could be enough t
Re:We need this (Score:5, Informative)
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Seems to me that the problem is more on the consequences side than the detection side. If the tail-light discussion was more along the lines of...
"I see you have a tail light out, either fix it now (eg. replace the bulb with a spare you carry) or I'm going to have to charge you $30 for this universal stick-on tail light to get you home."
Rather than starting people along the road to being jailed for years for every minor infraction
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This will lead to the collapse of society.
Sincerely,
The For-Profit Prison Industry
Re: We need this (Score:1)
Nothing will ever fully stop the innocent from being incarcerated by the corrupt.
Introducing facial recognition may reduce many problems in identifying criminals and act as a deterrent.
People will argue about privacy and perhaps in the world if deep fakes video surveillance will be outlawed due to the corrupt. Not counting on it
Re: We need this (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: We need this (Score:1)
I do not disagree.
I would argue that we cannot stop facial recognition being used. We can restrict when it is used.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Heh? It's facial recognition of someone they are *already* looking for. The only argument is false positives, and sure, they can always improve training sets to reduce bias in fall positives.
But otherwise, your post is nonsense.
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"until they're on the other end." (Score:2, Interesting)
This truly is the key. There are a lot of very shallow self-interested people who will fall for "tough on crime" slogans without vigilance, looking at evidence, assessing collateral damage - right up until their test rat status is revealed via consequences.
Unfortunately or fortunately it's kind of a fact of life that some fat % of the bell curve isn't going to care literally until it affects them personally in a significant negative way, even if they "knew" this was happening to other innocent people meanw
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"The article acknowledges that no one's challenged their arrests on the grounds of a mistaken photo match". So no "innocents" being arrested by this. But don't let that stop your rant.
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Ring Patent is a garbage patent (Score:2)
How much more obvious could it be, we have a camera that looks at people's faces so we are going to run them through facial recognition software to find out who they are.
We need to go back to when the courts would regularly throw out this kind of crap, this is arguably less obvious than pencil erasers which had their patent invalidated.
http://www.patentplaques-blog.... [patentplaques-blog.com]
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If someone has their image captured committing a (Score:2)
crime, maybe it's ok to check a database of known criminals...
Where this seems to break down is using other facial databases or sources of images.
I am somewhat conflicted about the whole thing.
It would be interesting to know how access to the system is controlled and logged to prevent stalking by law enforcement,
LOGICAL FALLACY ALERT!!! (Score:1)
"Is it OK to nab more bad guys if more good guys might get arrested, too?"
"The article acknowledges that no one's challenged their arrests on the grounds of a mistaken photo match -- but it still feels a little creepy."
So they are claiming, lots of innocent people would get arrested & yet they admit it never happened & yet they still want to get a new superior tech, that is extremely helpful to law enforcement (who are using it to protect & serve common good of general public), BANNED???!!!
&
error rate (Score:5, Insightful)
However, this might not happen. Kind of like genetic testing, if this works well, it could be a good overall, by improving the rate at which police catch the real criminals AND reducing the error rate at which innocents are swept up in an investigation. If that's the case, there's no downside, except for criminals complaining that they are somehow getting caught easier.
Of course this comes with the caveats that it isn't used in private spaces - only public ones. On roads, parks and governement buildings? Fine. In my bedroom or bathroom? Nope.
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https://www.azquotes.com/quote... [azquotes.com]
http://kowal.com/?q=How-Many-F... [kowal.com]
Laws can be weaponized by those who are in a position to do so.
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Laws can be weaponized by those who are in a position to do so.
Laws eventually will be weaponized by those who are in a position to do so.
FTFY
i can see value, but not on all public (Score:2)
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How to get great facial-recognition ready for sale (Score:1)
2. Contact nations globally that can't afford the price of there own national facial-recognition tech.
3. Offer free support and free product to 4th, 3rd and 2nd world nations to test the facial-recognition.
4. Place new CCTV systems at ports, roads, rail, airports, along roads, in shopping areas, near gov buildings.
5. Hire trusted staff from the nations gov/mil with access to their national photo ID system.
6. Use US math to slowly wo
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you mean
10.5 Accuse law-abiding citizens and their families and acquaintances of being criminals and illegal immigrants
That's the reality that would happen. The US government treats its citizens as criminals
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No system would want that amount of wrong data to present to a limited number of police in each US city working on large real time crime related data sets.
Such a system would not sell well and police would avoid such an unwanted work load.
Who is a criminal? Most nations have CCTV ready data on everyone who was a criminal.
Illegal immigrants using fake/shared/created/sanctuary city ID would be the data in use thats expected to be found.
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You are very naive, ignorant of bad things done to innocents by do-not-fly lists, freezing bank assets for "unusual activity", profiling of minorities, etc.
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What will criminal groups in the community do every day once they work that out?
I have no problem with this, IF (Score:2)
... and this is a BIG IF....
If you get snared by this, and you truly are 100% innocent, $25,000 fine to the police department that detained you, payable to the innocent/wrongly detained. If you're arrested, 100% paid for by the police department that arrested you to clean up the mess/expunge your record/etc.
This would make sure they only arrest folks that truly are suspects.
-Miser
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you are very funny, in a country where the police gun down innocents because of "profiling", swatting, or being trigger happy.... or here in Chicago where they just beat or rape innocents for jollies.
Hahaha
The old liberty versus security question... (Score:2)
In the long dark storm that is most of human history there have been few clear days of sunshine. I like to think that the American experiment is one of them — or has been. There is a kind of sad inevitability to the creep of technical totalitarianism. We were appalled when we read 1984 and the downtrodden people had cameras and microphones in in their homes put there by the Big Brother government. Now we gleefully install them ourselves. (Not I it should be pointed out.) And the government certainly h