NYPD Adds Children As Young As 11 To Facial Recognition Database (nytimes.com) 76
"The New York Police Department (NYPD) has been loading thousands of arrest photos of children and teenagers into a facial recognition database despite evidence the technology has a higher risk of false matches in younger faces," reports The New York Times. Some of the children included in the database are as young as 11, but most are teenagers between 13 and 16 years old. From the report: Elected officials and civil rights groups said the disclosure that the city was deploying a powerful surveillance tool on adolescents -- whose privacy seems sacrosanct and whose status is protected in the criminal justice system -- was a striking example of the Police Department's ability to adopt advancing technology with little public scrutiny. Several members of the City Council as well as a range of civil liberties groups said they were unaware of the policy until they were contacted by The New York Times.
Police Department officials defended the decision, saying it was just the latest evolution of a longstanding policing technique: using arrest photos to identify suspects. The New York Police Department can take arrest photos of minors as young as 11 who are charged with a felony, depending on the severity of the charge. And in many cases, the department keeps the photos for years, making facial recognition comparisons to what may have effectively become outdated images. There are photos of 5,500 individuals in the juvenile database, 4,100 of whom are no longer 16 or under, the department said. Teenagers 17 and older are considered adults in the criminal justice system. Civil rights advocates say that including their photos in a facial recognition database runs the risk that an imperfect algorithm identifies them as possible suspects in later crimes. A mistaken match could lead investigators to focus on the wrong person from the outset, they said.
Police Department officials defended the decision, saying it was just the latest evolution of a longstanding policing technique: using arrest photos to identify suspects. The New York Police Department can take arrest photos of minors as young as 11 who are charged with a felony, depending on the severity of the charge. And in many cases, the department keeps the photos for years, making facial recognition comparisons to what may have effectively become outdated images. There are photos of 5,500 individuals in the juvenile database, 4,100 of whom are no longer 16 or under, the department said. Teenagers 17 and older are considered adults in the criminal justice system. Civil rights advocates say that including their photos in a facial recognition database runs the risk that an imperfect algorithm identifies them as possible suspects in later crimes. A mistaken match could lead investigators to focus on the wrong person from the outset, they said.
Terrible (Score:1)
The corporatist state is taking over. With this and the Ring cameras spreading everyone means that no one is safe.
Or youths shouldn't commit felonies (Score:1)
who are charged with a felony
Don't forget that part of the summary.
Felonies don't just happen. They're serious crimes involving knowledge and intent.
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18 USC 1865 & 36 CFR 7.96(b)(3) make it a federal crime to harass a golfer in any national park in Washington, DC
That's the only one I really know about, but serious crimes indeed! We need to fill those prison beds!
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Protip (Score:1)
Remember kids, soon no one may buy or sell without having their forehead marked in a nice friendly leader-supporting database.
It's Progressive!
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It involves a camel's nose, and a tent, and a lot of people saying "well, why not for that too?"
Oh, and lots of lots of money.
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The people who should understand what I mean, do. As evidenced by what's already been posted.
For you, feel free to praise the system for tracking every instant of people's lives and finances, for any future government power that may be coming along, and feels like turning off all of their opposition's finances, and therefore lives, whenever they want to flip some bits. At least learn what the term "the camel getting it's nose in the tent" means, though, it's just basic knowledge for anyone mildly educated
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No, you're simply making that up to rhetorically make some directionless "point". The article says "felonies", not "rapists and murderers", but just make up what you like to argue instead of what reality is.
The point is, along with the well-backed notion that I've linked a Cato Institute study on already, that prosecution is gaining increasing arbitrariness in a legal environment where we all can be fairly said to "commit three felonies a day", if you combine such arbitrariness with tracking precisely what
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"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
--1984
Well, I never said there's nothing there to sympathize with.
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Outrageous! (Score:1)
Next thing you know, the police will be arresting teenage thugs for rapes, murders, assaults, and thefts they commit! Well, at least we know they won't actually be prosecuted for their crimes. Whew! We should cherish our children, and that of course means they should get a free pass on any bad behavior - they don't deserve any less, after all they're just victims of their environment.
Re: Outrageous! (Score:1)
I'm honestly not sure if you're being sarcastic, or if you're just a Democrat.
So if there's no conviction ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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A police-state never destroys any data it can use against its citizens. After all, that would contradict their mission.
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If there's no conviction, do they destroy the pictures?
No, they are using arrest photos. Arrest photos are kept eternally.
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We had this debate in Europe already. Being arrested is a very long way from even being charged, let alone convicted. Photos of people merely arrested, along with their fingerprints and any DNA taken, should be destroyed.
Re: So if there's no conviction ... (Score:2)
They are, at least here in Norway but the goal posts are moving in other ways. Anything more than a misdemeanor and you go on the policeâ(TM)s identity registry with photo, fingerprints and DNA. A rich guy challenged the last part after being convicted of tax evasion, itâ(TM)s cleared our Supreme Court so unless the EU court strikes it down as a violation of human rights that DNA bank will be huge.
Due to immigration fraud we are now also moving to legislation that would require DNA evidence by def
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I thought only pedos had databases of pictures of children.
You mean the TSA?
Probably they and NYPD are happy to share.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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This!! The bar for Felony is pretty low these days... Those hash pens that are legal to smoke in like 1/3 of the country now are automatic felonies (for any quantity) everywhere else. A long list of other drugs are in the same category (Pretty much everything but the actual marijuana plant). I have no idea what the stats are but just from my own observations kids have more access to felony substances than ever before (especially since one of them is substantially legal) so more likely they'll face such a ch
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Kids aren't worse today. There have always been malicious ones.
Perhaps people were more trusting in the past. Back during the Blitz, when Germany was bombing Britain and a million homes were destroyed and over 40,000 people were killed, criminals were still active. In fact they saw it as a golden era for them. Just act like you are there in some official capacity and people will actually help you loot the ruins of their neighbour's homes. And the kids were no exception, vandalizing the bomb shelters and the
Why the fear of what the algorithm finds? (Score:3)
What was the early IMSI-catcher tech. Voice print tracking. Smart phone tracking.
Low cost DNA tree searching.
Credit card, gift card tracking.
Police surveillance using a digital camera. A film camera in past decades.
Fingerprints.
Handwriting analysis.
All that tech "could" get the wrong person when done in a large city/nation.
DNA finds "someone" connected to a criminal with the same low cost DNA test.
Whats the fear with keeping a city safe from criminals with CCTV and public/private CCTV partnerships?
The crime is seen, reported and the person is tracked back over time.
A face is finally detected.
More CCTV is looked at to see the movement patterns of that person.
Their location is found.
Police start an investigation.
Is the person of interest a criminal? CCTV is the tool that found the person for later "human" police investigation.
CCTV is not connecting a person to a digital state/city photo database in real time displaying a name over every person.
Let the police track back movements of people suspected of doing crime then investigate in person.
CCTV gives location, time, past movements. The algorithm tracks the past movement of the face, not who the face is.
Police then try and find out who the person is..
Criminal? Person who is helping a criminal during a crime? Illegal immigrant?
The USA does not legally at a state and city level have a vast database of all names of citizens to match with faces using math in real time on city CCTV.
Once the crime is reported, the "algorithm" math can go back over huge amounts of CCTV kept to find the person again.
Find the person again, investigate the person.
What caused the police to start looking? A real crime. Not the "algorithm". Not the CCTV. Not the police. Not the city.
The criminal did a crime that was tracked back to a person after the crime.
Give the city and police the support they need to reduce crime in cites. The advanced new math to track criminals after a crime.
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The privacy protection in the USA is that citizens names won't appear in real time over every persons face.
Once a crime is seen by the police on CCTV, the power of the math will look back over hours and months of CCTV to find the person of interest again.
This is not math tracking every citizen and illegal immigrant in real time.
Its a tool to track back the movements after a
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It not the 1960's -1990's where people had to find a POTS and try and tell police about a crime.
Now a digital cam can help police see the crime.
So can people living in a city. Who is doing crime in their once safe area.
Gloablly thanks to the internet. No more crime stats as numbers per year in print in a newspaper.
See each crime as a criminal who is moving around a nice part of a city.
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No smartphone tracking tech?
No cars? Cars can be used to do "surveillance" too
Police forces get held back decades so criminals can go on doing their crimes all over US cities?
Restrictions (Score:2)
Just subject it to encryption and a warrant system to make it only usable for aggravated felonies or heinous crimes under penalty of serious jail time for anyone who abuses.
Praise Dog Vote Trump! (Score:2)
It will all be private databases soon (Score:1)
In 10 years anyone who frequents public places will be in many privately-run facial-recognition databases, although many will be without names attached.
Advertisers and police will be able to buy access to match a face to:
* places the person (or look-alike) has been
* places the person or a look-alike frequents, including when they go and who else is typically there
* what cars, including license plates, the person uses, or if he uses shared-ride services, public transportation, bicycles, or other modes of tra
OH NO BIOMETRICS SCARY!!! (Score:2)
Whatever. Really. Any news about biometrics makes the Slashdot feed and they all get the same tinfoil hat reactions especially when The Children(tm) get involved.
News Flash: You have no privacy. You have no security. You either lost it long ago when technology made it easy to take away or you never really had it in the first place. I sleep better at night being aware of this. You should try it.
As for this specific piece of news: Does your kid have a passport? They are in the biodb. Are they old enough to ha
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