Not so crazy now, but the accusations of "conspiracy" are still flying. There will not be any real apology from the public once these new technologies are used against them.
In areas where violent and property crimes are high, it will be a blessing. In places where law enforcement is used mainly for supplementing municipal revenue, it will be a curse. And where the government uses the law as a weapon against dissent, it will be a nightmare.
This is true of almost any police tool. I mean you can apply to guns, pepper spray, probable cause, etc. As a blanket statement reply: It really comes down to implementation and training.
Really though, i'm not arguing for or against face recognition in local law enforcement. As a biometrics researcher i love to see real applications that actually work for the community, but as someone who disagrees with mass collections, outside of the obvious, such as a license photo or voluntary admittance to a NEXUS/TSA pre-check/Global Entry program, i worry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/22/ferguson-warrants-p...
A more interesting one is here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-robinson/the-shocking-f...
In Ferguson -- a city with a population of 21,000 -- 16,000 people have outstanding arrest warrants, meaning that they are currently actively wanted by the police.
Your right here, but fighting the tools that improve efficiency also doesn't solve the systematic problem, only puts focus on those tools.
>> don't think anyone can argue that actually enforcing all those arrest warrants would improve the situation - does it really make sense to lock up 3/4 of a town? No, obviously not.
Enforcement is left to the officer/department/prosecutor. The tools merely provide the officer with additional means of conducting their work in the field.
>> But then they sit there ready to be used as justification for other police action.
Comes off as quite bitter, but there's an actual point here. There is a consistent need to be "hard on crime", and provided your point that there is "average of more than one outstanding 'warrant' per person" in Ferguson suggests that finding additional means to identify those with warrants is a good thing - to, again, be "hard on crime". However, the fact is that if a person has a warrant, then even a simple license plate/ID check will return the same information. In an 'active' system, the officer would need to manually take a photo to return any matches - this is not much different than the ID check.
Though in a 'passive' system the officer would be notified of the individual's warrants as they pass by. This system is clearly the most invasive and feared amongst HN readers, and while a warrant can be issued for innocuous things like missing child support payments, the same system could also be used to identify those who are suspected of more serious crimes. I don't necessarily agree with locking up someone because they missed a payment or two (your "unjust process"), but I'd much rather fight those issues separately rather than condemn a piece of technology.
To quote:
>> "I think it's helpful for people to understand that their fears that they're being tracked or that they are somehow having their privacy violated by tracking their personal pursuits over time is not even something we have the capabilities of doing. And we have no interest in that."
Ars 'creeped' out a couple of people by getting the license location data and doing look ups on people's plates. So yes, they may not be able to track everyone every where, but if someone wanted to know where 'you' were going it would be trivial to figure out. I'm not as worried about police and the .gov having the data. I'm more worried about when 'bad' people get access to that data and use it for nefarious purposes.
See the Federal security clearance hack for an example.
Today.
> And we have no interest in that.
Today.
Besides, the tools becoming available allow for much more subtle oppression, and that's the point being made here: you point at gross and obvious abuses of the past, when we can do much worse much more quietly.
Your jury, for example? Why care about skin color when what you really want is employment history, or socioeconomic class, or whatever other advertising criteria best help a prosecutor win a case?
EDIT: At least post counter-arguments before downvoting, folks. Rayiner used a strawman and distraction "oh ho, but but but ~executing thieves~!" as a way of discrediting a reasonable opinion "You know, little by little we can end up in a Minority Report sort of world". I was merely responding in kind.
People can express racism without it being overt, yet it can be just as destructive. In a relatively recent North Florida murder case, the jury was pruned to be all-white by the white prosecuter, citing a "sympathetic age similarity" with one of the prospective black jurors, who was 34. The defendant was 19.
Oh yeah, and thanks for the frog in the boiling water scare. We should certainly have the conversation. This is probably not the best forum. HN just isn't built for it.
Incrementalism is a powerful tool for exerting an unstoppable force onto something which would otherwise notice that force and resist it.