> It is not inappropriate for police to be able to determine who they are interacting with if that person is a known criminal.

Everyone is a criminal. You commit multiple crimes a day if you're like most people.

There absolutely should be a clear delineation between what is possible and what is allowed when considering state surveillance.

The 4th amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

It's right there. You have a right to be secure as a person from unreasonable searches. Massive face recognition of 'criminals' is a violation of exactly that, and should be prevented without question.

> Everyone is a criminal. You commit multiple crimes a day if you're like most people.

More importantly, pretty much everyone has a driver’s license or other government issued ID, and in most states, the police have access to your mugshot from that.

The criminality can be figured out later. The problem is real time surveillance of the entire population.

As in ww2 Germany they said: give me the man and I’ll give you the crime.

"Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime."

To be pedantic, it was Lavrentiy Beria[1] who is credited with that statement[2]; So it was a WW2 Russian Sentiment. Though Stalin-ism is also an example of a surveillance state government that was known for being unpleasant.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria [2] http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1137804

Thanks, learned something new today.

Reasonable people can disagree on the definition of "unreasonable," however.

Is it "unreasonable" for the Amber Alert system to co-opt the eyes and attention of ten thousand citizens around a kidnapped child? Hard to say. Most people seem to think 'no.'

If that system could co-opt camera feeds instead of human attention, we could get most (all?) of the benefits of the existing Amber Alert without having to burn civilian resources on it. Wouldn't that be a strict improvement over the current system?

Is it right to track the all online dealings of people that may be connected to terrorist organizations? Pretty reasonable people seem to think yes (Patriot Act).

Is it right for the government to track all the online dealings of an average citizen? Most people think no.

You may see a discrepancy here. That is why there is the saying "First they came for the fascists...". It is why when we talk about breaking encryption and backdoors discussion is centered around terrorists and pedos. Because those are universally hated groups. The problem comes with the fact that there is spill over. (See cases like San Bernardino shooting or the cop that is sitting in jail without sentencing because they know he has child porn on an encrypted drive. Btw, they use this same tactic to frame less controversial legal cases too)

I think if backdoors/searches/whatever could only be applied to universally hated groups and not include a single random citizen than there would be almost unanimous agreement that we should do that (you are not violating a "non-criminal's" rights). The problem is that technology doesn't allow us to exclusively target those kinds of groups. As tech oriented people we understand that this spill over HAS to happen, but the average citizen (outside SV) does not understand the how it works, the scale, nor ramifications. I'd like to remind everyone that 1984 wasn't about the government watching everyone at all times, but having the ability to. I'm not sure why we call that a dystopian society but many people readily accept the use of this technology by the government. Sure, the police have the technological ability do facial recognition without Amazon, but technological capability is not the question. It is SHOULD THEY?

> Pretty reasonable people seem to think yes (Patriot Act).

Sure

This is such a fascinating and interesting question. I highly recommend reading the book 'Automating Inequality'[0] if you haven't already. My initial reaction to this question was 'I certainly would prefer groups of humans making collective decisions over an opaque, proprietary, algorithm'. But then I also think back to the latest internet firestorm of the woman calling the police on black barbecuers over charcoal (this happened a block from my house). Can we actually trust people en masse to make collaborative decisions that generally avoid bias? Definitely not.

I think your comment may have changed my mind about the utility, objectivity, and overall value of amber alerts...

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Automating-Inequality-High-Tech-Profi...

This is a case of "system worked as intended." Humans are fairly audit-able, can be seen, and public discourse can have its moment. Imagine if instead one of the thousands of street-cams was used to phone in the call to police. There would be no public discourse because of the invisibility of the actions.

Wait, I don't get it. Someone was using charcoal as opposed to, say, wood? So what? Is that a fire hazard or something?

>If that system could co-opt camera feeds instead of human attention, we could get most (all?) of the benefits of the existing Amber Alert without having to burn civilian resources on it. Wouldn't that be a strict improvement over the current system?

In my area amber alerts are usually along the lines of "the non custodial parent has the child when he shouldn't". Reducing the resource cost of (and therefore threshold to utilize) that system or similar systems is not something I can get behind.

Finding and bothering specific people should be something that scales poorly enough that all the government organizations that engage in it are forced to pick and choose who they do it to. A low threshold is an invitation for abuse.

Edit: and I'm wrong because why?

> Wouldn't that be a strict improvement over the current system?

No, that would be an implementation of a panopticon. You'll find a lot of interesting criticism of that concept, and of Bentham for trying to solve societal problems in an inhumane fashion.

And why stop at Amber alerts once the resources to perform the search no longer complain or question oddities about the alert?

I definitely feel like we're missing positive opportunities for mass surveillance. Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke. Someday mass surveillance will help as much as it hurts society.

What's interesting is that anyone implementing mass surveillance could care less about your proposed benefits.

I believe technology will ever erode privacy, and that the best we can hope for is to make sure the transparency goes both ways. The government should become more transparent to the people as the people become more transparent to the government. Like you though, I'm afraid we'll end up with a vast and reliable surveillance system which police will be able to use, while the police themselves are still "struggling" to get their body cams to work reliably.

Or exactly the opposite - it may be their primary motivation, with the negatives ending up being caused by others co-opting the system.

> could care less about your proposed benefits.

Could they? Oh well, that is at least something then.

> Things like being able to recognize someone in cardiac arrest, or who is at risk for a stroke.

Can those things actually be done with a vanishingly low false-positive rate? If I'm walking down the sidewalk and a camera sees me suddenly grimace because a rock got into my shoe, I don't want paramedics rushing to the scene to offer me assistance for a heart attack.

Currently? No. In the future, sure why not. Just don't ask when.

All I see here is a slightly different version of “it’s for the children”.

I'm the last one to stay "it's for the children". I don't think mass surveillance can be rolled back though I will continue to support changing legislation that harms us. There are positives to consider if we must live in that reality. It's the best we can do if we can't go back.

Many prisons have blanket surveillance systems. I suggest you ask the prisoners how beneficial they find it, and extrapolate.

"Prison has X, therefore X is bad" isn't a very compelling argument.

Its exactly analagous. The government agencies want to implement this technology for the same reasons they do it in prisons - not for your benefit.

It isn't analogous because someone walking freely on the street has not been convicted of a crime.

Extrapolating is not always useful... See relevant xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/605/

Amber Alerts are opt-out, not mandatory.

At least in Canada, the new Amber-Alert-over-LTE system is mandatory, and cannot be opted out of:

"People cannot opt out of this," said CRTC spokesperson Patricia Valladao. "There is a high importance that people — want it or not — receive these alerts."[0]

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/emergency-alerts-system-ph...

They should be opt-in. When the feature was implemented on my phone I was not informed, the checkbox was already selected.

I honestly do not see how the 4th amendment's text obviously applies to surveillance, especially as it pertains to being identified in public. I don't even think it matters whether or not someone is a suspected criminal. It's not a search or seizure. And only in case law are there examples of the text being interpreted in favor of things like audio recordings needing a warrant. But this isn't one of those amendments whose text is clear on an issue like public facial recognition.

Lol. The fourth amendment went out the window with the Patriot act and the Freedom act. The fourth amendment does not matter anymore and nobody gives a shit. It's not like an 'important' amendment. I mean it's not the second amendment, otherwise there would be huge lobbying groups up in arms (no pun intended).

> The fourth amendment does not matter anymore and nobody gives a shit.

It does matter. Citizens do care. Just because they haven't taken action yet doesn't mean that they don't care or won't.

(Lack of) actions speak louder than words.

Better to do nothing then the wrong something.

There is a non violent solution to this, I'm just not smart enough to know what that is.

Wait long enough and the violent solution will emerge on its own, like riots or the guillotine. Waiting and doing nothing while hoping for something ideal is a surefire way to live through the worst case scenario.

that can easily tip into a policy of never doing anything, on the basis that there is always the possibility of an unknown better solution. Nonviolent solutions are ideal, but they do depend on the existence of a public conscience sufficiently active and reliable to restrain bad actors.

The don't and they won't, don't fool yourself, This legislation will never be backtracked, it's just political suicide as there will ALWAYS be a bogeyman to scare people straight. You know, like communists, drugs, terrorists, etc.. the usual [1].

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Do you know where that quote is from?

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Fantasyland-America-Haywire-500-Year-...

The Rehnquist drug exception to the 4th amendment opened the door for everything else.

TIL. Thank you, stranger.

This is an incredibly un-helpful comment.

This is an incredibly ironic comment.

> The fourth amendment went out the window with the Patriot act and the Freedom act.

Or in other words

> We had that right taken away and there's nothing we can do to change that. Laws can't be changed, so accept your fate.

We are literally talking about that we don't want to accept that and change it.

I don't see anything in the post you're responding to that would constitute a search (or seizure), but simply an identification, which by itself does not meet the requirements for probable cause, and is unlikely to meet the reasonableness criteria.

By analogy, if a police officer has an excellent facial memory and they recognize someone, can they use their memory to influence their actions towards the person?

known criminal != criminal

Yes, I likely commit a couple felonies a day unknowingly. Still, I've never been arrested and I don't have a mug shot. It's not inappropriate for law enforcement to automate processes that are valid and legal for them to do. They are allowed to study the mug shots but it's not reasonable for them to memorize every mugshot. However, automating their recollection via machine learning is reasonable.

the issue isn't that the police should not know about specific criminals, but when police overstep their authority and defy their own rules/laws in order to profile (sometimes racially) community members who have not been charged of crimes.

for a specific case, I can point to Portland's own suspected gang member list: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/09/portlan...

thankfully, it was required to be purged 2 years ago.

unfortunately, that didn't stop them, and an audit found that the same department was ignoring the rules and laws, and keeping an additional secret list to profile community members: http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2018/03/police_...

these are not necessarily criminals, and it is inappropriate for police to be using automated surveillance to track or monitor them.

This was the purported intention of cellphone location tracking data. Instead it has been sold to marketers and data aggregators, and so poorly secured that likely for over a year it's been possible to get location data via phone number as a service.

Companies and governments have demonstrated that they are not sufficiently responsible to have these databases. HIPAA-like laws and severe criminal penalties would be a start.

Well, we have multiple court cases to prove that one of the applications of the police's and CIA's power to monitor phone conversations is checking if your (not-quite) girlfriend is "cheating" on you and attacking, as a law enforcement officer anyone she calls.

But without more government, there can't be more handouts, so ... ok ?

It is, however, inappropriate to use facial recognition technology which is fundamentally terrible to primarily frame innocent people as known criminals. An encounter with a police officer, especially after 'the computer says you're a criminal', is dangerous. And facial recognition software is profoundly bad at its task. So this amounts to nothing but putting a bunch of innocent people in the crosshairs just so cops can feel like futuristic cyberwarriors.

Why would the police only use pictures of known criminals? Unless there are negative consequences for using something they will use whatever they can get their hands on...

Total surveillance of citizens? yes.

Body cams for police? Huge deal guys! How we gonna pay for this? Oh gee my body cam was off judge my bad

>They are NOT selling a service that identifies people from data sets other than the police's supplied data sets.

I don't really give a shit what tiny little corner of respectability they hold onto so they can sleep well at night while ratcheting up the surveillance state.

> The cat is out of the bag and is already something the police could do themselves

Yes. But what’s striking is that by offering this product and heavily marketing its law enforcement use, Amazon are clearly endorsing total surveillance as their preferred model of society.

I don’t imagine this will be incredibly lucrative relative to other AWS products. There’s very few potential customers. Law enforcement access to data is extremely broad, data-osmosis/‘fusion’ with the private sector is rife, and the whole area is pretty much unregulated. The potential for abuse is large.

> The cat is out of the bag...

Vigilant Solutions has been running this for years. Not just cops but tow trucks, bounty hunters, all kinds of private enterprising individuals have been building a collaborative commercially accessible database on all our locations, it was already robust technology based on plates alone.

Vigilant is so well placed, I wonder if Amazon will even have a market impact...

The last useful moment to get freaked out was probably when Vigilant hired facial recognition expert Roger Rodriguez back in 2016.

The cat's long gone, fat on mice, and we don't even remember where we left the bag.

A service that does recognition based analytics on images or video from your homw security camera seems like a multi-billion dollar idea to me.

Half the houses in my neighborhood have some sort of camera system that you can see, there are probably more that you can't. People are scared of things, there is a market there.

It's freaky 1984ish stuff to think about but normal type people have these cameras, it's only natural for there to be private databases used for analytical purposes.

It feels equivalent to auto-identifying license plates.

... which is done as a matter of course in many countries. Hell, the Netherlands does this for all cars, always, "to send speeding tickets". They are scanning and identifying all cars, whether or not they have reason to suspect anything.

This will be a constant in the future. It has everything government wants : a gross grab of power, vast potential for abuse, and it saves a little bit of money ! What more could you want ?

Not necessarily. The cameras the roadmanager (rijkswaterstaat) use to view the busyness of traffic are still out of reach for law enforcement. They could use those cameras for a whole lot of more money if they were allowed.

Weird, I've read in the news multiple times that these cameras "accidentally" caught some sort of criminal. From people wanted by the Dutch IRS to people "running from youth services". They were particularly proud of catching those people running from youth services when they ran unannounced, and before they hit the border.

You see, apparently youth services has a problem that once across the border all the "crimes" like having a teacher pissed off and report you to youth services or having your parents divorce, which according to the Dutch should lead to a child's incarceration are not actually crimes once you cross the border. You see, they feel the need to increase the safety feeling of children with divorced parents, by having the police violently (search on youtube) abduct them, then dumping them locked up in a "group", ie. a set of adults who don't care about them at all (not professionals, of course, those are expensive. No, the normal people they come in contact with come without so much as a high school degree), with total and complete power over them. But then night comes, and those adults abandon the group entirely, so the kids are totally at the mercy of older kids or just the more violent kids in said group. Needless to say, the rate at which rapes and sexual assaults happen in this environment is "somewhat" higher than in normal society. Oh and why does the Dutch state do this ? To make the child feel safe ! Sadly, that's not a joke.

Sadly, if you were a lawyer, you are now to advise that if you're trying to keep kids away from those services, you need to either rent a car (not sure if they surveil that yet), or you need to physically assault the police (you laugh, but that's exactly what immigrant communities are doing in Rotterdam and that's (granted, a small part of) the reason why they're doing it. The alternative in some cases is giving up their kids to these monsters. Again the government responds, not, of course, by fixing their own problem).

Because of these sorts of things, most of the neighboring countries have become appalled at this behavior and refuse to cooperate in all but the worst cases, so naturally they're fixing it : the fix for that problem is employing high pressure tactics to get other police forces to cooperate and mass-surveillance on their own people.

They are actually proud of this. Seriously.

You can leave your car at home. You can't leave your face.

I would counter that you don't need machine facial recognition for known criminals. They're already known.

Yes but automated systems make the cost of surveillance far lower than hiring and training and deploying human police.

You would if you want to surveil them.