Scooter crime is exploding in London and police numbers have been falling for a decade.

Personally I've had 3 scooter thefts on the past year, including a bike jacking at a red light - more a robbery than theft.

All these criminals wear balaclavas even if they're not wearing helmets, and they're used to using countermeasures against CCTV, so facial recognition isn't likely to make a big difference to them.

False positives vs false negatives. Most crimes are committed by young men, but most young men aren’t criminals. Same thing happened with medical tests for rare conditions — if you have rates of 5% false positive (0% false negative) and 1% criminality rate, then ~84% of those you shake up are innocent.

Tell me exactly what you mean by demographics?

Scooter crime seems to be committed by men under 30, are you talking age-related profiling? So shake-down a couple of million people and you will probably find the evidence you want?

How is attacking the demographics of crime working for America, and the other countries that do that? As far as I understand, the efficacy of profiling is extremely poor

Thankfully, racial-profiling is against the law in the US. Unfortunately, some involved in law enforcement do it anyway (sometimes unintentionally), and when they are caught they are disciplined.

> when they are caught they are disciplined

Under Trump and Attorney General Sessions, the Department of Justice said they were shutting down investigations of police departments for civil rights issues. (I don't remember the exact details.)

Not sure why parent is getting downvoted; this is a thing that's actually happening. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ag-sessions-says-trump-...

It's cheap and efficient to wear a mask, where it is the taxpayer's money being wasted on facial recognition systems, and on top of that: cameras don't prevent, and are not even being used to prosecute criminals, there are not enough resources to do that, as someone else already pointed it out:

> You only have to look at the widespread increase in CCTV use in Britain. Now when you get mugged in London the police can get you a little video of your hooded attackers for posterity. Except they only have time to go through the recordings if you got murdered, otherwise you will just get a crime number.

But hey, have fun with illusion of safety, deprived freedom and a complete waste of money.

Three in the past year? That's insanely unlucky. Do you carry baskets of iPhones around council estates?

As a resident of the UK, I perceive a strong political incentive to persue more laws and stronger enforcement of and punishment for violating those laws.

The UK has until recently been trying to follow a policy of reduced public spending and reduced government borrowing. It is natural to assume that any new technology is only being used on this basis.

That doesn’t mean this perception is correct, and the current state of the UK looks to me like they’re trying to promise all things to all people, failing to do almost anything, and increasing annoying everyone as a result — so there isn’t any reason to assume logical coherence either.

> The UK has until recently been trying to follow a policy of reduced public spending

Um, what? [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_the_United_Kingdom

Trying, not really succeeding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_government_aust...

> deficit reduction programme

Your link just explains that they’re trying to reduce the gap between tax income and expenditure, but the absolute level of expenditure (my link) has gone up every year (in real terms too)!

As a citizen of the UK I can tell you that until Brexit became along the political narrative since Cameron became PM had been all about 'The Cuts'. The fact that, despite widespread cuts to the civil service and the police, spending has increased just goes to show that ideology has become more important than sense in 2018.

Talking about the specifics however, the number of police officers in the UK have been reduced by around 19 thousand. Since that only leaves 126k I hope you will find that significant. I find the continued expenditure on unproven gadgets rather distasteful against this backdrop.

https://fullfact.org/crime/police-officer-numbers-have-falle...

> 1) It clearly does not work (as opposed to "it has a low accuracy" which just means they will have to filter manually)

When you point accuracy that poor at a sample so large the number of false positives is so colossally large that the resources to 'filter manually' are large, meanwhile a free- country is branding huge numbers of innocent people as possible suspects. So no it doesn't work. For it to work in a free-country we should be looking at five-nine accuracy at least.

> 3) Having a working solution would mean they could police with fewer police officers

But they don't have one...

Say you have 10,000 people attending a football match. Your intelligence suggests a known hooligan is amongst the crowd. How do you search for him and why wouldn't facial recognition be helpful?

As long as you have the resources to sort through 145 people to see if they are your man[0].

The really worrying thing for me is they use the excuse that they are looking for > "potential terrorist targets"

and then say

> "poor quality images" supplied by agencies including Uefa

UEFA is the governing body of the European football championship, now obviously famed for fighting terrorism. Terrorism is the excuse they love to use to take away civil liberties.

It continues to worry me

> over 450 arrests

and then discusses 2 convictions. It is a very worrying world we are slipping into where getting lots of arrests counts as a result

> no-one had been arrested after an incorrect match

This is not for the police to decide, it is for the courts. Hi-five 450 and 2 convictions of note

> The technology has also helped identify vulnerable people in times of crisis.

So it's already being used more generally than arresting terrorists, and football hooligans! It crept up on us over the course of one article!

[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/05/police-defend-fa...

> 2) They are pursuing a goal of policing with fewer police officers and

There is a difference between policing and surveillance. Confusing the two is a dangerous - and false - assumption.

It only makes sense that in order to get the system working better is to put it into use and actively make improvements.

I suppose people are expecting it to work 100% perfectly at its debut...like everything else that is brand new.