500k facial scans at UK stations yield no arrests, 1 false positive

It's worse in western countries because we like to pretend that we are superior to the "real" authoritarian regimes. Our governments do the same bs but under the veil of "western values".

A lot of those are going to be the same people day in and day out, the article says 500k faces, not people. You also have to filter out those people where the cameras aren't getting an image good enough to scan.

The article doesn't say, and I haven't seen the cameras, but it's not like you're getting every single person parsing through those stations.

But, yes, the numbers seems low.

How many unique faces though

Not for fishing, it's a control system.

Think back to the capital riots/insurrection/what-ever you want to call it; they used similar systems to identify and arrest those participants. Heavily publicize how many people and who; doesn't matter if you a 63yo grandmom or a pastor, we will find you and prosecute. Showing that you are prosecuting the "normal" people is part of it, show that and you make them less likely to show up to the next thing, less likely to provide support.

The Capital has many cameras owned by the feds, so they could easily do that. Chicago, Atlanta, LA not so much. When anti-ICE action takes place with protestors in black block, going under umbrellas, makes it hard to identify and prove. With strategically placed cameras, you can see what cars came in the area. You get statistical data that shows if they are there normally there. Get enough abnormality and you get enough for a search warrant.

> what's our actual ROI?

its one of the value function that makes it almost impossible to evaluate.

Lets imagine that catching someone in the Interpol list of wanted terrorists is a huge catch. You would expect the avg catch rate to be almost 0 but once one is caught the avg value of the system becomes very easy to justify.

Its the same idea as having photos of known terrorists in airports and train stations to see if guards recognise someone. But with the added benefit that the facial recognition should not miss them.

If the evaluation function is it costs X to run each day and we caught Y number of criminals who robbed phones worth Z > X then the system will come off pretty badly in terms of ROI.

I truly think it's safetyism. People seem to have a lower and lower tolerance for risk as society gets safer.

Since governments are run by people, this safetyism has become enshrined in law, typified by nonsense like criminalizing free-range parenting and mass surveillance.

ROI won't be measured in crimes stopped, since they're not actually intended to do that. It will be measured in votes changed or blocked.

It would be interesting to see how these are justified internally. If I had to guess, it’s either excess budget being channeled into “something” or a justification to reduce street patrols/street crime.

The real ROI is the change in behaviour of people constantly surveiled. We know people change their behaviour when under constant scrutiny and this why the elites want it.

Having lived in shitty neighborhood all my life (not in the UK tho'), I find this pretty laughable. First off, you would be surprised at how petty criminal caught on police tactic fairly quickly and find way around them. But in general, you will just get petty criminal. Sure they are a nuisance, but more a symptom than a cause. And let's say we do just that. You arrest thousand upon thousand of balaclava-wearing, e-scooter driving dudes. What do you do then ? Most of them will have to be released because, well, they didn't do anything. You might catch some of them with minor charges like drug possession or possession of a knife or something. You successfully wasted thousands of police and justice man-hours for a few petty charges which won't change anything. “Solving” crime is a hard problem, and one with 0 simple solutions and many, many things we have to work on as a society. Your idea is a net negative in prertty much all aspect.

They should just round up and imprison all the people who walk in my neighbourhood.

Some would call it discrimination but the majority of people who commit crimes in my area are people who can walk. I rarely see the wheelchair crowd pulling off B&Es.

Oh, or people who wear clothes. Criminals seem to like wearing clothes. Point proven: you never see nudists shoplifting Old Navy.

I would love to see a similar model trained on the Forbes 30 under 30 to catch all the young financial creatives wearing Patagonia gilets.

It would probably pay for itself.

We already have plenty of gangsters in suits. They travel in taxis and chauffeured cars, not on e-scooters.

Its like Shazam for Scrotes

> foul swoop

It's "fell swoop".

Hook this up into the facial recognition tech they're in no doubt are already using, and then you could also collect data from people's social profiles, ensure they vote for the right parties and generally don't get into trouble like opposing mainstream political ideas and such things.

I've spent a whole of 15 seconds thinking about this and I don't foresee a single drawback here, lets just try it and see if we can prevent future crimes 100%, because then the future will have been saved.

Set up some automated scanners for cyclists jumping red lights in the City as well.

They could just make sentencing tougher and keep criminals in prison.

The strongest predictor (by far) for committing a crime is having a prior criminal record.

The degree to which the British underclasses adopted a dress-code in the late '80s (quite conveniently, for the authorities), is a social phenomenon that should be studied. They openly self-discriminate, willingly reducing opportunities and outcomes. Was it just evolutionary adaptation (tracksuits make it easier to run in dangerous situations), or was it pursuit of a tribal sense of belonging?

This is a take I hadn't heard before, pretty interesting. I wonder if there are already any fiction out there where some widespread religion turns out to be an automated mass surveillance and policing system gone awry. Neat concept

That was my first thought. They scanned roughly 1% of the UK’s population. No way they didn’t identify any wanted criminals unless the set of wanted criminals scanned for was only a tiny fraction of the overall list.

By the way, if I was wanted, I'd just pull my shirt up over my face or wear a facemask

Where's our buddy Garrett Langley or even YC's Garry Tan to come to the defense of the privatized surveillance state?

Pretty much all I ever read about these systems is heinous false positives. I've currently set up automation to pull the local data that includes police activity. One of the towns over from me has, at least, 6 Flock cameras (probably more) for a locale of less than 2000 people. I've not once seen anything related to ALPR or any camera system providing any influence on assisting a crime. You'd think Mr. Langley would be begging police chiefs around the US to put in a positive spin to public information around these digital watchers.

But the morons buying these systems are also the morons taking state tax dollars to buy SWAT vehicles for 100s of thousands of dollars because they want to cosplay GI Joe. Yet... You want a park? Or something that's actually useful in your local community? Fund raise it yourself is the response.

Yeah but from the PoV of the government everyone you meet could be a future criminal. They could have hateful thoughts towards the INGSOC party or towards Big Brother. They could even be allies of Emmanuel Goldstein. How else do you expect the government to keep you safe from such criminals, brother?

"If most everyone you meet is not a criminal, the definition of 'criminal' is not yet sufficiently comprehensive."

Edit: added scare quotes because it's difficult to be sarcastic on the internet these days.

Tech bros pushed us to believe that disagreeing and arguing instead of voting is the right way.

So we are now distracted while they reshape the world with hunger and death

In the UK it has worked at other places

"He said 103 arrests has been made so far and there was one false alert which did not result in an arrest.

Supt Luke Dillon said overall crime figures in the Fairfield ward, where the pilot has been held, fell by 12% per cent.

"We're seeing reductions in almost all crime types, certainly in shoplifting and robbery," he said. "

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2056r07rjlo

If it's not working it's because there isn't enough of it, silly.

"Last month BTP announced it was extending the trial for a further four months and expanding the deployments to include London Underground stations. "

The surveillance will continue until morale improves ... or collapses, depending on your perspective.

No, because think of the children. /s

It was one case, hardly systemic yet. Shit happens, mistakes are made.

You’re conflating private helicopter rides (which are annoying and frequent) with police ones, which are generally pretty necessary. I’ve only seen them out in my neighborhood after serious crimes where a suspect hasn’t been caught.

Shouldn't the burden of proof be the other direction, that it's both cost-effective way to prevent crime? And that the cost should include not only pricing but all of the other negative externalities of removing privacy (such as deliberate abuse by bad actors inside or outside the government).