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I hear again and again that China is "bad" but I see that western countries copy everything from them... except going after big corporations. We will gather personal data and have files for each citizen, punish peaceful protests, use social media to control the masses but punishing the rich like China does is unacceptable. That seems to be the red line that the West will not cross, the one that protects billionaries.
For scale 500k people is 2 days of Liverpool Street Stations daily average
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.
[0] https://www.btp.police.uk/police-forces/british-transport-po...
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.
Why should it matter if you are a 63yo grandmom or pastor?
It happens that the J6 rioters were on the wrong side of truth and history, but I would rather some of them get away with it than live in a perfectly effective panopticon.
It's purely about the unease of living in chaotic cities, the random stabbings, the shoplifting, the visible homelessness etc. Flock is the stopgap here.
Partly the "feeling" of chaos is just that, a feeling, driven significantly by algorithmic feeds feeding us every random crime from around the country 24/7. Husband murders wife in a murderous rage? No one hear's about it. Mentally ill man murders a woman on the train in a Tier 2 city, immediate nationwide breaking news.
The other part though is a real dissolution in how we take care of our mentally ill. Complex topic [1].
I think complaining about Flock is complaining about the symptom. Today we dogpile on Flock to get it cancelled, tomorrow the public will reach for something else. We have to fix the underlying disease, which is a combination of the two factors above.
[1]: https://time.com/6265241/america-care-of-mentally-ill-people...
The public perception of crime is persistently incorrect for many if not most people and this incorrect, emotional rather than evidence-based view of the world is unfortunately what drives political pressure.
Who's the "we" in this sentence? The people who want to keep cities crime-ridden? And why does your opinion matter more than that of the public? I thought these "we" were pro-democracy?
In the privacy of a voting booth, people will vote for Flock to feel safer and simply flooding the headlines will only work temporarily (in fact, there's a good chance Flock simply rebrands)
You can correct me if I’m wrong though.
The random smattering of shoplifting is never reported, the unhoused man in a fit of rage yelling at passers-by is never filed with the police. But in the privacy of the voting booth, people will vote for more Flock cameras.
Instead of waving off concerns we should be addressing them better.
What is also missing here is that even if there is not criminal activity occurring, there is a general influx of highly anti-social behavior occurring that feeds in to the perception that higher rates of criminal activity occurring. This is very noticeable when you see people casually running red lights, driving without registration, yelling and screaming at people on the street or at the bus stop, and more. Even if I'm unlikely to be a victim of a crime, I don't feel safe when these anti-social behaviors are occurring, people are shoplifting and now going to CVS feels like going to a third-world country.
Framing this as right-wing propaganda I believe is a mistake and if you are a leftist it just loses elections for you because even if the folks who are concerned about crime levels are wrong (they're not though) the perception matters much more than reality. Denying the perception implies you deny the reality too and fewer people are going to vote in favor of candidates who tell them that what they see for themselves isn't happening.
It is not "unhinged propaganda from the right" for people living in those cities to wonder why the rate cannot be 1 or 2 per 100,000 like it is in most European cities, many American suburbs, and has been consistently for 2 or 3 centuries in England and New England (except for a rise to about 4 during the 1970s and 1980s in lower New England).
Since governments are run by people, this safetyism has become enshrined in law, typified by nonsense like criminalizing free-range parenting and mass surveillance.
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.
It doesn’t. I had a car stolen, called it in as they pulled away. I live a block from a Flock camera, 2 others apparently captured it. Car wasn’t intercepted, car was never recovered, no arrests were ever made. They could have put up scarecrows and it would have done as much good for a lot cheaper.
> the system will come off pretty badly in terms of ROI.
It’s a bad evaluation function. A lot of the cost of crime isn’t directly the crime, it’s the economic deadweight of trying to deter the crime. Every car needs anti-theft parts, lots of people buy home security systems, armored cars to do bank drops, etc, all this stuff we pay for that exists solely to try to stop crime.
Flock would look great if it worked so well it made armored cars and car anti-theft obsolete. It won’t, but if it did the ROI would be crazy.
In reality, Flock cameras are bought for “law enforcement”, using taxpayer dollars (therefore free to the people making decisions) and enable both feelings of omniscience and the ability to stalk exes.
So ROI is pretty good when the I comes from someone else and the R is and random act of spying that makes the operators feel powerful.
Cynical, I know, but not empty cynicism I hope. All evidence leads me that way.
it's there to keep the well behaving citizens in check.
very authoritarian at the core.
Build an AI model, train it from the catalogues of JD Sports and Sports Direct (and other brands like Stone Island etc.) and how to detect balaclavas, illegal electric bikes and e-scooters. Have it link to cameras and do a percentage chance using machine learning on chance of crime. Also increase the percentage if a 'wheely' is done (riding only on back wheel).
Would minority report the majority of crime in this country in one fell swoop.
Could call it ScroteScanner.
Some would call it discrimination but the majority of ASB I see around my area are people dressed/using those exact things.
If they start to catch-on (unlikely) then worse case we have a fancier looking society with gangsters in suits again.
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.
As I said, machine learning to take all these pointers into perspective.
The real challenge, if you wanted to work on the meat of the issue, is that we need to reduce crime without catching the innocent in the net, without having a chilling effect on legal behaviour and people’s rights, and without normalizing the mindset that we should just precrime people.
One of the core points of Minority Report is in the film’s title: that even if technology becomes 99.99% accurate, we are still damned by the destruction of due process and the presumption of innocence.
I think ideas like yours belong in the incinerator.
Ideally, you'd go back in time and do this before the problem really took off - but failing that, you could introduce scrappage/swap schemes to incentivise taking existing bikes out of circulation.
To tighten things up further, you might think about making safety certification mandatory, and force delivery platforms to take responsibility for ensuring that their riders are using only certified bikes.
Deal with the source of the problem rather than wasting police time on chasing down every teenage cyclist or bringing back sus laws.
Comments like these reinforce my belief that the UK is a panopticon because UK residents sincerely want one and not because the government is corrupt.
And let me remind you those criminal stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.
The problem with stereotypes isn’t that they are usually right (they’re not), it’s that they’re sometimes (usually) wrong.
It seems the sense of safety is often different from the actual numbers especially when stereotypes are involved as shown in parent comment regarding to e-scooters. To such an extent that there is the phenomenon called the crime decline paradox.
https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/public-perceptions-of-crime-at-od...
Also, clicking through, you can see the whole report is some panglossian delusion aimed at making Reform supporters look bad.
It would probably pay for itself.
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.
Rented you're charged by the minute so there's a financial incentive even for non-scrotes.
The strongest predictor (by far) for committing a crime is having a prior criminal record.
It's "fell swoop".
IMO they're really just aspiring to be able to afford high-end versions of the same clothing. It's the opposite of trying to look poor. Misguided, obviously
We try to reinvent something that claims that keeps tabs on everyone and for sure will punish you if you don’t behave well but will reward you if do!
The thing has a name. It’s the religion.
It is not true of Christianity, which promises forgiveness, nor of the other Abrahamic religions.
There is an out-of-hell card you can get if you pay your dues to the local enforcement branch (before you die, they need today’s money not after life checks)
Absolutely not.
> There is an out-of-hell card you can get if you pay your dues to the local enforcement branch (before you die, they need today’s money not after life checks)
Where did you get that from?
I am assuming you are just badly informed but that is really stretching the assumption of good faith.
The Catholic church believes hell is self chosen:
> To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called "hell."
https://ccc.cab/1033
Traditional protestants often believe the same, but there is variety. Some believe all human beings are redeemed, for example.
Some evangelicals do believe in hell as a punishment, but most of those also believe faith is the key to redemption, so you are safe if you are a Christian.
> "God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment and punishment. Other sentiments towards them were secondary."
> "The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment."
> "The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization."
> "The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning."
> "God was a dream of good government."
> "You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."
- Morpheus ( Deus Ex, 2000)
You're probably just parroting David Foster Wallace.
It’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Classic Britain. Wouldn’t want the criminals to be filmed without their consent!
Their watchlist was only ~450 people, and it was restricted to people relevant to the transport police. The system was also overt and clearly marked, there were alternative routes that avoided the cameras and even then they were on 3-6 hours per day.
The headline suggests this system is not only invasive but also ineffective. While I agree it's a privacy nightmare, I also think those idiotic deployment conditions set them up for failure. At least we know there aren't many false positives, it could've been worse.
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.
Let me off this stupid ride, please.
Uncomfortable facts certain bigots dont want to understand.
If they're not laundering money, trafficking people or avoiding taxes, they're likely a visitor who has come to commit bribery. Oh sorry, "lobbying".
Edit: added scare quotes because it's difficult to be sarcastic on the internet these days.
So we are now distracted while they reshape the world with hunger and death
> So we are now distracted while they reshape the world with hunger and death
How constrained must one's thinking be to think like this? There are massive actual issues, and they're not your hated group of choice's fault.
It really won't be long until your face is scanned well before you get to the barrier, then an alarm goes off and blocks the barrier. Or it detects barrier-pushing then automatically begins an investigation or issues a fine.
And of course there is facial recognition + AI for retail profit maximisation
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/national/24397770.network-rail-...
Trust the railway as far as you can throw it...
"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
For example the falling of the crime figures could be just because there where more officers around attending the camera's. Or actually that just there being a camera already has a deterring effect, I assume the perpetrators didn't know it was LFR.
I also wonder if the resources spend in a traditional way would have been more effective. I think 3 month trail to make 103 arrests seems a bit low, but I am not familiar with the normal "arrest rate" in that area.
People are being matched against an existing watchlist so the people arrested are those the Police would arrest anyway if they found them.
"Last month BTP announced it was extending the trial for a further four months and expanding the deployments to include London Underground stations. "
So much effort to protect little girls. Yet if you get stabbed, say clearly that you've been stabbed, they will not believe you. Then they will arrest your dead body.
Hitler was elected democratically. Democracy is non-excuse for the complete destruction of civil liberties.
ahahaha. "My magical face detection software worked because (according to our detection software) none of the undesirables came in!"
The cops keeps doing it and the rich join in on holidays to take a shortcut to JFK from downtown Manhattan. The city were 9/11 was apparently a big deal wants to you feel like you're in a war zone all the time for shortcuts and a few $ savings on helicopter fuel.
This to me is the ultimate security theater environment, where the state is constantly pressing a false sense of FUD.
[0] https://stopthechopnynj.org/
No they are not necessary, the East River is right there to fly over. I also have never read "cops failed to catch criminal due to long helicopter route back to base over East River" as a headline or a logical train of thought.
I'm guessing you're related to, or are a police officer yourself. Which means you're conflating truth with misdirection.
[0] https://globe.adsbexchange.com/
Instead of misunderstanding things, assuming it supports your preconceived beliefs, then making further unwarranted assumptions about others to reinforce your misguided world view, simply google to see if those tags are helicopters.
Don’t project your incorrect beliefs onto others.
[1] https://www.skydio.com/blog/faa-issues-revolutionary-approva...
The reason they did not get any arrests could be that sought-for criminals now avoid those stations. Given that there are relatively few of such criminals, that’s hard to prove or disprove (traffic would go down, but only by a slight amount)
It also could mean such criminals already avoided those stations, to start with. Again, hard to prove.
It also might mean people misbehave less now at these stations. So, did the number of incidents at such stations go down?
That, I think should be easier to (dis)prove, but also doesn’t require running live face recognition. Recording and only looking at recordings after an issue is reported would be the better option.