| ▲ | Traster 12 hours ago |
| I really don't understand why they do trials for this. What would be the failure case for the trial? "We carried out the trial for 6 weeks over X period of time, we arrested Y people, at that rate we've decided this is not compatible with modern liberal democracy, we would've traded a free society for Y+2 arrests over X period but we just didn't quite get there"? As suggested by other people - this is just going to be used to identify, infiltrate and disrupt the numerous peaceful protests that the police aren't keen on in London. |
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| ▲ | sarjann 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| If I were to guess, they may have some "test" users (people who are involved in this) who are on the watchlist, they do their regular commutes and see if the system picks them up each time. For this system there is no requirement that criminals faces are used to test it. |
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| ▲ | ra 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I don't think it's very scientific, more of a procurement process. |
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| ▲ | jambalaya8 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| All due respect but I am not totally against police dealing with protests. I am against this Orwellian surveillance stuff. If you want to police so people can deal with day to day things like go shopping without being harassed or freaked out I am all for that. But do it the old fashioned way. |
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| ▲ | samudrijan 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | So flash bang grenades to peaceful protesters skulls is okay? Shooting rubber bullets at peaceful protesters eyes is okay? | | |
| ▲ | stronglikedan 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As usual, it depends. "Peaceful" is a very subjective term. Like the mostly peaceful but fiery protests in Wisconsin. | |
| ▲ | dghlsakjg 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | None of what they said could logically lead to that conclusion. |
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| ▲ | ChrisRR 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because I guess if it's not proven to be effective if they use some known test cases, then they won't roll out to the whole network |
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| ▲ | kotaKat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Is it to ID protestors, or to ID overstayers/other immigrant offenses? Home Office just parked up outside the station waiting for every overstayer to flag instead of just questioning people on walkups? |
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| ▲ | gspr 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just a guess, but I would think that a significant motivation for doing a trial is to ensure that the frog is boiled slowly. Opposition can now be met with "it's just a trial, relax". Then you expand the trial a bit. Keep running it until the discourse moves on. And then a few years down the line, when you roll out the full system and people complain, you can counter with "these people are exaggerating their concerns, we've trialled this for yeaaars and there were very few problems!" |
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| ▲ | _fw 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | There’s also transparency theatre here. “If it WAS part of a nefarious system, surely we wouldn’t be talking about it so openly?” It’s especially disappointing when the entire system is foiled by the balaclavas worn by so many of the country’s criminals every day anyway. | | |
| ▲ | angry_octet 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The obvious next step is to prevent entry if the face is covered. I'm curious to know how resistant the system is to face masks with a printed picture on the front (or indeed, the back). |
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| ▲ | fragmede 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The failure mode is incorrect detections. If the automated system says person 1 from camera 1 is the same as person 1 in camera 2, and then extrapolate out to 10,000 people and cameras, and then don't get it wrong. Because the BBC is never going to let you live it down if the person they arrested for stealing kinda sorta looks like the guy that actually did the stealing. |
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| ▲ | andyjohnson0 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Jean Charles de Menezes never got as far as being arrested. The police observed him enter an Underground station, followed him onto a tube train, and put seven bullets into his head. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jean_Charles_de_Men... | | |
| ▲ | mattlondon 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Perhaps facial recognition would have saved him? It's not like humans are 100% accurate as this demonstrates | | |
| ▲ | andyjohnson0 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Or perhaps facial recognition would leave even less time for decision making. Someone who's face resembles that of a known terrorist was detected entering the station 8 seconds ago. He's carrying a backpack and will be on a crowded platform in 37 seconds time. There are armed police in the ticket hall. What do you do? Only 31 seconds now... | | |
| ▲ | snozolli an hour ago | parent [-] | | What do you do? Walk up and place him under arrest. He might have a bomb. He might have a trigger for it, or he might have a dead-man's switch. It might detonate and kill you along with bystanders. That's a risk you take. Unless you know with certainty that he has a bomb and does not have a dead man's switch, you don't just take his life because you're concerned about what-ifs. It's no different than cops killing a man because he was holding a wallet, which they imagined might be a gun (e.g. Amadou Diallo). Police need to stop pretending that they exist within fiction, where the outcome is known by the author. Just because you're afraid of something doesn't mean it's an actual threat. Since 2001, there's been a real uptick in confusing fear and suspicion for evidence and knowledge. |
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| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | raverbashing 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | These are different problems, with different sensitivity/selectivity (and fail modes) It's one thing to identify a person from a database, another from camera 1, then camera 2 etc. My guess is the latter has a much lower false positive rate |
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| ▲ | chrisjj an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > What would be the failure case for the trial? Every passenger taking the "nope" lane. |
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| ▲ | foldr 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How would that work? Easiest way to stop protests is to block off the area of the planned protest and arrest people who try to enter it. It’s not clear to me how facial recognition on the tube would help from a practical point or view. Also, this seems to just be a trial expanding existing time and location scoped deployments of live facial recognition into a new environment, rather than a trial run for always-on live facial recognition across the tube network. |
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| ▲ | notRobot 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Identify attendees and key figures from social media → pick them up when detected on public transport. The real issue is not (just) this specific use case, rather it's the govt generally knowing where people are going and where they have historically been. | | |
| ▲ | AuthAuth 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | If they can ID them they can go to where they live. The gov has records of its population | |
| ▲ | foldr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why wait till they’re on public transport if you’re going to arrest them before they even arrive at the protest? |
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| ▲ | noman-land 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The easiest way to stop protests is to listen to your constituents and implement the changes they desire. That's what a representative democracy is. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don’t have a problem with protests, but clearly there’s no one set of laws or policies that will be agreeable to everyone. Think fox hunting, abortion, trans rights, etc. etc. There will always be protests in a representative democracy. |
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| ▲ | brettermeier 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Facial recognition could be used to identify people who are likely to participate in protests and prevent them from doing so in advance by intercepting them at their boarding station or somewhere near it. You could also scan for persons arriving in a city where a protest might be plannend and arrest them beforehand. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | As with your sibling comment, what you’re describing is theoretically possible, but it’s also more difficult and resource intensive than the simple dumb alternative of blocking off the area of the planned protest and putting some police officers outside nearby tube stations to arrest anyone who’s clearly intending to head to the protest. It’s already easy for the police to prevent protests in a practical sense. It’s a political and legal issue more than a technical one. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you exit the tube? | | |
| ▲ | foldr 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Same grounds as for arresting them anywhere else, more or less. I am not saying that the police should ban protests (and they generally don’t). I’m just talking about the practicalities of how they could go about doing it. | |
| ▲ | dofm 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality. If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less. A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence. But I think the idea that face recognition is being used to suppress protest is pretty overcooked; apart from the utter silliness around the banning of Palestine Action, we have a solid right to protest and we do. The main problem is London has far too few police officers, and it has a transport system that is under consistent terror threat. | | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future? | | |
| ▲ | dofm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Either. Where there is a need. The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait? Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance policing is arresting people who are clearly about to do a thing. That might indeed be disruptive protest where it is illegal — for example if you know someone is intending to deface a painting or a monument, or has been planning to attend a protest to disrupt it. I think people look at face detection policing in this context and imagine thoughtcrime, when the reality is e.g. finding a disturbed person who has been doing a dry run on pushing a stranger off a tube train platform (a real problem that seems to happen every couple of years), catching someone who has been reported sexually assaulting fellow passengers or who has violently assaulted another passenger or someone above ground (a regular problem), trying to disrupt county-lines drug distribution etc. (absolutely constant), or, heaven help us, finding someone who has been spotted at a national railway station with someone on terror watchlists who has then disappeared into the underground. London Underground isn't a thing that can be effectively managed with ordinary policing. It has 272 stations, over 70 in central London alone. During rush hour there are up to half a million people in that system at any one time. Tube exits are choke points. | | |
| ▲ | Lio an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Whenever someone suggests it's OK for the police to arrest people for future crime they haven't committed I feel the need to point out that the police do not always act in the public interest. Individuals abuse their powers. e.g. when they do things like holding illegal employment blacklist[1][2][3] of innocent people. I don't want to live in a country where, for example, the police can punish you just because they don't like trade unions. What's I find ironic is that all this police state bullshit never seems to actually deal with antisocial behaviour or low level crime, it's always for political infractions. We have more CCTV in London than almost anywhere else on the planet and you still get harassed outside tube stations by organised gangs of soliciting very forcefully for "charity" collections. 1. https://www.parliament.uk/external/committees/committee-news... 2. https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/ico-40/construction-employ... 3. https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-do... | |
| ▲ | singleshot_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The latter is legitimate, isn't it? No, arresting people for crimes they haven’t committed is horrifying and bizarre. | |
| ▲ | _heimdall 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't know English law, and I'm american so I have a bent towards protecting freedoms. That said, no I don't see it as necessary to arrest someone before they do anything wrong. There's a gray area for sure, and in the US you can, for example, be charged with conspiracy to commit murder without actually getting to that end goal. I'm always uncomfortable with how a court decides to allow a trial in such a case, though if someone has actively been surveiling their target, collecting materials or weapons, and ideally documenting their intentions somehow then I do understand why most would consider that itself punishable. If a person without a warrant gets off the tube and walks in a general direction of a protest, I wouldn't see any grounds for arrest. I'm sure there's still gray area there, say they're carrying smoke grenades or flash bangs or something - though in that case I'd assume the potential crime is possessing those items rather than walking in a direction. | | |
| ▲ | dofm 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > If a person without a warrant gets off the tube and walks in a general direction of a protest, I wouldn't see any grounds for arrest. The police don't manage mass protests this way either. If they want to stop you joining a disruptive protest they just cordon off streets, close tube exits, stand in the way and tell you to turn back. But severely disruptive micro-protests are now a significant problem in London; I am quite relaxed about the idea that someone known to be planning to seriously disrupt might get tracked to their destination, and I suspect so are they, or they aren't very serious about it. I think people from the USA really misunderstand how policing works here. When we say we are "policed by consent" it is taken pretty seriously. Back when I was a student, this idea of facial recognition was only a glimmer of possibility and the idea of all of this would have got my freedom fighter hackles up. But if you've ever been in a tube station, one of the deep lines, when they've had to close exits and you're one of thousands of people who need to get out, you realise that these are high-pressure environments where even British reserve and fairness begin to fray. They are very vulnerable places. So I look at this plan and I am like… nope, doesn't bother me. Getting in and getting out at rush hour bothers me. I am not without my concerns about the mobile recognition vans; I think there is a risk that they have a chilling effect on gatherings that is disproportionate. I dislike that concept in much the same way that I dislike our regional police force's tendency to get the helicopter out when a bit more road policing might do the job. But inside the tube? Nope, facial recognition seems like a pretty worthwhile tool, not least because it could be so efficiently deployed. |
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| ▲ | foldr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We’re talking about the practicalities of arresting protestors and whether or not face recognition on the tube would be a practical aid to police officers for this sort of purpose. Who should or shouldn’t be arrested is a separate question (and no-one here is suggesting that peaceful protestors should be arrested). |
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| ▲ | fragmede 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Last one was in 2017 though. | | |
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| ▲ | brettermeier 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | There might not be a publicly known area for that protest. | | |
| ▲ | foldr 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Then it’s most likely going to be a very small protest. | | |
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| ▲ | CommanderData 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| They are prepared to arrest 90 year old protestors at Palestinian matches for Israel, they won't stop until all critism of that illegal state is silenced. |
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| ▲ | steve_gh 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| It's a technology. What you could do with it, and what you should do with it are completely different things. If you follow the links there is a lot of information about the trial, including a whole series of documents identifying the legal framework that authorises LFR, including rationale under GDPR, Data Protection etc. Of course, this technology could be used for bad purposes. But within a democracy, policing happens with the consent of the people, expressed through various channels including legal (parliament and local government) and police commissioners. What is interesting is the way that these frameworks are used to constrain the purpose and extent of this processing. For example, at the moment the images on the watchlist can only be drawn from custody images. The police already have powers to seize CCTV and door-cam imagery in order to investigate crime. They need a warrant from a judge - so it isn't justified without good reason such as serious crimes. This is the way you constrain these things - you put the regulatory framework around them. You can't put the technology back in the box, so you put rules and expectations around how it is used. |
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| ▲ | krisbolton 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This. It's all within a democratic and legal framework, from GDPR to organisational policies. The source is the police themselves informing the public of the trial. The actual camera setup is bright yellow in the middle of the concourse, it's not hidden. They haven't hidden this technology, a private company hasn't deployed this technology. As citizens you have some control. It's probably not perfect, but there's humans in the loop. You have recourse to complain, to write to your PM, to take a different route (because they are pre-warning you). This IS democracy. | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The UK stopped being a democracy a long time ago. In the UK if you keep your mouth shut during an investigation, it may harm your defense. There is zero right against self-incrimination. It is also the place where you can be jailed for not providing the PIN to your phone. I could go on. | | |
| ▲ | steve_gh 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How does that make us not a democracy? You are confusing the constitutionally based US system with the parliamentary based UK system. They work differently. We have elections typically every 4-5 years and elect a new government. That's the democracy bit. The laws that our elected representatives make are sometimes good, and sometimes bad. But they are made by the people we elected. | | |
| ▲ | ExoticPearTree 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | So what you are saying is this is what you want as citizens, to be surveilled and tracked by police 24/7? | | |
| ▲ | steve_gh 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My point is that the technology exists, for good or ill, and we cannot put the genie back in the bottle. What we can do, and should do as a society, is decide on how that technology should be used. And that means regulating it, in the same way that we regulate other technologies. For example, we regulate cars. Not just who can use them, but how they have to be constructed too. And we also place limits on how the authorities can use them, for example the rules that the police must obey when in an emergency response situation. We are a democracy, so these rules are made by the people we have elected. so when it comes down to it, yes, this is what we as a people have asked for. And we are responsible for the conditions that the police can use this technology under. FWIW, the capabilities and resources that the police have to track us 24/7 are an order of magnitude less than Google or Meta has. And they are an awful lot less accountable. | | |
| ▲ | throw-the-towel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > the capabilities and resources that the police have to track us 24/7 are an order of magnitude less than Google or Meta has. This will be a good argument when Google or Meta are able to arrest you. |
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| ▲ | Nursie 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, quite a lot of people want that or think they want it in many Western societies. They want the police to be able to find criminals, they want their kids kept off social media, they want terrorists' comms to be intercepted, they want 'immigrants' to not be able to claim benefits, they want voters to be required to produce ID, they want all manner of joined-up information state capabilities and they don't give a shit if they're surveilled and caught up in it until/unless it bites them in the ass. And the thing is that they're not necessarily wrong to want some of those things, but they don't understand or don't care about collateral damage or what you might perceive as a lack of freedom. So they will happily vote for it. Democracies vote to shoot themselves in the foot all the time. Look around you. |
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| ▲ | dofm 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > In the UK if you keep your mouth shut during an investigation, it may harm your defense. There is zero right against self-incrimination. By "may harm your defence" what is meant is that Miranda was modified to inform people who are arrested that magistrates and juries are fully allowed to infer that you might be seeking to mislead the court if you didn't tell the police something significant that you later rely on as a defence in court. You're still allowed to do it, and they are allowed to conclude it is sketchy. That's the point of the modification. Juries do and did this anyway. The modified Miranda doesn't say you have no right against self-incrimination; it now warns you that if something is crucial to your defence it might be in your interest to mention it so the jury doesn't think you are trying to shine them on. It's important to understand that this happens in the context of a country that does not have a plea bargaining mechanism. Cases go to court if it is in the public interest that they do (and the police don't decide this). But you can still no-comment your way through an interview and you aren't going to be bullied by a prosecutor into accepting a plea deal. | | |
| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Miranda is an American case and has no relevance to UK law, the precedents aren't interchangeable. |
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| ▲ | krisbolton 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This just isn't true... you've heard of "no comment" right? And the ability for the police to invoke the requirement for you to provide your PIN is behind the tests of specific legislation. You're not automatically required to provide it. | |
| ▲ | _fw 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You WILL be charged for not giving the PIN to your phone in an investigation. It’s a strict liability offence which means there’s no legal defence. The only realistic protection here is a “decoy” partition, a partition that provides access to a separate installation of the OS. That gives the device owner plausible deniability that their real system even exists. | | |
| ▲ | dofm 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You WILL be charged for not giving the PIN to your phone in an investigation. It’s a strict liability offence which means there’s no legal defence. Again, no, not just "in an investigation". It has to be an investigation that has reached the point where they have gone to a judge and got permission to serve written notice. The judge will ask them if there is a necessary and proportionate reason. There is then a timeframe in which you have to respond. Police can't simply demand your PIN and charge you if you don't comply. |
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