| I would argue that it doesn't even matter, but I'll try to clarify my reading of the article. The example name they give is "an obvious case" (nevertheless giving a name like this of someone who isn't convicted is an egregious violation of due process). But here's the paragraph I'm talking about: > Soft-spoken and gentle-mannered, Constable Collins carries a baton and pepper spray, but no gun. His weapon is his memory: Facial recognition software managed to identify one suspect of the 4,000 captured by security cameras during the London riots. Constable Collins identified 180. Note the nice, round number. I wonder how that was established. Note that the sentence strongly implies that the only thing that makes these people suspect is being "captured by security cameras during the London riots". Those security cameras are pointed at streets, not shops, not office buildings, not private property, they couldn't have gotten a good look at the people who looted and burned. This footage is very low quality: grainy 640x400 or less (cheap image sensors from around 2008, also the common resolution of the example images) black-and-white filmed in very bad lighting conditions at a distance of at least 6-7 meters (they hang those cameras up high), with most people on those cameras at at an average distance of 30 meters (my guess at half the distance between two of those security cameras from walking around in London). At that distance, a face is between 5x5 and 20x20 pixels. You can't tell me they have less than 10% error rate. And of course, the subject given is black, and all the police officers mentioned are white. I'm not even implying racism here, people are notoriously bad at identifying members of other ethnic groups correctly. Example of footage here[1]) And aside from the people who were right next to the police, I doubt there were many assaults at all, though I'd expect a few. But even if they do find the looters. They're not catching any reasonable percentage of them, they're just randomly punishing 4000 people : let's say they actually "catch" 2000 of them, and let's assume a 30% error rate (seems like the absolute minimum reasonable to me). So in effect, they're slapping jail on 660 innocents, and 1340 people who damaged property during a riot. Of the people who burned and looted, that 1340 is going to be, comparing with the numbers reported looting, somewhere between 2% and 5% of them. The point is that this is going to be very bad for the social situation in London, and not going to change the fact that there's a very high chance that you can loot and get away with it during riots. It's all the bad, with none of the good. [1] http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/criminalminds/images/7/7... http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/07/us-britain-bombing... http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article5828360.ece/ALTERNATE... |
