[StavrosK]

> The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”.

That's why it's called "erosion of rights" and not "outright nullification of rights". Unfortunately, it works, and it's entirely unsurprising that face surveillance will become normalized.

[lm28469]

It's not everyday I quote Ted Kaczynski, but I think he had a valid point when, in his manifesto, he theorise that no amount of regulation is capable of making us safe from technological abuse.

125 - 135 from: https://www.josharcher.uk/static/files/2018/01/Industrial_So....

> It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises.

> A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on ... In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.

> While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable.

> Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation.

> No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or ethical codes, can provide permanent protection against technology. History shows that all social arrangements are transitory; they all change or break down eventually. But technological advances are permanent within the context of a given civilization.

[StavrosK]

The issue is that, ultimately and generally, the government does what a majority of people wants (or at least tolerates). Why are we tolerating this loss of freedoms? The only answer I can arrive at is "because it doesn't inconvenience people enough to do something about it".

Protesting against something takes a lot of energy, and inconveniencing you only a little (or very much but extremely rarely) doesn't make most people's list of priorities.

[lm28469]

The way I see it is that our systems became so complex that we lost sight of what's good for us, as individual and as a group.

Most people are too busy to even acknowledge these issues. When you're barely able to financially take care of your family or when you're too deep in the consumerism game you don't have time for these high level questions.

People are more outraged about the latest episode of Game of Thrones than they will ever be about the current state of humanity and its impact on Nature, the erosion of privacy and freedom, &c.

[jimktrains2]

> The way I see it is that our systems became so complex that we lost sight of what's good for us, as individual and as a group.

I feel ask though it's more that our systems became so complex that no one, let alone the lay in that specific tech, are even capable of understanding the consequences and what we're loosing.

It's not unreasonable for a lay person to be told about facial recognition and think "well, it's just doing a better job than what a cop would have done anyway" without realizing that it often does worse than a cop statistically and that unlike a cop, all the cameras can be coordinated so that your movements are stored indefinitely and viewable by anyone, something that couldn't happen when a person was looking at people on their beat.

Ditto with online tracking, it's the extent of the ramifications that people don't think/know about. Even then, there are no alternatives that provide the simplicity of communication that Facebook does, so even after something like Cambridge Analytica, most people don't really have options to move away from without completely changing how they socialize, and to be honest, most people don't understand just how much information they leak even still.

[Loughla]

>[. . .] no one, let alone the lay in that specific tech, are even capable of understanding the consequences and what we're loosing.

This 100%. Living deep in flyover country, I have heard the sentence in your second paragraph from several people.

And do you know who I blame?

Creators and marketers of AI/ML. People on this site are included in that list.

They are being lauded as the saviors of humanity. Think of all we can learn and do with AI/ML. Nevermind that they're just sufficiently large datasets with sufficiently complicated math problems. Also nevermind where that data is coming from or what it contains.

You won't have to worry about online shopping, because we'll be able to get you your stuff faster! Isn't that great?!

In flyover country, deep in flyover country, away from huge cities, away from tech, people do not understand what data is out there about them and what is being done with it. That is the biggest problem with all of this. They literally don't understand why it's a problem, let alone the nuance of the problems.

[peterwwillis]

> Why are we tolerating this loss of freedoms? The only answer I can arrive at is "because it doesn't inconvenience people enough to do something about it".

Throughout recorded history, people have usually been "ruled" by some form of king, warrior, aristocracy, etc. But it's not like one leader could really hurt or kill every single person in a large society, so the people as a collective shouldn't really need to follow his orders. So why do they?

The simplest answer is, there are a series of trade-offs made when following a leader (or government). You have less autonomy, but you may gain some benefits, such as security, order, direction, and the possibility that they might accomplish some of your wishes. Of course, if the leader controls an army, you could say fear is a big motivator to follow their wishes, but then why does the army follow the leader? Same thing: security, order, direction, accomplishment of wishes, etc.

We all make tradeoffs to live in a society. The loss of most freedoms isn't actually a huge impact to your ability to live your life; even in a highly repressive society, you can still eat, sleep, socialize, which is all most animals need. The idea that your society might be secretly abusing its citizens is troubling, but it's not as bad as, say, a food shortage, or waves of crime. So on the whole, mass surveillance is a minor inconvenience, and not something worth flooding to the polls (or storming the gates).

[moorhosj]

==Why are we tolerating this loss of freedoms?==

Fear. Why do people think it is unsafe to walk outside when statistics show us we have never been safer? Why are people afraid of public places when crime is far more likely to happen in the home?

[lm28469]

We need to go deeper though. The decrease in perceived safety is, at least in part, due to 24/7 news reporting about violence, crime, terrorism, hate and generally negative topics. Which itself is due to progress in information technology and in the way we make money out of it. There is literally no benefit for the general public in this.

Don't get me wrong, you have all the reasons to fear these things if you live where these things happen, but I'd bet my left hand that most people in 1st world countries ever witness any kind of serious violence.

[moorhosj]

The book Fortress America [1] posits that, in America at least, it has been a long shifting of the fear from red to black. Basically, after USSR was defeated, we shifted more vigorously into a "law and order" society. Politicians and the media played up the threat (even though all data was showing a safer society) of gangs and "thugs".

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Fortress-America-Embraced-Abandoned-D...

[wallace_f]

Tech has also given us freedoms. It's just what people do with it. This world would be so easy if nobody was cheating or aggressing on anyone else. And it's not lile that because people are terrible. Most people in this world are immoral and/or idiotic. The average person is not enlightened, nor even genuinely motivated to helping their fellow if they gets nothing in return.

Now you are asking for not just good nature or enlightenment, but for something more... moral courage.

The sad part is the people who are will be lost forever as we march this ugly walk into the Grest Filters which consciousness seems to tend to do to itself.

The only way to get something like moral courage from the masses is to spread ideas into people's minds the same way religious leaders or propagandists do. People love crusaded and want to be important so will become a part of them.

[hedora]

Your question was well-answered by the quote you are replying to.

Put more succinctly: It is the full time job of law enforcement to use these tools to solve crimes. Even if literally everyone protests them next month, if you wait 10 years, people will have moved on with their lives, and it will be implemented anyway.

Here is a concrete example:

Back in high school, a holocaust survivor visited our class. We were told the fundamental difference between the US and Nazi germany was that in the US, you could travel without carrying papers (which meant that people could keep the inevitable failings of democracy in check, since privacy while traveling and meeting people basically implies freedom of assembly and press).

That difference no longer exists in the US in any practical way because technology has obsoleted the legal mechanism of “you can’t ask for my drivers license without probable cause”.

[xoa]

>That difference no longer exists in the US in any practical way because technology has obsoleted the legal mechanism of “you can’t ask for my drivers license without probable cause”.

Are you sure this is quite as absolute and one-way as you’re saying here? ID isn’t required by government to be driven, use public transport, fly on private aircraft, use boats, etc. Sure as a practical matter in the US non-car options are not nearly as powerful as in most first world countries, but that’s not a matter of law. And while technology helped create the current state of affairs, it can disrupt it too. The motivation for drivers licenses is a real one of public safety. If self-driving cars mean most people cease manual driving though, the need for licenses will cease as well (and also most of the typical suspicions and justifications police use to pull over a car). That may result in a significant clawback of travel privacy in some respects. Practical is not always the equivalent of legal long term is it?

[elliekelly]

> The motivation for drivers licenses is a real one of public safety.

If the true purpose of a drivers license was public safety there are surely a large number of people who wouldn't be permitted to operate a motor vehicle. Or at the very least we would be required to periodically prove our competency.

[xoa]

>If the true purpose of a drivers license was public safety there are surely a large number of people who wouldn't be permitted to operate a motor vehicle.

That's silly. Driving in America at least is a quasi-right: while not technically a right by law, as things stand the economy and much of society in the country would collapse if most adults were not able to drive. But at the same time driving is not natural and definitely represents real danger. So the law reflects a balance between these two competing interests, with safety concerns slowly getting pushed harder over time. Driving requirements are relatively forgiving, and removal is taken seriously. But there are a lot of laws and thinking around how to improve safety. The licensing process has become more of a ramp too, with many (all?) states having increasingly graduated licensing and some starting to have rechecks needed for the elderly. Licensing for non-necessity driving (commercial vehicles, motorbikes etc) sees a significant spike in requirements.

People very much care. In highschool I had a good friend hit and killed by a drunk driver while they were walking right near school, and I would strongly resent any putting down of how devastating that was for the family and our group. But "individualized mechanized arbitrary point to point transportation" is also very much critical, and with current technology that means "a human driving". It's very unfairly glib to impugn that society isn't trying to balance here. What is needed to radically change the status quo is to finish the car technology so that a human is not needed. Once that is the case and manual driving becomes a fun luxury I expect we'll see licensing requirements and training increase a great deal, looking more like what professional motor racers do. The converse from a privacy perspective is that no, many people will not bother to carry drivers licenses with them anymore, nor will they need to.

Generalized authentication is and should be an important role of government, so some form of ID will still matter. But in terms of needing to have it on you? No, I do not think that legal requirements around that will change. The "true purpose" of a drivers license is in fact trying to have some minimum level of competence and personal responsibility attached to the act of personally controlling a multi-ton pile of metal moving at high speeds.

[forgottenpass]

>Why are we tolerating this loss of freedoms?

The press sold us out. They rolled up, told us they were the forth estate. People are busy so they outsourced their critical thinking about government to experts. The press then proceed to not give half a shit about civics.

[elliekelly]

This is what I don't understand about the hard-line 2A advocates. They're so concerned with being able to "defend against the government" if needed but guns are no longer the government's biggest source of power over the people. Data and surveillance are far more powerful in 2019 than any weapon.

Full disclosure: I'm a gun owner. But I'd swap the second amendment for a data privacy amendment in a heartbeat.

[dragonwriter]

> This is what I don't understand about the hard-line 2A advocates. They're so concerned with being able to "defend against the government" if needed but guns are no longer the government's biggest source of power over the people.

They also fail to realize that the 2A already failed, and that it's premise wasn't that gun ownership protected against a tyrannical government. It's that gun ownership was necessary to the militia-based security posture which was the alternative to relying on a powerful standing military and armed police forces for external and internal security, and that preventing the creation and reliance on those large standing forces in the first place was the safeguard against tyranny.

[jerf]

"But I'd swap the second amendment for a data privacy amendment in a heartbeat."

In practice, that would be a bad trade, because you can verify that you still have your 2A rights by being in possession of a gun, whereas with data privacy, all you have are solemn assurances that your rights are being respected, and when you discover you were lied to and you didn't actually have data privacy after all, you've got nothing.

If you mean some sort of impossibly-strong, enforced-by-God-or-aliens data privacy amendment, maybe. But that's not on the table.

(My point here is independent of the question of the 2A itself, but just looking at it as the proposed trade. Trading something concretely verifiable for promises that the promising people have every motivation to break secretly and you have no ability to audit is a bad trade.)

[elliekelly]

I definitely see your point. Though I would argue most of our rights are intangible and without ability to audit yet they're (so far, at least mostly) enforced by the court system. Your right to due process, for example. And your right to free speech. And your right against unreasonable government search and seizure. All we have are solemn assurances from the court system that our rights are being protected. So far, at least mostly, it's worked.

Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.

[ncr100]

For those who don't know, Ted murdered people with improvised explosive devices.

[klyrs]

I've done some research that introduced me to some of his more... acceptable writing.

http://homepages.rpi.edu/~bulloj/tjk/tjk1.html

[darkpuma]

He was eventually caught after he coerced the NYTs into publishing his manifesto and his brother recognized the arguments contained within it.

Not quite stylometric analysis, but I think that's an interesting angle of the story.

[gus_massa]

a.k.a. "Unabomber" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski

[andai]

For eighteen years, while living in the woods.

[dsfyu404ed]

There's a reason they're doing it in London first. In a wealthy city like London you can get away with going full "law and order" because the ratio of rich to poor is better (i.e more rich people) and the rich generally view this as no threat to them. Then once it's normalized they roll it out to Liverpool, Belfast and everywhere else that the poors are less under the thumb of the government.

You see this in the US. Boston, DC, New York, etc are littered with surveillance cameras and ALPRs. Once it's normalized they'll roll it out to places like New Bedford, Norlfolk and Buffalo and all the other places where the government (as an organization, not as individuals) feels its respected less.

[arethuza]

If there is one place where the authorities might take a bit of care around implementing new surveillance technologies you would hope it would be Belfast.

[dsfyu404ed]

That's basically what I was thinking. I figure as soon as the system is sufficiently "mature" they'll use it there.

I hope they totally screw it up and touch off the kind of "civil unrest" that you need in order to remind the government that people have rights.

[foldr]

Romford is on the outskirts of London and is not especially wealthy.

[dsfyu404ed]

Exactly. You don't implement your Baghdad style checkpoints in Manhattan. You do it in the Bronx. The rich (the people who's non-disapproval you need) get told by the official statements (that the newspaper regurgitates) how it's the best thing since sliced bread while not actually being negatively affected by it themselves. The fact that you've got a bunch of rich people who never see the downside of each step toward the police state and don't come out strongly against it lends legitimacy to each step.

[sverige]

Your assumption is that the government is not controlled by the very wealthy already, so that their disapproval of the very thing they are engineering is possible. It's not designed to target them. It's for their benefit. There's no downside for the wealthy with this tech, it's all upside since it gives them greater control.

[dsfyu404ed]

Controlled is an odd word in this context. It's both controlled by them and seeking to diminish their capacity to resist it at the same time. I think there's some tragedy of the commons here since you've got many people advocating for more government control in specific cases and it adds up to a police state.

>There's no downside for the wealthy with this tech,

Wealthy people break petty laws (the kind of stuff these systems make it possible to crack down on) all the time. There's a reason you never see the cops running a DUI dragnet at the rich people boat ramp. The wealthy do not want to be subject to surveillance dragnets because while many people can pull strings to get out of trouble very, very, very few people can afford to pull string with the regularity that would be required if the rich were subject to a police state.

[devmunchies]

> because the ratio of rich to poor is better

I’m not clicking with this theory. I think it’s in cities that are more multicultural and thus have more hostility.

The government can get away with a lot when the people are frustrated about something else.

[dagaci]

I'm not sure your theories have a base. Population may not like whats happening, but the peoples will only rise to protest when they feel directly threatened.

People will feel directly threatened if these systems produce too many false positives which result in too many false arrests or "police harassment".

Government and vendors will get away with it by slowly and sporadically deploying these systems until "we" get used to being monitored by these "AI" type systems.

Mildly "sexy" news like this is perfect for letting the people gently feel aware that they are being monitored in this way without being too threatening.

The last thing authorities or vendors want is news that 250 <insert-triggering-ethic-minority> were falsely apprehended because of AI identification with a few citizens getting chased and "accidentally" shot in the process => That would be inescapable-incompetence compounding incompetence after all, reason to take to the streets.

[bgeeek]

Except it was used elsewhere in the UK before London.

[dalbasal]

I wonder how you'd avoid this, even if parliament had the inclination.

Would private face recognition be banned too? Very soon a CCTV setup without face recognition will be out of date.

Computer vision-ey stuff is maturing and the list of "trivial" is getting long. It'll probably be implemented in most camera applications. Face recognition, object recognition, all manner of classification.

Once your phone organizes and hyperlinks photos this way, it'll seem weird to deny police.

I'm not denying there're major rights issues associated with this, just that the technology is set to become so ambient.

[dsfyu404ed]

>I wonder how you'd avoid this, even if parliament had the inclination.

You need a populace that overwhelmingly believes it is not ok for the government to operate a surveillance dragnet. Then the politicians will do that. The only reason the government doesn't go full Waco on people who haven't paid their parking tickets is because the overwhelming majority of society don't tolerate that. This is also why it's important to not let this kind of crap be legitimized in the public's mind.

Unfortunately it looks like that ship as long since sailed as far as a damp rock off the coast of France is concerned. With all the crap that's being dredged up as a result of Brexit there's still hope for the Irish saying they see what Britain has and they don't want any.

[StavrosK]

Exactly, educate the people about it and get them to want it to stop. Unfortunately, most people don't care if it never actually inconveniences them, and "there's a one in a thousand chance this bad thing will happen to you" isn't enough to get them to care.

Just look at how many people consider the existence of the TSA normal now.

[dalbasal]

Ok. I'm a populace (even a plurality, some days) that overwhelmingly believes it is not ok for the government to operate a surveillance dragnet.

How does this translate into practicalities? What laws do I want Westminster or London Assembly to enact?

The point I was making earlier is that the distinction between dragnet and regular policing is eroding, as this technology becomes widespread.

Presumably it's ok for police to stand at the station and look out for their man, or ask to look at a store's CCTV. We'll... That kind of thing is becoming mediated by software. Upload your CCTV photo to the app, and it finds matches with your target, or multiple targets, or everyone.

[dsfyu404ed]

I don't know but politicians need to feel like they will lose votes if they are caught supporting these kinds of things.

To put it in US terms, in the 2016 Democratic primary we saw attack ads criticizing Hillary for being a hawk. They'd say things like "she says she supports not getting involved in Quagmire:latest but in $YEAR she voted for a bill that funded $ThingThatDoesTheOpposite".

When we see city and state politicians getting called out in the same manner for pandering to the interests (mostly police and government) that want a police state then we're on the right track.

I don't know exactly how this translates to practicalities. I'd support politicians who have a strong message of getting the .gov out of people's business in specific cases in the hope it eventually generalizes.

[FerretFred]

> How does this translate into practicalities? What laws do I want Westminster or London Assembly to enact?

I think (in London at least), there are so many cameras that we have no idea which ones just record and which have facial recognition capabilities.For all I know, when I come out Waterloo Tube Station into the rail station, the camera at the top of the escalator could be face-id'ing me.

If the police stand there pointing a camera at me, I'll naturally be suspicious, and yes, defensive.

[stavros]

I started to ask if the GDPR applies here, I realized you're in the UK so it wouldn't apply, but have the question anyway: Does the GDPR prevent this?

[dalbasal]

I don't think it does. If I understand correctly, these images would not be considered your private data. It belongs to whoever owns the cameras. Ianal

Interesting question though.

[arethuza]

GDPR most certainly does apply in the UK? We haven't left the EU yet - if we ever will and even if we do we'll still have GDPR like rules in place.

[dalbasal]

EU laws don't directly apply in member states, afaik.

The UK wrote their implementation of gdpr into UK law: general data protection act 2018. It's the law unless parliament changes it, Brexit or no Brexit.

[pjc50]

GDPR has a huge law enforcement exemption. The only relevant EU law is probably the ECHR(+) right to privacy.

(+) Yes I know this isn't exactly the same

[sasasassy]

In many countries recording someone in public without their consent is simply illegal. If you notice someone caught you in a picture or video, and you visible (not just a blur in a giant mass of people), you can request (force) the person to delete the footage. I've seen this happen multiple times.

Concerts and other closed events routinely have as a condition for attendance that you consent to have your photo taken.

[mcv]

The way to avoid this is to make dazzle makeup fashionable.

[mises]

That will work, at first. It is not a long-term solution, as algorithms and technology will simply evolve to recognize in spite of that. The solution, at least for America, is to remind the feds that they have no constitutional power to use facial recognition, for a similar reason that mass surveillance is unconstitutional. It's a breach of the Fourth Amendment Right to security in persons and papers, I would argue (as is TSA), as well as a violation of the Due Process Clause, because it makes every one a suspect (same issue with fingerprints, DNA, etc.). The bottom line should be that law enforcement has no right to do anything, hold information on you, surveil you, or put you through airport security unless you commit a crime. Quite frankly, there should be no such thing as a "watch list" -- they don't get to make you turn over information or treat you as a suspect (note their use of the term "suspicious behavior" - behaving like a suspect - as a justification) when you have done nothing wrong.

There was a comment I read on another thread about some one who bought about 20 pressure cookers when they were accidentally marked down for a dollar apiece and had the police called on him. Is that really okay? I have also heard that the FBI is notified if you buy more than a certain quantity of fertilizer.

Can a Brit enlighten me as to if there are similar protections or justifications against this technology in England?

As mentioned in another comment, this is the gradual erosion. They say "we want to compromise", get some ground, then push more and "compromise" again to push the line further. Trading liberty for security is a risky game.

[cr0sh]

> I have also heard that the FBI is notified if you buy more than a certain quantity of fertilizer.

I'm not even sure it matters any longer; have you ever tried to find ammonium nitrate based fertilizer at your typical big-box store?

It's pretty much unobtainable unless you're a farmer.

[FerretFred]

> That's why it's called "erosion of rights" and not "outright nullification of rights"

True, but you can't erode something ad infinitum; eventually it will disappear.

[StavrosK]

Yes, yes it will.

[lapinot]

Also called: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline