Re: UK police chase crooks on CCTV (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> From: bill.stewart@pobox.com
> X-Sender: wcs@idiom.com (Unverified)
> Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 09:27:28 -0800
> Subject: Re: UK police chase crooks on CCTV (fwd)

> >> ``The only people entered on to the system will be convicted criminals
> >> who, through our intelligence, we believe are habitually committing
> >> crimes in the area,''

> >> Dave Armond as saying. ``If people are not committing crime they have
> >> nothing to fear, but if they are among the small minority who are, the
> >> message is, 'We are watching out for you.'''

> The policeman's statement, if honest, implies that the 
> system needs a real mugshot or more detailed set of pictures to work from, 
> so they're going to start with feeding it the Usual Suspects,
> for whom they can get good data for the system to search.
> It probably also has capacity limitations, so they won't be searching
> for everybody they have pictures of, just the most likely.

For now. What's the curve on facial recognition for 2x improvement?

It would seem probable to me that there would be a feature to snap closeups
off the cameras and feed them back in real-time. Talk about real-time traffic
analysis.

> >We need a law or court ruling pretty quickly in the US that sets the
> >standard that a group of people have no more or less rights than an
> >individual. This will required LEA's to provide probable cause prior to any
> >actions against groups of people (such as this).
> 
> Ain't gonna happen - are you kidding?  If there is a ruling like that,
> it'll be done in some way that restricts citizen rights rather than
> expanding them, or expands police powers rather than restricting them.

I'll have to disagree.

> It's already legal for cops to hang around street corners watching for 
> suspicious activities or suspicious people, and all video recognition

Um, it was always legal and should continue to be so, just as it should be
legal for you or I to stand around that corner and watch for unusual
activity. It's there job. They call it walking the beat.

> Unfortunately, I'm being increasingly forced to take the David Brin position of
> "Cameras are cheap, get used to it, just make sure we have more cameras
> pointing at the cops than they have pointing at us, and make sure
> the cameras the government has are citizen-accessible as well."

I don't know about citizen-accessible. I don't want some joe blow walking
down the street to get access to the cameras that track my trek to work each
day. No, it needs to be very limited and require full interaction of the
courts to gain access. Simply putting on a police uniform (or a army
uniform) shouldn't mean you give up your rights as a citizen.

This may be hard to believe, but I'm not the state's nigger and neither is
that police officer or soldier.


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