UK police chase crooks on CCTV (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 1998 14:21:04 +0200
> From: Tim Griffiths <griffith@wis.weizmann.ac.il>
> Subject: UK police chase crooks on CCTV

> Civil liberties groups said they were alarmed by the new system, but
> police defended its use.
> 
> ``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,'' The Daily Mail quoted police Chief Superintendent
> 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 newspaper reported that police initially will use the system to
> concentrate on catching robbery suspects. In the future, however, it

Excuse me....

Since when does 'suspected of' equate to 'convicted criminal'?

Also, in order to wath you (sic) they have to watch everyone - in effect
guilty until proven innocent by the computer software.

What sort of civil recovery are provided for the inevitable software errors?
I bet nadda, and that's wrong too.

This is Big Brother Spin Doctor BULLSHIT.

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).

If they can't audio tape me, or seize my papers and correspondences without
a warrant then they bloody well can't video me without a warrant either
,within the context of criminal proceedings.

Does anyone know if *any* PAC/SIG/whatever has this as their main political
agenda?

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a similar note, here in Austin they are finishing up with putting
hundreds of cameras around town. It isn't long before these sorts of social
theory X'ers get their teeth in the shank of American society.

We've got(!) to put a stop to this sort of stuff. The law should basicaly ok
the use of cameras for vehicular traffic control (this does NOT include
execution of speeding infractions and such), this means no police or other
LEA's may be involved or view the tapes *without* a warrant. The operators
and support personnel should be required to abide by a strict non-disclosure
agreement as well. If they notice a wreck or whatever they should notify the
relevant emergency personel and *IF* the police serve a warrent only then
turn over the tape.

This is a perfect example of why I, personaly, believe that a polycratic
democracy is the only workable kind in the real world.

The 'seperate but equal' doctrine should effect every aspect of a democratic
society.


    ____________________________________________________________________
 
       To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.

                                                     Confucius

       The Armadillo Group       ,::////;::-.          James Choate
       Austin, Tx               /:'///// ``::>/|/      ravage@ssz.com
       www.ssz.com            .',  ||||    `/( e\      512-451-7087
                           -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
    --------------------------------------------------------------------

>>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.
>It's already legal for cops to hang around street corners watching for
>suspicious activities or suspicious people, and all video recognition
>technology does is increase their effectiveness and speed at doing things
>they already are allowed to do.
>
>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."

An alternative is a new religion, The First Cypherpunk Church, whose
members are admonished to wear identiy hiding (oops, I mean modesty
enhancing) garb, like arab women. Then we can all go around anonymously in
public. Of course, you'll stick out like a sore thumb and may look like a
fool unless enough parishoners join, but....

--Steve

At 08:22 AM 10/21/98 -0500, Suspect Jim Choate wrote:
>> ``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,'' The Daily Mail quoted police Chief Superintendent
>> 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 newspaper reported that police initially will use the system to
>> concentrate on catching robbery suspects. In the future, however, it
>
>Excuse me....
>
>Since when does 'suspected of' equate to 'convicted criminal'?
>Also, in order to wath you (sic) they have to watch everyone - in effect
>guilty until proven innocent by the computer software.

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.

However, looking for more people doesn't take more cameras,
just more backend computers analyzing the video feeds,
so Moore's Law will increase analysis capacity rapidly,
though it will also make it cheap to put more cameras out there.

>What sort of civil recovery are provided for the inevitable software errors?
>I bet nadda, and that's wrong too.

Software errors don't seem to be a major problem here - 
false negatives just mean they miss an opportunity to catch somebody, and
false positives mean the system says "Looks like Joe Suspect on Camera 3!" or
"Looks like Joe Suspect on Videotape 32674 at 23:10 entering the bank" - 
in either case, the police can then look at the picture and see if it is.
Of course, if you're Jack Suspect, misidentified as Joe Suspect,
the police _can_ break down your door at 6am, haul you in,
and later apologize by saying "Sorry, honest mistake, it was dark and
all you <ethnic>s look alike, but your Public Defender says it's
not you in the video so we'll let you go this time, even though you 
missed your parole office meeting because we had you in jail."

>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.
It's already legal for cops to hang around street corners watching for 
suspicious activities or suspicious people, and all video recognition
technology does is increase their effectiveness and speed at doing things
they already are allowed to do.

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."

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639