Big Brother IS watching you
I am not a number I am a free man
British cops’ use of automated facial recognition technology has come under fire from peers, with the Greens’ Jenny Jones calling on the government for an immediate ban. Speaking in a House of Lords debate, Jones said that there were “very real concerns” about the use of the technology, asserting that the UK was “moving into …
Details of Ireland's 'most reckless driver'. He had amassed speeding tickets and parking fines. Each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.
It was discovered that the man the Irish police had been looking for was a Mr Prawo Jazdy. Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for "driving licence" and not the first and surname on the licence.
Police decided to check and see how many times officers have made this mistake.
The system had created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.
(It's an old story, but I doubt any lessons have been learnt, in terms of today's biometric data)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7899171.stm
“What we have at the moment is a make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach or “do as you want as long as you don’t get caught”,” he said.
When they do get caught, a vaguely worded bill gets whipped through to make it all legal and things carry on until some other ruling deems the legislation is illegal, then they keep doing it while another bill gets drafted to quickly and clumsily paper over the troublesome bits.
Especially when your Echo ** suddenly becomes your always on 'Telescreen' and everything you do and say in your home is sent to the NSA (for later transmission to GCHQ). and please note that watching boxed sets of "Yes Minister" is not an opt-out from the data collection.
** Other home spying equipment is also available for you to purchase.
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Unfortunately you wont be nicked - that would allow you to question the evidence.
You will just be misidentified and go on a database. You were "seen" (to p=0.05) at a demo against an arms fair. You end up on a no-fly list or suddenly don't get that job at a firm that gets lots of government work.
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They are currently building up to a ban on burkhas in the UK, the unsuspecting public believing its to stop terrorism. Of course once it comes into law it will just be titled face coverings in public to avoid persecuting individual religions etc. If switzerland, france, belgium, the netherlands, spain and italy all have bans of some description then its a matter of time before it becomes european policy.
And don't forget the Dame Edna glasses to help the confusion - the fancier the better because then they have trouble getting a fix on where your eyebrows are meant to be.
Added bonus, the glitzy bits can hide the cunningly-flickering camera-blinding IR LEDs that you added to the frame.
As they say, If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear!
Now, please be a good little citizen, pay your taxes on time and make sure to keep us up to date with any decisions in your life you plan to make, should you wish to do something other than we have allocated for you today please be aware you will be caught. Remember, you owe us everything and without us you will have nothing.
But please don't think of us as "spying" on you. Think of it as keeping you safe, there are some very bad people out there who do not pay their taxes, sorry, wait no that's not what I mean, I mean there are bad people out there who will hurt you and your family and must be caught.
It is for your own good really. We are keeping you safe, we are protecting your children from the child catcher and we are helping you live a long and happy life!
Just remember, you can trust us. We are perfectly trust worthy. We do not use any of the information we capture about you unless you do something bad like missing a tax payment or killing someone.
We are your friends, please trust us. Now run along and enjoy your life and remember, every day, every hour, every minute and every second of your life we are here for you.
PS: Can you please tell your neighbour John that he isn't fooling anyone by telling us his last name is "Doe". If he continues to resist we may have to terminate him.
As usual, terrorism is the go-to excuse for justifying all this surveillance.
Sorry, but to catch terrorists you do not need to blanket the country with cameras, just the airports and seaports. If terrorism is really that important to you, then add radars along the coast to catch any incoming boats that do not enter the normal channels, that way you can send a "greeting committee" to make sure they "arrive safely".
That should be enough to deal with terrorism.
Concerning tying the hands of the police behind their backs, well the alternative appears to be give them a blank check. Neither is good. And what do I care that private companies are using the tech ? Private companies cannot arrest me and throw me in jail by mistake. Stupid argument.
Finally, as far as cameras are concerned, don't make me laugh. I cannot count the times I've heard about people wanting to check the images to find the perp who stole their bike only to be told that there were no recordings at that time, or to find that the image was perfectly useless on the rare occasions they actually got an image to check.
Makes me wonder what all the hoopla is really about. Is all this just the PM's private perv channel ?
In case you haven't been paying attention for the past 50 years, which frankly is what it looks like: most terrorism is perpetrated by people who are already inside their native country, who don't have to pass through any borders to get there.
On the rare occasions when they do pass a border (e.g. the 11 September hijackers), they usually have clean criminal records at the time.
Watching airports and seaports is certainly not "enough to deal with terrorism". It is, however, quite enough to infringe on a lot of people's privacy.
> google kingdom litter fines
I didn't use GoogleTM, but searched with Ixquick. :) The url http://www.kingdom.co.uk/services/environmental-protection/ (deliberately not linkified) returns an error unless one allows http://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js to run some JavaScript. I didn't do that, either.
I'm sure this sort of thing isn't what TBL had in mind when cooking up the WWW ...
"The peers also voiced concerns about the government’s attitude to data retention, with many questioning why custody images of people who have not been charged with an offence were still on record, despite a 2012 ruling that said keeping images of presumed innocent people on file was unlawful."
Considering that the Police have stated that it's "difficult" to remove images from the custody database, it does make me wonder if they are simply storing up future problems. Both passports and driving licence photos have to be renewed every 10 years because over that time period a photo is likely to become inaccurate for identification purposes. If the Police can't find a way to expire photos after about 10 years or so, they will end up with a database full of outdated and inaccurate data. Facial recog will get progressively worse.
They really aren't. The problem with each force having a system for this and a system for that. No link between custody systems, criminal history systems etc, probably because someone in the past claimed that there were "Big Brother implications" of a link between someone not yet charged, and a later person who had been charged with something.
Facial Recognition works well enough for the police to be able to spot those members of the Green Brigade who have sent along someone else to the police station to sign the book while they are at Parkhead and shouldnt be there because of a Football Banning Order.
Wasserman: this technology could lead to miscarriages of justice, which in turn could lead to a loss of confidence in the technology and a loss of trust in the criminal justice system as a whole..
A bit late for that I would say. Technology has the potential to increase miscarriages of justice, and do we really trust the criminal justice system?
The passport agency is a facial I.D.s trove.
Since the likeness of people to their photographs is pretty lose for passports, the opportunity to modify them is great.
Simply consult a facial recognition chart then work on the key points such as eyes (move iris), ears (hide under a shaggy hair style), eye brows (join), beards and mouth (make a suckling lemon shape) before dispatching your pictures. Fortunately, I have my pictures taken by a graphic artistic outlet and, slowly, over the years they have gradually varied many salient points.
And don't forget, IR LEDs are your friends - they sure distract scanners.
Don't like bio eye scanners? Cross your eyes (works on single scanners, too). And using arsenic on hands regularly and your fingerprints will disappear - and won't kill you, ether.