[HN Gopher] House Democrats debut new bill to limit US police us...
___________________________________________________________________
House Democrats debut new bill to limit US police use of facial
recognition
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 245 points
Date : 2022-09-30 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| battery_glasses wrote:
| I would love to see more bills where Democrats provide more
| police funding but tie it to accountability reforms like this
| one. Seems like a winning move.
| kansface wrote:
| I would not cede funding of local police agencies to the
| federal government (ie, the next Trump or J. Edgar).
| pstuart wrote:
| Another win would be promoting/funding resources for mental
| health crises. There are too many reports of unstable people
| being killed by the police when their families call in for
| help.
|
| Cops should be dealing with bad guys, not sick people.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| American police are funded locally, often with large budgets,
| and would happily turn away that extra federal funding and
| associated accountability. Even more, lots and lots of
| conservative politicians and talking heads would make a point
| about how they fought off "big government" and "democrat"
| control of their local police departments, and you'd be hard
| pressed to convince people not already pissed at their local PD
| that such a situation is a bad one.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| but, since covid times, many small towns are legitimately in
| financial distress.. especially around pension commitments..
| its a slow-moving train wreck
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| If they had to turn away things like surplus military gear
| and federal dollars for training in military tactics because
| they weren't willing to take the accountability measures --
| that'd be progress.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| To add on. Even outside the scope of funding. There is an
| interesting trend in local politicians elected to city
| council, mayor, etc and having backing of the police union.
| Any serious action that would cause a culture change that is
| unwanted by the police could result in loosing the backing of
| the police union, hence, a good chance of loosing an
| election. So change on the local level is unlikely to happen.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not a recent trend, it is simply a consequence of
| sufficient voters not able or willing to do sufficient due
| diligence and voting in the election.
|
| 100% of the cops and their family and friends will be
| voting for the politician that favors them. Will sufficient
| local voters not associated with cops also vote? Probably
| not.
|
| Few people want to go to work their jobs, raise their kid,
| and then also dig into the city budget to find out which
| politician is proposing increasing retirement benefits for
| cops that will cause massive increases in spending 30 years
| down the road.
|
| In many ways, our "democracy" relies on a certain amount of
| people doing the "right thing", even though they could get
| away with worse. Too many people try to get away with
| stuff, and it will start to unravel.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Are we "funding police" or are we "funding enforcement?" And
| should all enforcement funding be viewed through the lens of
| political reform? Why is that necessarily a winning move?
| pc86 wrote:
| Except police have more than enough funding.
| Alupis wrote:
| Police are not funded by Congress...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Police are not funded by Congress...
|
| Yes, they are; out of very roughly $125 billion annually in
| funding for state and local police, about $20 billion comes
| from the feds through DOJ programs that support them, and
| some comes through other federal funding streams.
| Alupis wrote:
| This is stretching the truth I think. The feds don't just
| hand out money to your local town's police and buy them
| things. The local government applies for grants, funds and
| special programs and then gives it to the police. Which is
| very different.
|
| It might get muddy when an elected official runs the law
| enforcement office (such as with elected county sheriffs,
| etc.), but that is still the local government that is doing
| the requesting.
| xxpor wrote:
| Not directly, but there's lots of federal funding that ends
| up in police budgets.
| Alupis wrote:
| That is for the state, and local municipalities to decide -
| not congress.
|
| Policing is best done at the local level. The police force
| needs to be local, and beholden to locals. It would be a
| very perverse system to have a "federalized" police force
| in every town and city...
| xxpor wrote:
| >That is for the state, and local municipalities to
| decide - not congress.
|
| Congress can attach strings, just like they do to tons of
| other things.
|
| >Policing is best done at the local level. The police
| force needs to be local, and beholden to locals. It would
| be a very perverse system to have a "federalized" police
| force in every town and city...
|
| I don't think you can just take that as a given. Most
| countries in the world have a federalized/unified police
| force, the Anglosphere are the weird ones here. But of
| course there is the RCMP as a counterexample.
| Alupis wrote:
| Most countries in the world are not the size of the US
| (both in population, territory and diversity of
| culture/norms/expectations). And most countries in the
| world are very clearly examples of how _not_ to do
| policing...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| they could be though...
| Alupis wrote:
| Why would you want your local police force beholden to the
| federal government instead of the local populace that they
| serve?
| triceratops wrote:
| Ask the parents of Uvalde who actually helped them when
| they most needed it. Was it the local police force, or
| the federal CBP?
| Alupis wrote:
| Neither - it was a random dude acting in an un-official
| capacity.
|
| Regardless, one isolated example is not evidence of
| anything. Everyone agrees something very wrong happened
| in Uvalde.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Many reasons. Maybe I'm a black person in the south who
| believes my local government is controlled by racists.
| Maybe I believe the incentives for the prosecutors who
| are supposed to police the police are completely out of
| whack because prosecutors rely on police work to do their
| job. Maybe I just think the police are completely
| unaccountable and am ready to see a new political
| strategy regarding policing to be tried.
|
| Either way, federal funding doesn't eliminate local
| funding, it would just be in addition to if the police
| agree to some rules.
| Alupis wrote:
| The problems you describe would only be made worse by
| moving funding to a centralized, far away and detached
| federal entity. Accountability - gone. Locality - gone.
| Trust - gone.
|
| We already have a centralized federalized police force -
| the FBI. Look what political shenanigan's they have
| become embroiled in lately. Who's interest are they
| serving currently? Who are they accountable to? What can
| be done about systemic issues in this system? Nothing and
| no-one...
|
| > Maybe I'm a black person in the south who believes my
| local government is controlled by racists
|
| This is vastly overplayed in modern times, despite what
| sensationalists would have you believe, but in this
| alternate reality nothing forbids the federal government
| from being filled with and controlled by racists
| either...
|
| Regardless, the solution is very clearly to change the
| local government, not side-step it for a government
| that's hundreds or thousands of miles away and unaware of
| local issues that might be important to residents. Oh how
| history repeats itself... the US wouldn't be a country
| today if we hadn't already learned this painful lesson.
|
| More federal government is rarely if ever the solution
| folks. Your local government already has the power and
| ability to do all the things it's citizens desire.
| pstuart wrote:
| Who polices the police?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I guess I just disagree with your characterization of
| pretty much everything you said.
|
| The FBI - obviously not perfect, but the political
| shenanigans seem overblown to me. The mar-a-lago thing
| was 1. probably justified although I'll reserve judgment
| until the confiscated files are revealed, and 2. ordered
| by the attorney general, not the FBI. Based on the news I
| have read the FBI is far, far, far more accountable than
| my local police department which is utterly unaccountable
| because any politician who crosses their union is
| instantly replaced.
|
| > the solution is very clearly to change the local
| government
|
| Much easier said than done. Pretty much everyone in my
| city has nothing but negative experience with the police,
| but nothing can be done because every politician is
| scared shitless of them. We elect "police reformer" after
| "police reformer" and they quickly change their tune once
| they realize doing anything cops dislike effectively
| instantly means laws are no longer enforced. We're being
| held hostage, and there is no local solution.
| Alupis wrote:
| It seems much more likely the perspective being portrayed
| here is not the reality to the elected officials. Perhaps
| there is more to the story than what joe-random citizen
| sees or understands. I highly doubt elected officials are
| actually "scared" of the police, despite whatever
| campaign contributions the local union chapter can
| muster. There are a lot of political forces at play,
| including the desire for re-election.
|
| Mar-a-lago is just the latest of a string of political
| shenanigans the FBI has been involved in. But we can also
| look at other federal law enforcement agencies for clear
| examples of why we do not want this. ATF, Secret Service,
| CBP, ICE and more have all become embroiled in political
| turmoil in the last decade.
|
| Regardless, the problems you voice here are not solved by
| a federal police force nor federal funding. The federal
| government is not immune to corruption and bad actors -
| and are far far more difficult to hold accountable for
| bad decisions and actions. The federal government doesn't
| understand nor care about the problems of some po-dunk
| random town.
|
| You need local folks that live in your town to be the
| local law enforcement. It's that simple. It should be
| noted currently a lot of your town or city police don't
| actually live where they work, and therefore might be
| inclined to care less about the local community. Moving
| the agency and incentives further away only will
| exacerbate this situation.
|
| You want more accountability? Then have your neighbor be
| the enforcer, not some hired gun from out of town.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| My police department literally operated torture
| facilities for over a decade. People were being tortured
| by their own police department. They paid $67 million
| settlement money last year alone, and that's been about
| the average over the last decade. Yes, to an extent all
| government is bad, but saying that police departments
| that for all intents and purposes are self-regulating are
| more accountable than federal agencies just seems bonkers
| to me. Local regulation may be able to hold individuals
| accountable, but can never create systematic change
| because the inertia is just far too strong to overcome.
|
| The only thing that has ever created some amount of
| change is a federal consent decree that the department is
| now forced to follow (although they have been to court
| fighting it many times)
| Alupis wrote:
| How would any of this change at the federal level?
|
| The federal government doesn't solve local problems. They
| can barely solve national problems these days...
|
| People want to look towards some higher power for
| solutions. No such thing exists here. The solution is
| already in front of you.
|
| If your local politicians don't change anything, then it
| really means the constituency doesn't actually want it to
| change. Just because you and your circle disagree doesn't
| mean everyone does. Politicians like to remain in
| office... and it's not police unions that submit
| ballots...
|
| Lastly, your perspective might be very different if you
| happen to live in a major city. However, this policy
| would not be isolated to major cities... it would also
| impact small towns all across America - we need to
| remember NY, SF, LA, SEA are not the only places folks
| live. For majority of this nation that does not live in
| this mega-cities, losing locality would be a huge step
| backwards.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think we disagree on much. You're probably right
| that my perspective is completely skewed by living in a
| major city. I will say though that reason local
| politicians don't change anything, beyond losing pro
| police votes, is that the police literally engage in work
| stoppage as soon as anyone starts talking about reform,
| and then hands are tied.
| Alupis wrote:
| I think most folks actually agree on more than they would
| assume - today's media thrives by making it appear we're
| much more divided than reality.
|
| > is that the police literally engage in work stoppage as
| soon as anyone starts talking about reform
|
| I think this might be related to the recent "defund the
| police" movements and other similarly misguided attempts
| at reform. Making it more difficult or dangerous to do
| the work will absolutely result in stoppages, or at least
| the appearance of stoppages.
|
| What gets left out of these conversations is the police's
| opinion. Why not engage with police and find solutions
| for making our communities better and safer? I think many
| would be surprised to find out the police actually do
| care majority of the time. Some folks spend an entire
| career in law enforcement, and some even obtain advanced
| degrees (masters and higher) on enforcement policies and
| actions - yet we do not involve them in these
| conversations at all, almost as-if us simpletons know
| best how to do their job (hint, we don't). Our ideas and
| their ideas should be discussed and consensus reached.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > What gets left out of these conversations is the
| police's opinion.
|
| The problem with this is the union has elected
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Catanzara to be their
| president. His history includes countless complaints,
| domestic abuse, and a relationship he started with a
| student at the school he was supposed to be protecting.
| Timeline of wrongdoing https://www.reddit.com/r/chicago/c
| omments/hio06z/chicago_fra.... It's just hard for people
| to take police demands seriously when they choose to
| elect someone that basically everyone in the city
| believes is evil. I find it hard to believe politicians
| aren't attempting to find common ground on changes that
| can be made, but every time the mayor releases a list of
| reforms they'd like to see the only response is "fuck off
| or we stop arresting people" and then they follow through
| if push comes to shove.
| Alupis wrote:
| I think that is my point though. The mayor just putting
| out a list of reforms they want doesn't actually mean
| they are good reforms. Particularly when the proposition
| follows a public incident.
|
| The mayor is a politician that often seeks cheap PR (like
| many or most politicians) and will say things that are
| absurd but sound good. A lot of things sound good until
| you iron out the details, as the "defund the police"
| movement found out.
|
| I do not know the specifics of what you talk about
| regarding proposed reforms, but I would be shocked if the
| mayor of Chicago sat down with police captains and chiefs
| and worked together to propose and implement solid
| reforms. If they had, they would by definition have
| police backing for the reforms. The opposite is what
| almost certainly happened...
|
| Think about it - what if your local mayor starting
| yammering on about how your industry does their job wrong
| and here's how it's going to get fixed - all without
| including anyone from your industry for input. I think
| the reaction would be quite similar...
|
| I promise you the folks working at your police department
| do not wake up in the morning eager to harm their
| community.
| watwut wrote:
| Afaik, police opinion being treated as most important
| thing is how things got where they are. They are
| unaccountable, effectively speaking.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A winning move if you want to create a police state papered
| with guidance that can be either ignored without consequence or
| repealed in days.
| int_19h wrote:
| Federal legislation on pretty much any "hot button" political
| topic is practically guaranteed to not pass on the federal level
| these days. And anything having to do with regulating police is
| one of such topics. This isn't going anywhere.
| an1sotropy wrote:
| The one-pager [1] ends with some points about auditing, but when
| I search for "audit" int the full-text [2], I'm wanting more
| details. It refers to GAO audits, and ensuring that arrest
| photographs are not stored, but I would think the purpose of
| auditing is a more general and quantitative assessment of whether
| the system is working as intended, such as:
|
| - measurements of accuracy rates, using new photos of people
| known to be in database, and people known to not be in database,
| and measurements of how accuracy is related to race.
|
| - records of who is accessing the database, in the context of
| which investigation. The one pager outlines things you can't do,
| but within whatever the allowed uses are, there may be fishy
| harvesting things going on, and how will you notice that?
|
| - facial-recognition technology is only as good as its software
| interface, and how will the development and versioning of that
| software be audited? what will prohibit vendors from including
| secret APIs what law-enforcement can use in a way that side-steps
| auditing?
|
| [1]
| https://lieu.house.gov/sites/lieu.house.gov/files/FRT%20One%...
|
| [2]
| https://lieu.house.gov/sites/lieu.house.gov/files/Lieu%20FRT...
| amluto wrote:
| I am not at all in favor of this. If the police can legally
| obtain information, they should be allowed to use it.
|
| IMO the right fix is at the other end: severely restrict the use
| of facial recognition _for everyone_. I don't want corporations
| to have powers exceeding that of the police, thank you very much.
| omniglottal wrote:
| If you outlaw facial recognition, only outlaws will recognize
| faces. Consider how gun control laws have some efficacy because
| not everyone is a skilled gunsmith with machining equipment.
| Someone with a mill/lathe in their garage can still make them.
| Software allows even unskilled people to do the thing. This can
| be performed today with off-the-shelf, existing hatdware and
| open-source software. Attempting to outlaw its use is about
| like trying to close Pandora's box. The horses are already out
| of the barn on this one...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Except you don't have access to the datases of identities as
| an individual (without paying a lot). That's the value. Who
| cares if someone runs facial recognition if they don't have a
| database to tie it to your PII. It's also a big difference
| based on what powers the user legally has (police vs
| individual).
| amluto wrote:
| On the other hand, if you outlaw the collection, retention,
| and sale, transfer, or other trafficking in information
| derived from large scale face recognition, then the
| availability of the information will decrease radically.
| People deploy or obtain access to large scale privacy-
| invading data sets because they can legally monetize it. If
| it becomes illegal to collect the data and illegal to be on
| either side of a transaction, then the information becomes a
| liability instead of an asset. And outlaws don't have
| enormous fleets of cameras.
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Police just buy this technology from corporations right now.
| Presumably in practice this bill would be interpreted as "you
| can't search clearview.ai's website unless you have a warrant"
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/faci...
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I think it's a bit silly to target face _recognition_. The data
| 's already there, so to say "yeah you can have all this video
| footage, and you can review the footage all you want, you just
| aren't allowed to use a computer to analyze it" is dumb. To the
| extent that further privacy protections are needed they should
| be enforced at the point of data collection/retention, not at
| the point of analysis.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It costs a lot of hours to watch cctv footage. Tracking
| everyone who ever is on cctv footage without
| face/gait/whatever recognition is impossible.
|
| We do want the police to do their jobs. We don't want them to
| be an intelligence apparatus.
| Gunax wrote:
| But police (well, anyone, really) can still take a photo of
| protestors and examine it manually, right?
|
| The technology is just a tool that makes it easier, but in
| principle changes nothing.
|
| I guess my point is that there isn't any fundamental change here,
| we have just made things easier. Maybe before, compiling facial
| databases if everyine was just impractical, and now it's easy.
|
| On a scarier note: anyone can do this. You can tell the police to
| pinky-promise they wont use it, but nothing stops me or you or a
| corporation from taking photos and identifying the people on
| them.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| The difference is scale is a difference in kind though.
|
| The thing I'm worried about is parallel construction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| rightbyte wrote:
| Is it just me. Or did I just read some HN post of the oposite.
| Like use it to deanonymize people?
| egberts1 wrote:
| Eleison23 wrote:
| Who needs face recognition when we're all carrying around
| fingerprintable electronic devices anyway. Well, I suppose
| Congress has no shortage of red herrings to energize their base
| and cause public debate.
| nemo44x wrote:
| All this will do is open an industry for private camera and
| facial recognition private enterprise to sell data to police
| forces.
|
| Building owners can work with the company to mount hardware that
| feeds into the database and compares faces to public records and
| other observations. This data is sold to police forces and
| governments and really anyone that would like the information. 1a
| protects this.
|
| So at least democrats are all about letting the free market do
| it.
| Spivak wrote:
| Worded correctly you can legally prevent police from accessing
| certain data even though 3rd parties. 1a doesn't mean shit when
| it comes so what's admissible in court. The law is about what
| police are allowed to hear not what people are allowed to say.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Why do you not want justice served for those that commit
| crimes?
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Open? That's the state of the world. It has been for a couple
| years, now. Police don't have their own tech, they just have
| subscriptions to clearview.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/18/magazine/faci...
| cavisne wrote:
| And the story above this one on HN
|
| "US government plans to develop AI that can unmask anonymous
| writers"
|
| This isn't about individual liberties, it's about centralizing
| enforcement at the federal level, where federal politicians can
| control it.
| exabrial wrote:
| How about license plate scanners too? And Civil forfeiture?
| megablast wrote:
| Every single car should be tracked at all times. Car are
| killing machines. Killing or sending to hospital over a million
| people a year in the USA alone.
| mminer237 wrote:
| What limitation would you want for license plate scanners? I
| know in my area they've been the key to solving half a dozen
| murders in the last year or two since they've been introduced.
| exabrial wrote:
| The ends do not justify the means, ever. Repeat this ad
| infinum.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Okay, but that doesn't answer the question. Would you want
| a complete ban? Privacy is a pretty nebulous concept. You
| obviously have to draw the line between privacy and
| security somewhere.
|
| You can say the ends don't ever matter, but generally
| things are a balancing act. Bodycams obviously reduce
| people's privacy, but the accountability provided was
| considered to justify it. Metal detectors obviously reduce
| people's privacy, but people justify that by the ends too.
|
| Typically in the US, we give up privacy rights to things
| done in public and not to things done in private unless if
| a judge agrees to a warrant.
|
| It's already legal for police to send out an amber alert
| and have everyone look for a license plate. How is that
| practically any different than flagging it in a computer
| and having it alert you automatically when it's viewable in
| a public place?
| monksy wrote:
| License plates are publicly available IDs that are annoymous to
| most of the public usage.
| findalex wrote:
| Haven't read but I'm gonna guess they don't consider federal law
| enforcement "police".
| narrator wrote:
| The FBI will have this power in spades though. They also have a
| 98% conviction rate.
|
| I think the federal government might be worried that local police
| could get too good at their jobs thanks to technology and that
| would create a state/federal power imbalance.
| tb_technical wrote:
| Good. We need to dismantle the tools that can be used to oppress
| the masses.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Do you have evidence that this tool is used to oppress masses
| in the US?
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| A lot of the things that came with the Patriot act have been
| used predominantly to arrest drug dealers.
| donatj wrote:
| The qualification was "can be", not "is". I think it's pretty
| self-evident that it can be.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Do you accept that facial recognition can be used to oppress
| the masses in the US?
| tb_technical wrote:
| Donatj is on point. I'm wary of government power and want to
| destroy tools that can be used to oppress people.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Empirical evidence isn't necessary for politicians to make
| decisions. This has been true since the time of the Greeks
| and applies to every politician in every party, without
| exception.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| > It would also require police departments and agencies to purge
| databases of photos of children who were subsequently released
| without charge, whose charges were dismissed or were acquitted.
|
| Feeling weird about the notion that law enforcement keeps photos
| of children who have had run-ins with the law but ultimately
| weren't convicted of any crime. Why would they even need to keep
| such photographs? Data retention == legal liability.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Data retention == legal liability"
|
| The government has ensured to give itself very little
| liability.
| stormbrew wrote:
| You assume police experience anything that can be called legal
| liability. There is rarely any consequence for abuse of power
| by police, because for the most part the people tasked with
| investigating any such abuses are either police or people who
| have a vested interest in keeping police happy.
|
| So they keep any data they can and hide any data that makes
| them look bad. It's always useful to them to point out the kid
| they just shot might have stolen a pack of gum in the past.
| skrowl wrote:
| This is the correct take here. Law enforcement, at least in
| the United States, often operates above the law, particular
| at the federal level.
|
| Pass all the laws you want, but they'll continue getting away
| with abuses of power.
| guelo wrote:
| In my experience I'd say particularly at the local level
| since there's usually much less oversight or training and
| more gun-ho attitude.
| ss108 wrote:
| More true at the local level than the Federal.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| It very much can be. The sheriff in the county I grew up
| in used to search people's property without a warrant and
| they weren't home. I remember my buddy's dad when I was a
| teen was growing a little marijuana deep in his
| cornfield. Buddy and I were home, his parents gone.
| Sheriff knocks on the door with the plants at his feet to
| tell us to tell his dad that he better not catch him
| growing anymore. I also remember others having similar
| experiences with them coming home to the sheriff looking
| through their sheds for a stolen ATV. No warrant, no
| nothing. And nobody ever did anything about him because
| he was too well connected with town leadership and county
| leadership. Small and rural areas can be heavily screwed
| up because the sheriff and many of the county
| commissioners or city councilmen or other people in local
| governance all went to highschool together. Nothing like
| an old good ol' boys network.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The thing about that is at least you have the feds to
| report to. If you have enough people file complaints with
| the FBI and DOJ, they _should_ end up looking into it.
| Usually the local guys don 't have connections that deep.
|
| On the other side, if it's just one or two complaints,
| then they won't do anything.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The sheriff definitely had the right to search the farm
| field, and possibly had the right to search in sheds
| without a warrant. I'm not a lawyer, but there is a
| Supreme Court case that defines what is and isn't
| protected on someone's property, the result of the case
| is the open fields doctrine. [0] Open fields are not
| protected by the 4th amendment, the shed may or may not
| have been protected.
|
| This is related to the common law concept of 'curtilage'.
| [1]
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hester_v._United_States
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtilage
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| It also sounds like the sherrif chose NOT to prosecute,
| and tried to handle the matter informally - I think this
| is just good policing unless it's only certain social or
| ethnic groups that get the benefit of the doubt in these
| kind of circumstances
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| Here's a story about the FBI stealing $80 million after
| lying to a judge:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-23/fbi-
| beve...
| ss108 wrote:
| Here is one anecdote in contradiction? ok
|
| (fair enough, since it's not like I provided any support
| either lol)
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Absolutely, most likely nobody can make a call on
| corruption % but the FBI seems to make arrests in the low
| 10s of thousands / year max at the highest[0] while the
| total number of arrests tends to be ~10M minimum in a
| normal year
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/745456/number-of-
| fbi-arr... [1]
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191261/number-of-
| arrests...
| techdmn wrote:
| The town I grew up (about 10k people, in the midwest) had
| exactly one bike cop. I don't recall his real name, but
| everybody called him Lurch. The story was that when he was
| new, he spent a day speed trapping outside the police
| station, and giving other cops speeding tickets. They took
| away his squad car, and he was a bike cop forever after.
| I'm not sure what he did when there were three feet of snow
| on the ground.
|
| Anyway, when I heard that story, it was a joke about how
| dumb Lurch was. As a grown up, this is a story about how
| local law enforcement is above the law, and how they
| punished an officer who challenged that.
| eftychis wrote:
| I mean nobody is expected to investigate their own group.
| That is why things like judges/courts, prosecutors,
| civil/town/city observation groups and federal agencies
| are there.
|
| The problem arises when you have cases like:
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/lawsuit-claims-
| loveland... (series of false DUI arrest to bring in cash)
| and the whole police department is not raided on the
| spot.
|
| Courts just drop cases because: a) qualified immunity and
| b) an "allergy" to having the D.A. and other agencies
| step in and do the investigation.
|
| P.S. Hold your D.A. accountable in your area when you
| hear things like that. It is more important in the long
| run to have a few less street criminals behind bars and
| more corrupt "apples" in.
|
| Edit: typo
| Animats wrote:
| > I mean nobody is expected to investigate their own
| group. That is why things like judges/courts,
| prosecutors, civil/town/city observation groups and
| federal agencies are there.
|
| Maybe we need a setup where local cops are investigated
| by the FBI, the FBI and CIA are investigated by DoD's
| Navy NCIS or Army CID, DoD is investigated by Homeland
| Security or Treasury, and Homeland Security is
| investigated by local cops. It's hard to collude around
| that big a loop.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People around the NYC area openly drive around with fake
| badges mounted on their windshield to indicate they know
| a cop and should get preferable treatment. And cop unions
| openly advertise handing out cop union support stickers
| in exchange for donation.
|
| Very in your face corruption.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I know a career opiate addict who has about a dozen of
| those stickers on their car, many on top of each other.
| Like they truly believe each sticker reduces their chance
| of not looking like a total suck up
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why does any organization keep 90% of the data that they have.
| It's all a liability. Either they are required to keep it by
| law, or they are making money selling it or mining it for
| others.
| ortusdux wrote:
| My local PD growing up would have kids in for field trips and
| one of the 'activities' was getting fingerprinted.
| [deleted]
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Wait til you find out the widespread practice of getting a
| baby's footprint on the birth certificate! Maybe those fade
| or change more with time, I don't actually know.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| This was my first thought when I heard (after the fact) that
| the police visited my kids daycare. I was livid with the
| director, but it looks like the cops in my Bay Area town are
| a little more restrained
| wl wrote:
| There's a pretty big difference between doing an FBI
| fingerprint card to show kids the process and send home vs.
| submitting that card to a database.
|
| With the advent of live scan, that distinction may have
| disappeared, though.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| For my age demographic, the US went through a kidnapping
| moral panic when I was young and that's why people let their
| kids get mass-fingerprinted. It was very "We must do
| something. This is something, therefore let's do it"
| thinking.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As boy scouts, we set up a booth at the local Dairy Queen
| to get fingerprints for kids if their parents wanted it. A
| lot of parents did indeed want it. Can't remember exactly
| what year it was, but early/mid 80s sounds about right.
| jandrese wrote:
| It would be interesting to know the statistics on how many
| missing children have been identified by the fingerprints
| they filed with the local PD over the decades.
| kingkawn wrote:
| And how many times this data was used for other purposes
| by the PD
| giantg2 wrote:
| I've been finger printed a few times. More and more jobs
| require it - SEC, security work, schools, etc. Some states
| require it for the exercise of specific rights. It seems
| likely that at least 50% of people have been fingerprinted
| by the age of 30, likely higher.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| See also: The boy scout fingerprinting merit badge, which
| local police departments are naturally happy to assist with.
|
| The original requirements from 1938 included _" Obtain the
| fingerprints of 5 persons and present evidence that these
| fingerprints, together with complete descriptive data, have
| been accepted for the civil identification file."_
|
| https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2021/08/09/merit-badge-
| his...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Palo Alto local police definitely do this; also require
| fingerprinting/recording (at least) of any new massage parlor
| employees, among other things
| elliekelly wrote:
| WHAT. For what purpose? I mean, I know the _real_ reason is
| prostitution but what's the justification they use? This is
| so insane I don't even want to believe it's true.
| Alupis wrote:
| It's probably not the fingerprinting you're thinking of.
|
| More likely it's the Live Scan system, which is a thorough
| background check that touches with DOJ and others, etc. It
| does include finger/palm scanning but also much more.
|
| Think of it like a very thorough background check.
|
| If you have a criminal background, ever been in trouble, or
| have known criminal associates, it'll turn up on the Live
| Scan.
|
| So yes, the real reason is probably anti-prostitution and
| anti-sex trafficking - and they probably don't hide that
| fact I would imagine.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if they save the Live Scan.
| Alupis wrote:
| Of course they do. That's part of the Live Scan system.
| It's a background profile of sorts. Teachers, field trip
| chaperones, certain licensees and many more folks have to
| get one done.
| rr888 wrote:
| > The use of facial recognition has grown in recent years,
| despite fears that the technology is flawed, disproportionately
| misidentifies people of color (which has led to wrongful arrests)
| and harms civil liberties, but is still deployed against
| protesters, for investigating minor crimes and used to justify
| arrests of individuals from a single face match.
|
| I feel like I'm the only peron where who doesn't see a problem
| with Police having access to facial recognition. Its not like
| anything used right now is accurate, eg eyewitnesses. If it
| really is unreliable it shouldn't be used as a sole basis to
| arrest people, I'd expect a civil suit if that really happened.
| However just because some police mis-used it doesn't mean it
| should be banned.
| wang_li wrote:
| You're not the only person who thinks this. It's just a tool,
| people who think police shouldn't properly use a useful tool
| are morons.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I agree.. I think the length of the time the data is stored
| and who has access to it and whether that access is audited
| or not are the important factors to legislate on.
|
| If it can still be useful while protecting the rights of the
| citizens, then why should the police not use it? If it can't
| be useful with these protections in place, then why would the
| police spend money on it?
| SilverBirch wrote:
| The problem with technology is it allows abuse on scale. Yes,
| there can be racist cops. But if you buy in technology that's
| racist, suddenly _every_ cop is using a racist profiling
| system. In a similar way, yes, eye witnesses can be mistaken,
| but we know that, it 's far more difficult to argue "oh this
| billion dollar AI machine is mistaken, oh actually they've
| threatened to sue me no they aren't".
|
| >If it really is unreliable it shouldn't be used as a sole
| basis to arrest people,
|
| It seems like you do get it.
|
| > I'd expect a civil suit if that really happened.
|
| That's not how the law works in the US. Just spend some time
| reading up on sovereign immunity. The likelihood of any police
| officer being punished for wrong-dooring is 0.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| This seems like a good rule. Warrants are good. Outlawing using
| it to ID peaceful protestors is good.
|
| While the points about facial recognition misidentifying black
| people are true, I'd rather it rely only on the civil rights
| issues associated with it working and not tie it to
| misidentifying minorities. That's a situation where in 5 years
| "it works on black people now, kay" is the argument to overturn
| the law.
| colechristensen wrote:
| At this point I'm thinking "Thou shalt not make a machine in
| the likeness of a human mind" would be a good constitutional
| amendment.
|
| That is, if a reasonable number of humans couldn't do it, the
| government can't do it with computers against its population.
| everforward wrote:
| I think that's probably far too broad. E.g. I don't have a
| problem with the IRS using computers to calculate how much
| people owe in taxes based on the info they collect. The
| number of people it would take to do that manually might be
| unreasonable. W-2 info has to be to the IRS by Jan 31st,
| taxes are due April 15th, that's 51 days to generate a couple
| hundred million tax return numbers.
|
| Federal payroll is something else that would probably take an
| unreasonable number of people to manage manually.
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| If taxes can't be done in paper with basic math, then it's
| too complicated.
|
| Automating it just makes everyone unknowing victims to the
| tax corruption congress persists in.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| In the sci-fi universe being quoted, they used drug-
| enhanced humans for all calculation after narrowly averting
| an AI based catastrophe. Honestly, I'm finding it pretty
| prescient stuff for 1965 myself.
| delecti wrote:
| > E.g. I don't have a problem with the IRS using computers
| to calculate how much people owe in taxes
|
| Or the census, which was an early adopter of computers
| (give or take your definition of a computer), because not
| doing so was taking almost the full 10 years between
| censuses.
|
| https://www.census.gov/history/www/innovations/technology/t
| a...
| danjoredd wrote:
| Its a quote from Dune. IDK if OP is being serious or not.
| Basically AI similar to human intelligence has been banned,
| and hyper-intelligent humans called "Mentats" have largely
| replaced computers, and help navigate ships through space,
| as well as complete complex math and probability problems.
| They are also often used as advisors.
| BEEdwards wrote:
| >and help navigate ships through space
|
| the spacing guild handles ships, they do train their
| minds, but not in the same way as mentats. They use spice
| melange's prescient powers to navigate more than maths.
| eunos wrote:
| In 20xx, aggreagating billion points of data is illegal due
| to reasonable number of humans couldn't do it.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Define reasonable. In practice, the government defines it
| based on salary and budget feasiblity, rather than
| difficulty.
|
| I'm not concerned about facial ID getting my face wrong, as
| in a human couldn't be hired to do the same, I'm concerned
| about it costing fractions of a penny and the government
| doing it everywhere all the time.
|
| There should be quantitative restrictions on minor rights
| violations that become major rights violations, even if
| they're sufficiently minor to be reasonable when done once by
| a human being in a way that costs the government 10,000 times
| more than having it done by a computer.
| kingkawn wrote:
| We'll need Mentats
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| how is a machine that does something "a reasonable number of
| humans _couldn 't_ do" "in the likeness of a human mind"?
| colechristensen wrote:
| Many AI systems these days are adequate counterfeit humans
| in ways that adding machines and spreadsheets (and advanced
| systems that reduce to these things) are not.
|
| In other words, computers interpreting things in ways that
| counterfeit humans or computers generating things that
| counterfeit humans needs to be banned for government use.
|
| I'm not talking about banning the steam shovel but systems
| where it becomes difficult to determine whether or not a
| human did it.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Lets figure out how to make mentats and ban robots. That way
| we can expand the human mind like crazy and see how far we
| can take our own mental abilities
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The sad thing is that our constitutional right to privacy is
| nowhere near as broad as our modern understanding, and that's
| exactly why the Supreme Court was able to get away with the crap
| it did when they ruled against the precedent Roe v Wade.
|
| Not only should we have an amendment that ensures that we have a
| reasonable right to privacy, but it should include a right to
| privacy from the government even if the data collected is by a
| third party.
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