[HN Gopher] NYPD can use more than 15,000 cameras to track peopl...
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NYPD can use more than 15,000 cameras to track people using facial
recognition
Author : raybb
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-01-15 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.amnesty.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.amnesty.org)
| algog wrote:
| Is the MTA doing this at its subway turnstiles? Everyday I see
| people just walk thru the open gates or jump right thru without
| paying. I feel like a chump for paying.
| mdni007 wrote:
| Another reason to mask up
| sschueller wrote:
| I am so glad many cities and even Cantons in Switzerland have
| decided that such a thing should not be permitted. [1] Such a
| distopian future is not something people want anywhere.
|
| I assume it is still legal in NYC to wear clothing or head gear
| that would make face recognition difficult if not impossible?
|
| [1] https://www.gesichtserkennung-stoppen.ch/news/grosse-erfolge
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Crime is one of the most important voting issues. Republicans
| had a resurgence in NYC because of it.
| edge17 wrote:
| Alternatively one could say Democrats lost ground for being
| too soft on it.
|
| Seriously though, your comment makes it sound like
| Republicans benefit from high crime. No one benefits from
| high crime.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Or rather they weren't soft enough. Republicans are just
| cruel and unjust because that usually benefits those in the
| in-group. Democrats compromise so much they are left with
| the worst of both worlds.
|
| They couldn't decriminalize drugs enough or enable world
| class social welfare programs when they did get majority
| control over legislature. But voters are ultimately to
| blame, they want their cake and to it too.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > But voters are ultimately to blame, they want their
| cake and to it too.
|
| As a voter, you're given the choice between terrible and
| truly awful. No matter which you choose, it's your fault?
|
| Frankly, when I buy a new kind of underarm deodorant and
| later I stink, I feel I'm more to blame than I am for my
| political vote and any lack-of-outcome. And I'm inundated
| with deodorant choices - it's harder to pick.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| I don't think republicans want this. I think all they want is
| the criminals already identified or caught to actually be
| prosecuted and not released back on the streets.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Republican voters want whatever "get tough on crime" aligns
| with. "Repeal bail reform Derp Derp"
|
| The "freedom" stuff is bullshit and narrowly scoped.
| badrabbit wrote:
| They are politicians, they want to look tough on crime no
| matter the cost. They make the laws. War on drugs is their
| creation, half the criminals are created by them. Rudi got
| popular because stop-and-frisk in NYC, for no legitimate
| reason cops would stop random people and frisk them. This
| social classist hostility where crime is what the fund-
| raising class it is and the solution is hostility against
| "those people" who are the least likely to be in their
| party is their MO.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| algog wrote:
| Just wear a cap, shades, and a covid mask.
| quazar wrote:
| Illegal + doesn't work against modern solutions incorporating
| e.g. gait analysis.
| minkowski wrote:
| I didn't check if this research is still pursued or abandoned
| due to the rise of face recognition and other metric
| learning/re-identification technologies, but a few years ago a
| number of faculty at ETH Zurich were quite heavily involved in
| researching CCTV-based person tracking, which would work even
| against people taking measures against face or gait recognition
| algorithms if they weren't able to leave the CCTV-covered area.
| It was insinuated that various external state agencies, not all
| Switzerland-based, were specifically funding this research.
|
| So, while the citizens might not want it, faculty seem
| perfectly happy to keep developing such technology for other
| clients.
| carom wrote:
| Link to the research?
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| The normalization of face-masks in public have been amazing for
| aiding anonymity.
| kwere wrote:
| too bad one can be identified also from the way they walks
| [0]
|
| [0]https://www.cnet.com/science/china-surveillance-tech-ids-
| peo...
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Not if they apply https://github.com/topics/gait-analysis &
|
| https://github.com/topics/gait-recognition
|
| https://securitytoday.com/articles/2018/11/12/new-
| surveillan...
|
| https://recfaces.com/articles/what-is-gait-recognition
|
| If they (can) do so ATM (at large scale and in real time) is
| another matter, but only a question of time, IMO.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Not sure how effective it would be in reality, but in Cory
| Doctorow's _Little Brother_ they work around gait analysis
| by putting some pebbles in their shoes.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| As a temporary means of distraction, maybe. But it
| wouldn't really change the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinematics, ratio of joint
| to limb length, and so on. You'd just sway a little bit
| different, but not that much.
|
| Then there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-
| area_motion_imagery AKA
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare ,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS , the digital
| signature of your gadgets in the EM-spectrum, where their
| sudden 'disapperance' might raise flags, leading to
| 'replay' of the region for further analysis.
|
| But there is always hope in rising incompetence of ever
| growing institutions and organisations, hollowed out from
| the insides by the parasites they attract.
| brk wrote:
| FTFA: "Data on commercial cameras available at the time suggest
| that it is likely to be a Pan, Tilt, and Zoom (PTZ) model
| containing a 6-134 mm varifocal lens able to film at 4K or 8
| megapixel resolution."
|
| This is so wildly inaccurate that it really makes this whole
| thing seem highly suspicious.
|
| The average CCTV camera in a municipal deployment, especially
| ones from several years ago, would be a fixed 1080p camera with
| an adjustable 4-8mm lens, which is set at a fixed focal point
| upon installation. In other words, not a PTZ, not a long range
| lens. The mounting height is usually 10+ feet high, which overall
| makes it really poor for face recognition purposes.
|
| This is not to say that many of these cameras cannot capture at
| least _some_ faces with a level of detail that is sufficient for
| face-rec, but this camera network is nowhere near the ability to
| track a person /their movements throughout the city.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Based on being on an NYC grand jury where we had to watch a
| fair amount of NYPD submitted surveillance footage:
|
| - NYPD uses PTZ, and the mount points aren't always fixed.
| They're also on poles which are connected to a mobile platform
| that is then deployed onto sidewalks / in parks etc.
|
| - Ability to track across multiple cameras exists today (this
| is intended to address density of cameras, not how tracking is
| done). However, there was no clear indication how automated
| this was. We were simply shown "Suspect on camera 1, and then
| you see them leave frame, and here they are on camera 2"
|
| - Faces could be seen fairly clearly even at night in a
| decently lit park setting.
|
| My gut feel was that as the hardware improves, 100% automated
| tracking of everyone is only a question of when.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| New Haven, the city where Yale is and a much poorer city than
| NYC had PTZ surveillance cameras deployed when I lived there
| close to a decade ago.
|
| Cities can afford PTZ cameras and the backends to store
| mountains of high quality footage, the average small town
| municipality can't
| brk wrote:
| There will almost always be _some_ PTZs, but they are more of
| the exception than the rule. Also, when they are PTZs, they
| will tend to have smaller imagers and be 1080p max in
| previous eras (4K is more common in the last couple of
| years). The assumption that article makes about these cameras
| all likely to be 4K or 8K PTZs with the longest lens options
| is just absolutely wrong.
| jahnu wrote:
| Reminded of Person of Interest
|
| Pretty entertaining show actually.
| gaetgu wrote:
| I came here to say this. As time goes on I see more and more
| real tech that mirrors what is in the show, albeit without a
| controlling super-AI behind it all.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Great. And they still can't catch that guy who robbed the bodega
| on the corner, and people casually ride the subway without paying
| every day.
|
| NYC's latest shooter turned himself in, the cops couldn't even
| handle that: https://abcnews.go.com/US/nyc-police-search-gunman-
| brooklyn-...
| caditinpiscinam wrote:
| Public transit should be free
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| [flagged]
| Benjammer wrote:
| Do you say this about the road crews who build and maintain
| public streets and highways? What about the parks
| department? Should I pay a fee to enter Central Park for
| the day? Why can't public transit be a government service?
| Does everything need to be financialized?
| ninkendo wrote:
| We can't operate it on love, hugs, and hope, but we can
| probably operate it on tax dollars.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| So then, it isn't free. You just want someone else to pay
| for it.
| ninkendo wrote:
| If you interpret caditinpiscinam's comment so
| uncharitably that you think they really think public
| transit _really can_ cost zero dollars to anyone, you
| probably have a very frustrating time interacting with
| others.
|
| They very clearly meant "you don't have to pay at time of
| use, it's paid by tax dollars", and nearly everyone who
| reads that comment would interpret it that way. There's
| no reason to pick the _dumbest, most braindead_
| interpretations of such comments just to make yourself
| feel smart. You could have just thought "they probably
| mean taxpayer-paid" and then moved on.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Or everyone, in this case.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Yeah. I do. Just like I don't expect to pay for my
| firefighter and I don't expect to pay the actual cost of
| implanting internet and electricity wiring in the street.
| I don't expect to pay the salary of the science, math,
| literature, etc. teachers, not even the school nurse.
|
| In fact when it comes to schools I am the someone else
| paying for it, because my children aren't in every school
| at all times. And I'm fine with it.
|
| I frankly find this attitude that social benefits should
| be pushed back on because not everyone is partaking in
| the social benefit at the same time to be frankly
| hypocritical to communicate on the internet, a technology
| I certainly didn't pay the salaries of the mathematicians
| and engineers for.
| ergonaught wrote:
| I like these kinds of responses.
|
| So you suggest we pay them with what, exactly?
|
| With gold coins? With fruits harvested from the vast fields
| of money trees?
|
| Or maybe with the collective consensus illusion of funds
| fabricated by "government" for the use of its citizens?
|
| Money isn't a real thing. Money is not a real thing. There
| is no such thing as money.
|
| Public services can be paid for with the same thing
| everything else is paid for: the surrounding social system
| ("government") saying that it's paid.
|
| People are so deeply invested and locked into maintaining
| their grasp of the illusion of how things really are that
| they cannot fathom "the way things are" is completely
| invented and almost always subject to change if people
| would just stop maintaining the illusion.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Why and how?
|
| Edit:
|
| 1.What will be the second and higher order consequences? See
| the student loan crisis and ballooning costs of higher Ed due
| to admin bloat.
|
| 2. Is it fair in a society with more free basics to require
| more responsibility from the public?
|
| 3. It is easy and popular to mandate feel good stuff than
| reason about that mandate.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| The benefits of subsidizing public transit are obvious:
| less congested roads, more economic activity, fewer cars
| polluting the city.
|
| Free public transit is just the same idea taken to the
| extreme.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > 2. Is it fair in a society with more free basics to
| require more responsibility from the public?
|
| I was curious what you were thinking with your second
| question above, in the context of free public transit. I
| wondered if the need for responsibility would be a wash
| when comparing transit vs driving, affecting both?
| warning26 wrote:
| It's nice sentiment, but studies have found that making
| transit free just tends to cause existing transit users to
| ride transit more frequently for shorter distances (instead
| of walking) but doesn't tend to encourage _new_ users of
| transit.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| What time period did they do the studies on? Suppose I
| drive a car because it has some advantages over paid public
| transit. Now when they make public transit free, I still
| have my car. I'm not likely to switch within a short time
| period. When it comes to moving home, getting a new job or
| a new car then I may become a new user of transit.
| getcrunk wrote:
| Studies paid for by who? The car lobby
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| It makes transit more accessible to people without money.
|
| And it saves a good chunk of money on fare collection,
| processing, and enforcement.
|
| Thankfully, since the beginning of the pandemic, most mass
| transit in the U.S. is de-facto payment-optional.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The problem then being that it becomes so over used and
| underfunded it collapses...
| smlavine wrote:
| In many cities I think that this is a good idea, but in New
| York I worry about how effective this would be because of the
| outsized number of non-resident, non-tax-paying riders
| (tourists) who use the system.
| godelski wrote:
| Interestingly there has been a parallel conversation with
| EVs since money for road maintenance typically comes
| through gasoline taxes. The idea being that the more you
| use the more you pay (more driving == more gas, heavier
| vehicles == lower mpg, etc).
| [deleted]
| wongarsu wrote:
| Wouldn't you want tourists to travel as efficiently as
| possible so they leave lots of money at various places
| (which the city participates in via sales tax)
| algog wrote:
| I'd want locals to travel as efficiently as possible too-
| to get to their jobs.
| wittenbunk wrote:
| Tourists pay sales tax, Uber tax hotel tax etc
| jrockway wrote:
| I'm completely fine subsidizing tourists' use of the
| system. Every subway ride is one less rideshare ride; less
| rideshare rides mean more space for buses, bikes, and
| people walking. Well worth the tax paid!
|
| That farebox revenue needs to cover operational costs for
| public infrastructure seems just crazy to me. The fire
| department doesn't need to make a profit on putting out
| fires. Public parks don't need to make money by charging an
| admission fee. It's just something we pay for for public
| good. I'm pretty sure that public transportation fares are
| something nobody has ever really thought about; the
| networks used to be run by private companies, and when they
| were taken over by the government (which put them out of
| businesses by building highways) nobody ever thought to get
| rid of the fares. It's certainly time to think about it.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Tourist tax. Like when you check-in to your hotel they ask
| you to pay 15 euro.
| mattnewton wrote:
| This already exists, and there are various excise taxes
| the city levels on things tourists are likely to consume
| too.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Most of the tourists will be paying a nightly hotel tax
| (which could be adjusted).
| chmod775 wrote:
| > non-tax-paying riders (tourists)
|
| They're literally carrying money into the local economy,
| yet one should worry about them getting a free ride on the
| subway along with everyone else?
|
| A taxpayer may need months to generate the same amount of
| wealth a tourist leaves behind in a single week.
|
| Making public transport free/cheap for _only_ tourists
| would make more sense. In fact some places do just that
| (usually bundled with discounts /tickets to popular
| attractions).
| [deleted]
| qwezxcrty wrote:
| Cities in Mainland China have comparable density of cameras, if
| not more. And there's no mechanism to stop the police or the
| Chinese three letter agencies using them for facial recognition.
| Pretty scary.
| IanDrake wrote:
| [dead]
| walterbell wrote:
| NYC has several thousand LinkNYC kiosks run by Google's Sidewalk
| Labs, located on major streets,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18024123 &
| https://cryptome.org/2016/06/linknyc-spy-kiosks-installation...
|
| _> Each kiosk has three cameras, 30 sensors, and heightened
| sight lines for viewing above crowds ... According to privacy
| watchdogs, the rollout of the kiosk's cameras have shown how the
| mission has already expanded beyond its initial purview. In 2016,
| LinkNYC disclosed that the kiosks "may" contain cameras; by 2017,
| the cameras were operational. LinkNYC's privacy policy states
| that cameras do not keep video records for more than seven days
| and that the camera footage is used to "improve the services."
| But opting out is not an option: Just by walking down the block,
| it is possible to be swept into its audio or video feeds, which
| can capture a nearly 360-degree view of their surroundings._
|
| The new LinkNYC kiosks include a sizable 5G antenna,
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/nyregion/nyc-5g-towers.ht...
|
| _> A curiously futuristic tower recently appeared on the corner
| of Putnam and Bedford Avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
| neighborhood of Brooklyn. A gray column topped by a perforated
| casing, at a whopping 32 feet tall, it reaches higher than the
| three-story brick building behind it ... a cylindrical object
| roughly the size of a human being: a 5G antenna that is 63 inches
| tall and 21 inches in diameter, according to the company. It is
| accompanied by a box that is 38 inches high, 16 inches wide and
| 14 inches deep -- about the size of a filing cabinet or a night
| stand._
| jmkb wrote:
| Currently only 2009 LinkNYCs, according to
| https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Social-Services/LinkNYC-Map/tg...
|
| My assumption is that these kiosks log all wifi and bluetooth
| traffic from nearby persons and vehicles, and USB device IDs of
| anything plugged in for charging. And of course the new ones
| will be logging 5G signals as well. Maybe there's not yet a
| centralized effort to coordinate these logs with the camera
| feeds to map people's physical appearance to their electronic
| footprints, but I can't imagine it isn't somewhere on the
| roadmap.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _London Sez:_
|
| "15,000 cameras? Heh. That's cute. Hold my lager."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| (Hold my bitter more like, lager is more popular in the US :) )
| nemo44x wrote:
| On one hand it might allow for softer and safer police practices.
| With ample video evidence and AI to recognize suspects, they can
| be apprehended at a time and place that's safer for everyone.
|
| End of the day this is the price being paid for unfettered
| rioting and the increase in petty crime since then. There's just
| no way that is going to be allowed to happen again. Extensive
| camera networks and AI will deliver summary reports of top
| suspects that police will be assigned to apprehend with real-time
| location data sent to nearest units hours, days, or even months
| after the crime.
|
| They might not get you for a few small shop lifting infractions
| but the cameras will watch and record and once you cross a
| threshold ($1000 In property?) you'll make it into the summary
| report and face justice.
| raybb wrote:
| > our modelling suggests have the capacity to track faces from as
| far as 200 metres away (or up to 2 blocks).
|
| Does anyone know how true this is? I watched the video and it's
| pretty convincing but compared to the security footage so often
| seen in the news this seems like it would be insanely high
| resolution.
| brk wrote:
| See my other comment, it's basically not true at all, IMO.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| I thought such footage is bad quality because nobody wants to
| store months of 4k footage of tarmac. Maybe they process it
| immediately for facial recognition, then store a lower
| resolution version? Or they just use AI "enhancement" and
| pretend they got the right guy.
| tylerag wrote:
| Or just use AI to detect faces (without recognizing them),
| and store the high resolution faces for later processing.
| 6177c40f wrote:
| Has anyone ever done research to see if pervasive use of facial
| recognition has any real effect on reducing crime?
| sosborn wrote:
| It's not really about decreasing crime. It's really about
| increasing convictions (for better or worse).
| medler wrote:
| This is the part I don't understand. In the past decades
| surveillance tech has become more pervasive, and police
| funding has continued to increase. Yet the percent of
| homicides "cleared" by police has dropped from 90% to 50%
| over the past 50 years. All this surveillance, and somehow
| police continue getting worse at solving crimes
| lesuorac wrote:
| > All this surveillance, and somehow police continue
| getting worse at solving crimes
|
| Be careful with this line of thinking.
|
| "cleared" generally means either an arrest was made (not a
| conviction) or they would've made an arrest but weren't
| able to (i.e. suspect died). A drop of a clearance rate
| just means it dropped. It only means cops in the past
| arrested people more often not that they actually arrested
| (or convicted) the correct people.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I'm curious as to what elements of policing have been the
| beneficiaries of increased funding. I'd love to see a
| budget and staffing breakdown of a police department from
| the 70s to now. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's not
| the investigative side that's grown hugely. I may well be
| wrong though, and just showing my bias.
| bnralt wrote:
| Increasing video coverage doesn't simply mean people are
| more likely to be imprisoned; it can also be used to prove
| innocence as well. Here's an example of a guy who was able
| to prove his innocence because he was captured on tape at a
| baseball game[1].
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-
| radio/2017/sep/29/larry-d...
| jrockway wrote:
| It's possible that people are getting better at committing
| crimes at a faster rate than police are getting better at
| solving crimes. Maybe if we teleported today's average
| police department to the 1800s, the % of cleared homicides
| would be 100%. Who knows.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'd expect increasing convictions and increasing the
| perceived likelihood of being convicted would both be
| negatively correlated with future crime levels.
| sosborn wrote:
| Why? I mean, intuitively it makes some sense, but harsh
| penalties for drugs in the U.S. haven't really dented
| demand.
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