[HN Gopher] Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonpl...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police
       use soars
        
       Author : c-oreills
       Score  : 101 points
       Date   : 2025-05-24 17:03 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | Teever wrote:
       | This is unavoidable and the only way to mitigate the negatives is
       | sousveillance.[0]
       | 
       | I reject claims by law enforcement that this will lead to making
       | their lives less safe and that they will need to take steps to
       | mitigate it including wearing masks and not giving out their
       | names.[1]
       | 
       | In small towns of old every knew the police and judge, where they
       | lived and which schools their children attended because their
       | kids may have even sat next to them in class. This was fine and
       | served as a moderating force for the worst impulses of law
       | enforcement.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance [1]
       | https://calgaryherald.com/news/calgary-police-service-doxing...
        
         | swayvil wrote:
         | Who gets to be anonymous and who doesn't? Cops or regular
         | people? Mods or users?
         | 
         | And there's the separation between public and private
         | conversation too. Where do we draw that line?
         | 
         | I had a post removed the other day. The moderator's identity
         | (or psuedoidentity) remained hidden. Mine didn't of course. The
         | conversation over his motive and actions remained hidden from
         | public view too.
         | 
         | And that seems bad to me.
         | 
         | So ya, that line.
        
           | perching_aix wrote:
           | The sousveillance GP suggests seems to address exactly that
           | kind of asymmetry, if even just partially. Or do I
           | misunderstand what you're getting at?
        
         | SoftTalker wrote:
         | This was true of pretty much everyone in small towns of old, or
         | even in city neighborhoods of old. Everyone knew each other, or
         | at least knew a stranger when they saw one. People saw who was
         | talking to whom, and gossiped about it.
        
         | worldsayshi wrote:
         | People will be more likely to carry surveillance capitalism
         | devices than devices that store data for some idea of public
         | good.
         | 
         | This world being us closer to the solution: build ecosystems
         | where data is stored in s way that is owned by the community
         | rather than a company.
        
           | perching_aix wrote:
           | In Russia of all places, internet companies maintain the city
           | webcams and locals can tune in on-demand. Had a Discord mate
           | show it to me. Although from a hosting and technical
           | standpoint, this is still squarely in the centralized
           | ownership terroritory, but the idea is there.
        
         | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
         | Not sure how well that would work.
         | 
         | When Yugoslavia disintegrated, and old ethnic hatreds flared
         | up, neighbors for decades, would suddenly rat out or attack
         | their neighbors. Same with Rwanda.
        
         | aerostable_slug wrote:
         | I don't think sousveillance will do a thing to avoid the
         | following scenario:
         | 
         | The criminal underclass becomes even more 'under' as fairly
         | large numbers (integer percentage of the population) of people
         | are forced to avoid known camera locations. All of a sudden
         | someone's kid can't take the bus to work/school because they
         | have a failure to appear warrant stemming from apprehension in
         | a flashmob or participation in a sideshow or some other
         | 'lifestyle' crime associated with certain ethicities, which
         | inevitably adds to the political spice level. Essentially
         | everyone in certain areas will start wearing shiesties/masks,
         | which is unlikely to ease tensions. Involvement with the
         | criminal justice system will now carry even more of a 'weight'
         | as being flagged by the system can happen anywhere, not just in
         | traffic stops.
         | 
         | You'll have massive complaints when accountability comes
         | crashing down on the significant population of Americans who
         | are frequent fliers with the criminal justice system. This will
         | be true even if cameras only alert on known faces in preloaded
         | databases (e.g. active warrants), something that's going to be
         | pretty hard to argue against with most of the standard
         | arguments used against license plate readers -- hard to argue a
         | violation of privacy if it only alerts on known bad guys and
         | doesn't keep any history.
         | 
         | And in terms of sousveillance, plenty of people would happily
         | stand up and claim credit for a system that alerts only on
         | known 'bad guys,' so deanonymizing them won't work. Further,
         | it's really hard for politicians argue against it when the
         | counterargument is "you literally want to protect known
         | murderers, kidnappers, and child molesters from being
         | apprehended."
        
       | Oarch wrote:
       | Will they ban all types of face coverings? I couldn't imagine
       | this happening in the UK, it's too culturally sensitive.
       | 
       | In which case, what good does it do?
        
         | n8cpdx wrote:
         | Plenty of criminals don't bother covering their faces. Even
         | when they plan their crime in advance and know there are
         | cameras.
        
         | FredPret wrote:
         | What about gait recognition
        
           | ris wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_of_Silly_Walks
        
             | dghlsakjg wrote:
             | https://xkcd.com/1105/
        
         | titzer wrote:
         | Yes, except "law" enforcement. In scare quotes because there
         | will be no law.
        
       | kwertyoowiyop wrote:
       | This will make murder mystery shows harder to write. Even now
       | they usually put in some line about how they don't have traffic
       | camera coverage in the critical area, and they ignore getting
       | location data from suspects' phones.
        
         | tough wrote:
         | AI generated deepfakes solve this you can't trust the cameras
         | footage now
        
         | cortesoft wrote:
         | I have always thought that futuristic police state movies and
         | shows underestimate how oppressive a fully capable, automated
         | surveillance apparatus could be.
         | 
         | Movies like Minority Report try to show the surveillance state
         | as being a struggle to overcome, but it is still always too
         | easy. Computers don't get distracted, scale perfectly, and can
         | run 24-7. You can't just sneak away with your head down,
         | because the machines would have tracked you into a place, would
         | know exactly who is in every building, and would be able to
         | associate the person exiting a building with the person who
         | went in. They wont forget.
        
           | matthewdgreen wrote:
           | Look at how quickly the cops tracked Luigi Mangione. It's not
           | clear how much face recognition (as opposed to manual search)
           | contributed to that, but even for a person who wore a mask,
           | all it took was a slip up where he took the mask off in one
           | place.
           | 
           | I am not saying this is a bad thing in the case of a pre-
           | planned murder. But it does make it obvious how hard it might
           | be to evade notice in the future, assuming you are doing it
           | for more legitimate privacy reasons.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | If you go into a building and change clothes, they will not
           | remember. Of course, we're assuming that the place you went
           | into does not have cameras accessible to the system. At some
           | point, building codes/permits will start requiring cameras
           | specifically to feed into this system.
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | Changing clothes does nothing against gait recognition.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Change your shoes with a rock/tack in one of them. Tie
               | your laces together. There's all sorts of ways to change
               | your gait
        
               | cortesoft wrote:
               | Well, then the system could flag you because it doesn't
               | know who you are. Someone walks out of a building with a
               | gait that doesn't match the gait of anyone known to have
               | entered the building. It would follow the person to the
               | next building and the next, until it figures out who they
               | are via the process of elimination (or if it see you go
               | back to your normal gait). Then, the system would note
               | (and store forever) that you have multiple gaits, and
               | would never fall for the trick again.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | you have way more confidence in AI than I do. "never fall
               | for the trick again" bwahahaha. it can't even tell the
               | same answer twice, or tell you the correct answer the
               | first time for everything.
        
               | cortesoft wrote:
               | This wouldn't have to be AI. I think you are
               | underestimating how good tracking systems already are,
               | and will continue to improve, and become cheaper and
               | cheaper to deploy.
        
             | cortesoft wrote:
             | If the system sees someone exit a building and that person
             | does not match someone the system saw enter the building,
             | the person could be flagged and tracked as possibly being
             | someone else who entered the building. Once the system
             | accounts for everyone else who entered the building (by
             | seeing when they exit), the system would be able to
             | correlate that the unknown person who exited is the same as
             | the only unaccounted for person who exited
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | If that building in an apartment building? Someone from
               | an apartment building might not enter before leaving on
               | the same day. How far back in the camera's history does
               | the system look for that person entering?
        
               | cortesoft wrote:
               | This is the point... computers can watch 24/7 and never
               | forget or get distracted. The system could look weeks
               | back, and will never forget a person.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | until someone finds that certain cameras are unavailable,
               | or that something has obstructed the view for a
               | significant enough time to cause reasonable doubt
        
           | anjel wrote:
           | In Los Angeles, a firebug sets a morning fire. 4 hours later
           | and 50 miles away, they set another fire. The firebug is
           | apprehended late in the afternoon. Good policework, I wonder
           | how they did that. /s
        
       | masfuerte wrote:
       | A similar thing happened with automatic number place recognition.
       | With no public debate the police built a nationwide network of
       | ANPR cameras. The Information Commissioner opined that it was
       | probably illegal. But rather than recommending prosecutions, he
       | recommended that the law be changed to legitimise the police law
       | breaking.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | How are you harmed by it?
        
           | matthewdgreen wrote:
           | The neat thing about these databases is that you'll never
           | know. Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive
           | ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew
           | just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that
           | just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or
           | buy the data from a data broker?
           | 
           | There's a version of an answer to this where access to search
           | these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to
           | wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of
           | the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that
           | standard.
        
             | allthenopes25 wrote:
             | > Can a lender buy access to them?
             | 
             | In the UK (as in the case we're discussing)? No.
             | 
             | > How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop?
             | 
             | Like all other PNC access, this gets logged. Police
             | genuinely do get disciplined and fired for abusing the PNC.
             | Random officers cannot randomly look up plates on ANPR:
             | only traffic police or more senior officers can and it,
             | like every other access, gets logged.
             | 
             | The Data Protection Act allows us to find out who has been
             | disciplined, demoted or fired, and the Met for example
             | answer those.
             | 
             | > The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would
             | be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he
             | slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a
             | data broker?
             | 
             | Data brokers do not get PNC data in the UK. And you're
             | imagining an unnecessarily fantastical, conspiratorial
             | explanation of a stalker who "somehow knew where" some
             | woman would be, when stalkers clearly manage this
             | adequately by, like, ordinary stalking skills (and are
             | rarely unknown to their victims in the first place; they
             | usually have knowledge that was volunteered or was acquired
             | firsthand). Women don't need this imaginary scenario to
             | feel fear: old-fashioned hiding in a car and waiting will
             | do it. More high-tech: hiding an AirTag will do it.
             | Following on Facebook will do it.
             | 
             | Also imagining third party violence that happens due to
             | police data access is irrelevant: police officers
             | themselves commit violence. Probably start there.
             | 
             | > There's a version of an answer to this where access to
             | search these systems is so tightly logged that we never
             | need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt
             | most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere
             | near that standard.
             | 
             | They are in the UK.
             | 
             | Are face recognition cameras a bad thing in the hands of
             | the UK police? Probably sometimes yes. But these
             | conspiratorial hypotheses don't need airing.
             | 
             | FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK
             | "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on
             | poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has
             | never been adequately put into context.
             | 
             | These facial recognition cameras cannot be instantly used
             | on some big national police surveillance mechanism because
             | in essence no such system exists: the vast majority of CCTV
             | cameras in the UK are not operated by police at all.
             | 
             | Most cameras are operated by local and regional councils
             | (access for which the police would need to issue warrants
             | or make detailed subject/time requests) or private
             | businesses (ditto).
             | 
             | And most of the huge number of cameras the police imagine
             | aren't connected to anything more complex than Ring. Even
             | with Ring footage, British police find that if they want to
             | use doorbell camera footage, it is faster to arrange a time
             | to visit the owner or at best knock on the door of the
             | householder and ask for it to be emailed or copied to an SD
             | card. They do not have broad instant access, much less
             | broad, instant, warrantless access.
             | 
             | The biggest risk is not outright abuse but
             | malfeasance/misfeasance overuse, much more dull-witted,
             | instant and humdrum: for example some of the operators
             | perceive the desire not to walk past one of them to be
             | evidence of criminal intent, and they use that as a
             | justification for a stop and search.
        
               | terribleperson wrote:
               | In the U.S., law enforcement misusing their access to
               | existing surveillance technologies is already reality.
               | Enlarging the capabilities they have access to, when
               | they're proven to misuse what they have, isn't ideal.
        
             | kotaKat wrote:
             | > Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive
             | ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew
             | just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that
             | just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or
             | buy the data from a data broker?
             | 
             | Good news! Basically... yes! https://drndata.com
             | 
             | Lenders are already buying that data by the boatload along
             | with everyone else throwing cameras up.
        
           | lm28469 wrote:
           | Religious registries were a harmless little census thing in
           | Germany... well until 1933 at least. Once the system is in
           | place and the data collected you need very strong
           | institutions to protect the people
           | 
           | The 23 and me fuck up is also a good example, data is
           | forever, laws and morales are very temporary
        
           | dghlsakjg wrote:
           | I don't know for sure since we don't know who has access to
           | that data, but if I were an auto insurance company, I would
           | love to know which of my customers tend to go out in
           | inclement weather, or after midnight when the roads are
           | statistically more dangerous.
           | 
           | Took me less than a minute to think of that example. I'm sure
           | there's more ways that information could be used against my
           | interests.
        
             | allthenopes25 wrote:
             | But you don't need access to ANPR for this, particularly.
             | 
             | You just ask the customer to tell you, perhaps with one of
             | those driving monitoring apps/devices that people use to
             | lower premiums. Pretty commonplace now.
             | 
             | FWIW, having worked on car insurance applications, most
             | insurance companies do not much care about microtargeting
             | consumers in this way. Beyond looking at their claims
             | history and the kind of car they are driving, it is a
             | large-scale numbers game, and the way you know which
             | customers, for example, tend to go out more at night when
             | it is dangerous is to look at their age (more likely very
             | young) and gender (more likely male). And then you just
             | make them all pay more. There's no particular reason to get
             | any more forensic than that; it's more costly and it
             | probably doesn't deliver much extra value.
             | 
             | And if young drivers complain, "hey, I am an excellent safe
             | driver, I've done my advanced test, and I don't take
             | risks", you say: "Great. Use one of our driving monitoring
             | apps or devices, prove it and we'll happily give you lower
             | premiums!"
             | 
             | I could tell you a couple of horror stories I am not going
             | to repeat on the internet because they are old news now and
             | times have changed, but I really must say, it's not
             | necessary to imagine what government data could be used for
             | in the hands of insurance companies: it's much more likely
             | that insurance companies will simply incentivise customers
             | to hand over the data. People who want lower premiums will
             | jump through all sorts of hoops to get them.
        
           | neumann wrote:
           | https://www.9news.com.au/national/brett-johnson-court-
           | update...
           | 
           | Pretend you are in op sec for personal information and you'll
           | quickly come up with a dozen examples. Ranging from
           | individuals abusing access for nefarious reasons [1],
           | institutions using it to reward hack kpis to what's happening
           | in America with illegal ICE arrests.
        
       | galacticaactual wrote:
       | What say all of you who worked on the AI that powers this?
        
         | kunzhi wrote:
         | "When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead
         | and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after
         | you have had your technical success."
         | 
         | - Robert J. Oppenheimer
        
         | nxm wrote:
         | If they didn't, others would have.
        
       | beloch wrote:
       | We may need laws that treat these cameras as something like a
       | wiretap. They can be there streaming their data to data stores,
       | but accessing that data would require warrants that are limited
       | in scope. The data could be used for answering specific, legally
       | justifiable questions, not for everyday surveillance and
       | profiling.
       | 
       | e.g. It would be valid to use these cameras to answer who was at
       | a crime scene, when, and where did they go that day. It would not
       | be valid to reconstruct a web of everyday associations stretching
       | back months for someone just because an officer didn't like the
       | way they look.
        
         | matthewdgreen wrote:
         | I think we need to understand and accept that this stuff is
         | inevitable as the technology gets cheaper. If the cops don't do
         | it themselves, private industry will do it for them and sell it
         | or hand the data over as a "public service." The only way out
         | of this is to make an affirmative series of laws that make the
         | construction of anything resembling a tracking database illegal
         | and heavily-fined, but we're not there. Even privacy-friendly
         | Europe isn't close to putting those restrictions on its police.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | No private industry will do anything without it being
           | profitable. Handing it over as a public service would mean
           | they are making money with that data in other ways. What
           | would be those other ways? I can't think of anything that's
           | not dystopian hell, so maybe to make that not legal???
        
             | matthewdgreen wrote:
             | The answer is that these databases are hugely valuable for
             | targeted advertising and marketing, and if they're
             | relatively cheap to build then that makes everything even
             | easier. Law enforcement gets access because in most
             | countries the law allows them to make data requests to
             | existing companies, and "we aren't going to help the cops
             | solve a murder" is bad PR when you've already collected the
             | relevant data.
        
             | BirAdam wrote:
             | Sufficient tax breaks would likely do it.
        
             | bbarnett wrote:
             | This has already happened, and the police and others pay
             | for access.
        
           | cluckindan wrote:
           | > private industry will do it for them and sell it
           | 
           | This is already how it works in many cities.
        
           | causality0 wrote:
           | One of the inevitable consequences of the legal conceit that
           | images belong to the person who owns the camera, not the
           | person who owns the face.
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | People do have publicity rights for their image being used
             | in some contexts such as an advertisement. But not sure
             | what rights to your image would even look like in the
             | context of random public photographs or video in general.
        
           | pilingual wrote:
           | First, in the US this type of thing violates the fourth
           | amendment as the Institute for Justice will prove in court
           | with ALPRs. It _could_ be set up such that it does not, but
           | for whatever reason these companies are greedy and make it
           | broad rather than narrow in scope.
           | 
           | Second, I just won't patronize your establishment, shopping
           | center, or municipality if you do. I'd like to go to the UK,
           | but because of this policy I will not. Menlo Park pushed back
           | against ALPRs: I'll go there. I went to a different ski shop
           | because the one closest to me has an ALPR. And so on.
        
             | microsoftedging wrote:
             | Genuine question, what's wrong with ALPR? (Coming from
             | someone in the UK)
        
               | alasarmas wrote:
               | So, this may be different in the UK, but in the US a
               | large majority of travel occurs in private cars, so
               | omnipresence of ALPRs is close to collecting data on
               | everybody and knowing what everybody is doing at all
               | times.
               | 
               | One might assume from a game-theoretical perspective that
               | this is no different from living in a village where
               | essentially everyone knows everyone's business, and the
               | knowledge that that knowledge is mutual prevents people
               | from acting badly with the information that they have.
               | However, in the situation where a small minority of
               | people have knowledge about everyone else, and not vice
               | versa, this can give that minority unearned power over
               | everyone else.
               | 
               | In practice, it doesn't feel great. I hope this answered
               | your question.
        
         | like_any_other wrote:
         | That was the NSAs legal theory, wasn't it? That they can
         | collect all the data they want, but it only counts as
         | "wiretapping" when a human looks at it.
         | 
         | It's a theory that turns my stomach, frankly.
        
       | vladms wrote:
       | Let's not ignore though that there are some people with some
       | control. These systems do not appear because of a small
       | conspiracy but because a lot of people think they are OK and
       | don't bother to understand the issues and organize to fight them.
       | 
       | I know an ex-policemen that is a good man but hated working in
       | the police because the "public" was aggressive and were
       | challenging them constantly (would not name the country or
       | specific stories). From their point of view "automatization"
       | would make police job safer and easier, and convincing them of
       | the contrary has few chances.
       | 
       | The more "not-connected" is the society (with people not having a
       | friend that is "a policeman", "a firefighter", "a teacher", etc),
       | the more problems we will have no matter the technology...
        
         | freeone3000 wrote:
         | Why would I want to be friends with someone who murders with
         | impunity? Who considers "the public" someone to control? Who
         | considers themselves above question?
        
           | blooalien wrote:
           | > Why would I want to be friends with someone who murders
           | with impunity? Who considers "the public" someone to control?
           | Who considers themselves above question?
           | 
           | Because they're not _all_ that way, and some of them still do
           | genuinely try to  "Protect and Serve"? And then you have the
           | others mentioned "fire fighters", "teachers", etc, again
           | _many_ of whom are just tryin ' to do some good in the world.
           | Hunt all those _good_ ones down and hold them up as
           | _examples_ of how the rest _should_ be trying to do their
           | jobs. Just complaining about the bad ones and acting like
           | they 're the _only_ ones certainly doesn 't make the
           | situation any better for them _or_ us.
        
       | _DeadFred_ wrote:
       | The Unites States just approved what, 20 billion, to build
       | infrastructure for a new national police people identification
       | unit? Just like the patriot act after 9/11, the giant new 'ICE'
       | budget is going to transform America, and not in a good way. And
       | that 20 billion additional for internal policing is never going
       | away, just look at the TSA. And mission creep will set in, just
       | look at FISA courts and 'parallel reconstruction' now being the
       | norm and no one cares.
       | 
       | I tell my kids this isn't normal, this isn't what the US used to
       | be like, but they don't know any different, so to them giving up
       | just a little bit of this (like we did with the Patriot Act)
       | isn't a big deal.
        
         | blooalien wrote:
         | > I tell my kids this isn't normal, this isn't what the US used
         | to be like, but they don't know any different, so to them
         | giving up just a little bit of this (like we did with the
         | Patriot Act) isn't a big deal.
         | 
         | That's why books like "1984" used to be _required_ reading in
         | grade-school Literature class (fully supported policy by the
         | History and Civics class teachers), and the  "messier" bits of
         | our nation's history were taught openly as "mistakes to be
         | learned from so that we _never_ repeat them " way back when I
         | was a kid and dinosaurs still roamed the Earth...
         | 
         | The idea was (as one teacher explained to me) that we would
         | learn the dangers to watch out for, and as good little
         | patriots, we'd always be ready to defend the freedoms of our
         | great nation whether threatened from without or within.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | What is this slippery stuff on this slope?
        
       | Buttons840 wrote:
       | Technology seems destined to bring everything to light. My only
       | wish is that those in positions of power are the first to be
       | dragged into the light.
        
         | ivape wrote:
         | So, are you thinking what I'm thinking? Bodycams on
         | congressmen/women and senators? If you're on the job, the
         | bodycam stays on.
        
         | 0_____0 wrote:
         | Public facial recognition and ALPRS database. It would be
         | chaos.
        
         | latentsea wrote:
         | Power is protected.
        
       | smcin wrote:
       | The US's first "Cop City", the $117m Atlanta Public Safety
       | Training Center, officially opened April 29, 2025, despite years
       | of opposition and a suppressed effort to get a referendum against
       | it on the ballot. [0] Did not get any discussion here on HN at
       | all. [1] characterizes it as "a massive, militarized police
       | training compound in the Weelaunee Forest in the southeast
       | outskirts of Atlanta" and lists its security partners as Flock
       | Safety (automated license plate reader (ALPR) vendor, #58
       | fastest-growing company) and Motorola Solutions. [1] lists its
       | Corporate and Nonprofit Foundation Donors and Sponsors: finance,
       | real-estate companies, Acuity Brands, AT&T, Cushman & Wakefield,
       | KPMG, McKesson, Invesco, Rollins, Synovus and others, Arthur
       | Blank Foundation, The Bierenbaum Family Foundation, Connolly
       | Family Foundation, The Goizueta Foundation, of Atlanta, Robert W.
       | Woodruff Foundation, of Atlanta, O. Wayne Rollins Foundation, of
       | Atlanta, J. Bulow Campbell Foundation and others.
       | 
       | (FYI the parent Guardian article is about England and Wales, not
       | the US. There is a similar level of surveillance cameras but
       | comparing use of force to the US, police in England and Wales
       | only fatally shot 2 people in 2023/24 [2], 24 deaths in or
       | following police custody and a further 60 fatalities defined as
       | other deaths during or following police contact. for which [2b]
       | is a report with demographics.)
       | 
       | [0]: "Atlanta's controversial 'Cop City' training center opens
       | after years of fighting" https://www.the-
       | independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/at...
       | 
       | [1]: "The Companies and Foundations behind Cop City"
       | https://afsc.org/companies-and-foundations-behind-cop-city
       | 
       | [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/319287/deaths-during-
       | or-...
       | 
       | [2b]: https://www.policeconduct.gov.uk/our-work/research-and-
       | stati...
        
       | octo888 wrote:
       | This will achieve 3 things:
       | 
       | 1. No reduction in crime
       | 
       | 2. A huge chilling effect on the innocent population, further
       | subduing people and paving the way for more authoritarianism.
       | 
       | 3. Large amounts of profit for a private company
        
         | smegma2 wrote:
         | How would it chill things that aren't crimes without deterring
         | actual crimes? This seems like a convenient set of assertions
         | if you're a priori against surveillance. You're also missing
         | the aspect of _catching_ crime rather than deterring it.
        
         | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
         | Perhaps not coincidentally, that's the same thing that
         | generally happens with gun control laws.
         | 
         | They're all built on a flawed principle - that criminals don't
         | have and will not use workarounds. In reality, only law-abiding
         | people have no workarounds.
        
           | latentsea wrote:
           | Well... as someone living in a country with strict gun
           | control laws who marvels at the dumb shit that goes on in
           | America, I can say for certain that at least here the average
           | run of the mill crazies don't have access to firearms and
           | thank bloody goodness.
        
       | lenerdenator wrote:
       | Tyranny can always come. All you can do is be ready for it to
       | come to you.
        
       | caditinpiscinam wrote:
       | Cities are banning face coverings too.
       | 
       | https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-ski-mask-ban-bala...
       | 
       | At this rate they should just make everyone wear a big QR code
       | containing our names and social security numbers on our shirts. A
       | sort of license plate for people. Would save on processing power
       | at least.
        
       | tippytippytango wrote:
       | False positives for this tech is absurdly high and law
       | enforcement treats it like it's perfect. That's enough of a
       | reason to make it illegal.
        
       | ineedaj0b wrote:
       | too bad im not a female who wears a burka.
       | 
       | closest thing we have workable day to day are gaiters (balaclavas
       | imo don't work outside cold winter months, gaiters you can where
       | in hot weather too - get it wet, it'll shed heat)
       | 
       | still doesn't help with the eyes. or your gait. and face masks
       | have people rolling their eyes at you and likely will for the
       | next 5-10 years, despite sorta working if you're sick.
        
       | hd4 wrote:
       | https://archive.is/2wkD0
        
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