It seems that the cops were basically uploading images of suspects so that the cameras in the city were constantly scanning for people who were wanted (like a mug shot or an image of somebody stealing something) and then if a camera picked up a match it would send police the location of the suspect on a map.
Apparently Palantir was working with NOPD to secretly test predictive policing since 2012
The program began in 2012 as a partnership between New Orleans Police and Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital firm. According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, the initiative was essentially a predictive policing program, similar to the “heat list” in Chicago that purports to predict which people are likely drivers or victims of violence.
The partnership has been extended three times, with the third extension scheduled to expire on February 21st, 2018. The city of New Orleans and Palantir have not responded to questions about the program’s current status.
The key scandal to me — I live in NOLA — is that the city council had tons of debates and put in place a process and limitations on facial recognition to limit false positives. But the new cameras aren’t city owned. A private company sells the cameras to businesses. Then, if a crime happens, the police call the company and ask if they “witnessed” anything. Then, the company basically texts officers a location if they think their facial recognition software spots the suspect.
And since we’re apparently the demonstration city (again) for a company, it’s no cost to taxpayers. Maybe that makes it no different from typical police work to you. But even if the product worked perfectly, and it likely doesn’t, I don’t like the idea of the NOPD secretly working overtime to find loopholes around laws and regulations.
And that’s before you get to collecting evidence for trial. Defense attorneys probably won’t have a hard time getting these cases dismissed unless there’s tons of other evidence.
AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Or just wear a mask, saw a dude ride by me on a bike yesterday at like 11am in a skeleton zip up mask covering his whole head. Smart man.
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Can’t they still identify him as “the guy with the skeleton mask”? Maybe not “identify” but more of, build a profile.
AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee 1 month ago
The WaPo article goes into a lot more detail: archive.ph/2fmW1
It seems that the cops were basically uploading images of suspects so that the cameras in the city were constantly scanning for people who were wanted (like a mug shot or an image of somebody stealing something) and then if a camera picked up a match it would send police the location of the suspect on a map.
Apparently Palantir was working with NOPD to secretly test predictive policing since 2012
archive.ph/NxPbY
Not sure that it actually did ever expire
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The key scandal to me — I live in NOLA — is that the city council had tons of debates and put in place a process and limitations on facial recognition to limit false positives. But the new cameras aren’t city owned. A private company sells the cameras to businesses. Then, if a crime happens, the police call the company and ask if they “witnessed” anything. Then, the company basically texts officers a location if they think their facial recognition software spots the suspect.
And since we’re apparently the demonstration city (again) for a company, it’s no cost to taxpayers. Maybe that makes it no different from typical police work to you. But even if the product worked perfectly, and it likely doesn’t, I don’t like the idea of the NOPD secretly working overtime to find loopholes around laws and regulations.
And that’s before you get to collecting evidence for trial. Defense attorneys probably won’t have a hard time getting these cases dismissed unless there’s tons of other evidence.