Comment on New Orleans used Minority Report-like facial recognition software to monitor citizens for crime suspects: Report

• SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Can’t they still identify him as “the guy with the skeleton mask”? Maybe not “identify” but more of, build a profile.

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  • AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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

    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.

    Not sure that it actually did ever expire

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    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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      • AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        That’s what they’re saying now, but apparently, an app was developed that allowed police to create a watch list of suspects, upload their picture, and use the cameras to constantly scan for the images. When they got a hit, police received a direct notification via the app

        Apparently much of this wasn’t documented, but for whatever reason, the police captain decided in April to end it for the time being, so now it’s back to the company notifying police, but they want city council to pass an ordinance so they can go back to police being directly notified

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