6 ms·

Facial recognition could be used to identify people who are likely to participate in protests and prevent them from doing so in advance by intercepting them at

Facial recognition could be used to identify people who are likely to participate in protests and prevent them from doing so in advance by intercepting them at their boarding station or somewhere near it. You could also scan for persons arriving in a city where a protest might be plannend and arrest them beforehand.

foldr 1mo ago
As with your sibling comment, what you’re describing is theoretically possible, but it’s also more difficult and resource intensive than the simple dumb alternative of blocking off the area of the planned protest and putting some police officers outside nearby tube stations to arrest anyone who’s clearly intending to head to the protest. It’s already easy for the police to prevent protests in a practical sense. It’s a political and legal issue more than a technical one.
- _heimdall 1mo ago
  What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you exit the tube?
  - dofm 1mo ago
    It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality. If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less. A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence. But I think the idea that face recognition is being used to suppress protest is pretty overcooked; apart from the utter silliness around the banning of Palestine Action, we have a solid right to protest and we do. The main problem is London has far too few police officers, and it has a transport system that is under consistent terror threat.
    - fragmede 1mo ago
      Last one was in 2017 though.
      - deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
    - _heimdall 1mo ago
      What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future?
      - foldr 1mo ago
        We’re talking about the practicalities of arresting protestors and whether or not face recognition on the tube would be a practical aid to police officers for this sort of purpose. Who should or shouldn’t be arrested is a separate question (and no-one here is suggesting that peaceful protestors should be arrested).
      - dofm 1mo ago
        Either. Where there is a need. The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait? Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance policing is arresting people who are clearly about to do a thing. That might indeed be disruptive protest where it is illegal — for example if you know someone is intending to deface a painting or a monument, or has been planning to attend a protest to disrupt it. I think people look at face detection policing in this context and imagine thoughtcrime, when the reality is e.g. finding a disturbed person who has been doing a dry run on pushing a stranger off a tube train platform (a real problem that seems to happen every couple of years), catching someone who has been reported sexually assaulting fellow passengers or who has violently assaulted another passenger or someone above ground (a regular problem), trying to disrupt county-lines drug distribution etc. (absolutely constant), or, heaven help us, finding someone who has been spotted at a national railway station with someone on terror watchlists who has then disappeared into the underground. London Underground isn't a thing that can be effectively managed with ordinary policing. It has 272 stations, over 70 in central London alone. During rush hour there are up to half a million people in that system at any one time. Tube exits are choke points.
  - foldr 1mo ago
    Same grounds as for arresting them anywhere else, more or less. I am not saying that the police should ban protests (and they generally don’t). I’m just talking about the practicalities of how they could go about doing it.
- brettermeier 1mo ago
  There might not be a publicly known area for that protest.
  - foldr 1mo ago
    Then it’s most likely going to be a very small protest.
    - brettermeier 1mo ago
      Might be, we will see.

foldr 1mo ago

As with your sibling comment, what you’re describing is theoretically possible, but it’s also more difficult and resource intensive than the simple dumb alternative of blocking off the area of the planned protest and putting some police officers outside nearby tube stations to arrest anyone who’s clearly intending to head to the protest. It’s already easy for the police to prevent protests in a practical sense. It’s a political and legal issue more than a technical one.

_heimdall 1mo ago
What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you exit the tube?
- dofm 1mo ago
  It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality. If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less. A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence. But I think the idea that face recognition is being used to suppress protest is pretty overcooked; apart from the utter silliness around the banning of Palestine Action, we have a solid right to protest and we do. The main problem is London has far too few police officers, and it has a transport system that is under consistent terror threat.
  - fragmede 1mo ago
    Last one was in 2017 though.
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
  - _heimdall 1mo ago
    What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future?
    - foldr 1mo ago
      We’re talking about the practicalities of arresting protestors and whether or not face recognition on the tube would be a practical aid to police officers for this sort of purpose. Who should or shouldn’t be arrested is a separate question (and no-one here is suggesting that peaceful protestors should be arrested).
    - dofm 1mo ago
      Either. Where there is a need. The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait? Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance policing is arresting people who are clearly about to do a thing. That might indeed be disruptive protest where it is illegal — for example if you know someone is intending to deface a painting or a monument, or has been planning to attend a protest to disrupt it. I think people look at face detection policing in this context and imagine thoughtcrime, when the reality is e.g. finding a disturbed person who has been doing a dry run on pushing a stranger off a tube train platform (a real problem that seems to happen every couple of years), catching someone who has been reported sexually assaulting fellow passengers or who has violently assaulted another passenger or someone above ground (a regular problem), trying to disrupt county-lines drug distribution etc. (absolutely constant), or, heaven help us, finding someone who has been spotted at a national railway station with someone on terror watchlists who has then disappeared into the underground. London Underground isn't a thing that can be effectively managed with ordinary policing. It has 272 stations, over 70 in central London alone. During rush hour there are up to half a million people in that system at any one time. Tube exits are choke points.
- foldr 1mo ago
  Same grounds as for arresting them anywhere else, more or less. I am not saying that the police should ban protests (and they generally don’t). I’m just talking about the practicalities of how they could go about doing it.
brettermeier 1mo ago
There might not be a publicly known area for that protest.
- foldr 1mo ago
  Then it’s most likely going to be a very small protest.
  - brettermeier 1mo ago
    Might be, we will see.