UK policing minister urges doubling down on face-scanning tech
- Reference: 1698755412
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/31/uk_police_minister_lfr/
- Source link:
Chris Philp MP, Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Fire, said both the use of live and retrospective facial recognition should increase following a commitment to spend £17.5 million ($21.3 million) on "a resilient and highly accurate system" to search all databases of images the police can access.
Retrospective facial recognition (RFR) relies on an image taken at a crime scene – using CCTV, police cameras, or phone footage – to scan police databases to find a match. In live facial recognition (LFR), real-time footage from events is checked against a pre-defined target list of known criminals or suspects.
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"Algorithms have advanced hugely in recent months and even blurred, or partially obscured images can now be successfully matched against custody images, leading to arrests," Philp said in an [2]open letter . "Searching the whole Police National Database (PND) image set rather than just local force ones will maximise the chance of a match, and I encourage routine use of RFR across the entire range of crimes."
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He claimed there were examples of RFR helping police to identify people suspected of murder, sex offences, domestic burglary, assault, car theft, and shoplifting, where identification "might otherwise have been impossible or taken much longer."
Philp also said LFR would deter and detect crime in public settings that attract large crowds. There is College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice in place and a "sound legal basis for LFR," he claimed.
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London's Metropolitan Police "recently used LFR at an Arsenal v Tottenham game where it led to the arrest of three people: one charged with being in breach of a football banning order, one wanted on recall to prison for sexual offences, and one who admitted using threatening and abusive words and being in breach of a court order," he said.
[6]UK tribunal agrees with Clearview AI – Brit data regulator has no jurisdiction
[7]Chinese citizens feel their government is doing such a fine job with surveillance
[8]NYC rights groups say no to grocery store spycams and snooping landlords
[9]China – which surveils everyone everywhere – floats facial recognition rules
The National Physical Laboratory provided the "necessary assurance" about accuracy and the absence of gender or racial bias in the algorithms where LFR had been used, Philp said, while the immediate deletion of non-matched biometric data "addresses privacy concerns."
However, [10]speaking to Parliament's Science, Innovation and Technology Committee in May, Dr Tony Mansfield, principal research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory, said the system used by the Met, the UK's largest police force, was prone to bias against Black individuals on a set of test data created for his investigations.
"We find that if the system is run at low thresholds and easy thresholds, it does start showing a bias against the Black males and females combined," he told MPs.
Mansfield added that he believed the Met did not operate the system at these thresholds.
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In 2017, [12]the Met was urged to cancel its planned use of facial recognition software at Notting Hill Carnival, Europe's largest street festival. Privacy groups including Big Brother Watch, Liberty, and Privacy International called for a U-turn on the use of the tech.
In 2018, Big Brother Watch found that 91 percent of people flagged up on the Met's facial recognition system [13]were not on the watch list . At the time, a Met spokesperson said the force did not consider these false positives "because additional checks and balances are in place to confirm identification following system alerts." ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZUEyt4LmmPtrmzDpg-8w2AAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/letter-to-police-on-ai-enabled-facial-recognition-searches
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/19/uk_tribunal_agrees_with_clearview/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/chinese_citizens_feel_their_government/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/27/nyc_biometrics_ban/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/08/china_facial_recognition_rules/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/25/facial_recognition_system_used_by/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZUEyt4LmmPtrmzDpg-8w2AAAABc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2017/08/17/concerns_over_facial_recognition_at_notting_hill_carnival/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/15/met_police_slammed_inaccurate_facial_recognition/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: LFR - RFR - FFS
Oh, it's not a sleepwalk. They know exactly where they're taking us.
A step towards a police state?
Or just cleaning up loose ends?
No right to silence. No right to privacy. When they finish "Reforming" the human rights act, there will be no rights.
Re: A step towards a police state?
Two points have been taken off your social credit score.
"a bias against the Black males and females combined"
Full speed ahead from the government, then.
Haven't checked Labour's position on this, but I would be thoroughly unsurprised if there were no policy difference.
Re: "a bias against the Black males and females combined"
The last couple of Labour Home Secretaries I remember, Blunkett and Straw were lock step with most Tories on this
But it was all right,
everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
"Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance"
My Deus Ex quotes are becoming more relevant every day, it seems :(
Funny how both a book written 75 years ago and a [1]PC game written 25 years ago based on a mashup of Usenet conspiracy theories from the 90s should be so prescient. Either some of the conspiracy theories were real, or our lords and masters have read the book, perhaps even played the game, and decided that it is a great way to run a government stay in power.
"God was a dream of good government." "You will soon have your God, and you will make it with your own hands."
I wonder how that AI summit will go..
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b-bijO3uEw
Hokey cokey
A UK minister for policing has called for forces to double their use of algorithmic-assisted facial recognition in a bid to snare more criminals.
This seems like encouraging forces to engage in "busy" work without achieving tangible results. The police are well aware of who the criminals are, yet there seems to be little interest in arresting them. Firstly, because it's risky, and secondly, there's a high chance they'll merely receive a slap on the wrist and be back committing crimes the following day.
Like many UK institutions today, they appear to be mere facades. Underfunded, apathetic, and resigned.
Moreover, it's intriguing that the force isn't examining the root causes.
How to use statistics
This morning it was announced that the UK Government has decided to cancel the closure of ticket offices in Britain's railway stations. A person stated that it was a bit of ahem as 'only 11% of people use ticket offices'. They received millions of objections to the proposed closures because some people actually need a human being to help them get the correct tickets, discount cards and travel arrangements
In the article, the Metropolitan Police admitted to a 91% error rate in facial recognition technology, but insisted that they do not consider the to be 'false positives' as 'other checks' are made before action is taken. I do wonder act the 'other checks' are, and how much effort they require. 91% of computer time being wasted is bad enough
Now to this humble Ph.D. mathematician it looks like a 9% success rate with facial recognition, with some admitted poor work with 'ethnic minorities' (for which read "people with dark, or non-white, skin", they do not mean Liverpudlian or Geordie) and women.
So my idea is this - let's install Live Facial Recognition in the Houses of Parliament, and see how the MPs and lords take to it. If it is good enough for us plebs, it should be good enough for them.
Re: How to use statistics
Experiments using images from the Senate and the House of Representatives were very amusingly reported on in this very organ I believe.
Re: How to use statistics
I'm fine with the police having these: If and only if everyone involved in decisions about them, from the minister for policing down to the copper operating the system can answer this simple question. (no conferring allowed!).
Your intelligence says you have 4 Just Stop Oil protestors trying to sneak into Wimbledon, and your shiny new scanner with a 99% accuracy rate (both negative and positive) has identified a face in the crown ? What are the chances this person is one of your protestors ?
Re: How to use statistics
its very very simple .
when your shiny new scanner with a 99% accuracy rate (both negative and positive) has identified a face in the crowd , and it alerting you to this it would display a picture of the person it has seen and the person it thinks it is from the records - the human meatbag can then decide whether to proceed or not.
Re: How to use statistics
Zero: no “just stop oil” protesters are also royalists, so won’t be wearing a crown. QED
Re: How to use statistics
I do wonder act the 'other checks' are, and how much effort they require.
Seems pretty simple to me - the computer would flash up 2 pics on a human's desk and say "is this guy this guy?" , very fast , human verification , no man hours wasted.
Only then do you send out the ED209 robot.
I'm a bit on the fence.
Rudimentary facial recording in public places by law enforcement agencies is a Police State activity and should be outlawed. Similarly, comparison of routine footage against, for instance, a national identity card database *for any reason* would be right out and in the same way a national DNA database should not be interrogatable in a routine way.
On the other hand, if a crime has been committed, footage (or DNA) was available, the validity of the claim checked and a warrant issued by a Judge then that could be a legitimate use of search powers. The level at which such a warrant could be issued would be up to the lawmakers - dna taken from a dropped crisp packet to substantiate the crime of "dropping litter" may not justify a warrant however blood in a murder may do so. On the other hand is that opening the door to acceptance ...?
Re: I'm a bit on the fence.
Just remember RIPA for an example of the 'trustworthyness' of politicians' promises.
They will say whatever they need to say (they may even believe it); and then they will do whatever they want to do.
Despite the best efforts of the justice system and some excellent NGO activists, this country still has an underlying feudal understanding of the relationship between the 'government' and the 'people'—given half a chance the government act as owners rather than servants.
It all goes back to the entrenched concentration of money, power, and entitlement.
We can expect
DVLA and Passport Office images to be added to the core data set. Learning from the best - China.
'No question' it will solve more crimes, Tory MP claims
Shame about all the false positives and innocent peoples' lives being turned upside down by dodgy technology, but it makes our Laura Norder stats look better, so that's what counts.
Re: 'No question' it will solve more crimes, Tory MP claims
How would that happen exactly ?
You're walking down the high street , and the Face Machine accidentally incorrectly mistakes you for a rapist currently on the run .....
Where does it go from there?
Drone strike?
or does the cctv operator just look at the picture and say , no HAL , this time you're mistaken .
or do they send a bobby to stop you and compare your face with the rapist on his ipad , then you go on your way?
Re: 'No question' it will solve more crimes, Tory MP claims
Arrest first, then maybe you’ll get to be released after a senior officer has reviewed the “evidence” - but not before they question you.
No smoke without fire, you know
Re: 'No question' it will solve more crimes, Tory MP claims
Yep, you're walking down the street, then for no other reason than technological and patronising bureaucratic incompetence your day/month/year/life gets fucked over by the system.
Tough luck, and better luck next time.
LFR - RFR - FFS
Another step on our sleep walk to a police state.