Post: #1

NPR Wrote:A new report from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology says all it takes is a driver's license to be included in the searchable databases.

http://www.npr.org/2016/10/23/499042369/...-americans

Between that, license plate readers, and cell phones, the ability to track people is getting scary.

Post: #2

The price one pays to drive a car and to hit up bars.

Quote:...and some law enforcement agencies can identify people on video surveillance in real-time.

So now they can pick you out of a crowd in a hot second? If law enforcement suspects a person, I expect them to have the person's physical characteristics down to a T in their mental notes already. Doesn't seem new to me.

Quote:...I want this technology to be used to catch terrorists. I don't want it to be used to catch jaywalkers. And so ultimately, it is up for the people in these communities, for legislators and for regular citizens, to take action if they want to stop this...

Catching criminals is still a time investment for now. As long as you're not one of the bigger fish to fry, jaywalk all you want.

Good thing we're not the Puritans...yet. Incidents like the media branding Trump with a hot-iron for his "locker-room comments" give me pause to think what a bored SJW with time on their hands could do.

Post: #3

That is official story. Facial recognition software started with Total Information Awareness program that was induced immediately after Patriot Act.

P.S. Watch Person of Interest to get taste of what kind of technology exists.

Post: #4

I suspect a lot of this stuff is psyops. We keep hearing about this "all seeing all knowing state information apparatus" yet they often have trouble tracking down the most common of criminals, even when they commit major crimes.

They want to paint the idea that they can feed your picture into the database and then as soon as you walk by a security camera then you'll be pinged. Logistically it reeks of bullshit to me, but the idea of it serves a very useful purpose.

In any case they only trot this out for hardcore enemies of the state, which is to say the enemies of the government. You and me? They don't give a shit what happens to us, and they don't want to spook the herd by convicting shoplifters and spraypainters using the fruits of a trillion dollar snooping apparatus. Raise the temperature in the pot too quickly and the frogs will start jumping out.

Post: #5

Image and video analysis is about to becoming an increasingly powerful tool. We're close to having very effective gait analysis systems, Facebook's facial recognition algorithm is ridiculously good, and there are more and more very cool (in themselves) technologies coming down the line. There are so many ways to identify people now. I'm aware of quite a cool project someone in the UK has worked on and which has been very successful in the early stages: it is the ability to essentially take a fingerprint of a person's heart by looking at the blood flow in their face. Whether it becomes viable as a commercial/government technology remains to be seen, but there are certainly some very bright people doing some very interesting things.

This is one are where resistance really is futile, and where much more is already going on than most realise. You are going to be surveilled, and it is going to be effective. At this point the only sensible course of action is complete submission to your reptile overlords.

For those who take their PERSEC seriously:

Post: #6

(10-24-2016 12:52 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I suspect a lot of this stuff is psyops. We keep hearing about this "all seeing all knowing state information apparatus" yet they often have trouble tracking down the most common of criminals, even when they commit major crimes.

They want to paint the idea that they can feed your picture into the database and then as soon as you walk by a security camera then you'll be pinged. Logistically it reeks of bullshit to me, but the idea of it serves a very useful purpose.

In any case they only trot this out for hardcore enemies of the state, which is to say the enemies of the government. You and me? They don't give a shit what happens to us, and they don't want to spook the herd by convicting shoplifters and spraypainters using the fruits of a trillion dollar snooping apparatus. Raise the temperature in the pot too quickly and the frogs will start jumping out.

I suspect there are massive manpower issues. Sure, maybe they have the information, and maybe they can even analyze it to some degree of effectiveness (maybe, it's a fuckload of information to sort through). But you still need boots on the ground to do anything about it, and there simply aren't that many people available. It takes many people to capture one person. And of course you have to have the actionable intelligence in time to act.

This sort of thing is exactly why the powers that be want people to do everything connected to some kind of network, so they can lock you down without manpower present. Get in an elevator after you're tagged, and the elevator locks down and you're stuck, for example. Or all your payment methods are frozen (cash long since abolished) and your car is locked down so you can only move on foot, making it much easier to capture you.

No doubt they'll want widespread deployment of drones to track people, too. And it'll be a 20+ year prison sentence to fuck with the drones.

I'll be in the hills with a rifle long before I consent to live in that sort of gilded cage. Just saying.

Post: #7

(10-24-2016 12:52 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I suspect a lot of this stuff is psyops. We keep hearing about this "all seeing all knowing state information apparatus" yet they often have trouble tracking down the most common of criminals, even when they commit major crimes.

They want to paint the idea that they can feed your picture into the database and then as soon as you walk by a security camera then you'll be pinged. Logistically it reeks of bullshit to me, but the idea of it serves a very useful purpose.

In any case they only trot this out for hardcore enemies of the state, which is to say the enemies of the government. You and me? They don't give a shit what happens to us, and they don't want to spook the herd by convicting shoplifters and spraypainters using the fruits of a trillion dollar snooping apparatus. Raise the temperature in the pot too quickly and the frogs will start jumping out.

You are right regarding small fishes, nobody catches purse snatchers and murderers using this technology. This is reserved for intelligence services to keep track on population and occasionally catch some terrorist or two.

Again I really recommend TV series "Person of Interest" as it gives best view on global surveillance systems based on super computers. Btw, I was told that they even use quantum computers for this so its no surprise regarding their capabilities to track all population, on passive level.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/

P.S. Jim Caviezel is as much Alpha in this series as he can be.

Post: #8

(10-24-2016 12:52 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I suspect a lot of this stuff is psyops. We keep hearing about this "all seeing all knowing state information apparatus" yet they often have trouble tracking down the most common of criminals, even when they commit major crimes.

They want to paint the idea that they can feed your picture into the database and then as soon as you walk by a security camera then you'll be pinged. Logistically it reeks of bullshit to me, but the idea of it serves a very useful purpose.

In any case they only trot this out for hardcore enemies of the state, which is to say the enemies of the government. You and me? They don't give a shit what happens to us, and they don't want to spook the herd by convicting shoplifters and spraypainters using the fruits of a trillion dollar snooping apparatus. Raise the temperature in the pot too quickly and the frogs will start jumping out.

I think you're making a good point. There are definitely some sociological impacts to convincing everyone that they're being watched and tracked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism

As for facial recognition itself, the technology obviously exists, and it's good. You can already unlock your phone or auto-tag your photo library with facial recognition.

The greater problem is that using this stuff in civilian law enforcement requires certain judicial considerations, because there is a larger debate on the constitutionality of mass surveillance.

If a government keeps its surveillance activity quiet and doesn't bring cases against anyone using mass facial recognition as evidence, then nobody can construct an appeal that says the data are inadmissible in court. That way, the government never has to risk an appellate court deciding that a mass surveillance system based on facial recognition is unconstitutional.

The decision in Katz v. United States (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/35) upheld the idea that the 4th amendment protects a person's "reasonable expectation of privacy." US v. Jones (https://www.oyez.org/cases/2011/10-1259) found that extended GPS tracking of a vehicle does qualify as a search. Even if a vehicle spends the entire duration of warrantless GPS tracking within plain sight of public roads, i.e. a cop could have observed its location at any given time, a warrant would still be necessary.

So, mass unwarranted facial recognition surveillance would probably be ruled as totally unconstitutional under current jurisprudence.

Post: #9

The problem really is that in many cases judicial considerations are not necessary. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places, and consequently you cannot object to being photographed (at least indirectly) by other citizens or having those images disseminated.

Much of the case law on reasonable expectation of privacy, here in the UK (article 8 ECHR - The Right to Private Life) and in the US, is focused on covert surveillance, GPS tracking of cars etc. These are all invasive - they require that something be placed in or on your car/home/place of work etc. In these places you do, for now, have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Just walking down the street though it is much harder to litigate against these technologies. Adding in a back end to already existing CCTV is, at best, a grey area. I suspect a lot of people are going to be caught in future using gait analysis and other such technologies, precisely because they plug in so neatly to already existing and legal hardware.

Post: #10

The only solution is to transition to female and then convert to strict Islam. Transgendered + Burkas for the win!

Post: #11

(10-24-2016 04:44 AM)weambulance Wrote:  

(10-24-2016 12:52 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  I suspect a lot of this stuff is psyops. We keep hearing about this "all seeing all knowing state information apparatus" yet they often have trouble tracking down the most common of criminals, even when they commit major crimes.

They want to paint the idea that they can feed your picture into the database and then as soon as you walk by a security camera then you'll be pinged. Logistically it reeks of bullshit to me, but the idea of it serves a very useful purpose.

In any case they only trot this out for hardcore enemies of the state, which is to say the enemies of the government. You and me? They don't give a shit what happens to us, and they don't want to spook the herd by convicting shoplifters and spraypainters using the fruits of a trillion dollar snooping apparatus. Raise the temperature in the pot too quickly and the frogs will start jumping out.

I suspect there are massive manpower issues. Sure, maybe they have the information, and maybe they can even analyze it to some degree of effectiveness (maybe, it's a fuckload of information to sort through). But you still need boots on the ground to do anything about it, and there simply aren't that many people available. It takes many people to capture one person. And of course you have to have the actionable intelligence in time to act.

This sort of thing is exactly why the powers that be want people to do everything connected to some kind of network, so they can lock you down without manpower present. Get in an elevator after you're tagged, and the elevator locks down and you're stuck, for example. Or all your payment methods are frozen (cash long since abolished) and your car is locked down so you can only move on foot, making it much easier to capture you.

No doubt they'll want widespread deployment of drones to track people, too. And it'll be a 20+ year prison sentence to fuck with the drones.

I'll be in the hills with a rifle long before I consent to live in that sort of gilded cage. Just saying.

Its not far fetched because we have the tech to do it and the infrastructure. The only problem is the density of CCTV isn't what it could be.

Large countries such as the US with high crime in urban areas is fine but anywhere outside of that you will require monitoring at extended distances.

Facial recognition software can flag a face ID if it identifies someone with similar features. All you need to do then is monitor the person from afar. It gives false flags and that will come down with time and the advancement of high definition CCTV.

Drones can track someone once they're marked but a drone cannot bend light to see the face.

Grabbing someone only needs a small team or the police to turn up and arrest them. Once you know where your target is its just a matter of getting them.

Post: #12

I remember a couple of years ago when a thing went around on facebook encouraging women to post pictures of themselves without makeup and millions of women just did it. I thought that it was a great way for security agencies to scoop up photos of people.