Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7036141/Police-fine-pedestrian-90-facial-recognition-camera-row.html

by mlmartin • 7 years ago

283 159 7 years ago

dailymail.co.uk

vixen99• 7 years ago

For those who prefer not to go to the Daily Mail directly:

"Camera cross-checked photos of faces of passers-by against wanted database. One man covered face before officers stopped him and took his picture anyway. He was fined £90 at scene in Romford by police who arrested three other people Police say they know of human rights concerns but want to make London safer"

dominicr• 7 years ago

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recogniti...

(Adding a link to a news source from the other side of the aisle to the Mail.)

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

Less other side of the aisle than the Mail being an issue for having a long, long history of inaccurate and plain made up "reporting".

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

>Police say they know of human rights concerns but want to make London safer"

Alrighty then, just wanted to make sure that they know of human rights concerns.

simonh• 7 years ago

..but want to make London safer.

It would be nice to be safer from police harassment.

TomK322• 7 years ago

That old Sinéad O'Connor is still ringing true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n14lwdpYkAA

sanbor• 7 years ago

..but want to make London safer.

By the police stopping you, taking your picture, and trying to match your face to a list of criminals with 96% of false positive match rate.

willyt• 7 years ago

Technically he was fined for swearing at the police, not for covering his face. If he had said nothing he would not have been fined but might have been searched as the police have the power to stop and search anyone who they have reasonable cause to suspect is acting suspiciously.

kwhitefoot• 7 years ago

But they didn't have reasonable cause.

epanchin• 7 years ago

That’s not entirely accurate. They have the power to stop and search where they believe you have been involved in a crime or are carrying a prohibited item.

They must have grounds to suspect they will find what they are looking for.

rurp• 7 years ago

If he had remained quiet he would not have been fined for swearing, but he likely would have been fined for something else. It seems pretty clear the intention was to issue a fine, not to reduce swearing.

ChuckNorris89• 7 years ago

How do they enforce this on people wearing hijabs or other religios clothing that covers the face?

sundvor• 7 years ago

Or Respro masks. Legitimate use cases for those, London has.

ptah6• 7 years ago

they would ask them for identification just like they did with this guy

cjrp• 7 years ago

Of every person wearing a headscarf or veil? And every cyclist wearing a filter mask?

kypro• 7 years ago

What identification exactly? You don't have to own a passport or a drivers license in the UK, nor do we have ID cards.

mrep• 7 years ago

They can just make that illegal. Burqas have already been made illegal in many countries such as France and Denmark [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijab_by_country

Mediterraneo104• 7 years ago

Hijabs do not cover the face. A niqab or burqa would, but the former are very rare in the West, and the latter virtually nonexist.

7813• 7 years ago

Maybe in the countryside. Go to any West EU capital and you'll see planty of niqabs and burqas.

Angostura• 7 years ago

From the Independent coverage:

The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”. However, witnesses said several people were stopped after covering their faces or pulling up hoods.
“The guy told them to p* off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,” Ms Carlo added. “He was really angry.”

I live close to Romford, and I'm quite tempted to wander past with my face obscured and then politely decline if asked to be photographed.

Of course, I'm white, middle class and middle aged, so I probably wont be stopped.

NullPrefix• 7 years ago

Man in the news photos didn't look that dark either.

dazc2• 7 years ago

“The guy told them to p* off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,” Ms Carlo added. “He was really angry.”

Accepting such a fine is voluntary, he could go to court and defend himself instead. I'd be surprised if some organisation or another didn't offer to pay his costs?

mywittyname• 7 years ago

If he gets off, it will absolutely be the result of the publicity around this case. Courts will uphold these rules if imposed on normal people.

petercooper• 7 years ago

“The guy told them to p off and then they gave him the £90 public order fine for swearing,”*

This is a common use of laws in the United Kingdom. They put lots of laws on the books around trivial things that they almost never enforce on their own, but then which officers arbitrarily use in "convenient" situations like this. The average person swearing in the street will not be accosted, someone arguing with a cop who wants to make a point will.

noir_lord• 7 years ago

Up to and including ASBO's

Which whatever their intention became a useful 'we don't like your face' tool.

My default position is 'explain why you want these powers with evidence they are nescessary' unfortunately the average person here doesn't pay any attention, which is why we are one of the most heavily surveiled democracies in the world.

fifnir• 7 years ago

A great loophole to subvert bureaucracy and return the power to the whims of individuals....

kevin_b_er• 7 years ago

This is called selective enforcement and is part of the erosion of the rule of law in the UK. When you have mountains of laws such that most people are always violating them, you can target anyone you don't like. This leads to abuse of power and is formative in the transformation of police from those that uphold the law to thugs. The thugs decide when to punish on whim.

sieabahlpark• 7 years ago

To what, show who is really in control of the land? Sounds corrupt and a slippery slope to me.

fredley• 7 years ago

"neccessarily"

rezeroed• 7 years ago

Is "piss off" swearing?

wallace_f3• 7 years ago

They're just "protecting and serving" their fragile egos.

What society needs is genetic engineering to ensure no more micro dick, low IQ, braindead thugs are born into the world to play grown-up wunnabe nazis.

StavrosK5• 7 years ago

The force had put out a statement saying “anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious”.

That's why it's called "erosion of rights" and not "outright nullification of rights". Unfortunately, it works, and it's entirely unsurprising that face surveillance will become normalized.

dsfyu404ed6• 7 years ago

There's a reason they're doing it in London first. In a wealthy city like London you can get away with going full "law and order" because the ratio of rich to poor is better (i.e more rich people) and the rich generally view this as no threat to them. Then once it's normalized they roll it out to Liverpool, Belfast and everywhere else that the poors are less under the thumb of the government.

You see this in the US. Boston, DC, New York, etc are littered with surveillance cameras and ALPRs. Once it's normalized they'll roll it out to places like New Bedford, Norlfolk and Buffalo and all the other places where the government (as an organization, not as individuals) feels its respected less.

foldr• 7 years ago

Romford is on the outskirts of London and is not especially wealthy.

arethuza2• 7 years ago

If there is one place where the authorities might take a bit of care around implementing new surveillance technologies you would hope it would be Belfast.

devmunchies• 7 years ago

because the ratio of rich to poor is better

I’m not clicking with this theory. I think it’s in cities that are more multicultural and thus have more hostility.

The government can get away with a lot when the people are frustrated about something else.

bgeeek• 7 years ago

Except it was used elsewhere in the UK before London.

dalbasal4• 7 years ago

I wonder how you'd avoid this, even if parliament had the inclination.

Would private face recognition be banned too? Very soon a CCTV setup without face recognition will be out of date.

Computer vision-ey stuff is maturing and the list of "trivial" is getting long. It'll probably be implemented in most camera applications. Face recognition, object recognition, all manner of classification.

Once your phone organizes and hyperlinks photos this way, it'll seem weird to deny police.

I'm not denying there're major rights issues associated with this, just that the technology is set to become so ambient.

dsfyu404ed6• 7 years ago

I wonder how you'd avoid this, even if parliament had the inclination.

You need a populace that overwhelmingly believes it is not ok for the government to operate a surveillance dragnet. Then the politicians will do that. The only reason the government doesn't go full Waco on people who haven't paid their parking tickets is because the overwhelming majority of society don't tolerate that. This is also why it's important to not let this kind of crap be legitimized in the public's mind.

Unfortunately it looks like that ship as long since sailed as far as a damp rock off the coast of France is concerned. With all the crap that's being dredged up as a result of Brexit there's still hope for the Irish saying they see what Britain has and they don't want any.

mcv• 7 years ago

The way to avoid this is to make dazzle makeup fashionable.

sasasassy• 7 years ago

In many countries recording someone in public without their consent is simply illegal. If you notice someone caught you in a picture or video, and you visible (not just a blur in a giant mass of people), you can request (force) the person to delete the footage. I've seen this happen multiple times.

Concerts and other closed events routinely have as a condition for attendance that you consent to have your photo taken.

lm284693• 7 years ago

It's not everyday I quote Ted Kaczynski, but I think he had a valid point when, in his manifesto, he theorise that no amount of regulation is capable of making us safe from technological abuse.

125 - 135 from: https://www.josharcher.uk/static/files/2018/01/Industrial_So....

It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises.
A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on ... In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.
While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable.
Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation.
No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or ethical codes, can provide permanent protection against technology. History shows that all social arrangements are transitory; they all change or break down eventually. But technological advances are permanent within the context of a given civilization.

StavrosK5• 7 years ago

The issue is that, ultimately and generally, the government does what a majority of people wants (or at least tolerates). Why are we tolerating this loss of freedoms? The only answer I can arrive at is "because it doesn't inconvenience people enough to do something about it".

Protesting against something takes a lot of energy, and inconveniencing you only a little (or very much but extremely rarely) doesn't make most people's list of priorities.

ncr100• 7 years ago

For those who don't know, Ted murdered people with improvised explosive devices.

elliekelly3• 7 years ago

This is what I don't understand about the hard-line 2A advocates. They're so concerned with being able to "defend against the government" if needed but guns are no longer the government's biggest source of power over the people. Data and surveillance are far more powerful in 2019 than any weapon.

Full disclosure: I'm a gun owner. But I'd swap the second amendment for a data privacy amendment in a heartbeat.

lapinot• 7 years ago

Also called: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline

FerretFred2• 7 years ago

That's why it's called "erosion of rights" and not "outright nullification of rights"

True, but you can't erode something ad infinitum; eventually it will disappear.

StavrosK5• 7 years ago

Yes, yes it will.

cbovis2• 7 years ago

Very interested to understand what sort of metadata is being stored from these cameras. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the cameras are being used to build a database of individual’s movements, whether deliberate or as a side effect of logging.

Any more information on this from a better source than the DM?

cbovis2• 7 years ago

Did a little more digging around this and discovered https://www.met.police.uk/live-facial-recognition-trial/ through Reddit.

“Live Facial Recognition uses NEC’s NeoFace technology to analyse images of the faces of people on the watch list. It measures the structure of each face, including distance between eyes, nose, mouth and jaw to create facial data.

The system detects a face, creates a digital version of it and searches it against the watch list; where it makes a match it sends an alert to an officer on the scene.

The officer compares the camera image and the watch list image and decides whether to stop and speak to the person. We always explain why we’ve stopped someone; we also give them a leaflet that explains how they can contact us to ask any questions afterwards.

The system will only keep faces matching the watch list, these are kept for 30 days, all others are deleted immediately. We delete all other data on the watch list and the footage we record.”

telesilla2• 7 years ago

In a science fiction world, those of us who cared about privacy would start wearing make-up (until it was banned):

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/makeu...

We don't do this en masse now because "The very thing that makes you invisible to computers makes you glaringly obvious to other humans"

wnkrshm• 7 years ago

I wonder, what about methods that do not obstruct human vision but do obstruct the camera? Like a faceshield, transparent mask or bag that you can wear (like a transparent raincoat hood) but one that has scattering features for near IR light that will hide your face to cameras.

Or laser dazzlers that look for lenses. Both will probably be quickly banned as criminal tools (like 'hacking tools' are in some nations).

You could also project time-dependent illumination patterns on your own face, throwing off algorithms.

telesilla2• 7 years ago

I think we need temporary tattoos: they should dissolve over a few days, so you can new ones and avoid re-detection, but not be able to be "taken off" by police wishing to scan you. Something that is worn would be considered as disobedience, like the shirt the man in the article pulled over this face.

We just need one of the Kardashians to make it fashionable and then it's all over for face detection.

TomK322• 7 years ago

How good is this software if you just close one eye and make a grimace while walking by?

teekert• 7 years ago

Show your face, slave!

upofadown• 7 years ago

We haven't really even come to terms with the false positive rate associated with just looking at people. When law enforcement wants to check ID all they have to do is say they thought you looked like someone. The high rate of false positives is a feature not a bug. You could set up an empty box with a lens drawn on it with a motion detector aimed to go off 4% of the time and the result would be almost as useful to law enforcement as a facial detection system that actual did something. The facial detection just increases the efficiency of the "papers please" checkpoint.

coldcode• 7 years ago

1984 was not intended to be a how-to manual.

moron4hire• 7 years ago

> After being pulled aside, the man told police: 'If I want to cover me face, I'll cover me face. Don't push me over when I'm walking down the street.'

Jesus, it's a good thing cops in London don't have guns. Can't imagine how this would have ended in one of the whitebread suburbs here in the US with our 'roided-out school-yard-bullies-turned-pro.

shawabawa3• 7 years ago

Slight correction: It seems he wasn't exactly fined for hiding his face. Police asked him to uncover his face and he told them to "piss off", for which he was fined.

anbop• 7 years ago

That’s actually worse.

gjm11• 7 years ago

I don't think it is.

Scenario 1: You get fined if you refuse to expose your face.

Scenario 2: You get fined if you refuse to expose your face, and are rude about it.

I don't see how scenario 2 is worse than scenario 1: it seems obviously less bad. Now, maybe in fact it's

Scenario 1: You get fined if you refuse to expose your face.

Scenario 3: You get fined if you're rude to the police.

This comparison is more debatable, but I still prefer 3 to 1, because not exposing your face is a thing that has (so to speak) possible functional uses, so if you can't do it then you've lost something that could actually be useful to you, whereas being rude to the police -- which, for the avoidance of doubt, I do think people should be free to do -- isn't really something anyone has a particular need to do.

Again, I can understand why someone might prefer 1 to 3. But if my civil liberties are going to be gratuitously eroded, I'd prefer to lose ones whose value is only symbolic.

bArray2• 7 years ago

You'll find in the UK that it's quite common practice to use the vagueness in the law to pin a different charge on somebody. Being rude to a police officer isn't a chargeable offense, yet it'll be treated as such. The police have no requirement or training available to actually understand the nuances of the law, nor are they updated when the law changes. The British police is mostly under-trained and under-funded, especially as you break out of the London bubble.

One of the major issues with UK law is it's vagueness and openness to interpretation, which is all of course by design. You don't tend to notice erosion until the ground beneath you collapses.

marme• 7 years ago

In the US you would just get charged with resisting arrest. This is what happens when they ask for your ID and you refuse to give it to them. You wont be convicted but the fact that you can be arrested for resisting arrest without committing any crime is a problem

lucb1e• 7 years ago

Wait, that's not a slight correction, that's a whole different thing. So nobody was fined for covering their face, but when they swore at cops they got a fine for that? That's quite a distinction. That's the difference between being fined for speaking ill of Budha/Allah/God or for swearing at the police man who asked you to voluntarily not do that.

neiman• 7 years ago

... and now his face is all over hackernews. Great.

sudoaza• 7 years ago

Police state intensifies

bredren2• 7 years ago

I regularly see people going around with their faces covered in Portland. For example, guy in dark clothes on a bmx bike riding down east bank esplanade.

I assume that these folks have warrants. But I am not aware of any deployed facial recognition in Portland.

tasty_freeze• 7 years ago

If they are doing it for that reason, that seems like a bad choice. That would stand out even more obviously than had they worn a T-shirt that said "The police are looking for me".

bredren2• 7 years ago

I thought the same but you still see it all the time.

Zenst3• 7 years ago

I wonder if you could copyright your face and then use the law against the law. DMCA takedowns etc etc.

CharlesColeman• 7 years ago

use the law against the law

You can only do that if the lawmakers agree.

Zenst3• 7 years ago

They already agreed lots of copyright laws and the like, be kinda ironic to use those laws for civil justice.

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

It's not an artistic work, and there are broad rights to images in public that preclude you from making a work on your face to prevent imaging of it.

It's a nice idea but it would allow lots of law breaking of things worked that way. Eg paint something on your car, now police can't capture you on speed camera!!11one.

Zenst3• 7 years ago

Yes sadly that is the crux. Whilst the people do have concerns, those concerns are shared for nefarious reasons by your criminally inclined.

Way things are going, how long until we have camera technology as CCTV that is comparable to Holywood camera's - certainly the standard today is up there with 80's offering.

Might even come a time when you can do a film in places like London without needing any cameras as you can just ab-use the data protection act to get copies of any footage your in and get all the camera angles and video you need to edit into a film. Kinda doable now, though not all cameras are 4k and well light area's. But certainly doable.

One interesting legal aspect about CCTV in the UK - the only camera's that are allowed to record audio are the ones located outside police stations. Which is reassuring as with mic-arrays - intrusion into privacy and indeed voice recognition would be far greater than any CCTV/facial recognition. But that is one to watch and keep an eye upon as I'm sure that will change/erode over time.

bArray2• 7 years ago

This makes me very sad for many reasons:

* People are losing their freedom of privacy in the name of safety and most accept it. Many are likely unaware at this stage of the trade-off.

* One activist was in presence by happen chance, otherwise this likely would have gone unreported.

* The database _currently_ only keeps peoples data for 30 days. When the UK leaves the EU, this will likely be extended. China has already experienced multiple data breaches.

* It's unclear what data is kept and deleted, I suspect that metadata may be retained indefinitely.

* The money being spent on these systems could be spent getting more officers on the ground. I have no doubt they are sinking millions of pounds into this project.

* The police initially started testing this system illegally, there were no repercussions.

* The majority of people being arrested as a result of this technology are probably not the worst people in society. I believe this will be used to disproportionately target poorer people and petty crimes.

* Telling an officer to "fuck off" or "piss off" is not a crime. It's not an offense to be rude and you certainly shouldn't have to "Wind your neck in" in fear of a public servant.

wlkr2• 7 years ago

Telling an officer to "fuck off" or "piss off" is not a crime.

This is largely true but

It's not an offense to be rude

is rightly or wrongly a very broad grey area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_5_Public_Order_Act_198...

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

Also, if you're aggressive IIRC then it can be considered to be threatening.

timthorn• 7 years ago

Telling an officer to "fuck off" or "piss off" is not a crime. It's not an offense to be rude and you certainly shouldn't have to "Wind your neck in" in fear of a public servant.

Yes it is: From the Public Order Act 1986 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64)

A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he—

(a)uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or

(b)displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.

cies• 7 years ago

Always start your sentence with "In my opinion you should..."

wlkr2• 7 years ago

There are exceptions for police officers though, who are expected to tolerate some swearing. Relevant cases are listed on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_5_Public_Order_Act_198...

geodel2• 7 years ago

I think TV has created an image where young people can get really aggressive or even physical with police, doctor/nurses etc. The receiving side of this aggression are quite understanding people who'd say 'oh this guy is just emotionally hurt and it should be fine'.

YeGoblynQueenne2• 7 years ago

Is there another source for this? I don't even want to visit the Mail's website, let alone read whatever misrepresentation of what actually transpired that they have put down in their article.

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

See my comment, it was on BBC Click a few days ago.

richrichardsson• 7 years ago

As someone also not interested in giving the Daily Fail/Heil any traffic what-so-ever, I found this : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recogniti...

YeGoblynQueenne2• 7 years ago

Cheers.

benj111• 7 years ago

I always find I slightly unsettling when the Mail gets frothy mouthed about the same things as Hacker News.

Don't want to get stuck in that news bubble though....

Wildgoose• 7 years ago

It includes video and is also available on the Daily Mirror website.

pbhjpbhj5• 7 years ago

This was on BBC Click, which is on YouTube (for me, I'm in UK though). A good programme overall.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KqFyBpcbH9A

They give stats and details.

It may not be the same incident as the OP, but it sounds broadly similar and the programme fleshes out the general situation well.

Edit: Actually it is the same guy. The issue and provision of the fine, etc., it's on the show.

pif2• 7 years ago

I personally don't see any issue with this.

If you want absolute privacy, than stay at home.

If you want absolute freedom, than go live somewhere where nobody else lives.

Society runs on compromises: your freedon to swing your fist ends where my nose begins (and viceversa); your privacy ends where my safety is concerned (and viceversa).

seieste• 7 years ago

What’s your full name, phone number, and street address?

If you want privacy, then don’t post online.

wallace_f3• 7 years ago

He doesn't even have an Online Commenting License. A hefty fine under the Against Hate Speech Act of 2022.

WilliamEdward• 7 years ago

To add to this, there hasn't been any expectation of privacy beyond a reasonable amount out in public, in most places, for the longest time. Whether you think this is morally correct or not, it has been the norm for quite some time so this can't suddenly be surprising.

Zak4• 7 years ago

Even if I accept your premise that privacy from facial recognition in public is to your safety as swinging my fist at your nose is to your right to not be assaulted (I don't), I don't think the police in the UK have done a good job justifying the benefits of using facial recognition this way. How much safety benefit does it actually produce?

pif2• 7 years ago

The main point for me is that policemen made it really clear that, once public procedures and policies have been defined by a legitimate government, unless those policies infringe internationally recognized human rights, it's not up to the single citizen to challenge them!

If you don't agree with them, democracies give you the means to start a public discussion. But, in the meanwhile, you comply. That is civilization!

Do you know that idiocy of sovereign citizens? Well, London police demontrated that none of that bullshit will be tolerated. And, while I personally dislike being continuosly filmed, I think that London police has just made London a better place to live.

London city is not the wild west.

stunt• 7 years ago

Well said that we are the last free generation.

It so weird how much of our freedom and privacy we are giving away. People used to fight for these stuff.

And then you would think how far this can go in near future if this is just the beginning.

After all, all these fear and mixed feelings about security and conflicts are caused by a long chain of reactions and consequences of bad decisions governments are making themselves around the world. And it is sad that normal people end up losing their privacy more than responsible ones do.

It requires a fundamental strategy change that is not going to happen in reality. I wonder what kind of destructive side effects it will have for the future generations specially to the culture.

marcod• 7 years ago

Another report https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/16/moment-man-fined-90-hiding-fa... It's a little bit like saying "If she doesn't want to be tossed into the water she must be a witch!"

Police fine pedestrian for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face

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