UK passport images database could be used to catch shoplifters

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/02/uk-passport-images-database-could-be-used-to-catch-shoplifters

by mindracer • 3 years ago

20 37 3 years ago

To be fair britain does have a crime problem and a money problem. Since it cant finance the police it could leverage the existing government owned database of people’s pictures to catch criminals faster. Should look into driving license photos as well.

rcarr2• 3 years ago

Driving license and passport photos are the same in the UK now. When you get your passport photo taken now the photo booth gives you a digital link which you put in the application. And then when you renew your driving license it uses the photo from the passport. I'm not 100% sure but I think there's an option to use another photo but I expect the vast majority will just use the passport one.

rjh29• 3 years ago

I just took a photo with my phone, so I don't have a link.

beezlewax• 3 years ago

You're talking about mass surveillance of the population as if it were normal. We're sleep walking into a nightmarish dystopia one piece of tech at a time.

djohnston3• 3 years ago

People are openly looting businesses with impunity because of overstretched police and weak prosecution. Bring out the models.

chmod7752• 3 years ago

I'd rather have crime and money problems than a surveillance state problem.

djohnston3• 3 years ago

Disagree tbh. Sick of the crime, happy to be surveilled not committing crimes.

didntknowya• 3 years ago

leverage? as in sell out people's biometric data for profit? yea that's exactly what we were warned about

rcarr2• 3 years ago

Co-Op alone is seeing a 1,000 incidents of shoplifting a day at the minute[1]. I'm wary of governments overstepping the mark and using this stuff for ill, but I'm leaning on the side of this being a legitimate use case. Of course, we also need solutions to address the societal reasons why people are turning to shoplifting and organised crime in the first place.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/21/co-op-boss-u...

OfSanguineFire2• 3 years ago

Meanwhile, on Mastodon’s feed of its most liked recent posts, I have repeatedly seen posts of the slogan “If you see someone shoplifting food, no you didn’t”. There definitely seem to be a lot of people in the tech world who believe that supermarket shoplifting should not be prosecuted or even reported.

PebblesHD• 3 years ago

I usually see this remark associated with the idea of a struggling person stealing essentials, which I would probably not report either. At least in Australia, supermarkets are making record profits and increasing prices in the middle of a housing crisis so the general feeling is they can afford the loss, rightly or wrongly.

As far as the article goes, I’m opposed to using these data sources for anything other than their original purpose, as it’s the same logic that would be used to test for example medically collected DNA against crime databases just in case.

Seanambers3• 3 years ago

Just as Rob Henderson said at the All in summit. It's basically a luxury belief. Rich tech folks isolated from the effects of stealing encourages poor people to steal and at some point face the consequences.

throwaway143562• 3 years ago

This would have been needlessly complicated if part of the EU.

tinktank2• 3 years ago

It wouldn't have been possible (and rightfully so) if GB was EU.

throwaway143562• 3 years ago

sorry for the joke, it is interesting to see the brexit "advantages" in action. I thought it would be uniformly bad for the brittons and haven't seen anything desirable let alone that makes it worth it

ianpenney• 3 years ago

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/rcmp-crack-fraudulent-passport-sch...

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

Slightly different case in nature but analyzing all the passport photos for duplicates is a no brainer move and led to at least one arrest and extradition in Canada. They allegedly paid drug addicts to file false applications in their names with different photos.

dv_dt3• 3 years ago

There is an evil doppelgänger problem given how bad the recognition is - or how seemingly unrelated people can look like one another. Good luck arguing that the database is wrong.

And of course all of those problems are intensified for minorities or other out groups.

ls612• 3 years ago

If you have government ID stating you are someone other than the person they think they are looking for it’ll not take long for them to move on.

amoshi• 3 years ago

Throw in proximity/place of residence and false positives go down too

dv_dt3• 3 years ago

Someone holds up a shop, it’s caught on ccd. The criminal is not caught and the media is matched to your photo. Your id paperwork is not going to help. You have become the person they’re looking for.

iudqnolq• 3 years ago

Ask a postmaster

tinktank2• 3 years ago

LOL. Surprised it took this long. The UK government really really has zero respect for its citizens. Seems to hate them with a passion.

ralferoo• 3 years ago

I don't have any figures to back this up, but I'd imagine that a significant chunk of shoplifters are teenagers, and given the 10 year lifetime of passports, their passport photos probably bear little resemblance to what they look like now.

I'd also imagine that another significant chunk of shoplifters are people who are struggling to get by financially, and if they're struggling to pay for food, they're not likely to be jetting off abroad on holiday and so unlikely to have paid £82 for a passport they don't need.

UK passport images database could be used to catch shoplifters

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