[HN Gopher] How the Police Use AI to Track and Identify You
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How the Police Use AI to Track and Identify You
Author : kungfudoi
Score : 109 points
Date : 2020-10-03 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thegradient.pub)
(TXT) w3m dump (thegradient.pub)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you want to see the horrors that result from law enforcement's
| use of AI and predictive policing, look no further than here[1].
|
| It's several videos taken from body cameras of police officers
| harassing, assaulting and abducting people because they showed up
| in their system as being related to, or knowing, people who are
| suspected, and not convicted, of crimes.
|
| The videos are from a story that made the front page on HN about
| a month ago[2], if you want more details.
|
| [1]
| https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24363871
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| It there any "AI" in the Tampa issue?
|
| Or "predictive"?
|
| The Tampa program is vindictive policing to harass undesirables
| into leaving town.
| maze-le wrote:
| This incredibly disturbing. I grew up with family members
| telling me horror stories about state abuse like this, from
| more than 30 years past in a country that doesn't exist
| anymore: The German Democratic Republic. If this isn't classic
| Stasi Zersetzungstaktik, I don't know what it is. Aren't there
| any laws against abuse like this? How the hell is this legal?
| kyuudou wrote:
| I'm glad you've pointed this out. Comparisons to GDR and the
| Stasi often get ridiculed for being excessive and hyperbolic
| when in fact what's currently implemented would've been the
| Stasi's dream.
|
| If anyone needs a good weekend movie recommendation, __Das
| Leben der Anderen __[1] is excellent and quite relevant.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
| geraldkleber wrote:
| This is why we built Trix (trix.co).
|
| It's a consumer-facing photo editing app that uses adversarial AI
| to manipulate your photos in such a way that companies like
| Clearview AI can't train facial recognition algorithms off your
| data. You can download the Android or iOS version at trix.co -
| we're in beta right now.
|
| Would love to get anyone's feedback!
| searchableguy wrote:
| What if this works to increase bias against certain group of
| people because the facial recognition software isn't trained on
| them?
|
| I am not sure technology can solve this completely.
| geraldkleber wrote:
| I very much appreciate that question, and having been in this
| space for a few years now, it's certainly one that's relevant
| to the tech as whole, but less so our app.
|
| Our technology is simply indexed to a public data-set of 30k
| individuals and when our deep learning model scrambles the
| key-points on your photos to confuse the clearviews of the
| world it does in a random manner. The model truly is a black
| box in that way.
| chance_state wrote:
| Do you have any data on how effective this technique is?
| geraldkleber wrote:
| Not yet - much of this research came out of U Chicago this
| summer and we just launched our beta. You can download at
| trix.co (iOS and Android).
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| So you're Theranosing it?
| geraldkleber wrote:
| Nope - you should check out the research!
|
| https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Hmm trying to download it on Android, I click the link and it
| starts to take me to google play but it just loads forever.
| Never gets to the page to download it
| geraldkleber wrote:
| Hmm, lemme do some bug squashing. Will reply when it's dealt
| with!
| _tulpa wrote:
| I really don't think you can solve technology with more
| technology...
| geraldkleber wrote:
| In this instance, we're well convinced we can.
| godelski wrote:
| This is cool, do you have a technical blog post?
| geraldkleber wrote:
| No technical blog post yet, but have some faqs up that could
| help out!
|
| https://www.trix.co/faq
| samename wrote:
| >"We require that you sign up with a valid US phone number to
| verify your identity as a human for security purposes."
|
| How does collecting personal data improve security? Why is
| identity verification needed when the point of using the
| service is to avoid automated identification in the first
| place?
| bigbubba wrote:
| Such a database would be a tasty treat for any unsavory
| company looking to purchase them.
| geraldkleber wrote:
| This is a measure designed to help us prevent facial
| recognition companies from gaining programmatic access to
| our api to test against it. In addition, because we are a
| new startup with limited computer resources such testing
| could also harm our throughput capabilities for actual
| users. Unfortunately, there are far better sources of
| simple name and phone number data such as whitepages.com,
| or any other CNAM service, so we doubt we would be a target
| of an attack for this data or that this data would be sell-
| able even if we were bad actors. Our perspective is that
| requiring phone verification allows us to provide a better
| level of service to customers.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Do you have any evidence that your system works?
|
| "Adversarial AI" doesn't really work against systems like
| Clearview that aren't using "AI" in the first place.
| geraldkleber wrote:
| You should check out the research that was done on this. The
| technology works - we're simply the first to really
| productize it in this manner.
|
| https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/
| vaccinator wrote:
| Sounds like a fight that can never be won
| geraldkleber wrote:
| We don't think that's the case!
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| Someone should check them for facebook scraping, because their
| tos and privacy policy are worded in a way that implies that:
|
| > _" By granting Trix access to any Third-Party Accounts, you
| understand that Trix may access, .. any information .. that you
| have provided to and stored in such Third-Party Account ("SNS
| Content") ... all SNS Content shall be considered to be your
| User Content"_
|
| Some great advice from their own privacy policy:
|
| > _" You should always review, and if necessary, adjust your
| privacy settings on third-party websites and services before
| linking or connecting them to Trix's websites or Service."_
|
| Statements like this are red flags:
|
| > _" We may collect metadata associated with User Content.
| Metadata typically consists of how, when, where and by whom a
| piece of User Content was collected and how that content has
| been formatted."_
|
| > _" Trix may transfer information that we collect about you,
| including personal information, to affiliated entities, or to
| other third parties "_
|
| Basically they reserve the right to do as they please with your
| data and all data they can access through services you link
| with their service.
| ape4 wrote:
| And why do they scan the demonstrations asking for police
| accountability - right away that sounds like a conflict of
| interesting. You never hear about the AI scanning faces at places
| where actual criminals hang out - like maybe a pawn shop
| (possibly selling stolen goods).
| tal8d wrote:
| Because the "demonstrations" have devolved into riots where
| "asking" means firebombing. Combine that with local prosecutors
| refusing to pursue charges, and you've got a situation where
| the police a highly motivated to identify everybody in black
| bloc chic.
| blantonl wrote:
| It won't be long before we see more and more escalating instances
| of the population using traditional electronic and physical
| warfare techniques against law enforcement in these "battles." I
| predict we'll see someone in the general public shoot down a
| collection drone, or start to actively target these physical
| collection nodes installed on poles, posts, buildings etc.
|
| There were already numerous documented cases of electronic
| warfare being deployed during protests at law enforcement - the
| jamming of their public safety 2-way radio systems.
|
| Whenever there is an escalation of techniques against the "enemy"
| - the enemy fights back. There will be interesting developments
| in this space the next decade with regard to this. Law
| enforcement already needs advanced direction finding equipment -
| which is traditionally a military operation.
| andreyk wrote:
| Don't think it's cited in this piece, there is also this recent
| piece of news - "Controversial facial-recognition software used
| 30,000 times by LAPD in last decade, records show"
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-21/lapd-con...
|
| I guess it's reasonable for police to use this technology, but
| not without more transparency and accountability... Feels like
| this year that's becoming very clear.
| moate wrote:
| >>I guess it's reasonable for police to use this technology...
|
| Depends on your interpretation on the 4th amendment. I
| personally feel it's extremely unreasonable.
| monocasa wrote:
| You're not the only one. If you read the opinions in United
| States v. Jones, the supreme court makes a pretty big
| distinction between the kinds of surveillance a police
| officer could reasonably do on their own, versus the scaling
| up that technology allows, and how that might kick otherwise
| allowed surveillance without a warrant to requiring a warrant
| just about the sheer amount of information being acquired.
| And that's even with data that could be available from
| watching from public streets, if there were enough officers
| to watch everyone.
| stanrivers wrote:
| China perfected this all for us and now the U.S. government can
| piggyback off of their practices... great.
|
| Serious note - the below is such a scary concept. There is a line
| somewhere and this feels like you are starting to cross it...
| both place-based and person-based predictive policing sound ripe
| for profiling / instigating actions that police can use as a
| reason to arrest an otherwise harmless person.
|
| "Predictive policing programs are another illustrative example
| showing how data, surveillance technology, and a system of
| automated policing work together to spy on, search, and,
| ultimately, control Americans who have not committed or been
| convicted of a crime.
|
| Predictive policing is premised on the idea that historical data
| of crime, demographics, socioeconomics, and geography can be used
| to forecast future incidents. Knowing where crime is likely to
| occur again, police try to intervene beforehand and prevent it.
|
| Broadly there are two kinds of "heat maps" produced by predictive
| policing models: place-based, which uses less data to try to
| avoid systemic pitfalls of relying on crime and demographic data
| and surges police into specific areas, and person-based, which
| tracks and creates a list of "high-risk" individuals by combining
| a person's criminal history with an analysis of their social
| network. "
| jancsika wrote:
| > person-based, which tracks and creates a list of "high-risk"
| individuals by combining a person's criminal history with an
| analysis of their social network.
|
| There is no way the software actually achieves this. If it did
| we would have already heard about a well-off target identified
| by the software, a target with the means to mount a loud
| defense against such tracking.
|
| And it cannot be that the software accurately returns such
| results but LE simply ignores them if the target seems to be
| too powerful. In that case we would have already heard from a
| leaker about a murder from a perpetrator that such a system
| correctly identified but LE neglected to follow up on. (Think
| of the value to the company of such evidence!)
|
| No, I'm guessing this system gives LE cover for the same flawed
| systems they've historically used to target and harass people
| who don't have the means to loudly mount a defense. Just take
| the same process that a court has ruled against as
| unconstitutional, use its data as input to your ML algo, and
| voila! You've probably got at at least one more decade before
| society figures out you're just appending the words "through a
| sophisticated AI system" to your outlawed policing.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I 'm guessing this system gives LE cover for the same
| flawed systems they've historically used to target and harass
| people who don't have the means to loudly mount a defense._
|
| This is exactly what happens. If we look at the evidence[1],
| law enforcement preys upon the poor and minorities who are
| not even committing crimes, but their predictive policing
| systems target them for harassment anyway.
|
| [1] https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigation
| s/p...
| monocasa wrote:
| Why would we have heard about any of the failures? Part of
| the 'blue wall' is intended to hide policing failures from
| the general populace. Particularly when
|
| * in the case of targeting a well off person who they decide
| to further investigate, they can simply use it as reason to
| look harder at someone, use parallel construction to build
| the case that the defense sees, and simply drop any cases
| where the defense happens to get too close. This is what they
| do with stingrays.
|
| * in the case of targeting a well off person who they decide
| not to investigate, they can simply tell themselves that the
| person is a paragon of society and it must be one of the
| failures of the technology. Like when a boy escaped Jeffrey
| Dahmer's house heavily drugged, running down the street,
| bleeding out of his anus, begging anyone who would listen to
| not let Jeffrey take him back, the police got involved and
| gave him back since Jeffrey was such a paragon of the town.
| That cop later became head of the police union.
| moate wrote:
| >>There is no way the software actually achieves this. If it
| did we would have already heard about a well-off target
| identified by the software, a target with the means to mount
| a loud defense against such tracking.
|
| I mean it's more likely that the system is going to informing
| you about likely targets for certain crime types (less murder
| which is frequently singular and more drug dealing since
| repeated). It's going to help create lists of suspects to
| pursue on a matter. If one of them is also a senator's son or
| a CEO, you'd likely go in softer than Joe Poorperson
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| > _Last month, it was revealed the Department of Homeland
| Security authorized the domestic surveillance of protestors and
| journalists, training a system usually reserved for hunting
| terrorists overseas with drones on American citizens exercising
| their First Amendment rights._
|
| wait wat
|
| edit: the articles linked source doesn't actually say that but
| instead talks about "Baseball card" dossiers.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| This is where policing in America has been headed for at least
| a decade now. Everything is so polarized that people who would
| normally be opposed to this view those being tracked as their
| enemies, and thus fair targets. (For example, I'd imagine that
| right wing or libertarian types would normally consider
| surveillance to be a real bad thing. But if it gets deployed
| against George Floyd protestors... Ehhh... nbd)
|
| When you hear politicians talking about being "tough on crime"
| or "law and order", this is exactly the program they are
| pushing for.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Please don't conflate conservative with libertarian. They are
| partially similar in economic policy but opposites in social
| policy.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| With rare exceptions, police are strongly addictive
| personalities. There's no bit of power over the public that cops
| can use in a reliably responsible way.
|
| Surveillance & control are drugs, ones that they are not capable
| of putting down.
| tal8d wrote:
| That is true of almost everybody, not just police. Petty
| tyrants are a dime a dozen, they just lack the ability to
| legally kidnap you. People are bad, so we need a government
| comprised of people are bad, so we... I already hear the cries
| of "But who will build the roads?!"
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| So we come together as a democratic society to hold each
| other accountable.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I'm not going to say ACAB, but many who do believe that no matter
| how nice of an individual a cop might be, they are still working
| within an organization that pushes for privacy shredding
| technologies like this.
|
| You can be a sweet, community oriented beat cop out there doing
| your best, but behind you stands surveillance, militarization of
| police, and the tragedy of prisons in America.
|
| Maybe this isn't a generalization that's fair -- should/do we
| fault all FAANG employees because their parent companies are
| doing unethical things?
|
| I don't know the answer, but articles like this definitely make
| me think a whole lot more about whether individual police can be
| ethical while operating in the way the departments do today.
| ssklash wrote:
| I don't think you can separate the individual from the
| organization when the organization either fundamentally or in
| practice is engaged in negative/harmful activities. Policing is
| broken in the US, and though its original intention is good,
| the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no
| longer has the original intent as its goal.
|
| The same applies to companies like Facebook and Google. They
| fundamentally exist to extract data from their users. They
| never had another legitimate mission that was corrupted over
| time, unlike the police. Apple, Netflix, Amazon at least have
| services that do not revolve around taking advantage of their
| users and manipulating their behavior.
|
| Organizations are made up of individuals at the end of the day.
| If you are a cop or work at companies like Palantir, Google,
| Facebook, you are helping prop up organizations that actively
| do harm to many people. You may not be as responsible as cops
| that murder or decision makers at the top, but their guilt
| would not be possible without you. Please think long and hard
| about where you work and why you work there.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Are you honestly saying that FB and Google don't provide
| anything that users value?
| Animats wrote:
| Can this be used against employers to detect wage theft? "Time
| shaving" should be easy to detect. If cell phone tracking, W-2
| payments, and employer time records are in substantial
| disagreement, wage theft has been found.
| [deleted]
| klenwell wrote:
| I initially read this the other way: used _by_ employers to
| detect wage theft.
|
| Supervisor Drone: You are allotted two government-mandated
| 15-minute breaks a day, but our third-party right-to-work
| service detected you away from your work sector for an average
| of 16.8 minutes per break period over your past 3 shifts. You
| are hereby terminated and liable for service fees you agreed to
| as part of your original employment agreement.
| moate wrote:
| By whom? The government has shown time and time again they
| aren't interested in policing attacks against labor (see: the
| toothlessness of the NLRB, the gig economy, weakening of
| unions/organizing, etc) so it wouldn't be them.
|
| The companies aren't going to do it because LOL wut?
|
| So how are you going to get labor to do that? And if they do,
| who do they take it to (because again, NLRB is underfunded and
| relatively weak)
| Animats wrote:
| We'll have to see how pro-labor the next administration is.
|
| Labor law enforcement could be run as a profit center, like
| drug enforcement, if the fines were higher.
| aaron695 wrote:
| I know HN isn't very technical so this might be hard to
| understand, but this isn't AI.
|
| It's just computer power.
|
| All this was possible 40 years ago but it cost orders of
| magnitude more.
| notsuoh wrote:
| It's true that AI is a bit of an overloaded term these days,
| but in the modern usage of AI you have all types of machine
| learning and neural networks, which this certainly is. The AI
| you're thinking of is usually referred to as AGI. But all that
| aside, in the end your comment is still a little off the mark
| because what is any flavor of AI but computer power.
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