What are they detecting for? Just capturing everyone in case? Or warrants? Or? Freaking dystopian

Weirdos

I went to the trouble of creating a custom meme for such a post. Telescreen next?

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Digital id Freaking dystopian

the fuck

and nobody gives a shit...

Yeah they started "testing" them in our area last year. I love how you can see them from a mile away, so anyone who actually has something to hide will just neatly avoid it.

Why would anyone get near that thing? Are these the sludge people I keep hearing about?

Yeah, it's all part of the net that's being assembled around us. If a phone's IMEI, IMSI etc gets linked to the incoming digital ID and the increasing volume of facial data, the correlation step will be much lower overhead, and so I expect much more pre-correlated data will be gathered.

Agree that they are obvious, although in a busy area if you aren't looking out for them I think it's easy to get picked up on the cameras before noticing and avoiding. I think this stage is part testing, part picking up any wanted people they detect (plain clothes police came back and forth from crowd into the van), and a large part normalisation to mass public-space facial-recognition monitoring.

Lol, go for it, its open source 🤣 I'm stealing yours too hard ha

Sorry, not sure I follow. What does a digital id have to do with walking around the streets?

Capturing faces to match up with digital id profiles… maybe match up with the data collected through biometric scanners at airports (possibly, I’m speculating)… But they’re definitely not there hoping to catch street crime on camera… they’re collecting personal data… possibly gait too Maybe I’m too cynical and they need total surveillance to prevent climate change and protect the children

You hear about these facial recognition jobs arresting people from the local met forces every now and then. As a privacy advocate, I don't like them. As someone who wants to keep criminals off the streets, I have mixed feelings. Guess things have changed a lot since I've now got a young daughter. I used to hold onto beliefs like privacy above all else, but I suppose I'm now considering things like family safety as even more important. chat have I sold out? 😔

nah man, you haven't sold out - you're just a dad now who gives a shit. we always balance risk vs freedom, just different math once kids enter the picture. but here's the thing - being watched 24/7 doesn't actually make your daughter safer. smart criminals adapt quick (like you said), surveillance creep always expands, and the data rarely stays put. maybe consider privacy *as* safety - for her future. none of us want little squiggs growing up in a world where someone can pull up everywhere she's ever been from some fish van. strong communities > cameras, every time.

Well said. And thanks 😹 I honestly can't disagree with you, and I still feel that. However with age and family, I guess come the realization that there's so much outside of my control. In an ideal world we'd all pull together as communities and stop crime when we see it. The truth is I so rarely see this happen than I have given up on this hope. I'm absolutely more worried about the "dumb" criminals than I am about the smart criminals. And unfortunately, there's a lot of dumb crims in my area. Some parts of our community are strong (and getting better), and yes, in these parts strangely, there's more privacy. But in other areas (such as central, high streets, etc), it's just rife with fucking crime, sexual predators, repeat offenders. I do hope that one day, community will beat out surveillance. But that hope is diminishing every passing grim headline I read.

age does that - strips away the "we can fix this" and leaves the "how do we survive this." i get it. the brutal truth? most dumb crims aren't stopped by facial rec anyway. they're caught by old-school stuff - patrol cars, nosy neighbors, repeat offenders being predictable. surveillance is just busywork that makes politicians feel useful. maybe the move is micro-community level. neighbors you actually talk to. looking out for each other's kids without some van watching. it's slower than surveillance, but at least it's real. don't blame yourself for feeling defeated though. these systems are designed to wear us down.

That is so well put... and exactly how I feel. Complacency is unfortunately the path of least resistance, and even more so when you worry about children. Definitely guilty of that. I feel disgust whenever I pass one of these surveillance vans, yet feel delight when I see they've arrested some repeat offender.

I wonder whether there's a "nothing stops this train" aspect to all centralised systems, and to state systems in particular. The state may even realise that ever increasing surveillance ends up doing more harm than good, but by its nature, it's an impersonal system, and has no effective means to bring about stronger communities (where it tries, it's counterproductive). So, when attempting to solve problems, it just keeps pulling harder on the system levers it can control, until eventually something breaks.