I reject the implication that police will only use facial recognition on people who are attacking the police, or that the repercussions for being present at (not necessarily instigating, or using violence during) a violent altercation will be proportional.
Not OP - but this is really good policing in my view. If the data stays private and not used against people in an unfair way subsequently, then I see no reason for it to be seen as "worrying" as the other commenter said.
E.g. they can cross reference-timestamps and see which individuals were close to violent altercations, they can then build up a solid case for who to interview and investigate further. Or maybe an actual crime happens during the protests and they need to investigate further, etc.
Honestly, as a side note, I personally find it very worrying that I have to justify such policing to a tech crowd. We can have responsible use of facial recognition and data-gather / profile-building, and it need not be a privacy issue. Right now, we sit with a situation where violent/aggressive/illegal behavior is being allowed to transpire during chaotic protests and it slips through because of the chaos and sheer scope and size of the protests. There is no way that traditional "policing" can combat that, and I fear we're emboldening criminal elements to take advantage of peaceful protests because we're unnecessarily tying the hands of the police because of nebulous "privacy" concerns.
And yes, burning/looting is a criminal act and shouldn't be tolerated during protests.
You don't need to techsplain this in hackernews of all places, it's cringey. You must be a perpetual contrarian, it makes you special.
There is a direct line between police use of Rekognition and the pretence to squash the freedom to protest. But you knew that, you just purposely have your blinders on to protect your worldview. Enjoy your leather sandwich.
You broke the site guidelines extremely badly in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. You've posted some substantive comments in previous threads, though (as well as some unsubstantive ones—please don't do that). I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and not ban you, but if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Just saw this. Sorry I got heated that day. Didn't have any time for these type of comments. Going forward I'm just gonna ignore and move on. Or just say what I need to say within the confines of the rules. Thanks.
For a start police in the UK have been videoing crowds with Handy Cams and mounted specialist mobile CCTV for decades for manual review. They have proved invaluable in NI for example in securing convictions of violent persons.
No one is saying there isn't a right to protest. The police have a duty to enforce the law and when protests turn violent they have the support of the majority to enforce that.
This method means minimal engagement with the crowd.
There was widespread violence and damage of public space. That you were outplayed by the police in exercising your little tantrum, it has no bearing on a discussion about police using video technology effectively to make policing safer and making finding culprits more reliable.
It's not ok to break the site guidelines even if another account was behaving badly. That only makes this place even worse and contributes to its self-destruction. I know it's not always easy, but if you'd please not do that, we'd appreciate it.
