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Comment by nerdcity | Hacker News Reader

People asking for body cameras on all police, whether net benefit or not, need to understand everything that is coming with it. That includes automatic facial identification of everyone. Police will simply no longer have to ask for ID. Obscuring your face is already being made illegal... (see: burqa bans)

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So i looked up burqa bans and found this: http://qz.com/326086/the-places-in-the-world-that-have-a-bur... which basically only has 2 European countries banning it nationally, and just a few more who implement local bans or have attempted to ban it. Provided the constitutional religious freedoms we have in the US, it seems very unlikely that a similar ban would pass here. In terms of obscuring your face, there are anti-mask laws, but they really pertain to protests/riots.

I'm not suggesting that the ban is good, or other countries will not follow suit, however it just seems like quite a jump to make - because 6 countries have some form of a ban on a burqa we have to watch out for face recognition. Should we not wear a cross if we're Christian because Syria persecutes Jehovah’s Witnesses?

http://qz.com/326086/the-places-in-the-world-that-have-a-bur...

In 2011, France went even further, forbidding concealment of people’s face in public—through a burqa, niqab (a version of the veil that leaves a slot for a woman’s eyes), but also masks or balaclavas

http://www.connexionfrance.com/cctv-video-surveillance-prote...

President Sarkozy wants 2011 to be the year that "vidéoprotection" goes mainstream, and has set a target of 60,000 cameras watching public spaces around the country by the end of this year, up from the current 20,000.

Did you read my reply? I'm aware that France and a few other countries are placing a ban on burqas. I stated this very fact.

So i guess i'm confused what you're getting at here.

I'm just noting that the timing coincides with an upward usage of cctv and public surveillance.

Oh ok. Yea that's a good point. Though i stated in another reply that images of unconstrained users from NIR sensors is still an active and less successful form of face recognition. It's actually part of what i work on!

I don't think there is anyway the technology doesn't get used. The only option is going to be transparency and openness in the data collected so it becomes harder to hide abuse. Privacy will be what dies.

You've made a great point here, and certainly this should be involved in conversations about police wearing body cams. I'm still for body cams, though-- the inherent trustworthiness of the police's word must be ended permanently, and there is only one way to make that so.

Eventually the video from body cams will be scraped for ID information, which can then be cross referenced with the cell phone data they pull from the local Stingray or dustbox. They've got your name, your face, your digital communications, and your physical location tracked over time, controlled at the metro level, all without any kind of warrant/oversight or consent from you. Pair this with an ARGOS equipped drone, and you could easily show a live map of where "problematic" individuals are. Reaching that point is a totalitarian panopticon, and 100% enforcement of the law becomes possible, criminalizing everyone.

At what point does the complex of this technology constitute a search/seizure that requires a warrant? At what point does this complex of technology constitute an unreasonable search or seizure? When does this cross the line into being illegal or unconstitutional, if we aren't already there? I mean, there's no legal participation needed to follow me around all day via a sky camera, snoop my communications all day for content and metadata, note all of my purchases, note all my interactions with others, note my general state when in view of police body cams, and generally scrutinize me 100% of the time.

I would also take this moment to note that these issues are separate from the NSA-related dragnet, though they are indeed likely to be integrated into it eventually. The body cams and police technology are about physical surveillance and enforcing physical compliance and "orderliness". The NSA is about enforcing and surveying ideological and norm compliance.

> is already being made illegal... (see: burqa bans)

I'm not even allowed to wear a baseball cap in my local public library.

Your's is an excellent point that gets lost in the shuffle.

On the bright side, as long as we keep underfunding police forces, maybe that reduces the surveillance apparatus? </sarcasm>

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