There's an argument for stores and petrol stations to change their premises.
The tech to pay in advance for fuel, for example, has existed for decades.
Display stock behind the counter. Larger stores already have dedicated security staff
I'd much rather live in a world where people don't commit crime because they know and fear the consequences rather than one where we're all treated as potential criminals.
Me too. Unfortunately that world doesn't exist.
The Met is currently reporting a £260mn budget shortfall, which is more than the annual budget for several forces, e.g. Derbyshire with 2100 officers and its 800,000 population - 391 pop : 1 officer (not picking on them, just first on the list)
STW formatting messing with the link^^ Replace the + with %20 e.g. Police%20Funding%20Settlement%202024-25%20WMS.pdf
Moving displays around isn't treating everyone as a potential criminal and it has the bonus of reducing the psychological hook of making comfort items, e.g. alcohol, too easily available. Cigarettes, vapes, scratchcards, etc are stored behind counters.
Spend a tenner a day on prescribed methadone or heroin, or spend £300m with Palantir to stop junkies shoplifting so they can sell the swag and buy heroin? It's a tough one for sure.
Except car registration plates are generally very clear and easy to read, because they’re designed to be. Humans, on the other hand, come in a bewildering variety of shapes, sizes, colours and facial features, which can fool camera systems, especially if the weather is colder and people are wearing hats, scarves, hoods, etc.
sounds like something ID Cards would resolve.
try this test on your own data - I have years worth of photos, screenshots and general tat on my google photos folder. if I click on search and select "people" its perhaps not surprising that its astonishingly good at automatically pulling together all the photos ive ever taken of family members. and so it should be, theres loads of them.
its also however incredibly impressive at correctly identifying people where I only have a few photos. a distant family member appears in the background of a small handful of photos over several years from child to adult - no bother, theyre all there. it matches robert Carlisle as begbie in a meme ive shared with a still from a film where I was trying to identify another actor. the technology is amazing. it makes a few mistakes, but not many.
HOWEVER - what about my black friends. well my pal Rich I have plenty photos of. but whats this, the notorious BIG album cover and a screenshot of the the black guy in Elf
then I notice its picked up Trugoy the Dove from a photo of the cover of "3 feet high and rising" with loads of matches - those matches are as follows: -
1. 3 members of blue man group
2. the cover of the book "William Shakespeares Star Wars"
3. a silver back gorilla
4. Samuel L Jackson in a meme
5. Samuel L Jackson again
6. a dark skinned guy in the background of a work event from years ago - pretty sure he was Iranian
7. the cover of "straight outa Compton"
8. a young black boy from the background of a photo of my son at an exhibition
9. yet another Samuel L Jackson meme
I dare say theres a good reason for this, but I can absolutely see why some people feel that whatever algorithms are used in facial recognition software might be just a teensy weensy bit racist in their action.
I'd be interested to hear what other people observe running the same test
It's a step to far for me. I am not sure I trust this Labour government with such technology and I definitely don't trust Farage.
I dare say theres a good reason for this, but I can absolutely see why some people feel that whatever algorithms are used in facial recognition software might be just a teensy weensy bit racist in their action.
I don’t think it’s racism as such, more the fact that the technology just can’t cope with photos where the contrast is low, just the same as trying to take photos of different colour clothing for catalogues, light coloured clothing easily shows folds and other details, whereas dark coloured, especially black, dark grey, navy blue, have very little contrast, so often look like a flat field of a particular colour.
I used to retouch illustrations for various clients, one was Titleist, the golf equipment manufacturer, and any of their merchandise that was black was incredibly difficult to make look three dimensional!
The same thing happens with human features, when the lighting is poor or very flat, which is very likely in the circumstances that facial recognition technology is likely being used, and this issue has been raised repeatedly as a reason not to employ it in random locations where poor light is most commonly found.
It is racist to pump out technology when it persistently fails around one racial group, and causes them adverse consequences, and you hand wave it away because you (as an institution/system) don't particularly care about that adverse impact.
the concept - approve
the current issues with it being racist, and the issues with people who are misidentified - strongly dissapprove
if anyone wants to be in a public space with other members of the public including me and you, I think they should be identifiable. If someone who is wanted, or banned from a particular place decides to breach that ban, I'd be happy for a copper to be able to quickly identify them.*
I'm also happy for private businesses such as a supermarket or sports ground to be able to actually ban people from their private areas.
I got properly slammed on here last year for being against face coverings, which is kind of the avenue this is driving us down.
*a few years back my friends dad who was a police officer got a commendation for managing to spot a known local wanted scally who happened to drive past him on the street. Excellent work from him but the fact that it was award worthy shows how infrequently it actually worked out, and how this person was up until this point able to travel around freely.
@CountZero - sorry, just to be clear, having reread the post, I was not suggesting in any way that you were racist. The "you" in the post was referring to the people implementing the technology/society generally.
The problem in colloquial English is that if you say "when one goes to the supermarket" instead of "when you go to the supermarket", one immediately sounds like Hyacinth Bouquet (RIP) even if it's much clearer!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2056r07rjlo
Interesting results from the Croydon trials, 12% reduction in crime in the area where the trial was taking place and almost no false positives, less than 1% and that was cleared up without an arrest. Some will say that is a Fail then for the system but as part of this is to develop better systems, you need 'mistakes' so you can understand why it was a mistake and further improve the matching algorithms to be better in future. That includes 'targetting' specific parts of the population if the technology doesn't work for them.
But as per another link above, there was no bias exhibited to the gender or ethnicity in the testing.
The individual cited above who was wrongly detained previously has his complaint heard in the courts next week, that'll be an interesting one to watch on. His complaint AIUI being lack of accuracy, and the loss of privacy which is a tougher one. I'm staying out of the politics of whether privacy is infringed, everyone has an opinion on that but I'd strongly suggest that testing suggests that accuracy is pretty robust, and used properly is a very useful tool for identifying people far faster and more accurately than manually.
Just. No. The growing observation state and the perennial militarization of police are two big anti-democratit moves that folks seem weirdly supportive.
for Croydon, the media coverage is so similar across outlets that it looks like parasitic reporting or regurgitation of a met or home office press release. That alone is a reason to doubt the information imo.
Not happy, there are already too many innocent people in jail. DNA reveled the level of injustice in rape and murder cases especailly amont minorities. This sort of thing is going to make it even harder to prove you are innocent when the courts should be proving you guilty. I don't care if it's "only" one percent. I'd rather see several guilty people continue to walk the streets than one innocent in jail, especailly for the sort of crimes they say this is useful for. And +1 for Kelvin.
I’m afraid my view of this sort of thing is very much based on what we’ve seen in the past with things like, for instance, the child support agency.
Sold to the public as “absolutely necessary to catch all those awful fathers who refuse to pay maintenance for their children” (who wouldn’t vote for that!) but then actually being used to increase existing payments, which were then often deducted directly from earnings, from fathers already paying maintenance, then not passing the increased amount on to the mothers concerned but rather using the difference to pay mothers of children who’s fathers refused to pay……
It turned out that it cost something like 6 Grand to find an absent father, but next to nothing to simply increase existing maintenance.
Of course they knew that all along…..
Lets see if this does good work, or if it’s used “for evil” 😉
or you face gets recognised at a protest against a genocidal regime that the government supports and is linked to your digital ID, and then you go for a job with serco or g4s and you can't get even basic security clearance.
404 media has reported on several surveillance stories in the USA. The ‘exceptions’ where surveillance tech, law enforcement, or ICE got things wrong from camera coverage and facial recognition seem to provide a flow of stories. Almost like there’s some kind of probability component involved.
And calls for national ID cards, physical or digital? No thanks. Another unnecessary, expensive measure that’s not needed.
There are examples of people who have never even been into a shop before being asked to leave due to being identified as shoplifters through the facial recognition network. Now take that an apply it to an individual who cameras identify as a person of interest to the police.
Then you need to prove you are not that person of interest. Which takes us into ID card territory.
The thing is though - all policing to date has been done on the basis of being recognised - a picture or description is given by the victim of a crime - that description is circulated and used to try and identify the perpetrator.
I was once picked up by the CID as the suspect in a bank robbery - act not just any bank but the branch I actually banked with. It was established quite quickly that I wasn't the perp - because I was a customer and the staff recognised me - but there was also no way of describing him more accurately without also describing me so I was given a card to carry by the CID to identify me as not the droid they were looking for as I was likely to keep being apprehended (never got to use it though so either theres was a limit to how many descriptions the police could keep in their heads as they went about their daily duty or the guy was caught soon after). Unlike something like facial recognition my 'description' was much more broad brush - height, build, age-range, colour, haircut and dress-sense really. Sothe perp could have evade detection just by getting a haircut or wearing a hat and meanwhile any lanky, scruffy ****er could be subject to the same wrongful identification as me.
It seems to me any digital / automated system would produce fewer false positives that a system based on a verbal description of gender, race, build and dress sense.
Not happy, there are already too many innocent people in jail. DNA reveled the level of injustice in rape and murder cases especailly amont minorities. This sort of thing is going to make it even harder to prove you are innocent when the courts should be proving you guilty. I don't care if it's "only" one percent. I'd rather see several guilty people continue to walk the streets than one innocent in jail, especailly for the sort of crimes they say this is useful for. And +1 for Kelvin.
In the context of your examples, the AI doesn't convict but it enables an arrest and gets a suspect into an interview. That's when the hard work begins
The faster the arrest the more likely that police will find transferred crime scene evidence, if it exists. If crime scene evidence is present with the suspect on arrest then it's likely to be better evidence, not worse.
The faster the arrest, the quicker a charging decision will be made. That means that an aggrieved person will get protection more quickly through bail conditions, remand in custody, etc.
Facial recognition doesn't taint later ID parades, unlike touring the streets with a witness who picks a suspect out for that arrest
There are plenty of examples of witnesses picking an innocent person out of some form of identification parade, way more than are associated with the use AI
Who is running the back office system that stores all the data. AWS, Palantir, Grok, and how is it controlled.
I get facial recognition is cool at one level (getting on BA flight at JFK), but blanket use in the high street.....how do we know how it's being administered
Don't worry, Fujitsu got the dev/support contract...
Ooo and isn't it on average 6 doppelgangers per... Plus all the a bit alikes that'll no doubt trigger the alarm.
That's the purpose of these trials, to train the technology to reduce the false positives (and false negatives) and get it better and better at doing what a human can only do a limited amount of. No-one's being convicted on the basis of the system advising a copper that they have matched a face to a database, and while some may predict the future that's not what happens now.
Add in potential for other forms of biometric info - eg: height, forensic gait analysis, etc. and these systems will be incredibly robust at identifying with very high accuracy. What is done with that ID, is a different things for me.
Hmmm.
I wonder where on the "societal cost per crime" scale these type of offences (shop-lifting) vs white collar crime (fraud, corporate tax evasion, corruption etc) fall?
Meaning, are these types of vans and the technology more of a costly PR exercise (like TV detector vans) rather than a effective tool for improving the well-being of the country as a whole?
I'm sure your typical white collar, middle class fraudster (whose crimes are typically a lot more costly than a couple of stolen six packs of beer) won't be scared of walking down their local high street...
So those of you that see no great harm in this tech - read this:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/25/facial-recognition-error-prompts-police-to-arrest-asian-man-for-burglary-100-miles-away
the tech is not robust, its errors disproportionately effect non white folk, it causes harm. Like Sat Navs folk will blindly believe it.
So those of you that see no great harm in this tech - read this:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/25/facial-recognition-error-prompts-police-to-arrest-asian-man-for-burglary-100-miles-awaythe tech is not robust, its errors disproportionately effect non white folk, it causes harm. Like Sat Navs folk will blindly believe it.
This, plus all the local wronguns round my way are all wearing balaclavas on thier scooters and electric motorbikes anyway... So it seems a bit redundant.
Maybe the police need annual eye tests and need to be examined on their ability to compare a suspect with a picture.
It would seem the the police involved in TJ's post, skills set in this area are woeful.
The fact that the person arrested had a full beard might have alerted them?
This technology is just going to embed the police’s institutional racism, as seen above.
Individual officers may not be racist, but somehow collectively they manage to be. As various reports and enquiries always find.
Bruce - its that folk blindly (sic) trust technology. Same as sat navs
You can't park there, mate!
Picture not uploading properly.. But imagine a van parked in the sea. Lol
Here's a gif instead.
