allthenopes25 (u/allthenopes25)

allthenopes25 commented on Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police use soars theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/c-oreills

inkyoto · 3 months ago

> FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.

Whilst the UK is not a «surveillance state» in the authoritarian sense, and they were certainly not the ones who invented CCTV, we must credit the British for pioneering the concept of ubiquitous CCTV as a tool of urban surveillance, which was complemented by a long-standing tradition of overzealous law enforcement – a legacy with undeniably robust historical roots. It is irrefutable that the UK was an early adopter of CCTV for security and policing purposes[0], much to the bemusement of the guests of Her Late Majesty and His Majesty now.

The British have certainly been instrumental – if not bestowing or spreading it (which is partially true, at least in the case of Australia and New Zealand), then at least influencing – in the widespread adoption of CCTV as a tool for urban surveillance in a large number of Western countries.

[0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/

allthenopes25 · 3 months ago

> [0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/

Not sure I will take at face value the idea that the Thai royal family were shocked and surprised at overpolicing of potential protestors and that the Thai embassy advance teams had nothing to do with that.

Call me cynical.

allthenopes25 commented on Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police use soars theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/c-oreills

codedokode · 3 months ago

> Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired

So basically no punishment.

allthenopes25 · 3 months ago

There are prosecutions too (the law has only relatively recently been tightened up):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-62729737

https://policeprofessional.com/news/pc-to-stand-trial-over-m...

But being sacked as a police officer in the UK is a fairly big deal. There's no Fraternal Order of Police to ease you into a cushy security job, and there's no macho culture of celebrating corrupt police. Being charged for misusing one's position would be pretty devastating. Policing in the UK is "by consent" and people don't take too kindly to stuff like this.

allthenopes25 commented on Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police use soars theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/c-oreills

dghlsakjg · 3 months ago

I don’t know for sure since we don’t know who has access to that data, but if I were an auto insurance company, I would love to know which of my customers tend to go out in inclement weather, or after midnight when the roads are statistically more dangerous.

Took me less than a minute to think of that example. I’m sure there’s more ways that information could be used against my interests.

allthenopes25 · 3 months ago

But you don't need access to ANPR for this, particularly.

You just ask the customer to tell you, perhaps with one of those driving monitoring apps/devices that people use to lower premiums. Pretty commonplace now.

FWIW, having worked on car insurance applications, most insurance companies do not much care about microtargeting consumers in this way. Beyond looking at their claims history and the kind of car they are driving, it is a large-scale numbers game, and the way you know which customers, for example, tend to go out more at night when it is dangerous is to look at their age (more likely very young) and gender (more likely male). And then you just make them all pay more. There's no particular reason to get any more forensic than that; it's more costly and it probably doesn't deliver much extra value.

And if young drivers complain, "hey, I am an excellent safe driver, I've done my advanced test, and I don't take risks", you say: "Great. Use one of our driving monitoring apps or devices, prove it and we'll happily give you lower premiums!"

I could tell you a couple of horror stories I am not going to repeat on the internet because they are old news now and times have changed, but I really must say, it's not necessary to imagine what government data could be used for in the hands of insurance companies: it's much more likely that insurance companies will simply incentivise customers to hand over the data. People who want lower premiums will jump through all sorts of hoops to get them.

allthenopes25 commented on Live facial recognition cameras may become 'commonplace' as police use soars theguardian.com/technolog... · Posted by u/c-oreills

matthewdgreen · 3 months ago

The neat thing about these databases is that you’ll never know. Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?

There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.

allthenopes25 · 3 months ago

> Can a lender buy access to them?

In the UK (as in the case we're discussing)? No.

> How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop?

Like all other PNC access, this gets logged. Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired for abusing the PNC. Random officers cannot randomly look up plates on ANPR: only traffic police or more senior officers can and it, like every other access, gets logged.

The Data Protection Act allows us to find out who has been disciplined, demoted or fired, and the Met for example answer those.

> The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?

Data brokers do not get PNC data in the UK. And you're imagining an unnecessarily fantastical, conspiratorial explanation of a stalker who "somehow knew where" some woman would be, when stalkers clearly manage this adequately by, like, ordinary stalking skills (and are rarely unknown to their victims in the first place; they usually have knowledge that was volunteered or was acquired firsthand). Women don't need this imaginary scenario to feel fear: old-fashioned hiding in a car and waiting will do it. More high-tech: hiding an AirTag will do it. Following on Facebook will do it.

Also imagining third party violence that happens due to police data access is irrelevant: police officers themselves commit violence. Probably start there.

> There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.

They are in the UK.

Are face recognition cameras a bad thing in the hands of the UK police? Probably sometimes yes. But these conspiratorial hypotheses don't need airing.

FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.

These facial recognition cameras cannot be instantly used on some big national police surveillance mechanism because in essence no such system exists: the vast majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are not operated by police at all.

Most cameras are operated by local and regional councils (access for which the police would need to issue warrants or make detailed subject/time requests) or private businesses (ditto).

And most of the huge number of cameras the police imagine aren't connected to anything more complex than Ring. Even with Ring footage, British police find that if they want to use doorbell camera footage, it is faster to arrange a time to visit the owner or at best knock on the door of the householder and ask for it to be emailed or copied to an SD card. They do not have broad instant access, much less broad, instant, warrantless access.

The biggest risk is not outright abuse but malfeasance/misfeasance overuse, much more dull-witted, instant and humdrum: for example some of the operators perceive the desire not to walk past one of them to be evidence of criminal intent, and they use that as a justification for a stop and search.

allthenopes25 commented on The copilot delusion deplet.ing/the-copilot-de... · Posted by u/isaiahwp

Jcampuzano2 · 3 months ago

As a preface, I think lots of people will not like this take.

A lot of people are going to have to come to the realization that has already been mentioned before but many find it hard to grasp.

Your boss, stakeholders, and especially non-technical people literally give 0 fucks about "quality code" as long as it does what they want it to do. They do not care about tests insofar as if it works it works. Many have no clue about nor do they care about whether something just refetches the world in certain scenarios. And AI whether we like it or not, whether it repeats the same shit and isnt DRY, doesn't follow patterns, reinvents the wheel, etc - is already fairly good at that.

This is exactly why all your stakeholders and executives are pushing you to use it. they've been fed that it just gets shit done and pumps out code like nothing else.

I really think a lot of the reason some people say it doesn't give them as much productivity as they would like is due largely to a desire to write "clean" code based on years and years of our own training, and due to having to be able to pass code review done by your peers. If these obstacles were entirely removed and we went full bandaid off I do think AI even in its current state is fairly capable of replacing plenty of roles. But it does require a competent person to steer to not end up in a complete mess.

If you throw away the guardrails a little bit and not obsess about how nice code looks anymore, it absolutely will move things along faster than you could before.

allthenopes25 · 3 months ago

A sane person writes clean code because they are going to have to maintain it themselves one day a few years into the future when the baby kept them up all night for three nights in a row and coffee isn't working for them anymore and they can't remember anything about it and it's falling over so it's really urgent and f**** those guys they swore they'd get someone to take this on with a proper handover and surely there was a goddamn sent email somewhere about it but nothing is coming up when you search and goddamnit it used to compile did people ignore your comment about how it won't build with the new version yet so don't update the build tools and and and

You write good code because you own it.

If you get ChatGPT or Copilot or Claude or whateverthe****else to write it, you're going to have a whole lot less fun when it's on fire.

The level of irresponsibility that "vibe coding" is introducing to the world is actually worse than the one that had people pouring their savings into a shitcoin. But it's the same arseholes talking it up.

allthenopes25 commented on GitHub Copilot Coding Agent github.blog/changelog/202... · Posted by u/net01

allthenopes25 · 3 months ago

"Drowning in technical debt?"

Stop fighting and sink!

But rest assured that with Github Copilot Coding Agent, your codebase will develop larger and larger volumes of new, exciting, underexplored technical debt that you can't be blamed for, and your colleagues will follow you into the murky depths soon.