As computers and AI recognizers get better and faster, recognition techniques will continue to get better and faster; I think that’s a given. But it’s also a given that as procurement managers keep throwing more money at a system that doesn’t quite work, they will … Well, they’ll have spent more money! It doesn’t necessarily mean that the system will work better.
This is a sad one; I’m afraid we’re looking at more police malfeasance.
The Baltimore Police have a huge problem. Not only has it turned out that the street cops are thugs that murder citizens, lie when giving testimony, and retaliate against whistleblowers – they’ve got a large contingent that appear to pad their books very heavily.
Americans my age grew up to imagery in LIFE Magazine, of cops beating black protesters. Oddly, I think of desegregation as something that happened, and jim crow was a bad period we mostly grew out of.
“American Justice” should always be scare-quoted. If you didn’t notice, the justice system has been dragooned into being part of a general push for voter suppression and forced labor that is highly racialized. It has also become a means of farming poor people for money – there are ridiculous crimes like “jaywalking”, and speed traps a’plenty to make sure that a steady stream of fines flows into the coffers of the police.
What. The. Fuck.
“Jaywalking suspect”?
Jaywalking?!?!?
Put the word “Jaywalking” with “suspect” and it makes absolutely no sense at all.
[washingtonpost]
Back in 2009 I did some strategy consulting for a company that was building a cop-cam system; they wanted to know if having the data in “the cloud” would be acceptable, and what protections would need to be in place for the customers to trust it. My job was to look for perverse incentives in the design, and to suggest ways to make the storage option more palatable.
It’s become a rite of the losers to decry the influence of money on politics, and it’s a legitimate complaint. As a portable form of power, money is going to immediately be corrupting to any system you can inject it into.
There is topic I’ve wanted to explore but haven’t because I am not sure how to explain it or make sense of it, but thanks to the NYPD I think I’ve figured it out. The problem is “what does ‘helping’ someone mean?” at a strategic level.
My accountant says “there are only two kinds of people in hell: those who were caught in the act, and those who kept records.”