>A city fire marshal used FDNY’s access to a facial recognition software to help NYPD detectives identify a pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia University, circumventing policies that tightly restrict the Police Department’s use of the technology.
Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?
bsenftner · 1h ago
It is not so important that the fire marshal has facial recognition, because the office chose that option because access was then free of charge and a mere handshake to them. If not the fire marshal, some independent 3rd party. This is a known trivial loophole to facial recognition bans. (Former lead dev of globally leading FR system.)
rendaw · 23m ago
It is not so important that the fire marshal has facial recognition, because the police department chose to ask the fire department because access was then free of charge and a mere handshake to them. If not the fire marshal, the police department would have chosen some independent 3rd party. This is a known trivial loophole to facial recognition bans. (Former lead dev of globally leading facial recognition system.)
dmix · 2h ago
The cop emailed the Fire Marshal who technically does investigations for stuff like arson. Maybe that's the justification for it, not sure.
toomuchtodo · 2h ago
Same operating model of law enforcement laundering their data requests on the Flock Safety/Group ALPR platform through adjacent agencies who have access. My hot take is this should be a termination and criminal offense in public employment (as a cybersecurity/risk mgmt practitioner).
dmix · 2h ago
Or Five Eyes doing data sharing between themselves which 'incidentally' bypasses domestic surveillance laws
> Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?
Arson investigation, identifying the people at the scene of a suspicious fire?
mitthrowaway2 · 39m ago
Wouldn't the fire department's role in an arson investigation be limited to consulting about the fire itself? (eg. identifying if accelerant was used, etc). I can't imagine they'd be identifying a suspect.
krapp · 1h ago
The job of the fire department should be to fight fires, not to investigate crimes.
The police should be the ones investigating crimes, under extremely strict and limited guidelines (eg. 4th amendment) which in this case include not being allowed to use facial recognition software.
Anechoic · 1h ago
The job of the fire department should be to fight fires, not to investigate crimes.
Part of the investigation is determining whether the event is actually a crime. I'd much rather have subject matter experts make the determination of arson vs. act-of-god rather than "every nail needs a hammer" police force.
Detrytus · 57m ago
Determining if it was an arson vs act-of-god should be mostly lab work, analyzing how the fire spread, whether there are any traces of flammable substances that should not be there, etc. That's what fire department should do, because they have expertise here. Analyzing security footage for potential suspects should be done by police.
Anechoic · 52s ago
Analyzing security footage for potential suspects should be done by police.
Again, it's not just "potential suspects" it's potential witnesses, or identification of potential casualties. I don't feel great about state actors of any type using facial ID, but I can think of any number of reasons why a FD might use it in the course of their duties, and I would much prefer they have it over the PD.
jajuuka · 59m ago
So adding more responsibilities to police to now also get expert level training in determining causes of fires and finding clues in a fire incident. That's kind of how we got here. Where the police are a panacea making them less effective and more corrupt since they are an even bigger keystone.
Separating out duties to experts is more effective. Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system. Same with mental health emergency cases. More social workers and experts dealing with a variety of mental disorders will be better to work people in crisis since they are trained for that.
drowsspa · 16m ago
The skills for putting out fires is very different from those for investigating fire-related crimes. It's literally a subarea of forensic science...
jajuuka · 10m ago
The fire department is bigger than the guys riding the truck. Those same guys aren't doing the investigation either. It's like saying cops can't investigate crimes because all they do is sit in medians and check for speeders.
drowsspa · 8m ago
I'm of course talking about the purpose of the department, not about the skills of an individual fireman.
mschuster91 · 43m ago
> So adding more responsibilities to police to now also get expert level training in determining causes of fires and finding clues in a fire incident.
In Germany, we have the same separation. We have solved the issue by having dedicated units for stuff like political crimes, online crimes, fire/arson investigators, organized crime, property crimes, violent crimes, drug units, you name it.
They're all policemen and -women, but at the very least they stay on the unit for many years and learn on the job, or they get additional education, or they get actual professionals (aka, the police officers do the police/bureaucracy side of things, the expert does the forensics).
> Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system.
Bad idea, there are lots of things to take care about when collecting and securing evidence.
jajuuka · 3m ago
The US has similar department separation (just look at how many versions of Law and Order there are), but it's less diverse. So the number of departments is smaller.
Not a bad idea at all. The people from the fire department investigating arson are highly specialized. The only difference between the two systems is which head organization it falls under. So it would be like your fire/arson investigators working under the fire department instead of the police.
US policing has regularly been used to commit abuse and harassment as well as straight crimes. So having that consolidation of power is not good. This store is a perfect example of why they need to be separated because the police cannot be trusted to use facial ID tech responsibly.
some_random · 1h ago
I think it's better to have a specific expert non-police organization in charge of investigating specific crimes like this, in fact we could probably do more of this. The issue here is that the NYPD wasn't banned because of 4th amendment reasons but based on a local law that didn't consider this loophole.
andrewla · 1h ago
This headline is extremely misleading because it leads you to believe that they are IDing this person because they are a "Pro-Palestinian Student Protester".
More proper would be "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Rock-Throwing Assailant"
Worth noting that the charges were dismissed, and that they added a hate crime enhancement based on why he threw the rock. The "hate crime" aspect does tie in to his protest activities, and like all hate crime enhancements is completely ridiculous, of course.
In the end, this is not a free speech issue except tangentially; it is a privacy issue.
mattnewton · 18m ago
Feels like a real life shiri’s scissor[0] in how many different factors collide to stop rational discussion and “shortcut” thought to existing worldviews past nuance.
To engage in this discussion, you have to avoid falling into at least 4 major schisms where you can assume the other person is wrong about everything and dangerous to you, from Israel/Palestine, US privacy rights, US first amendment rights to protest, and US attitudes on policing.
Really didn't look like a rock in the video and the target was uninjured.
jasonlotito · 1h ago
> This headline is extremely misleading because it leads you to believe that they are IDing this person because they are a "Pro-Palestinian Student Protester".
It read like a privacy issue. Then I read your comment, and was confused.
> More proper would be "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Rock-Throwing Assailant"
This is inaccurate. The charges were dismissed. At best, it's an alleged rock-throwing assailant.
> In the end, this is not a free speech issue except tangentially; it is a privacy issue.
That's what the original headline suggested to me on first reading. Why did you think the headline was a free speech issue?
That being said, the threat of a government disobeying its own rules and policies is a deterrent to free speech.
andrewla · 1h ago
If it is a privacy issue, why mention that he was a "Pro-Palestinian Student Protester"? That does not seem relevant at all; it's just a personal description, like saying "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Red-headed Person". The headline is intended to emphasize that fact and imply without stating that the facial recognition is being used to suppress free speech. I find it hard to believe that you can read it any other way.
At the time that they used the software, the charges had not been dismissed. They were looking for a person that in their eyes had committed a crime. This is right and proper; they don't have the right to hang the dude on the spot, they can arrest him and refer him for trial, which is what they did.
> That being said, the threat of a government disobeying its own rules and policies is a deterrent to free speech.
Why?
chaps · 1h ago
"This is right and proper"
They literally banned the use of the technology!
andrewla · 1h ago
Here I am referring to their desire to find a person who committed what appeared to be a criminal act.
I am not excusing their use of the technology, only that the state and specifically the police have a compelling interest to find people who commit crimes. There are lots of limitations on their powers to accomplish this end, but we do want police to investigate crimes.
chaps · 57m ago
You are definitionally excusing their use of the technology.
The definition of "excusing": "attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify."
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
>More proper would be "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Rock-Throwing Assailant"
You're preaching to the choir, everything is partisan now, including crime:
If the perp throwing rocks is in support of my political views then he's a victim of the fascist regime, but if he's from the opposite camp, he's a criminal fascist that's a threat to society.
That's how the media and people have trained themselves to see things. There's no bipartisanship, it's all propaganda for manipulation and engagement.
Which is why I tend to flag such topics as they're low quality rage bait that many people bite. I come here for technical talks not to read MSM garbage.
mc32 · 1h ago
Indeed. Enhancements are used too freely. They should only be an option in egregious cases, otherwise just charge people with the actual crime they committed.
I don’t like how enhancements are distributed like candy.
some_random · 1h ago
The trouble is that depending on the political affiliations of the people receiving the enhancement, you'll get different groups of people reflexively supporting or denouncing the system.
femiagbabiaka · 2h ago
How many rights will we be asked to give up in order to squash anti-war sentiment?
ethagnawl · 25m ago
It's _wild_. Find/replace using the name of any other country (Italy, France, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia -- take your pick!) and _every last person_ in the US would say, "Wait. What? Why are _we_ sacrificing _our_ liberty over ... that?".
Also, _so many_ of these people falling all over themselves to "support" this particular country are un-repentantly racist against this (larger) group of people. I have a rather working class background, know many of these people (cops and firefighters, as it relates) and have had the bad fortune of hearing their "jokes".
andrewla · 1h ago
I comment elsewhere that he was not ID'ed because he was a protester, he was ID'ed because he threw a rock at someone.
It's the same question though; how many right will we be asked to give up in order to catch rock-throwing assailants.
I lean pretty heavily on privacy not being a right in the direct sense or the penumbral sense. That a company sells a product that uses facial identification is to me not super relevant. If they had shown the photo around the department, and to random people at the university, and someone said "I recognize that guy, he's so-and-so" then there would simply be no problem here. Similarly if someone was just browsing through old yearbook photos and recognized the face. The computer system allows this to happen at larger scale, but the same basic thing.
regularjack · 25m ago
The fact that you can do it in a larger scale is the problem
conception · 1h ago
It’s the same basic thing as a spear being the same as a nuclear weapon. “They both kill people!”
Walking around with a photo versus walking around with a hundred million photos and asking everyone simultaneously should not be considered about the basic same thing.
tptacek · 1h ago
It is very bad to throw spears at people, despite the existence of nuclear weapons.
stefan_ · 1h ago
This guy was accused of hurling a rock at a protester, it seems we are trying to defend the right to peaceful protest?
Like, this guy was identified off video of him throwing a rock at a protester that hit them in the face. By all accounts this is someone who is trying to violently suppress peoples rights. That he got off on police misconduct in the investigation is a loss to society, no matter how many waxing words try to twist him into being a "protester violated in his rights".
toast0 · 20m ago
> That he got off on police misconduct in the investigation is a loss to society
There'a a balance though. I think that allowing police misconduct would be a larger loss to society.
When the state loses winable criminal cases because of police misconduct, it should be motivation at multiple levels to avoid such misconduct in the future.
thisislife2 · 1h ago
That's a separate issue. The US is an exception where evidence that is collected illegally (see 'fruit of the poisonous tree' - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree ) is not allowed in court. Thus, US law enforcements have come up with many creative means (like Parallel Construction - https://restorethe4th.com/our-new-brief-on-parallel-construc... ) to hide the fact that evidence was collected illegally. If you want justice to be done in the US, you want US law enforcement to comply with the law. Otherwise it could result in a miscarriage of justice - the guilty may escape because of police misconduct or innocents may be persecuted by the violation of their rights. This loophole used seems to be the grey area of the law. But loopholes too are slippery slopes in the law and shouldn't exist.
tracker1 · 13m ago
I definitely see both sides in this... it's a bad use of resources, that I'm not completely convinced police should be barred from all access to, if it exists... on the flip side, the context of protecting an a-hole throwing rocks at a protest irks me as well.
I'm actually against parallel construction and feel that is far more dangerous than a lot of other activities in that it literally prevents you from knowing your true accuser in terms of laying out a defense/confrontation in court.
This whole story is just full of bad guys all around to a large extent.
mattnewton · 1h ago
I don't read it as a peaceful protest issue, I read it as police are breaking privacy laws over a Palestinian protestor specifically; as far as we know they aren't doing this to investigate other violent crime in NYC. I agree this is sloppy policework and an unnecessary loss to society as a result.
i_love_retros · 1h ago
What's happening in Gaza isn't a war, it's an invasion and attempted genocide by Israel.
regularjack · 22m ago
I don't get why this is downvoted. I'm gonna guess it's because of "attempted"...
hopelite · 2h ago
Considering our government’s practices that most people are not even aware of leading up to WWI and WWI, in addition to the ones people are a bit more aware of regarding the anti-war, pro-peace movements leading up to Vietnam, not to mention what we were forced and willingly gave up following 9/11; most likely the government will abuse us and destroy the very few rights we have in theory.
I am 100% sure of this because the government has been 100% consistent and 100% abusive about this, 100% of the time.
Even the Civil War was clearly orchestrated and the people were abused and not just rights, but the very core Constitution was essentially destroyed and nullified, and what we’ve had since is nothing more than an abusive invalidated social contract upheld my sheer force, delusion, and bribing. The delusion and bribery part being what keeps people from realizing that.
Because the "fire" excuse is a favorite of those who like the 1A when it protects them.
cayley_graph · 1h ago
I've noticed many right-leaning tech types give quite a lot of lip service to free speech when it's about someone getting banned from a mailing list for being an asshole, and not so much when it's the government quashing protest against genocide. I'll personally always defend the idea of free speech, no matter the side.
ToValueFunfetti · 1h ago
>I'll personally always defend the idea of free speech, no matter the side.
You attacked the idea of free speech for the other side in the same comment where you said this. I would assume based on reference to government infringements that you're referring to the first amendment as "free speech" if you hadn't specifically emphasized "idea"; conservatives have no real first amendment case, but they do get censored and suppressed by people with power. The idea of free speech is very much still in play when university admin cancels a guest speaker or a forum moderator only allows left-wing or non-political posts. What am I missing here?
cayley_graph · 1h ago
No? I would defend the first example too, which is why I specified the idea rather than the letter (the 1A). Is it so rare to see someone who genuinely cares about this stuff, not just for those who agree with me? That I think they're an asshole is irrelevant.
noqc · 1h ago
Then you should read the article.
cayley_graph · 42m ago
I did. I believe this sort of stuff to be, at least morally, a violation of the 4A. It's no secret that the anti-Israel protests have gotten an inordinate amount of attention from the law relative to any harm caused, and overstepping bounds like this even to catch actual criminals (as happened here) isn't worth the price paid in liberty.
My comment was targeted at the government/ICE's notorious targeting of anti-Israel protesters broadly. It's absolutely clear that we're giving up rights left and right for this total farce, the same way we did for 9/11. It is imperative to the survival of liberal democracy that this ceases.
noqc · 7m ago
You didn't read the article correctly then. The student was being charged with throwing a rock at a protester. This is not a right granted by the constitution.
4A, sure, but you have argued that this was a chilling of a students protected speech. The only person engaging in speech at all was the victim of the assault.
rangestransform · 1h ago
Everybody feels the need to defend government overreach when it’s in their favour. The most famous example is any non-libertarian political leaning with free speech, but it was the same deal with the “left” complaining about Chevron v. USA being overturned when their guy was in power.
cayley_graph · 1h ago
Yeah. It's not cool to be principled anymore, I guess...
pxc · 1h ago
> Curious why this is downvoted?
Probably people reading the article title without reading the headline, not realizing that that it's not only literally about shouting in movie theaters.
But tbh most commenters/voters on this site are reflexively imperialist, which is not surprising for a forum run by (and for!) capitalists in the imperial core. That's doubtless a big factor as well.
noqc · 1h ago
This student threw a rock at a person. I would very much like to see him in prison.
amanaplanacanal · 5m ago
The police should follow the rules laid out for them. If they don't, I would very much like to see them in prison.
game_the0ry · 2h ago
Once you give the government access to powerful tools, you can be certain they will abuse to maintain their power over you.
andrewla · 1h ago
I comment elsewhere that he was not ID'ed because he was a protester, he was ID'ed because he threw a rock at someone.
It's true in a sense though; if you give the government these tools they will use them to capture offenders and enforce the law. Abuse? I guess, because they are not allowed by law to use these tools. It comes down in my mind to the specifics of why they are disallowed. Is it false positives? Is it an equity issue? Those are the things that would inform my outrage further.
i_love_retros · 1h ago
Just because the police said he threw a rock doesn't mean he threw a rock.
No comments yet
whatshisface · 35m ago
This argument is "could you rob a bank if it was to feed your family," applied to the police.
unethical_ban · 2h ago
Indeed.
The 2nd amendment and the notion that we have physical power over the government is going to be whittled away as facial recognition and omnipresent government spying via data brokers gives them all the info they need to spy on every citizen, all the time.
AI means they don't only collect all the data they want for when they need it ala NSA 2008, but they can have a robot army of analysts transcribe photos and phone calls instantly and analyze for sentiment, flag for review.
If we don't demand, as a society, that government stay out of the business of the people, and that the military stay out of the business of civil society (ICE/National Guard/Marines), we are in for true evil.
mistrial9 · 2h ago
at least in government there are paths to discovery; corporate applications on the other hand..
computegabe · 2h ago
The company used, Clearview AI, collects publicly available imagery. It would be different if the government was providing it. Here's an idea: maybe don't post your photos on social media. Still scary nonetheless.
oefrha · 2h ago
> maybe don't post your photos on social media.
I don’t, I deleted my social media accounts a decade ago and wasn’t into posting my own photos prior to that anyway. But other people can post photos with me/including me and I can’t control that (and since I don’t use social media I don’t even know when they do that).
gl-prod · 2h ago
Whats next? Innocent people don't have anything to hide?
macintux · 1h ago
> Here's an idea: maybe don't post your photos on social media.
Right. Also make sure your friends don't. And your family. Good luck with that.
sorcerer-mar · 2h ago
“Don’t post your photos on social media” is precisely describing a chilling effect on people’s expression, i.e. the exact thing the First Amendment is designed to protect against.
computegabe · 2h ago
If a user is willingly uploading their photos to a private company to be publicly shared, how does 1A apply?
kopecs · 2h ago
I think the suggestion is that the government use of that public data could be such as to create a chilling effect. That is, the upload and interaction of the user with the private company is almost irrelevant: it is just part of the antecedent to the government's conduct.
If you believe the government would only use that data for just purposes then you probably wouldn't then believe that there is a 1A issue. But if you think the government would use it to identify persons at a protest and then take adverse actions against them on the basis of their presence alone (which to be clear, seems distinguished from the immediate instance) you would probably think there is a 1A issue.
sorcerer-mar · 1h ago
You can go do some reading on Third Party Doctrine if you'd like.
SCOTUS ruled there are some instances where private use of a service is 1) effectively necessary for modern life and 2) leaks a huge amount of information about the person, then the government cannot utilize it without a warrant even if handed over or sold willingly by the third party.
I am suggesting that we likely need to expand Third Party Doctrine to things beyond cell tower data because 1) we don't have absolute control over how/where our images are used and associated with our names, and 2) the technology to later affiliate our always-on/always-visible identities (like faces, gaits, or fingerprints) with our names is getting better and better.
You're right that today this is not illegal, but I am pointing out that your argument for "what to do instead" is literally the precise argument for why it should be: it chills protected expression.
jgalt212 · 59m ago
Was this person targeted because of protest activity or criminal activity? To me, therein lies the rub. Cops should have access to such systems to investigate crimes.
atoav · 3h ago
So while we are making funny euphemisms I hope I can "bypass ownership laws" to relieve the author of the money on their bank account. The state of journalism in 2025 is such they can't even call a spade a spade.
AlexandrB · 2h ago
Another funny one: "Pro-Palestinian Student Protester" when they mean "Assault Suspect". I don't get why they're trying to associate pro Palestinian protesters with the actions of a few violent actors.
mattnewton · 1h ago
This one I'm not so sure is clearer - the charges were dismissed, and the fact that he was protesting for Palestine was interesting enough to the police to investigate as a potential hate crime, and may have motivated the police to break the facial ID law here, so it seems relevant enough to put in the title.
redwood · 2h ago
We all got excited and threw a rock once or twice in our youth
neuroelectron · 2h ago
Wow, NYPD is full of people who support Israel?
nroets · 2h ago
The article says he was suspected of hate crime assault. Then the police has a duty to act.
Edit: While I said "duty" I meant that I really hope the that the police investigate all allegations of hate crime assault properly.
neuroelectron · 2h ago
Certain animals are more equal than others.
g8oz · 2h ago
"reduced to a misdemeanor of second degree aggravated harassment" so it looks like the charge was exaggerated in the 1st place. The media and authorities tend to portray Zionist provocateurs as the second coming of Anne Frank when they get into trouble. Something similar happened when Israeli soccer hooligans got roughed up in Amsterdam.
maximinus_thrax · 2h ago
The police has absolutely no duty to act whatsoever. See Warren v. District of Columbia.
pbiggar · 37m ago
Yes, the NYPD is genuinely full of cops who support Israel. They have partnerships with Israel, they are trained by Israeli, the NYPD even has an office in Tel Aviv. Check out the training they get: https://jewishcurrents.org/training-nypd-keffiyeh-watermelon...
pbiggar · 3h ago
Can we talk about the fact that such a tool exists? A private company is able to take a photo and identify you. Scary shit!
tantalor · 2h ago
> take a photo and identify you
Actually neither happened. The article says they were not able to find any identifiable information online. They had to use drivers license instead.
> the fire marshal sent links to Clearview AI face search results, an archive of school play photos and another to an archive of high school formal photos. He said he couldn’t find associated social media but offered to get a driver’s license photo for the detective. “We have access to that,” he wrote.
I read the sequence as,
1. They started with a protest video
2. Clearview provided public images of the same person, but no name. It was certainly more identifiable (e.g., their high school).
3. Then somehow they get the driver's license photo. Do they use the original protest video, or the Clearview images? How does this search even work? Nobody knows. Lazy journalism.
As readers, we have no idea if the Clearview search was actually important, or a dead end.
542354234235 · 1h ago
I think it might be an error in the article, specifically
>A minute later, the detective sent the fire marshal Ahmed’s name, date of birth and driver’s license number. Within five minutes, the fire marshal replied, “Bingo.”
I believe that is supposed to say that the fire marshal sent the detective the license information. The Fire Marshal was clearly able to find identifiable information online, in the form of multiple high school photos, but was unsuccessful getting a match to any social media accounts. So the facial recognition worked and found matches in Clearview AI’s database of scraped school photos, but not their database of scraped social media photos.
Then the Fire Marshal offered to get a driver’s license photo, and says he has access [presumably to the DMV database]. The fact the about a minute later, license information was passed, sounds like a search was run by the Fire Marshal, a match popped up, and he sent it to the detective. But it could be that the detective used high school photos (being higher quality and full front facing) to run a search against the DMV records (which the police have access to with “permission from supervisors”) but according to other articles about the NYPD in general, it doesn't seem like that are able to run facial recognition on DMV records.
Either way, I think the ID came directly from the information the Fire Marshal passed and the Judge said as much.
>The NYPD would not have identified Ahmed but for the FDNY’s Clearview AI search and accessing the DMV photo, the judge indicated in her ruling
reverendsteveii · 3h ago
>bypassed ban
Broke the law is the phrase we want here. They did an illegal thing. They didn't just scoot past a barrier, they violated people's rights.
maeil · 3h ago
Wanna go bypass some burglary laws to take expensive things out of people's houses?
Assuming you're a cop of course, otherwise we'll go to jail.
reverendsteveii · 2h ago
I'm not a cop. I'm a politician though, so while we're there lets murder them and traffick their kids. I love being a member of a class to whom the law very blatantly just does not apply.
gruez · 3h ago
>They didn't just scoot past a barrier, they violated people's rights.
Claiming that an administrative policy against using facial recognition as a "right" seems like a stretch.
elashri · 3h ago
> Claiming that an administrative policy against using facial recognition as a "right" seems like a stretch.
This is such strange way to describe "right for privacy".
gruez · 2h ago
But it's not really a "right". The next police commissioner/mayor could conceivably overturn it if they wanted to. That's not the same as most other "rights", free speech for instance. More importantly to this case, because the police only violated a policy and not a constitutional right, the defense can't apply to have the evidence tossed under the exclusionary rule.
johnisgood · 2h ago
I remember a case (in Eastern Europe) where someone who took a video of their colleagues sleeping during a night shift got in trouble for the usage of phone (which is known to be used BTW), and nothing happened to the ones sleeping through the night shift. We are talking about a facility full of people with dementia and are known to go back and forth the hospital for serious falls and all that (at night, too). So backwards.
tetromino_ · 2h ago
Which is in some ways similar to the case in this article. The police violated department policy to identify the student who hurled a rock at another student. And the article is somehow painting the rock-throwing attacker as a victim, even talking about the attacker's complaints that they were identified and are now receiving hate mail.
zimpenfish · 1h ago
> The police violated department policy to identify the student who hurled a rock at another student.
Allegedly. The article doesn't mention any evidence that he actually did.
> "Per the record before this court, there is no additional evidence connecting the defendant to the alleged incident — no surveillance video to and from his home, no independent identification by others in attendance."
No evidence.
> "This case is premised on the complainant's word that he was the target of criminal actions by another person, and that other person was the defendant."
Weak evidence (with potential bias.)
> "The NYPD digitally altered the defendant's DMV photograph [...] never sought the metadata which would clearly indicate how, when, and perhaps by whom the photo was doctored."
Manufactured evidence.
> "That statement alone renders these medical records discoverable as possible impeachment material, necessitating their disclosure [...] Yet the People [...] have articulated no efforts to obtain these records"
Withholding evidence from the defence.
All in all, utter bullshit from the prosecution.
FireBeyond · 2h ago
Yes?
The person hit by the rock is a victim of whomever threw it, be this person or another.
And this person is the victim of the police department's policy violation.
These things can coexist.
actionfromafar · 2h ago
Yes?
kazinator · 2h ago
Hurling a rock at someone is privacy now?
elashri · 2h ago
This is the classical problem of do the police have the right to violate rules and law in order to bring case or not? The problem is that this open the box of abuse of power and rights of people to become the norm.
jmyeet · 2h ago
There are two takeaways from this:
1. US foreign policy is uniparty. As terrible as this administration is, remember that quashing anti-war protests happened under Biden, too. Columbia, Hind Hall, etc were all under Biden. That being said, moving to deport or denaturalize pro-Palestinian protestors is new; and
2. The state will turn violent to quash anti-imperialist sentiment.
Let me give you some examples:
1. The MOVE bombing. In Philadelphia in 1985 there was a black liberation group called MOVE. After a day-long standoff with police, the police dropped a C4 explosive from a helicotper on the house. The resulting fire killed 11;
2. Kent State. In 1970, there was an anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. The Ohio National Guard had been called in. The protestors were unarmed. The National Guard were at least 100 yards from the protestors. Yet at some point the protestors got scared and fired on the protestors, killing 4; and
3. At a pro-Palestinian protest at UCLA, the encampment was attacked by pro-Zionists. The police stood by and did nothing and the next day used that violence as an excuse to violently break up the protest.
Facial recognition, mass surveillance, social media checks at ports of entry, weaponized deportation, etc. The state simply will not tolerate anti-imperialist protests.
hearsathought · 2h ago
> 1. US foreign policy is uniparty.
Only in regards to one foreign entity.
> Let me give you some examples:
2 of those 3 directly involve the US and US action. The outlier says a lot.
> The state simply will not tolerate anti-imperialist protests.
The current administration ran on an anti-imperialist platform. You can protest american, russian, french, chinese, british imperialism all you want. You can quote george washington's warning about empires and foreign wars all day long. What you can't protest is israel. Period.
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neilv · 2h ago
This seems to be a mixed bag for privacy.
You have the judge coming down on the side of privacy, which is good; but the circumstances of the particular case are troubling (allegations of someone throwing a rock at someone else).
I'd be happier gaining ground for privacy rights with cases about, e.g., blanket surveillance, using surveillance for political purposes, surveillance capitalism, etc. Then we figure out where the best lines are for when surveillance actually should or can be used.
(Edit: And ill-considered downvotes is why I'm not going to bother to try to have a meaningful discussion on HN.)
542354234235 · 1h ago
“It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
necovek · 1h ago
The problem with that approach is that it will validate police illegal surveillance, and they'll only do more and more of it.
rangestransform · 1h ago
The ACLU doesn’t defend nazis for free speech because they think nazi opinions should be embraced by society, but because rights need to be defended for the most reprehensible for them to be truly universal. Same deal here
mattnewton · 1h ago
We either have rights to privacy from the police or we don't - if we lose the “rights” at police discretion we don't.
The system has tools like warrants for this. It appears to me as just sloppy policework.
beepbooptheory · 1h ago
Making a whole big "but" around something that probably happens on a playground everyday feels at best like bad faith here. Just maybe a low bar for "troubling," and is the perfect framing and mindset for allowing exceptions like this to continue to be pushed through.
Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d...
Arson investigation, identifying the people at the scene of a suspicious fire?
The police should be the ones investigating crimes, under extremely strict and limited guidelines (eg. 4th amendment) which in this case include not being allowed to use facial recognition software.
Part of the investigation is determining whether the event is actually a crime. I'd much rather have subject matter experts make the determination of arson vs. act-of-god rather than "every nail needs a hammer" police force.
Again, it's not just "potential suspects" it's potential witnesses, or identification of potential casualties. I don't feel great about state actors of any type using facial ID, but I can think of any number of reasons why a FD might use it in the course of their duties, and I would much prefer they have it over the PD.
Separating out duties to experts is more effective. Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system. Same with mental health emergency cases. More social workers and experts dealing with a variety of mental disorders will be better to work people in crisis since they are trained for that.
In Germany, we have the same separation. We have solved the issue by having dedicated units for stuff like political crimes, online crimes, fire/arson investigators, organized crime, property crimes, violent crimes, drug units, you name it.
They're all policemen and -women, but at the very least they stay on the unit for many years and learn on the job, or they get additional education, or they get actual professionals (aka, the police officers do the police/bureaucracy side of things, the expert does the forensics).
> Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system.
Bad idea, there are lots of things to take care about when collecting and securing evidence.
Not a bad idea at all. The people from the fire department investigating arson are highly specialized. The only difference between the two systems is which head organization it falls under. So it would be like your fire/arson investigators working under the fire department instead of the police.
US policing has regularly been used to commit abuse and harassment as well as straight crimes. So having that consolidation of power is not good. This store is a perfect example of why they need to be separated because the police cannot be trusted to use facial ID tech responsibly.
More proper would be "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Rock-Throwing Assailant"
Worth noting that the charges were dismissed, and that they added a hate crime enhancement based on why he threw the rock. The "hate crime" aspect does tie in to his protest activities, and like all hate crime enhancements is completely ridiculous, of course.
In the end, this is not a free speech issue except tangentially; it is a privacy issue.
To engage in this discussion, you have to avoid falling into at least 4 major schisms where you can assume the other person is wrong about everything and dangerous to you, from Israel/Palestine, US privacy rights, US first amendment rights to protest, and US attitudes on policing.
[0] fiction about ml writing controversial news stories that tear communities apart https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
It read like a privacy issue. Then I read your comment, and was confused.
> More proper would be "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Rock-Throwing Assailant"
This is inaccurate. The charges were dismissed. At best, it's an alleged rock-throwing assailant.
> In the end, this is not a free speech issue except tangentially; it is a privacy issue.
That's what the original headline suggested to me on first reading. Why did you think the headline was a free speech issue?
That being said, the threat of a government disobeying its own rules and policies is a deterrent to free speech.
At the time that they used the software, the charges had not been dismissed. They were looking for a person that in their eyes had committed a crime. This is right and proper; they don't have the right to hang the dude on the spot, they can arrest him and refer him for trial, which is what they did.
> That being said, the threat of a government disobeying its own rules and policies is a deterrent to free speech.
Why?
I am not excusing their use of the technology, only that the state and specifically the police have a compelling interest to find people who commit crimes. There are lots of limitations on their powers to accomplish this end, but we do want police to investigate crimes.
The definition of "excusing": "attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify."
You're preaching to the choir, everything is partisan now, including crime:
If the perp throwing rocks is in support of my political views then he's a victim of the fascist regime, but if he's from the opposite camp, he's a criminal fascist that's a threat to society.
That's how the media and people have trained themselves to see things. There's no bipartisanship, it's all propaganda for manipulation and engagement.
Which is why I tend to flag such topics as they're low quality rage bait that many people bite. I come here for technical talks not to read MSM garbage.
I don’t like how enhancements are distributed like candy.
Also, _so many_ of these people falling all over themselves to "support" this particular country are un-repentantly racist against this (larger) group of people. I have a rather working class background, know many of these people (cops and firefighters, as it relates) and have had the bad fortune of hearing their "jokes".
It's the same question though; how many right will we be asked to give up in order to catch rock-throwing assailants.
I lean pretty heavily on privacy not being a right in the direct sense or the penumbral sense. That a company sells a product that uses facial identification is to me not super relevant. If they had shown the photo around the department, and to random people at the university, and someone said "I recognize that guy, he's so-and-so" then there would simply be no problem here. Similarly if someone was just browsing through old yearbook photos and recognized the face. The computer system allows this to happen at larger scale, but the same basic thing.
Walking around with a photo versus walking around with a hundred million photos and asking everyone simultaneously should not be considered about the basic same thing.
Like, this guy was identified off video of him throwing a rock at a protester that hit them in the face. By all accounts this is someone who is trying to violently suppress peoples rights. That he got off on police misconduct in the investigation is a loss to society, no matter how many waxing words try to twist him into being a "protester violated in his rights".
There'a a balance though. I think that allowing police misconduct would be a larger loss to society.
When the state loses winable criminal cases because of police misconduct, it should be motivation at multiple levels to avoid such misconduct in the future.
I'm actually against parallel construction and feel that is far more dangerous than a lot of other activities in that it literally prevents you from knowing your true accuser in terms of laying out a defense/confrontation in court.
This whole story is just full of bad guys all around to a large extent.
I am 100% sure of this because the government has been 100% consistent and 100% abusive about this, 100% of the time.
Even the Civil War was clearly orchestrated and the people were abused and not just rights, but the very core Constitution was essentially destroyed and nullified, and what we’ve had since is nothing more than an abusive invalidated social contract upheld my sheer force, delusion, and bribing. The delusion and bribery part being what keeps people from realizing that.
Curious why this is downvoted?
You attacked the idea of free speech for the other side in the same comment where you said this. I would assume based on reference to government infringements that you're referring to the first amendment as "free speech" if you hadn't specifically emphasized "idea"; conservatives have no real first amendment case, but they do get censored and suppressed by people with power. The idea of free speech is very much still in play when university admin cancels a guest speaker or a forum moderator only allows left-wing or non-political posts. What am I missing here?
My comment was targeted at the government/ICE's notorious targeting of anti-Israel protesters broadly. It's absolutely clear that we're giving up rights left and right for this total farce, the same way we did for 9/11. It is imperative to the survival of liberal democracy that this ceases.
4A, sure, but you have argued that this was a chilling of a students protected speech. The only person engaging in speech at all was the victim of the assault.
Probably people reading the article title without reading the headline, not realizing that that it's not only literally about shouting in movie theaters.
But tbh most commenters/voters on this site are reflexively imperialist, which is not surprising for a forum run by (and for!) capitalists in the imperial core. That's doubtless a big factor as well.
It's true in a sense though; if you give the government these tools they will use them to capture offenders and enforce the law. Abuse? I guess, because they are not allowed by law to use these tools. It comes down in my mind to the specifics of why they are disallowed. Is it false positives? Is it an equity issue? Those are the things that would inform my outrage further.
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The 2nd amendment and the notion that we have physical power over the government is going to be whittled away as facial recognition and omnipresent government spying via data brokers gives them all the info they need to spy on every citizen, all the time.
AI means they don't only collect all the data they want for when they need it ala NSA 2008, but they can have a robot army of analysts transcribe photos and phone calls instantly and analyze for sentiment, flag for review.
If we don't demand, as a society, that government stay out of the business of the people, and that the military stay out of the business of civil society (ICE/National Guard/Marines), we are in for true evil.
I don’t, I deleted my social media accounts a decade ago and wasn’t into posting my own photos prior to that anyway. But other people can post photos with me/including me and I can’t control that (and since I don’t use social media I don’t even know when they do that).
Right. Also make sure your friends don't. And your family. Good luck with that.
If you believe the government would only use that data for just purposes then you probably wouldn't then believe that there is a 1A issue. But if you think the government would use it to identify persons at a protest and then take adverse actions against them on the basis of their presence alone (which to be clear, seems distinguished from the immediate instance) you would probably think there is a 1A issue.
SCOTUS ruled there are some instances where private use of a service is 1) effectively necessary for modern life and 2) leaks a huge amount of information about the person, then the government cannot utilize it without a warrant even if handed over or sold willingly by the third party.
I am suggesting that we likely need to expand Third Party Doctrine to things beyond cell tower data because 1) we don't have absolute control over how/where our images are used and associated with our names, and 2) the technology to later affiliate our always-on/always-visible identities (like faces, gaits, or fingerprints) with our names is getting better and better.
You're right that today this is not illegal, but I am pointing out that your argument for "what to do instead" is literally the precise argument for why it should be: it chills protected expression.
Edit: While I said "duty" I meant that I really hope the that the police investigate all allegations of hate crime assault properly.
Actually neither happened. The article says they were not able to find any identifiable information online. They had to use drivers license instead.
> the fire marshal sent links to Clearview AI face search results, an archive of school play photos and another to an archive of high school formal photos. He said he couldn’t find associated social media but offered to get a driver’s license photo for the detective. “We have access to that,” he wrote.
I read the sequence as,
1. They started with a protest video
2. Clearview provided public images of the same person, but no name. It was certainly more identifiable (e.g., their high school).
3. Then somehow they get the driver's license photo. Do they use the original protest video, or the Clearview images? How does this search even work? Nobody knows. Lazy journalism.
As readers, we have no idea if the Clearview search was actually important, or a dead end.
>A minute later, the detective sent the fire marshal Ahmed’s name, date of birth and driver’s license number. Within five minutes, the fire marshal replied, “Bingo.”
I believe that is supposed to say that the fire marshal sent the detective the license information. The Fire Marshal was clearly able to find identifiable information online, in the form of multiple high school photos, but was unsuccessful getting a match to any social media accounts. So the facial recognition worked and found matches in Clearview AI’s database of scraped school photos, but not their database of scraped social media photos.
Then the Fire Marshal offered to get a driver’s license photo, and says he has access [presumably to the DMV database]. The fact the about a minute later, license information was passed, sounds like a search was run by the Fire Marshal, a match popped up, and he sent it to the detective. But it could be that the detective used high school photos (being higher quality and full front facing) to run a search against the DMV records (which the police have access to with “permission from supervisors”) but according to other articles about the NYPD in general, it doesn't seem like that are able to run facial recognition on DMV records.
Either way, I think the ID came directly from the information the Fire Marshal passed and the Judge said as much.
>The NYPD would not have identified Ahmed but for the FDNY’s Clearview AI search and accessing the DMV photo, the judge indicated in her ruling
Broke the law is the phrase we want here. They did an illegal thing. They didn't just scoot past a barrier, they violated people's rights.
Assuming you're a cop of course, otherwise we'll go to jail.
Claiming that an administrative policy against using facial recognition as a "right" seems like a stretch.
This is such strange way to describe "right for privacy".
Allegedly. The article doesn't mention any evidence that he actually did.
> "Per the record before this court, there is no additional evidence connecting the defendant to the alleged incident — no surveillance video to and from his home, no independent identification by others in attendance."
No evidence.
> "This case is premised on the complainant's word that he was the target of criminal actions by another person, and that other person was the defendant."
Weak evidence (with potential bias.)
> "The NYPD digitally altered the defendant's DMV photograph [...] never sought the metadata which would clearly indicate how, when, and perhaps by whom the photo was doctored."
Manufactured evidence.
> "That statement alone renders these medical records discoverable as possible impeachment material, necessitating their disclosure [...] Yet the People [...] have articulated no efforts to obtain these records"
Withholding evidence from the defence.
All in all, utter bullshit from the prosecution.
The person hit by the rock is a victim of whomever threw it, be this person or another.
And this person is the victim of the police department's policy violation.
These things can coexist.
1. US foreign policy is uniparty. As terrible as this administration is, remember that quashing anti-war protests happened under Biden, too. Columbia, Hind Hall, etc were all under Biden. That being said, moving to deport or denaturalize pro-Palestinian protestors is new; and
2. The state will turn violent to quash anti-imperialist sentiment.
Let me give you some examples:
1. The MOVE bombing. In Philadelphia in 1985 there was a black liberation group called MOVE. After a day-long standoff with police, the police dropped a C4 explosive from a helicotper on the house. The resulting fire killed 11;
2. Kent State. In 1970, there was an anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. The Ohio National Guard had been called in. The protestors were unarmed. The National Guard were at least 100 yards from the protestors. Yet at some point the protestors got scared and fired on the protestors, killing 4; and
3. At a pro-Palestinian protest at UCLA, the encampment was attacked by pro-Zionists. The police stood by and did nothing and the next day used that violence as an excuse to violently break up the protest.
Facial recognition, mass surveillance, social media checks at ports of entry, weaponized deportation, etc. The state simply will not tolerate anti-imperialist protests.
Only in regards to one foreign entity.
> Let me give you some examples:
2 of those 3 directly involve the US and US action. The outlier says a lot.
> The state simply will not tolerate anti-imperialist protests.
The current administration ran on an anti-imperialist platform. You can protest american, russian, french, chinese, british imperialism all you want. You can quote george washington's warning about empires and foreign wars all day long. What you can't protest is israel. Period.
No comments yet
You have the judge coming down on the side of privacy, which is good; but the circumstances of the particular case are troubling (allegations of someone throwing a rock at someone else).
I'd be happier gaining ground for privacy rights with cases about, e.g., blanket surveillance, using surveillance for political purposes, surveillance capitalism, etc. Then we figure out where the best lines are for when surveillance actually should or can be used.
(Edit: And ill-considered downvotes is why I'm not going to bother to try to have a meaningful discussion on HN.)
The system has tools like warrants for this. It appears to me as just sloppy policework.