Cop busted for unauthorized use of Clearview AI facial recognition resigns ( arstechnica.com )

"So the cop was tracking random people off social media using this incredibly invasive technology, on a pretty regular basis."

"That's bad."

"But, an audit detected his abuse of the system and he was slated for termination."

"That's good!"

"But the system still exists, and can be used for nefarious purposes as long as those are state-approved uses backed by a case number, which is honestly a bigger deal and concern than one random officer using it for, presumably, stalking."

"That's bad."

"And, from the description of the nature of their auditing, it would be pretty easy for an officer to use the system abusively as long as they were more careful to disguise the nature of their access than this guy was."

"That's... also bad."

"And, it's notable that the auditing in question was done by his department, not ClearView itself. It sounds like it's up to each individual law enforcement agency to make sure its officers are using it ethically, without centralized oversight from ClearView let alone any type of judicial or legal oversight, which sounds like a recipe for abuse even leaving aside the issue of state-sanctioned abuse of the system and the general increase in police powers it represents."

"... Can I go now?"

intensely_human ,

Every cockroach you see on the counter has a thousand cousins hidden in the walls.

some_guy ,

By resigning, there’s nothing on his record to prevent getting a job in another department. Hooray! The system works. /s

ninjaphysics ,

Do. Not. Trust. The. Police.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

100% agree with this

I should make clear I am not an ACAB person by any means. The whole mentality that the police are automatically the enemy makes just as little sense to me as that the police are never the enemy.

But no one in the world should simply have unaccountable power. Body cams, judicial oversight, warrants, charges when they abuse their power, get rid of police unions or anything else that makes it difficult for a department to fire an officer who they feel is causing problems. Just like some percentage of non police people do bad stuff and we need a system to watch them and try to protect everyone else from them, we need it 10 times more for police people.

TachyonTele ,

I completely agree with you. They need to be made accountable.
That's the real root of the problem. ACAB/defund/whatever, if they were actually held accountable for their insane actions a lot of the problems would go away.

"You killed three peop- oh you resigned? Nevermind then. Have a good day Officer."

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Yeah. The frustrating thing is that the blanket "defund the police" attitude actually makes the problem of department-hopping bad cops, or tolerance for bad behavior by cops, worse a lot of the time, by starving departments of resources which makes it harder to hire as many cops as they need which makes them more desperate for employees and makes it harder to be selective about who they employ.

hydroptic ,

The way I've understood the "defund the police" movement's point is that they're saying police funding is excessive because a lot of the things cops do should be handled before the cops have to get involved, eg. with higher funding for mental health and social services, housing for homeless people etc. So the point is that you wouldn't need as many cops in the first place if things were handled more humanely "downstream" so to speak, instead of just letting problems fester until things go sideways

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Yeah. That part makes perfect sense to me. It's a little different from what you were saying, but someone on Lemmy was actually telling me about their experience with someplace where something like this had been implemented -- mental health people going on certain calls instead of cops, with cops assisting in cases that might turn violent, and it sounds like it works out great from all people involved's perspective. The callers are happier because people come who are better at handling the problems, the cops are happier because they don't have to deal with calls they are less qualified to deal with, the mental health people are happier because they have cops on standby for violent calls but they also get to deal with things right from the jump, instead of coming in after the cops came and just tackled and cuffed the person or whatever and now they have to come into the middle of the wreckage.

I know you were talking about things at an even much earlier level than when the 911 call happens; that sounds good to me too. The only part I was objecting to was the vindictive framing of it. Like if you want to fund mental health and homeless services that sounds great, we should do that. Coupling that idea up with punishing the police because they were bad (not saying you're doing that, but definitely some people have that in mind saying "defund the police" I think) I don't think is the way to produce progress though.

MelodiousFunk ,
@MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net avatar

This is exactly it. But it doesn't fit on a hat or bumper sticker so the details get ignored.

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/829f9a53-a4cd-44e5-a955-7d70bdd0fcb3.webp

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

The cartoon is excellent but yes the problem is that the phrasing doesn't match the reality. "Fund the nonpolice" isn't catchy though.

Honestly, just properly funding anything that is designed to do benevolent things for the community as a whole is a tough sell with way too many US community politicians

hydroptic ,

Honestly, just properly funding anything that is designed to do benevolent things for the community as a whole is a tough sell with way too many US community politicians

This seems to be a problem with at least conservative politicians everywhere. In Finland where I live we do still have the vestiges of a welfare state (and it really is vestigial at this point), but right wing politicians keep dismantling it and cutting taxes on the rich, and later on leftist politicians find it impossible to roll back any changes due to resistance from the right.

p03locke ,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Defund means to essentially get rid of a department or thing. The phrase "defend the police" means "get rid of the police". It doesn't matter if there's some cartoon to re-explain away the phrase or a bunch of other people trying to re-define the English language. English is English, and words have meaning.

The "defund the police" movement failed because us liberals don't fucking understand marketing. Like, at all. I can't count the number of times some liberal movement crops up with their slogan and Republicans turn that slogan against them because nobody spent the ten minutes time to think about how that phrase or thing could be abused. For example, that brief time when the LGBT movement wanted to rename themselves to LGBTQIA2SUVWTFBBQ? Seriously?!?

It's like naming your baby "Assman McAssface" and wondering why he gets bullied in school.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

I have a private theory, for which I have absolutely 0 evidence, that the forces of the establishment have some way of sneaking stupid unpopular things or phrases into the left’s discourse which the left then seizes and runs with, much to the establishments’s delight. E.g. renaming the Green Party the Green-Rainbow Party, climate activists attacking famous artworks, things like that.

I have 0 evidence for this, as applied to “defund the police” or anything else. Actually I sort of suspect that “defund the police” was an original creation of the ACAB contingent which meant exactly what it sounds like, that got retconned by more sensible but still reform-minded people into meaning “more properly fund everything else” for exactly the reasons we’re discussing. But as a general rule I suspect (again, with 0 evidence) that some of what you’re talking about actually comes from deliberate sabotage.

p03locke ,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Some of the more extreme-minded liberals do a good enough job at sabotaging themselves and the movements they are a part of, without the need for malicious saboteurs. Like Atheist+ or progressive stack.

Then again, Russians orgs are out there, trying to influence politic movements and sabotage others. GamerGate was an entire sea of political actors, journalists, influencers, and Russian agents, trying to push their own narratives to the point of mass disinformation from both sides, with the general public on either side confused and angry at the other's responses.

jonne ,

But in order to get the money for those programs, especially if their effect is to lower the workload for police, you should get the money from the police budget, otherwise it's just wasted money. Are you just going to keep giving the NYPD a billion dollars a year to do nothing?

violetmadder ,
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics

The trouble is, being the enemy is their actual job. From the ground up.

BendingUnit ,
@BendingUnit@undernopretext.social avatar

@violetmadder @mozz @ninjaphysics
Higgs and I disagree on a lot. But on cops, we sync up well:

"The whole Good Cop / Bad Cop question can be disposed of much more decisively. We need not enumerate what proportion of cops appears to be good or listen to someone's anecdote about his uncle Charlie, an allegedly good cop.
We need only consider the following:

1/2

BendingUnit ,
@BendingUnit@undernopretext.social avatar

@violetmadder @mozz @ninjaphysics

A cop's job is to enforce the laws, all of them;

Many of the laws are manifestly unjust, and some are even cruel and wicked;

Therefore every cop has to agree to act as an enforcer for laws that are manifestly unjust or even cruel and wicked.

There are no good cops."

  • Robert Higgs
    2/2
mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

What are you talking about

Cops are the first step in enforcing the law. Before a judgement is entered, it has to go in front of a judge and maybe a jury depending on the severity. What you said is basically exactly the reason -- you need to have people in the system who can recognize cruelty or injustice in the outcome, gather the whole story, and make balanced judgements. A lot of that isn't really the police's job. It'd be terrible if the police were just going out laying down the law as it was written or however they saw it.

That's not to say there's nothing wrong with the whole system; there's plenty about it that doesn't function well or is bad or needs to be changed (lookin at you plea deals and public defender systems). But I don't at all agree with this simple QED logic with no reference to the reality of how the system exists and how it's evolved to deal with this exact issue starting back many hundreds of years ago when people saw how bad were the problems with having police organizations going around enforcing the law all on their own, and how badly that idea worked out (for this among some other reasons).

BendingUnit ,
@BendingUnit@undernopretext.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @violetmadder
I'm talking about the cops. Should be eminently obvious.

Nothing in your 2 paragraphs addresses the reality we exist in: cops are hired thugs, who use violence, to enforce bad laws that are written by and to protect the wealthy.

Your 2 paragraphs of mess ALSO fail to recognize that things in that regard have gotten WORSE in my 40ish years living in this country.

Nothing in the system reliably reigns cops in within a reasonable expectation.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

ALSO fail to recognize that things in that regard have gotten WORSE in my 40ish years living in this country.

...

You are living in a fantasy world. I am sorry.

When I was a kid, it was on TV cops literally just beating up suspects (on "Cops", not like fiction, but really just beating the fuck out of real people with batons because they tried to run away). On prime time. No one thought it was at all weird. When Rodney King happened, it was super confusing even the idea the the cops might be guilty of a crime. They got found not guilty on the first trial.

To say that from that, to bodycams and defund the police and murder charges for cops who kill suspects, is things getting "WORSE" just means you are literally just stating whatever, with no connection to reality. It's like saying global warming has gotten better since the 80s. It's like saying wealth inequality has gone down. It is literally backwards from what's happened to an absolutely crazypants level.

Plenty of things still need to change. It's not like me saying I think things have reached this significantly better level means it doesn't ruin people's lives every day. Sure, let's fuckin fix it. But you can't just come at a complex problem with this type of lego block understanding of what's going on and twist the whole world around to match your prejudices and expect anything good to come out of that.

BendingUnit ,
@BendingUnit@undernopretext.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @violetmadder
This reads like a lot of projection mixed with a LOT of ignoring reality and swallowing propaganda.

I apologize for attempting to bring your attention to the reality that hundreds of millions of us 'revolting peasants' struggle to survive within. I shall not trouble you or your utopian fever dreams any further.

But understand that for the safety of myself and my community, I consider ACAB to include gaslighters like you, too.

violetmadder ,
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @BendingUnit

The conclusions of abolition may sound simple, but the reasoning behind it goes much, much deeper than this "lego block" assumption you're scoffing at.

Note where Rodney King (1991) falls on the timeline of this chart:

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

You cut off the last 10 years of the chart, and you used total population instead of rate (meaning the number will go up anyway as population climbs the exponential curve).

Here's the chart with both issues fixed, data from the Wikipedia page I showed you (most recent data is in their citation but not much different from 2021 when I looked). This is population in prison per 100,000 people:

https://mbin.grits.dev/media/74/03/7403c22b7970663017e93cab6d79b370f75cc1d91ecd620fd911b50e387e7bce.webp

So like I said: Huge spike from 1980-2000, then peaked in 2008, then coming down since then. Which, sure, it being as high as it is is a fuckin problem. It's a huge problem. But you have to understand the problem to solve it. Just saying "IT'S GETTING WORSE, IT'S ALL GETTING WORSE COPS ARE KILLERS" is not conducive to understanding and solving the problem. In my opinion.

violetmadder ,
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @BendingUnit

Sure, and your chart doesn't show the longer period where it stayed steady before it suddenly climbed. I just grabbed the first chart I found, there are many ways to visualize it. Either way the backlash after Rodney King didn't slow it down at all.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Hm, I was not saying there was a backlash after Rodney King. (I mean... from the people on the ground, there was a pretty fuckin big backlash but it all got written down by people in charge as a destructive riot for no reason.) There was no backlash 10 years later, or 20 years later, when the police in the US were still killing black people and everything was basically fine and unchanged except for some protests when it happened and people found out.

Basically it took until 2020 to reach the point where everything made national news as a rule, cops involved with Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery all got charges, the DA got indicted, the whole fuckin country exploded, they burned down the police station, etc etc. It was a big deal.

The state of play post 2020 is that if an unarmed black man gets shot, it gets scrutinized, the bodycam footage gets released, everyone pores over it to see if something went wrong. It's assumed that the cops will get charges if something fucked up happened. All the roaches in the walls that were always there, in 2010 when cell phone use was still below 50% and grabbing video of what was going on wasn't at all universal, have been at least partially in the light for a while, and a lot of the (absolutely, well justified) anger that was 2010-2020 has produced a lot of changes.

If it sounds like anything I am saying means that I think policing is fixed, I do not. I don't think it will ever really be "fixed." If 10% or 2% or 1% of cops are dirty, it's a big problem. But also, I think fixing the remaining problems will not come from pretending that we're still in 1992 and they're out here just killing people and it's fine, there's no accountability for anything, no one ever gets fired or charged with anything, and every cop is automatically a bad person.

whatzaname ,
@whatzaname@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @violetmadder @BendingUnit Every cop, like every soldier, swears an oath to kill the people they're ordered, by those in control, to kill.
Lots of history shows that this leads to investments that increase in value when lots of people are in prison. Putting lots of people in profitable prisons means arresting as many as possible ( To let the 'above all doubt' legal system sort out lol) means some try to avoid getting arrested. Those ones, and others (oops) get dead.
And capitalism cheers.
Nah, you can't really be a good cop. You might delude yourself into thinking you are, but you are assisting oppressors in their grift.
That's all.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Jesse what the fuck are you talking about

What oath is this?

The oath for police is usually in the state constitution -- e.g. in Pennsylvania you can look here and here and see what's up with it

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth and that I will discharge the duties of my office with fidelity."

Do you hate on judges with this much vigor? Or jurors? They are generally the ones actually locking people up. I won't disagree with the injustice of private prisons, or the modern implementation of the court system in a lot of respects honestly, but just picking out some random individuals who work within the system and making up random nonsense about them isn't bringing anything any closer to a good solution to that

whatzaname ,
@whatzaname@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @violetmadder @BendingUnit oh the entire system is fucked, for sure.
Plenty of good people go in, but they either leave or conform to support and even promote unjust and inhumane laws.
Cops arrest people for being homeless. As part of their job.
They might even say they regret 'having' to.
Enough said.
Unless you're next going to try to tell me that it's good for homeless people to get arrested because it helps them get the help they need.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

What oath were you talking about?

whatzaname ,
@whatzaname@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @violetmadder @BendingUnit You understand the constitution was written to protect rich people's property, right? Did you study any us history before forming an opinion on the purpose of cops?

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

What oath did you mean, where they are swearing to kill the people they're ordered to? I ask because even in the military, modern democracies actually make a big deal out of loyalty to the law instead of purely to your commanding officer -- like if your commander orders you to shoot civilians for no reason, and you do it, you can both wind up in a court-martial together. There was kind of a big deal one specific time about whether or not acting under orders was a defense after the fact and what the person was supposed to do in that situation. I have studied history US and otherwise, yes; I suspect a lot more than you think I have.

So where in the police oath does it say about killing the people you're ordered to kill? You're lecturing me to be honest, to some extent, on how it is, so I'm asking you, hey can you tell me some more about this thing you told me is how it is?

violetmadder ,
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @BendingUnit

It has "evolved" to the biggest mass incarceration system on Earth.

BendingUnit ,
@BendingUnit@undernopretext.social avatar

@violetmadder @mozz @ninjaphysics
THIS.
We were taught to fear "the gulag" in school. The US prison system has grown into a bigger, crueler gulag than that we were told to fear. And the violence that keeps it running is supplied by a certain group of bastards.....

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Pop quiz! What percent of the people who passed through it did the Gulag kill? The number for the US prison system must be sky high since it's so much crueler than the literal Gulag.

Also! What percent of the population of the USSR was in the Gulag at the peak? The number for the US prison system must be sky high since it's so much bigger than the literal Gulag.

(I actually know the answers to both questions if you want me to tell you, but I am curious whether you have a frame of reference for the claims you're making, or if you're just saying things to say things.)

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

It's actually been going down since 2008. The little table down the side shows the rate; it peaked at 0.75% in prison in 2008, and since then it's gone back down to about 0.53%, about 1992 numbers. 1980 through 2000 was when it shot through the roof starting from a level that was actually kinda reasonable.

0.53% is still way, way too high. It's unconscionable for a country that has enough wealth to be a paradise for everyone. Keeping it going down sounds great. There's a bunch of things to work on to fix it; eliminating private prisons, drug legalization, and funding the societal fixes (reduced wealth inequality being a big one) that reduce the number of people who are desperate enough or broken enough to commit actual (i.e. non-drug) crime.

I don't think "fuck the police" belongs in that list of how to fix it, though. Honestly I was just trying to say that that whole logical construction about how the police put people in prison and so etc etc QED they are bad was a big oversimplification, to me, and so it's gonna lead people away from talking about more complete solutions and a complete understanding of the systems and where the problems are. Not trying to say there are no problems, because there are problems, yes, 100%. We may disagree on the scope of the problems and the police's role in the problems but yes, absolutely, there are problems and injustice rampant in the US criminal justice system, on that we can agree.

violetmadder ,
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @BendingUnit

Yes. The prison population has finally begun to go down somewhat, but the apparatus is still expanding.

You may have heard of the 85-acre Cop City they're trying to build in Atlanta. You probably haven't heard much about the others, like the one near Nashville that will be over 800 acres.

Anyway-- I highly recommend Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow.

She's a civil rights lawyer, but even she thought the complaints about the system were exaggerations, for a very long time. When she finally really connected the dots, it shook her badly. We've been conditioned to accept some truly horrific things as "normal".

BendingUnit ,
@BendingUnit@undernopretext.social avatar

@violetmadder @mozz @ninjaphysics
Talking about prison populations only tells part of the story, too. It's ignoring evictions; violence against the homeless, striking workers, random POCs cops encounter; the murders gotten away with that the few sacrificial lambs thrown out as a distraction doesnt solve; the straight up theft; the sex crimes; the school to prison pipeline.....in short, the spoiled bunch.

Dude is using very little to whitewash and recuperate a lot.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

You have assembled a picture in your mind. I'm not saying any of what you are saying doesn't happen, because I am sure that it does. It's a big country and lots of shit happens (and in some particular departments it happens way way more often than it should, yes.)

But I am very confident that I can find data that part of your picture, at least, is not what's accurate to what's going on in the country as a whole. I'm not trying to argue with you or bother you about it if you're just committed to your way. But if you're open to talk back and forth about it and look at sources, that's something I'm open to do; I'll do the same for anything that you want to show me or anything it turns out I am wrong about on my side.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Anyway-- I highly recommend Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow.

I am reading the summary now

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

when people of color are disproportionately labeled as "criminals", this allows the unleashing of a whole range of legal discrimination measures in employment, housing, education, public benefits, voting rights, jury duty, and so on

Holy shit I think I may have to buy this

It was just kind of, yes yes the US is racist this is not news, and then I read this one sentence and what she was getting at started to click, like oh fuck, this is a fundamental and important thing she is saying

violetmadder ,
@violetmadder@kolektiva.social avatar

@mozz @ninjaphysics @BendingUnit

Yes!

I first encountered her work in this video of a lecture she gave at Chicago University. It kicked my (pretty white and sheltered) worldview right in the gut and I had to sit down for a long minute.

Usually the discourse is funneled into little silos of separate (and polarizing) topics, and this was the first time I really started to grasp how poverty and the lower classes are used as integral parts of a bigger machine, and how the parts relate to each other.

https://youtu.be/Gln1JwDUI64

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Yeah. I had some good friends who grew up in, more or less, the ghetto, and hearing them explaining how it was, and how literally everything is stacked against you and how hard (impossible) it is to make progress out of it is fuckin heartbreaking.

It may sound somewhat like I am saying “don’t worry, citizen, the system is just” but I am absolutely not saying that. Mostly what I’m disagreeing with here is (a) the idea of being antagonistic to every cop on an individual level (b) the idea that police reform has made no progress when I think it’s actually the part of the whole unjust system that’s seen the most progress in the recent past.

mozz OP Admin ,
mozz avatar

Interactions I have personally had / observed with the police that I can remember off the top of my head:

  • Roommate had a mental health crisis and called the police, they came and cordially took her to the hospital
  • Homeless guy screaming on the street, police came up and had a long conversation with him while he was screaming in their faces, finally got him to calm down, he left without incident
  • Friend needed a restraining order, talked with police, got a hearing with a judge, got no restraining order, policewoman got so pissed about it when she found out that she basically hauled my friend back to the courthouse and she got a new hearing at which she was able to get the restraining order
  • Got arrested for stupid stuff when I was younger
  • Observed a DUI crash and called the cops, cops took my report about what had happened and I left them to deal with the aftermath

In none of those cases were they in any way the enemy.

I think some of it is regional or race based but I definitely think that in the bodycam era, it's gone from "okay they do messed up stuff sometimes but they still accomplish a vital and difficult function in society" all the way to "with notable still-big-problem exceptions lookin at you NYPD they are largely accountable for all their actions and a lot of the important reforms to police behavior based on the very real problems, have actually already happened, and yet a lot of people still treat every single cop as an enemy which just makes interactions more difficult both for them and for the 99% of police who are good cops at this point"

That is my take on it

electric_nan ,

That's what ACAB means though. You cannot trust cops, because there's no real accountability for them. Why is there no accountability? Because their colleagues lie for them, their bosses lie for them, the prosecutors decline to prosecute them, judges trust them implicitly, their unions intimidate mayors and lobby politicians for more funding, tougher laws (for non-cops) and less accountability for themselves.

The system is so fucked up that reforming it seems like a waste of time. Actual "good cops" get squeezed out or worse. You might as well assume that ACAB, because the stakes are too high to assume otherwise.

autotldr Bot ,

🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

Click here to see the summary

An Indiana cop has resigned after it was revealed that he frequently used Clearview AI facial recognition technology to track down social media users not linked to any crimes.

According to a press release from the Evansville Police Department, this was a clear "misuse" of Clearview AI's controversial face scan tech, which some US cities have banned over concerns that it gives law enforcement unlimited power to track people in their daily lives.

Clearview AI touts the face image network as a public safety resource, promising to help law enforcement make arrests sooner while committing to "ethical and responsible" use of the tech.

This incident could have broader implications in the US, where its technology has been widely used by police to conduct nearly 1 million searches, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That told the BBC last year.

Facebook moved to stop the company from scraping faces on its platform, and the ACLU won a settlement that banned Clearview AI from contracting with most businesses.

"To ensure that the software is used for its intended purposes, we have put in place internal operational guidelines and adhere to the Clearview AI terms of service," Smith said.

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