[London Riots] Help work out how to do facial recognition on the police photos

It makes me very nervous, but how "ethical" or not this depends on who's driving and participating in the effort.<p>A college friend of mine got charged with inciting a riot by standing on a car and shouting "Don't burn our hood! Go burn some rich folks stuff! Follow me!" According to him they didn't trash his stuff, and that was worth the hassle with the courts.<p>If your shop or car got torched or your kids are afraid at night, this is probably a great idea. Leveraging public data (photos) and off the shelf technology to at least identify witnesses if not actual participants should be done. If a friend of mine was in that situation and asked for help, I would do everything I could. If a company asked me to consult on designing the solution they could sell, I would probably pass.<p>I've been working in security, identity and privacy for over a decade and this "ethical" question has loomed since before Orwell. Commercial packages are marketed to law enforcement, today. Instead of disengaging or blindly sending your leads to police, the ethical middle path is a publicly defined framework. Using the riots as the catalyst, there should be public/web/community effort for vetting the most incriminating images, aimed at shaping the rules of public disclosure, law and evidence around facial recognition.<p>If this makes you queasy, get engaged. Saying "that's bad" or "they're wrong" won't stop those driving the technology solutions forward. Advocacy can keep the situation a little more honest.

What inspired this idea? Most people would just leave these sort of efforts to the police. I'm not judging, I'm a journalist and I'm legitimately curious.

How many times have you heard this:<p>1. This will be misused.<p>2. But someone else will do it if you don't.<p>3. Okay I'll do it then.

If you build it , some one with more ambition will take it from you and misuse it. It might help here, no doubt, but it will be abused. Consider China doing this to identify political deviants. Consider the invention of nukes , and the on going struggle to keep them out of peoples hands who wish to use them. Nothing good will come of this in the long run.

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Screw taking pictures. Shoot Looters.....z

Please do not do this. It compromises people's right to privacy and will artificially incriminate people who may not be participating but are bystanding or trying to get home.<p>Technology is not the solution - it's part of the cause. Everyone is automatically incriminated. Don't add fuel to the fire.

Anyone who takes part in this is a fucking fascist. This is not just simple rioting and looting, it is a backlash upon the failed establishment in the UK. The young people can't find jobs and can't afford to go to school. They are poor, hopeless, and destitute; oppressed by the ever growing disparity between who is rich and who is poor. This is probably not a revolution or an uprising, but it is the start of something. People are fed up with government and they aren't going to be able to take it much longer.