[Air-L] facial recognition software
Barry Wellman
wellman at chass.utoronto.ca
Thu Jul 15 07:28:39 PDT 2010
In very early July, the G20 met in Toronto. (Never let this circus come to
your town.)
As such, there was the inevitable demonstrations -- mostly peaceful but
some violent -- and the inevitable police overreaction. I've heard
credible reports of untended broken arm, etc.
The usual investigations are taking place.
The police are now talking about using facial recognition software to
identify vandals. (Seems they grabbed 1K of the wrong people at the time.)
One of the most solid areas of research by my mentor Charles Tilly [RIP]
is that historically the police harm more people than vice-versa.
I've just written to one of the investigating units that they use facial
recognition software to identify the police who may have attacked
civilians without provocation. After all, the police already have photos
of their own officers on file.
Barry Wellman
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S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director
Department of Sociology 725 Spadina Avenue, Room 388
University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 2J4 twitter:barrywellman
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman fax:+1-416-978-3963
Updating history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
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