Use of AI by law enforcement agencies?

RedAsABeetroot

RedAsABeetroot

Well-known member
www.bbc.co.uk

Italian fugitive Vincenzo La Porta caught in Greece thanks to football photo

Vincenzo La Porta has been on the run for 11 years but was tracked down to Greece by police.
www.bbc.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk

Italian mafia boss caught after Google Maps sighting in Spain

Gioacchino Gammino had been on the run for two decades, but was spotted in Spain on Google Maps.
www.bbc.co.uk

Just been reading these two stories of fugitives being spotted in online photos.
I'm wondering if someone's using AI and facial recognition software to track wanted people down. Just curious if anyone's ever seen any info on this, not asking for a friend!
 
RedAsABeetroot said:
www.bbc.co.uk

Italian fugitive Vincenzo La Porta caught in Greece thanks to football photo

Vincenzo La Porta has been on the run for 11 years but was tracked down to Greece by police.
www.bbc.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk

Italian mafia boss caught after Google Maps sighting in Spain

Gioacchino Gammino had been on the run for two decades, but was spotted in Spain on Google Maps.
www.bbc.co.uk

Just been reading these two stories of fugitives being spotted in online photos.
I'm wondering if someone's using AI and facial recognition software to track wanted people down. Just curious if anyone's ever seen any info on this, not asking for a friend!
Click to expand...
I'm not sure about this particular use. But facial recognition AI models are already really good. Amazon have stores with cameras which track your face and movements around the store, alongside sensors on items, so that you can go around, bag all the items you need, walk out and get charged on Amazon afterwards. It's pretty amazing and I'm certain that the software is already publicly available.

There are other interesting facial recognition tools as well. If you go to Pimm Eyes, upload a photo of yourself and it'll search the Internet and find photos of you. I was amazed that a recent one of mine turned up photos of myself from about 10 years ago that I didn't even know we're online. I look very different in that photo, so the technology is already very good.
 
Hmm I bumped into a woman my Mrs sort of knows earlier in Tesco, spoke to her briefly for a couple of mins. Looked at Facebook tonight and she’s popped up straight away on the people you may know, definitely seems like some dodgy tracking going on.
 
Anton_Berg said:
The Amazon shops in my area are closing down. Maybe people don't like the AI.
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Personally, I liked the one I went to (White City, London, near the BBC studios). It looks like they're closing some and opening others. It was always a test rollout and I believe their main aim is to wholesale the technology to other retailers (similarly to how they resell their cloud services on AWS). I'd suspect that most people don't know about them (they don't seem to be in the most prominent locations) and that some may be suspicious of the risk of job losses (why my partner wouldn't go into one with me). Personally, I don't think it would take many more jobs than self service tills. But I can understand the fear.

The AI isn't particularly any more intrusive than the AI used to find our product preferences from clubcards, social media and search engines. I suppose it just feels more scary because it's in the real world rather than on your phone or card.
 
Priv said:
Hmm I bumped into a woman my Mrs sort of knows earlier in Tesco, spoke to her briefly for a couple of mins. Looked at Facebook tonight and she’s popped up straight away on the people you may know, definitely seems like some dodgy tracking going on.
Click to expand...

If your phones had permissions like Bluetooth, GPS, etc switched on then yes, it would link you in the same area. Amazing what these devices share without us realising it.
 
jeff_potato said:
If your phones had permissions like Bluetooth, GPS, etc switched on then yes, it would link you in the same area. Amazing what these devices share without us realising it.
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It is amazing the data that's collected. Even if you just use Google Analytics for websites you can get a lot of data on the visitors to your site. If you get access to sensitive data for apps on the Play Store you can pretty much get almost anything and use it in many different ways. It's crazy. And it's crazy that most people don't even realise that they're giving the data up!
 
jeff_potato said:
If your phones had permissions like Bluetooth, GPS, etc switched on then yes, it would link you in the same area. Amazing what these devices share without us realising it.
Click to expand...
I’ve noticed a lot of friend suggestions over the years for people I’ve never interacted with or had links to but recognised their faces from bars I’ve been in the night before.

I suppose the one most people might be able to identify with is the Covid exposure notifications. At least before everyone started turning their Bluetooth permissions off to avoid having to go into a week long lockdown anyway.
 
Priv said:
Hmm I bumped into a woman my Mrs sort of knows earlier in Tesco, spoke to her briefly for a couple of mins. Looked at Facebook tonight and she’s popped up straight away on the people you may know, definitely seems like some dodgy tracking going on.
Click to expand...
More likely to be that the "woman Mrs Priv sort of knows" went home and did some cyber stalking of Mrs Priv.

AI can be very effective at doing things like looking through pictures for people. The systems are taught by bunging them tons of data and they learn how to do it. Humans can do it but tend to get bored. But the systems are not capable of anything else. It can't do your homework for you, it's just good at photo analysis.That would be something known as "General AI" which is still the stuff of Sci-Fi. Any more questions...

I'll be back.
 
rbmfc1985 said:
I'm not sure about this particular use. But facial recognition AI models are already really good. .
There are other interesting facial recognition tools as well. If you go to Pimm Eyes, upload a photo of yourself and it'll search the Internet and find photos of you. I was amazed that a recent one of mine turned up photos of myself from about 10 years ago that I didn't even know we're online. I look very different in that photo, so the technology is already very good.
Click to expand...
Amazing, but all i can say is George Clooney could be in for a shock should he try it 😉
 
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