Police In The Popular Resort City Virginia Beach

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Police in the popular resort city Virginia Beach recently began operating video surveillance cameras will controversial face recognition technology. Virginia Beach and Tampa in Florida are two cities in the United States to acquire the technology, which cost it $ 197,000. "Before we switched it on, we went through an extensive public education process with hearings and the involvement of citizen groups and minority groups. who helped write the policies we are using," said deputy police chief Greg Mullen. A citizens' auditing committee has the right to perform unannounced spot checks on police headquarters to make sure the technology is not being misused.

Three of the city's 13 cameras are linked full-time to the face recognition system, though the others can be activated as needed. The database of wanted people is updated every day. So far, the system has failed to produce a single arrest, though it has generated a few false alarms. It works by analyzing faces Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches based on f series of measurements, such as the distance ...
... from the tip of the nose to the chin or the space between the eyes. Critics say it is highly inaccurate and can be easily fooled. Mullen, who sees the system eventually being linked to the databases of other city, state and federal law enforcement agencies to track criminals and suspected terrorists, said: "The system doesn't look at skin color or your hair or your gender. It takes human prejudices out of the equation. "

"This technology has little or no effect on the crime rate but it does have an effect on people's behavior. People feel cowed, said Bruce Steinhardt, who directs a technology. Despite the fact that tests have shown face recognition only works in around 30 percent of cases, the ACLU is alarmed that the technology may soon spread to airports. The organization also fears it could potentially be used to monitor individuals' political activities to harass law-abiding citizens.

"This kind of surveillance should be subject to the same procedures as wiretaps. Law enforcement agencies should justify why they need it and it should be tightly limited, otherwise it will soon become a tool of social control," said Mihir Kshirsagar of the Electronic Information Privacy Center. Nor does such criticism come exclusively from the political left. Lawyer John Whitehead, founder Replica Breitling Watches of the conservative Rutherford Institute, wrote in an editorial that the technology threatened the right of each U.S. citizen to participate in society. After all, that is exactly what constant surveillance is—the ultimate implied threat of coercion," he wrote.