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NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester

(www.thecity.nyc)
291 points dataflow | 2 comments | 18 Jul 25 13:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.429s | source
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gruez ◴[18 Jul 25 14:11 UTC] No.44604843[source]▶
>A city fire marshal used FDNY’s access to a facial recognition software to help NYPD detectives identify a pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia University, circumventing policies that tightly restrict the Police Department’s use of the technology.

Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?

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neilv ◴[18 Jul 25 15:31 UTC] No.44605831[source]▶
> Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?

Arson investigation, identifying the people at the scene of a suspicious fire?

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krapp ◴[18 Jul 25 15:35 UTC] No.44605889[source]▶
The job of the fire department should be to fight fires, not to investigate crimes.

The police should be the ones investigating crimes, under extremely strict and limited guidelines (eg. 4th amendment) which in this case include not being allowed to use facial recognition software.

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jajuuka ◴[18 Jul 25 16:21 UTC] No.44606527[source]▶
So adding more responsibilities to police to now also get expert level training in determining causes of fires and finding clues in a fire incident. That's kind of how we got here. Where the police are a panacea making them less effective and more corrupt since they are an even bigger keystone.

Separating out duties to experts is more effective. Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system. Same with mental health emergency cases. More social workers and experts dealing with a variety of mental disorders will be better to work people in crisis since they are trained for that.

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1. mschuster91 ◴[18 Jul 25 16:36 UTC] No.44606714[source]▶
> So adding more responsibilities to police to now also get expert level training in determining causes of fires and finding clues in a fire incident.

In Germany, we have the same separation. We have solved the issue by having dedicated units for stuff like political crimes, online crimes, fire/arson investigators, organized crime, property crimes, violent crimes, drug units, you name it.

They're all policemen and -women, but at the very least they stay on the unit for many years and learn on the job, or they get additional education, or they get actual professionals (aka, the police officers do the police/bureaucracy side of things, the expert does the forensics).

> Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system.

Bad idea, there are lots of things to take care about when collecting and securing evidence.

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2. jajuuka ◴[18 Jul 25 17:16 UTC] No.44607323[source]▶
The US has similar department separation (just look at how many versions of Law and Order there are), but it's less diverse. So the number of departments is smaller.

Not a bad idea at all. The people from the fire department investigating arson are highly specialized. The only difference between the two systems is which head organization it falls under. So it would be like your fire/arson investigators working under the fire department instead of the police.

US policing has regularly been used to commit abuse and harassment as well as straight crimes. So having that consolidation of power is not good. This store is a perfect example of why they need to be separated because the police cannot be trusted to use facial ID tech responsibly.