Will The London Riots Be The Turning Point For Facial Recognition As A Crime …

Digital vigilantes discuss legal issues around identifying rioters using facial recognition technology

If you riot, social media will be used to track you down. That is no longer a surprise to anyone. A new twist in social media surveillance work following the London riots, though, may be the use of facial recognition technology to identify those involved.

After the riots in Vancouver earlier this year, following a Stanley Cup loss, a Canadian insurance corporation volunteered the use of its drivers’ photos database should authorities wish to use facial recognition technology to identify and charge rioters. A spokesperson from the Vancouver Police Department tells me that the agency, while aware of the technology, ultimately decided not to use it.

“We are aware of the technology but have not used it in the investigation that is currently underway. We have many investigative avenues and tools that we are putting into use currently that are working well to advance the investigation,” Constable Lindsey Houghton tells me.

Web vigilantes are doing their best to make sure facial recognition technology gets a fair shake in the London riots, though. Just last week, researchers established that off-the-shelf facial recognition technology mixed with Facebook’s vast database of photos linked to people’s real identities can lead to fairly reliable identification of complete strangers. Digital crime-fighters plan to use the same techniques the researchers used to identify students at Carnegie Mellon University to identify English rioters. On a Google group called London Riots Facial Recognition, a bunch of technophiles are discussing using Face.com’s facial recognition API to create a Facebook app that will identify ne’er-do-wells in London.

After getting media attention, the Google Group members have made their group private, but here’s a screenshot (above at right) of the members discussing the legal issues around identifying those involved…

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Tips galore

We experienced an unusual Facebook event late last week, one that points up at least one unintended circumstance of venturing out into the world of social media – necessary though it is to diversify our media options.

We began seeing posts regarding a dog owner in the city of Lebanon. These posts were asking us, in no uncertain terms, to do a story about the conditions in which the dogs were living.

The posts continued for a long enough period of time that we finally posted to the site to say that we would investigate.

We determined a number of things. First, neither the local Humane Society nor city officials, both of whom had been made aware of the situation, found anything about it that was considered outside the bounds of existing laws and regulations. That made it pretty much a nonstory.

What we also discovered, by tracking the identities of some of the posters, that those who posted to our page were mostly not from around here – unless you consider Chicago to be in the neighborhood. There were closer locations for posters and at least one local one that we could identify.

We would guess that the conditions in which the animals were being kept did not sit well with an individual, who then posted a request to contact local officials (and the newspaper) on, perhaps, another Facebook group, by means of a group email or through a service like Twitter.

It was effective, even if it was, at least by legal and regulatory standards, without standing.

We found out later in the process that the owner of the animals voluntarily made some changes based on the requests of those who posted to Facebook, which is to that individual’s credit. But we underline that it was strictly that individual’s decision, and there was nothing – officially – wrong with the set-up for the animals.

We’re used to getting news tips. We get them routinely. We get them by phone, by email, by letter; often anonymously. But they are generally single-shot items. One call; one email; one letter. Some are legitimate; some are misguided; some are interesting but not reaching the level of a story.

With social media, and a willing group, we can see the equivalent of an online flash mob.

This isn’t to say that social media aren’t a viable option for story ideas; they are. That is one of the many reasons for our expansion into those media.

Like anything else, however, it has the potential to be abused or misused. The individuals who made this recent posting had an opinion; their opinion was determined to be unfounded by those in authority; and while our Facebook site will rotate through and the material will be archived far down through the pages, it still has a form of continuing life.

We would rather have the ability to check on issues that are of importance to our local people and our readers. We appreciate hearing from those readers who may be out of town and who come to our website because of a specific story, column or blog.

There is less value in seeing a series of related posts and realizing that most of those posting have, at best, a very tenuous relationship with the area – they are responding, perhaps, to a person’s request to post to the newspaper (or any other) site in order to galvanize something.

This is the modern-day version of an organized picket. Understand, though, that like minds may find a given situation to be something that it may not actually be, in official terms. That may not change anyone’s opinion, and the topic may even be worth an editorial – and here it is – but it does not turn out to be a news story.

Newspapers are much more interactive now than in the past; in the print-only days, interactivity was mostly limited to the opinion pages, with letters to the editor. Now, interactivity occurs across many Internet platforms and even down to individual stories. The instant feedback is helpful to those of us in the news business, because it can, at times, offer ideas for follow-up or issues-oriented stories springing from a single source.

This is the media world in which we now live. It’s unrecognizable from what it was 25 years ago; it’s radically different from what it was just two or three years ago. And tomorrow? We’re not even sure if anyone’s started to figure that out yet.

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