| Floridians Protest Street Cameras |  |
| http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010715/aponline173031_000.htm The Associated Press Sunday, July 15, 2001; 5:30 p.m. EDT TAMPA, Fla. ญญ Wearing masks and making obscene gestures at police cameras, about 100 people protested a new security system that scans faces in the city's crime-ridden nightlife district to search for wanted persons. "Being watched on a public street is just plain wrong," said May Becker, wearing a bar code sticker on her forehead. Becker joined demonstrators in the Ybor City district Saturday night, wearing a sign reading: "We're under house arrest in the land of the free." One protester walked by a camera, gestured obscenely and shouted, "Digitize this!" Others wore gas masks, Groucho Marx glasses and other items to protest the FaceIt scanning system police are using in a neighborhood that attracts 75,000 to 150,000 people on weekend nights. The video cameras snap pictures of faces in the crowd and compare them to a database of 30,000 people that includes runaway teens and wanted criminals. It works by analyzing 80 facial points between the nose, cheekbones and eyes. Tampa is the only American city where police use the face-recognition technology for routine surveillance, but Virginia Beach, Va., is seeking a $150,000 state grant for a similar system. So far, police say the system has not led to any arrests although it has been used in Ybor the past two weekends. |
| mavericklady
comments: The
fact that the cops have not caught a single criminal does not surprise
me. They are claiming that Ybor City is a high crime rate
area. This comes as news to me - and I lived in the area for 10
years - followed the news - knew people that went to Ybor City al the time
- and in those ten years I never heard of any 'crime wave' in Ybor city.
But hey - I'm just a dumb broad - what do I know.
I am impressed that the young people in Florida are making their anger known. I know what the police down there are like. A regular cop is nothing more than a gestapo with a badge and a gun. They abuse their positions - I know - I've been subjected to them. As the victim of a crime - I was treated like the criminal. It also does not surprise me that it is happening in the south. When they put the 'spy' cameras up in New York - no one said a word. But then again - New York was already an occupied territory at the time. You want to know when a real revolution is going to happen - watch the mid-west and the south - believe them when they say "WE AREN'T GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE" |
