Via Kevin Underhill at Lowering the Bar, it appears that one takes a grave risk of watching the Olympics in person if your face doesn’t show the requisite degree of “happy.”

Mark Worsfold, 54, a former soldier and martial arts instructor, was arrested on 28 July for a breach of the peace shortly before the cyclists arrived in Redhouse Park, Leatherhead, where he had sat down on a wall to watch the race. Officers from Surrey police restrained and handcuffed him and took him to Reigate police station, saying his behaviour had “caused concern.”

While the bobbies may well have good reason to show heightened concern, given that the Olympics may be a target for terrorism and the Brits don’t want another Munich on their hands, there’s a limit to what sort of things are sufficient to seize a fellow.  From the Guardian :

Worsfold, whose experience was first reported by Private Eye, claims police questioned him about his demeanour and why he had not been seen to be visibly enjoying the event.

“It could have been done better. I was arrested for not smiling”

As it turns out, Worsfold has Parkinson’s Disease, which is not (yet) a crime a Great Britain.  Apparently, having Parkinson’s is a more anticipated cause for concern there than one might expect.

Campaigners, however, said the incident was illustrative of the kind of “chronic misunderstandings” people with Parkinson’s have to deal with regularly. “Sadly Mark’s experience highlights the lack of understanding and compassion that many people currently living with Parkinson’s have to deal with every day,” said Laura Bowey, head of information and support at Parkinson’s UK.

On the other hand, once the police realized after two hours of “investigation” they had needlessly seized Worsfold, who had no nefarious scheme in mind when he failed to adequately smile, he was released unharmed.

Surrey police said: “There were a number of factors which led officers to make this arrest, including the fact that the race was rapidly approaching, the heightened level of security due to the high-profile nature of the event and the sheer number of spectators in attendance. These were fully explained to the individual concerned. He was given words of advice and released with no further action.”

While the actual “words of advice” given remains a well-guarded secret, Underhill may have the inside track:

“See if you can’t get that Parkinson’s disease cleared up before the next Olympics.”

Words to live by.  More seriously, however, is the concern that facial recognition software, developed to automate that keen eyes of the Surrey constabulary, will not only suffer from the same false positive reaction, but will hardly be as prompt to cure as did this little Brit kerfluffle.

The most relevant example being the NGIFRP—what? You haven’t been following the deployment of the NGIFRP? The Next Generation Identification Facial Recognition Program? That’s the government’s plan to include in its giant biometrics database at least 12 million “searchable frontal photos” (hopefully, this means your face) and develop software to track and ID people in crowd or social-media photos. The vast majority of such people, of course, will not even be suspected of a crime. But hey, can’t be too careful. Still, consider this: if human beings are so incredibly bad at identifying bad guys, let alone potential bad guys— and they are really, really bad at it—is it better or worse to hand that off to software? How well do you think that software will work?

The problem is that facial recognition programs involve “science” (note scare quotes).  If “science” says it works, then work it must. If “science” says it’s valid, then who is a judge to disagree?  After all, no one can argue with “science.”

That cynical Kevin Underhill not only suggests that this technology is unlikely to work in a way that won’t sweep in the Worsfolds of the world, but that somebody is going to get filthy rich off the government contracts.  Personally, I’m considering a substantial investment in Guy Fawkes masks. They’re always smiling.