Questões Militares de Inglês - Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension

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First ship tunnel to be constructed in Norway

How facial recognition technology aids police

Police officers’ ability to recognize and locate individuals with a history of committing crime is vital to their work. In fact, it is so important that officers believe possessing it is fundamental to the craft of effective street policing, crime prevention and investigation. However, with the total police workforce falling by almost 20 percent since 2010 and recorded crime rising, police forces are turning to new technological solutions to help enhance their capability and capacity to monitor and track individuals about whom they have concerns.

One such technology is Automated Facial Recognition (known as AFR). This works by analyzing key facial features, generating a mathematical representation of them, and then comparing them against known faces in a database, to determine possible matches. While a number of UK and international police forces have been enthusiastically exploring the potential of AFR, some groups have spoken about its legal and ethical status. They are concerned that the technology significantly extends the reach and depth of surveillance by the state.

Until now, however, there has been no robust evidence about what AFR systems can and cannot deliver for policing. Although AFR has become increasingly familiar to the public through its use at airports to help manage passport checks, the environment in such settings is quite controlled. Applying similar procedures to street policing is far more complex. Individuals on the street will be moving and may not look directly towards the camera. Levels of lighting change, too, and the system will have to cope with the vagaries of the British weather.

[…]

As with all innovative policing technologies there are important legal and ethical concerns and issues that still need to be considered. But in order for these to be meaningfully debated and assessed by citizens, regulators and law-makers, we need a detailed understanding of precisely what the technology can realistically accomplish. Sound evidence, rather than references to science fiction technology --- as seen in films such as Minority Report --- is essential.

With this in mind, one of our conclusions is that in terms of describing how AFR is being applied in policing currently, it is more accurate to think of it as “assisted facial recognition,” as opposed to a fully automated system. Unlike border control functions -- where the facial recognition is more of an automated system -- when supporting street policing, the algorithm is not deciding whether there is a match between a person and what is stored in the database. Rather, the system makes suggestions to a police operator about possible similarities. It is then down to the operator to confirm or refute them.

By Bethan Davies, Andrew Dawson, Martin Innes (Source: https://gcn.com/articles/2018/11/30/facial-recognitionpolicing.aspx, accessed May 30^th, 2020)

How facial recognition technology aids police

Police officers’ ability to recognize and locate individuals with a history of committing crime is vital to their work. In fact, it is so important that officers believe possessing it is fundamental to the craft of effective street policing, crime prevention and investigation. However, with the total police workforce falling by almost 20 percent since 2010 and recorded crime rising, police forces are turning to new technological solutions to help enhance their capability and capacity to monitor and track individuals about whom they have concerns.

One such technology is Automated Facial Recognition (known as AFR). This works by analyzing key facial features, generating a mathematical representation of them, and then comparing them against known faces in a database, to determine possible matches. While a number of UK and international police forces have been enthusiastically exploring the potential of AFR, some groups have spoken about its legal and ethical status. They are concerned that the technology significantly extends the reach and depth of surveillance by the state.

Until now, however, there has been no robust evidence about what AFR systems can and cannot deliver for policing. Although AFR has become increasingly familiar to the public through its use at airports to help manage passport checks, the environment in such settings is quite controlled. Applying similar procedures to street policing is far more complex. Individuals on the street will be moving and may not look directly towards the camera. Levels of lighting change, too, and the system will have to cope with the vagaries of the British weather.

[…]

As with all innovative policing technologies there are important legal and ethical concerns and issues that still need to be considered. But in order for these to be meaningfully debated and assessed by citizens, regulators and law-makers, we need a detailed understanding of precisely what the technology can realistically accomplish. Sound evidence, rather than references to science fiction technology --- as seen in films such as Minority Report --- is essential.

With this in mind, one of our conclusions is that in terms of describing how AFR is being applied in policing currently, it is more accurate to think of it as “assisted facial recognition,” as opposed to a fully automated system. Unlike border control functions -- where the facial recognition is more of an automated system -- when supporting street policing, the algorithm is not deciding whether there is a match between a person and what is stored in the database. Rather, the system makes suggestions to a police operator about possible similarities. It is then down to the operator to confirm or refute them.

By Bethan Davies, Andrew Dawson, Martin Innes (Source: https://gcn.com/articles/2018/11/30/facial-recognitionpolicing.aspx, accessed May 30^th, 2020)

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn’t much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even goodbyes, for that matter. It was more of a “see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother’s attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn’t the right time.

Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television […].  

To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, “Well, good for him. I don't know that I believe in it, either”.

“That's exactly how I feel,” my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.

SEDARIS, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Recurso eletrônico. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004, p. 5. 

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would move again and, as she explained, there wasn’t much point in getting too close to people we would have to say good-bye to. Our next house was less than a mile away, and the short journey would hardly merit tears or even goodbyes, for that matter. It was more of a “see you later” situation, but still I adopted my mother’s attitude, as it allowed me to pretend that not making friends was a conscious choice. I could if I wanted to. It just wasn’t the right time.

Back in New York State, we had lived in the country, with no sidewalks or streetlights; you could leave the house and still be alone. But here, when you looked out the window, you saw other houses, and people inside those houses. I hoped that in walking around after dark I might witness a murder, but for the most part our neighbors just sat in their living rooms, watching TV. The only place that seemed truly different was owned by a man named Mr. Tomkey, who did not believe in television […].  

To say that you did not believe in television was different from saying that you did not care for it. Belief implied that television had a master plan and that you were against it. It also suggested that you thought too much. When my mother reported that Mr. Tomkey did not believe in television, my father said, “Well, good for him. I don't know that I believe in it, either”.

“That's exactly how I feel,” my mother said, and then my parents watched the news, and whatever came on after the news.

SEDARIS, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Recurso eletrônico. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004, p. 5. 

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

It is the standing reproach of a democratic society that it is the purgatory of genius and the paradise of mediocrity. With ourselves it has become notorious that when a man is so unfortunate as to exhibit uncommon abilities, he usually renders himself ineligible for political honors or distinctions. It would seem that the community is possessed with that groveling quality of a sordid mind which hates superiority, and would ostracize genius, as the Athenians did Aristides. One might believe it would not be unpleasing to the popular taste if some enterprising person could invent a machine for stunting intellectual development, after the fashion of idiotic barbarians who flatten the heads of their children. The masses of the community certainly appear to believe that political equality implies not only social, but should also imply intellectual equality, under pain of being severely frowned down by an outraged public opinion. 

The prevalent sentiment manifests itself in many different ways. It finds expression in public conveyances and resorts and is not altogether unknown even to the pulpit. It is found to perfection in the speeches of demagogues, who feel certain they are never so successful as when their audience is satisfied that the intellect of the speaker is of no higher an order than that of the lowest intelligence among them. Worse than all, it is demonstrated in the election of public officers of nearly all grades up to the highest: of which latter it has now become quite the custom to assume that it is impossible for a man of first-rate powers to be made President of the United States. 

The causes which lend to so singular a state of affairs are of an intricate and complex character. At the outset, it is difficult to realize the possibility of a system, the logical deduction from which appears to be that, if a man would rise in life, he must assiduously belittle his understanding. Perhaps it would be fairer to modify the proposition so far as to concede that ability is as useful here as elsewhere, provided the owner has the tact not to affront the sensibilities of the people by showing too much of it. No doubt a vague apprehension exists in the popular mind that shining talents are dangerous when intrusted with executive power in a republic: yet, it were a poor commentary on our institutions to intimate that, under them, for a man to be clever he must also be vicious. Experience rather teaches the contrary. If the diffusion of education, having the general tendency to elevate the understanding, is to produce more bad men than good, we had better abandon than foster our Common School system. Manifestly, we must look further for the solution of our enigma[:] that minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES. The worship of mediocrity. 17/08/1862. Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/17/archives/the-worship-of-mediocrity.html. Acesso 20/08/2020.

A questão refere-se ao texto destacado a seguir.

It is the standing reproach of a democratic society that it is the purgatory of genius and the paradise of mediocrity. With ourselves it has become notorious that when a man is so unfortunate as to exhibit uncommon abilities, he usually renders himself ineligible for political honors or distinctions. It would seem that the community is possessed with that groveling quality of a sordid mind which hates superiority, and would ostracize genius, as the Athenians did Aristides. One might believe it would not be unpleasing to the popular taste if some enterprising person could invent a machine for stunting intellectual development, after the fashion of idiotic barbarians who flatten the heads of their children. The masses of the community certainly appear to believe that political equality implies not only social, but should also imply intellectual equality, under pain of being severely frowned down by an outraged public opinion. 

The prevalent sentiment manifests itself in many different ways. It finds expression in public conveyances and resorts and is not altogether unknown even to the pulpit. It is found to perfection in the speeches of demagogues, who feel certain they are never so successful as when their audience is satisfied that the intellect of the speaker is of no higher an order than that of the lowest intelligence among them. Worse than all, it is demonstrated in the election of public officers of nearly all grades up to the highest: of which latter it has now become quite the custom to assume that it is impossible for a man of first-rate powers to be made President of the United States. 

The causes which lend to so singular a state of affairs are of an intricate and complex character. At the outset, it is difficult to realize the possibility of a system, the logical deduction from which appears to be that, if a man would rise in life, he must assiduously belittle his understanding. Perhaps it would be fairer to modify the proposition so far as to concede that ability is as useful here as elsewhere, provided the owner has the tact not to affront the sensibilities of the people by showing too much of it. No doubt a vague apprehension exists in the popular mind that shining talents are dangerous when intrusted with executive power in a republic: yet, it were a poor commentary on our institutions to intimate that, under them, for a man to be clever he must also be vicious. Experience rather teaches the contrary. If the diffusion of education, having the general tendency to elevate the understanding, is to produce more bad men than good, we had better abandon than foster our Common School system. Manifestly, we must look further for the solution of our enigma[:] that minds of moderate calibre ordinarily condemn everything which is beyond their range. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES. The worship of mediocrity. 17/08/1862. Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/1862/08/17/archives/the-worship-of-mediocrity.html. Acesso 20/08/2020.