This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Absolutely disgusting. It's like Labour wants to make sure they lose the next election... But to who would they lose? The conservatives who like this stuff too?
England is off my list to visit, as a Canadian, I take pride in the fact that facial recognition is illegal in most instances *here.
I am Canadian, too (naturalized citizen) and can I have the legislation that banned facial recognition?
https://idtechwire.com/alberta-court-upholds-ban-on-clearview-ai-facial-recognition-services/
Reaffirmed last year that it violates PIPA in Alberta.
Good gravy. 1984 wasn't a guidebook.
But it was. George Orwell knew what they wanted and how they thought.
Brits need to wake up to the fascism in their country, it’s much more quieter than the US but no better.
That’s how it started here
I remember hearing about how Britain had so many cameras that it was a privacy nightmare as early as 2000 or 2001. The more time passes and the worse it gets and when Snowden even revealed that the UK government was trying to build a master database of all UK citizens internet activity as early as the mid 2000s it became EXTREMELY evident to me where and how Orwell got his ideas for 1984. While it might have seemed unthinkable to many, the ideas that would lead to that kind of surveillance is a lot older than many people think.
And the reason why they didn't do it earlier is because... well, how do you do it at a time when recording equipment was costly to setup and extremely obvious AND posed no obvious benefit to the person it was being targeted at. Things like wire tapping phones has been possible since the earliest days of telephones (wire tapping became a known police/spy technique as early as 1928 in Olmstead v. United States), but in practice wiretapping all phones at the time was impossible. You couldn't record all calls and those calls had to be listened to by a human. It was not possible. But today it is absolutely possible to do all that and more.
At least smart phones and the internet are both extremely useful and highly critical things. Having a camera in your home that doesn't let you use it does not... but you can also use your ring camera that you set up in your home.
The privacy of being on CCTV seems almost quaint now that everything is internet connected and could follow you around forever.
The problem is there is more than one branch of it happening at once. We have this stuff but we also have the far right politics which is much more blatant. What most of those morons don't understand is that their movement is driving the justification for these overbearing technology changes yet are the first ones to cry about it.
This is the same problem that we had in the US. Neoliberalism will always lead to fascism since it breeds the economic hardship that causes fascism or revolt, and the powerful are able to tilt the scale away from revolt towards fascism, which is their preference.
The solution is to take over the more left party by any means necessary since the UK, much like the US, has a FPTP voting system. In the US, the Democrats were consistently able to rig their primaries against the more leftist candidates through a multi-level strategy. Don't let that happen over there.
Trump is a symptom of a greater problem in the US.
Don’t do it. Do you see what’s going on in the US right now? All it takes is one bad regime coming to power to abuse the hell out of these kinds of tools.
The bad guys are setting the chess board up. I kinda feel like all the western countries are going to be ruled by the same technocratic Israeli run shadow government
That's the idea, I am afraid.
Protest this, guys. You know exactly where this sort of shit is headed...
10 years ago i would have never believed UK would have their own Schutzstaffel, and that it would be AI
today i'm not surprised by literally any shitty thing that happens
I hate to say it, but I remember around 2000 the UK being called the most surveilled country in Europe due to massive numbers of cameras. I thought it was bad back then, but I had no idea how much worse it would be.
Until Flock, the vast majority of those cameras were privately owned and not integrated into any larger network. If the police wanted camera data, they had to ask businesses or homeowners, and there was no regulation of data retention, so if they wiped their recordings after 48 hours, there was nothing the police could do about it.
It's the aggregators of that data that are the real risk, not doorbell cams or shopkeepers trying to limit shoplifting or vandalism.
Has anyone here actually read the article? As far as I can tell, facial recognition is being increased in availability, but it was already in use.
Every police force in the country will be able to use live facial recognition vans, with the number of vans set to rise from ten to 50.
It's also worth noting that in the UK for a very long time now any data that is not E2EE can be seized by the government from companies without the consent of their users if a warrant is issued. That's obviously bad but nothing new.
It sounds like what's actually new here is that the police is becoming more centralised and organised. Instead of a lot of smaller departments in local areas with lack of expertise, more centralised organisations will do the policing.
The article covers some pros and cons from different people's perspectives.
Overall, to me, this seems like a generally negative move. I don't want the police to spy on people, and I want them to be more knowledgeable about their local area and more accountable to their people. It does look like there might be more surveillance, and that's bad too.
Please read don't take headlines for granted.
Yes, facial recognition cameras and 'intention detectors' have been around for almost 12 or 14 years now in the UK. But they are massively increasingly them AND making them more active. Like before you still could go into most places without major ID. Now you'll need a face scan for many places and probably fingerprints and DNA real soon.
1984 here we are
It is actually worse. In the novel that kind of surveillance was primarily for party members (Winston Smith was around mid-level) regular civilians, the Proles, were not surveilled as heavily. They were kept entertained by abundant football games and cheap beer and cigarettes.
"reforms" is supposed to imply improvement, not deterioration
Reform just ultimately means change. Meaning they can get rid of those pesky things like privacy and search warrants and right to silence. If the AI says you are guilty then you are. No appeals. If it turns out later that you aren't then you still must serve your sentence but we will correct the problem only if it impacts the provider's bottom line.
"nationwide"
"England and Wales"
"Facial recognition" and "major police reforms" should not be able to be used in the same sentence
Wow, the UK is speed running after the US, only less clowny
At least in the US there are finally some protests. When is the UK going to stand up for their rights?
In some books they mess up the facial recognition cameras by applying some makeup that makes the cameras see them as someone else. Is that possible and would it be possible to have it scan as the Guy Faulks madk?
They will either adjust or outright ban certain kinds of makeup. They will make the law so vague so they can selectively enforce it.
Get out the ICP face paint!
Ngl, I'd watch the fuck out of a movie about juggalos toppling a surveillance state. Culminating in the cinematic final showdown I've always pictured in my head when listening to I Want My Shit..
Drag makeup can also be effective!
Huh... til
We need a string of national web cams covering all areas of the country where each citizen has access to at anytime of the day or night. Wouldn't be hard. Now the authorities and the citizenry can both keep their eye on each other.
Nope. You are watched. They watch you. Remember their shit about banning encryption for everyone but politicians and the military? That is the point.
So you disagree that surveillance can be a two-way street? Seems extreme. If we only had some sort of trustworthy group, who we elect, managing affairs on our behalf. /s
Nation-wide iiiin the UK, I assume, going by the URL. Important to include which country, I feel.
Yes. I apologize. I should have mentioned it.
1984 was not an instruction manual.
I hate how plausible that book is.
Plastic surgery will have a surge in popularity
They will account for that.
