I'm old enough to remember when my colleagues were vigourously expressing concern about the potential for Oyster cards to be used to track who was protesting where.
What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to find who did it. Given things like that you really have to wonder what is all the surveillance for exactly?
Did that risk materialise? I suppose it would be only the same as credit cards. With a valid warrant authorities can gain access to information. But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament. I'm more concerned about ensuring the legal powers are checked and balanced, and stay that way.
Omniscient government surveillance in practice will be of far more use for harassment and suppressing political dissent than it ever will be used for the public good.
Perhaps it will be the first protest where FR is used, but the first pilot (which ended in March) just put 2 FR cameras on a street in Croydon and they arrested "170 wanted criminals" in 6 months.
A 36-year-old woman who had been unlawfully at large for more than 20 years and was wanted for failing to appeal at court for an assault in 2004.
so she was 16 when she "disappeared" (how, where, sleeping in the streets?) and the camera can link a 16 y.o. face to a 36 y.o. one after probably rough years?
Wow, that's... quite the precedent. Presumably this is a Reform UK event, which I'm not a fan of, but still, I don't think this escalation of surveillance will end well.
The article says that drones "will scan the faces of suspects", suspects of what exactly? What crime has been committed that they suspect people for?
No, nothing to do with Reform. Organised by Tommy Robinson. The guy Reform think is such a nutcase that they turned down a huge donation from Elon Musk because Elon made it conditional on letting Robinson join Reform.
Its hard to find anyone more loathsome than Tommy Robinson in British politics, but being horrible is not a crime.
I don't personally support this surveillance, but that isn't what the articles says. It says they will be "scanning for suspects from above." And later quotes the Met making reference to 'intelligence'. So conceivably they could have information about the plans of specific individuals at this event.
It doesn't matter what the article says. There is no penalty for lying and no incentive to be honest. The media exists to broadcast their lies at scale.
Back in the 2000s, upon arrest it was pretty common practice for cops to page through your phone contacts to see who you knew. I don't know if Cellebrite was used back then or if it was manual but the inferences were made and the point was to map out suspects' social networks to find suppliers and upstream orchestrators they had in common.
They're doing the same thing here but lying about it. By capturing all faces associated with whatever protest is going on and mapping them to known identities (because everyone has to provide ID to do anything nowadays), they gather intelligence on entire groups of dissidents. The crowd ARE the suspects.
By the time you're hearing about it in the news they've already been doing it for years. I wouldn't dare set foot near any anti-Israel rally myself, suspecting the NYPD has been field-testing this for a while and activist NGOs like Canary Mission explicitly performing such recon and mapping themselves. All those DHS counter-terrorism grants weren't spent exclusively on MRAPs and bomb disposal robots. That money trickled down to a lot of interesting places.
It's worth stating that historically these right-wing culture protests have been a bit more violent in nature than most protests are. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the protest is violent, but there's enough mob mentality that makes me (someone who lives in London) uncomfortable.
I'm old enough to remember when my colleagues were vigourously expressing concern about the potential for Oyster cards to be used to track who was protesting where.
What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to find who did it. Given things like that you really have to wonder what is all the surveillance for exactly?
Did that risk materialise? I suppose it would be only the same as credit cards. With a valid warrant authorities can gain access to information. But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament. I'm more concerned about ensuring the legal powers are checked and balanced, and stay that way.
I’m sure we can find a better anecdote than a bike being stolen…
Omniscient government surveillance in practice will be of far more use for harassment and suppressing political dissent than it ever will be used for the public good.
Perhaps it will be the first protest where FR is used, but the first pilot (which ended in March) just put 2 FR cameras on a street in Croydon and they arrested "170 wanted criminals" in 6 months.
https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-makes-one-arrest-every-3...
wondering about that line:
so she was 16 when she "disappeared" (how, where, sleeping in the streets?) and the camera can link a 16 y.o. face to a 36 y.o. one after probably rough years?Wow, that's... quite the precedent. Presumably this is a Reform UK event, which I'm not a fan of, but still, I don't think this escalation of surveillance will end well.
The article says that drones "will scan the faces of suspects", suspects of what exactly? What crime has been committed that they suspect people for?
No, nothing to do with Reform. Organised by Tommy Robinson. The guy Reform think is such a nutcase that they turned down a huge donation from Elon Musk because Elon made it conditional on letting Robinson join Reform.
Its hard to find anyone more loathsome than Tommy Robinson in British politics, but being horrible is not a crime.
I don't personally support this surveillance, but that isn't what the articles says. It says they will be "scanning for suspects from above." And later quotes the Met making reference to 'intelligence'. So conceivably they could have information about the plans of specific individuals at this event.
It doesn't matter what the article says. There is no penalty for lying and no incentive to be honest. The media exists to broadcast their lies at scale.
Back in the 2000s, upon arrest it was pretty common practice for cops to page through your phone contacts to see who you knew. I don't know if Cellebrite was used back then or if it was manual but the inferences were made and the point was to map out suspects' social networks to find suppliers and upstream orchestrators they had in common.
They're doing the same thing here but lying about it. By capturing all faces associated with whatever protest is going on and mapping them to known identities (because everyone has to provide ID to do anything nowadays), they gather intelligence on entire groups of dissidents. The crowd ARE the suspects.
By the time you're hearing about it in the news they've already been doing it for years. I wouldn't dare set foot near any anti-Israel rally myself, suspecting the NYPD has been field-testing this for a while and activist NGOs like Canary Mission explicitly performing such recon and mapping themselves. All those DHS counter-terrorism grants weren't spent exclusively on MRAPs and bomb disposal robots. That money trickled down to a lot of interesting places.
Right, but suspects of what? Just in general, all the crimes they know about?
Maybe one of them has quoted crime or immigration statistics on social media and must therefore be imprisoned.
if protest expects confrontation (for either side reasons), it's possible for roads to be preemptively de-surfaced to get stones to throw at police
Must be some heinous crimes to enable dragnet surveillance. That or the rotten state of Britain really is trying anything from splitting at the seams.
Must be the heinous crime thing tho.
Its definitely not heinous crimes. It's just recording people at events to know who's of what political persuasion.
It's worth stating that historically these right-wing culture protests have been a bit more violent in nature than most protests are. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the protest is violent, but there's enough mob mentality that makes me (someone who lives in London) uncomfortable.
Sure, but there's a difference between surveillance after a crime vs before.
facial recognition is old news, the development of intent prediction is the edge.
Thought crime, obviously!
The UK is one of the most effective and longest running surveillance states so this should not be a surprise to anyone.
Well, Orwell wrote about what he knew.