[HN Gopher] Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across the UK
___________________________________________________________________
Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across the UK
Related: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/uk_expands_police_f
acial_recognition/
Author : amarcheschi
Score : 68 points
Date : 2025-08-13 10:56 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.sky.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.sky.com)
| conartist6 wrote:
| If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.
|
| We are going to be hearing that argument a lot as the AI police
| state evolves
| ebiester wrote:
| And you're not trans. And you don't perform drag. And you don't
| go to an event with a lot of gay people. And you don't get
| mistaken for someone because ai isn't perfect. (Especially if
| your race doesn't have many people in the dataset.)
|
| But the people that don't have anything to fear don't see
| anything wrong with "inconveniencing" these groups.
| spwa4 wrote:
| This is the UK, and it's the police controlling these vans.
| So trans, drag and gay are not at issue here.
|
| And somehow, the countries where it _is_ a problem are never
| discussed. All muslim countries, for example, almost like not
| all religions are equal ... if you read hrw or amnesty you
| 'll find that even the most moderate muslim countries like
| Morocco or Turkey deal violently with sexuality (all forms,
| really, yes, being trans drag will, of course, attract
| immediate attention. But let's not pretend they leave public
| displays of straight sexuality (including subtle and
| tasteful) alone). And Morocco and Turkey are absolutely
| nothing like something like Afghanistan or even Iran.
|
| But in the UK the line is drawn pretty damn far. Are you
| seriously complaining about that?
| ivell wrote:
| I guess at present the UK is very tolerant. But no one can
| predict the future. It can go downhill. Even for developed
| western countries. Once surveillance is setup, it is hard
| to restrict its usage. Especially when the society gets
| used to it.
| ebiester wrote:
| I'm in particular speaking about the UK, actually. consider
| how much anti-trans backlash there has been in the country.
| Consider how in Weimar Germany there was a fair bit of
| acceptance for the LGBT community that was quickly undone -
| all it takes is a charismatic leader or a king that goes
| along with it.
| EliRivers wrote:
| I have so much to hide.
|
| I want to hide what I had for breakfast. I want to hide what
| books I read recently. I want to hide which TV shows I watch. I
| want to hide who I have conversations with. I want to hide who
| I avoid. I engage in so much completely legal behaviour, much
| of it quite laudable, that I simply want to hide.
| kbos87 wrote:
| The couple of times I've even done as little as fly through
| Heathrow it has been apparent to me that the UK is on its way to
| becoming an unfettered surveillance state, and I never hear
| anyone talking about it.
| oniony wrote:
| We're too scared to talk about it lest our faces get added to a
| list.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| You say "on its way" as if it hasn't been at the forefront of
| this for decades. Until China and post-9/11 US ramped up facial
| recognition and CCTV projects MASSIVELY, the UK didn't just
| have more CCTV units per capita than anywhere else on Earth,
| they had the most in absolute terms. Even now last I checked
| the UK has about 1 camera for every 11 people.
| drcongo wrote:
| I'm so embarrassed to be British these days. We're a small island
| of small minded people.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Small mindedness (to use your words, though I think other sets
| of words are perhaps more descripitive) is a condition that
| spreads like the plague. If you don't constantly stamp it out
| through ostracizing and marginalizing the infected and those
| who intentionally create the conditions for it then you will be
| overrun.
| mrangle wrote:
| Are your ideas not good enough to persuade?
| chownie wrote:
| If "just persuade them with your good ideas" was a workable
| solution it would've worked at least once by now, instead
| the means of persuasion are owned by psychopaths who
| continually convince the public to vote self-destructively.
| The enshittification of society continues.
| mrangle wrote:
| >If "just persuade them with your good ideas" was a
| workable solution it would've worked at least once by now
|
| If I have this right: your measurement for whether or not
| people are in their right mind is if they take to your
| specific ideas?
|
| Have you considered the possibility that people are most
| often persuaded by good ideas and your ideas are awful?
|
| And insofar as you present them in an ostensibly good
| light, you are lying somewhere in the presentation and
| people can see that.
|
| To be clear, your perspective is that everyone else is a
| psychopath or so much dumber than you, personally, as to
| be led by psychopaths.
|
| And it's not you that's dumber than most others, nor who
| is led by the psychopath(s), nor who is the psychopath
| that needs to advance their ideas by marginalizing people
| who have other ideas.
|
| And the strategy is to marginalize people
| because...checks notes... your ideas are unpalatable to
| the population. For no good reason.
|
| Why are your ideas unpalatable to the population, from
| their perspective?
|
| Any good policy wonk will know that much, will be able to
| explain the opposition's reasons accurately and in
| detail, and will be able to steel-man their own argument
| utilizing that perspective.
|
| Whereas a manipulative person will avoid that level of
| analysis.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Good ideas don't have to be persuassive to be good
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| We're already well into the process of being overrun so that
| strategy obviously didn't work.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Largest empire in history in 1920 to small isolated island
| speedrun any %.
|
| It's a good modern historical example of how you cannot take
| anything for granted on a long enough timescale (wink wink
| USA), and it wasn't even that long, no matter how good or bad
| things are looking right now all it takes is a couple of
| generations to radically change the situation
| spwa4 wrote:
| That's because empires don't work. In order to make them work
| what's needed is to have the center of the empire maintain
| infrastructure on the borders of the empire. The center grows
| when you get an empire, but ... it's an absurdly small growth
| compared to the border growth. Hence empires exhaust
| themselves attempting to guard borders and you start seeing
| absurdities like military fortresses manned by 5 unarmed
| (because too expensive) soldiers. Both the English and Roman
| empires did that. And then they abandon their borders to save
| some more money, and it all just ... fades away.
|
| And this is a cursed choice because empires need resources
| (as they _will_ find themselves in a war with just about
| everyone else at some point, so imports don 't work). Those
| resources are only available in far away mines. So you need
| to have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure
| everywhere..
|
| But you can't have the huge area and borders, and
| infrastructure because you can't defend it, you can't build,
| you can't pay for it.
|
| So ... no empires. Or at least, no permanent ones. People
| keep trying though.
| philipallstar wrote:
| We're so small-minded we let in more than basically anyone else
| as a percentage of our population and land area.
|
| I mean, if by small minded you mean "stupid" you're probably
| right, but I don't think you can mean much else. Unless you've
| never been anywhere else.
| bbg2401 wrote:
| Being embarrassed by your nationality or citizenship is
| certainly a feat of small mindedness.
| beardyw wrote:
| 10 vans works out at one for every 10,000 square miles. Hardly a
| "roll out across the UK".
| holsta wrote:
| > Hardly a "roll out across the UK".
|
| What's your threshold for when it becomes a problem? Should we
| wait until it becomes a problem, or should we try to stop this
| level of facial recognition?
|
| You should also assume this is a proof of concept. It'll get
| improved and scaled down to run on every police vehicle, and on
| every camera the police already control.
| spwa4 wrote:
| It has already been scaled down to android phones (you'll
| find phones are an excellent platform for this), where you
| can find apps that are meant to let venue-owners guard
| entrances against specific individuals. That's illegal, but
| obviously common enough to make such apps.
| davesmylie wrote:
| Well, that's some distopean shit right there ain't it
| drcongo wrote:
| From the country that brought you vans telling immigrants to
| "GO HOME OR FACE ARREST" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Go_Home%22_vans
| philipallstar wrote:
| Not immigrants. Illegal immigrants.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Colonial powers are not entitled to that argument, it's
| hypocritical.
| rangestransform wrote:
| They are entitled to that argument by virtue of having
| guns and borders. I would rather be hypocritical than
| have my government expend resources on other countries
| altruistically
| philipallstar wrote:
| > Colonial powers are not entitled to that argument, it's
| hypocritical.
|
| Yes they are. Everyone everywhere has invaded or
| otherwise traded their way into power in other countries
| (or pre-country equivalents). It's extremely foolish to
| bucket the world into Britain and not-Britain if one
| isn't entirely ignorant of history.
| coldtea wrote:
| Did the people suffering the consequences of illegal
| immigration today performed that colonialism?
|
| Not even their ancestors at colonial times benefitted
| much from it: the industrial working class of Britain was
| in dire position despite Britain being a colonial Empire.
| That money and power went to the ruling classes and their
| middle class bootlickers.
| dole wrote:
| Also from the country with television detection vans so you
| can pay your TV tax, what CAN'T vans do?
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Which country do you mean? :)
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funkmesswagen_(Fernmeldewesen
| )...
| coldtea wrote:
| Also from the country that pissed on the request of its
| population to curb immigration decade after decade, for cheap
| labor force, political gains, and globalist ideology...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Doesn't the UK have cameras everywhere doing this anyways?
| spwa4 wrote:
| Nope. They started a long time ago with the cameras and didn't
| upgrade them, because money. Which means a pretty large part of
| the cameras have pathetic resolution and are black and white,
| as well as being too far away from much of their vision. Useful
| for locating protestors sorry ("getting a general idea of
| criminal activity"), not so useful for recognizing anyone.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| That is interesting because it implies either the UK's camera
| infrastructure has simply amazing reliability with parts
| never failing. Or it could be that they have huge stocks of
| the hardware that they haven't yet exhausted.
| arethuza wrote:
| HN title is wrong - the article title says "...across police
| forces in England".
| oniony wrote:
| It's not wrong as England is within the UK: it's just not as
| precise as it could have been.
| arethuza wrote:
| HN Guidelines say "please use the original title, unless it
| is misleading or linkbait"
| thebruce87m wrote:
| The changed title is actually misleading since it includes
| three other countries that didn't appear in the original.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| That's on me, i made a mistake when writing the title
| Shank wrote:
| The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology that
| people once decried China for. Whether or not this is ethical or
| useful, I wish the hypocrisy would be acknowledged. The OSA, the
| Apple encryption demands, LFR, ..., it's clearly a trend. Has
| society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these
| things?
| elric wrote:
| They've been doing this for years at protests, using "Forward
| Intelligence Teams". Even back in 2010 [1] there was an action
| group trying to protest this growing police-state (Fitwatch).
| The UK has had an insane number of CCTV cameras for as long as
| I can remember.
|
| Must be a truly dangerous place...
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100824175032/http://fitwatch.o...
| jon-wood wrote:
| The CCTV cameras I've never really had a problem with -
| despite what TV shows and films would like to tell you
| they're not actually a single coherent CCTV network, a vast
| proportion of them are operated by random shopkeepers,
| private home owners, and other such places. If they want
| footage from them the police are typically going to have to
| send someone out to ask for it, and then hope they haven't
| reused the storage already.
|
| This sort of thing, deploying facial recognition systems in
| the street in the hope of finding someone, is much more
| insidious. Technically you can choose to bypass it, or pull
| something over your face, but that's more or less
| guaranteeing that you'll be stopped and questioned as to why
| you're concerned about it.
|
| Sadly the UK never met an authoritarian they didn't like
| (apart from Hitler, so long as you're not as bad as Hitler
| himself you're good though). When surveyed the British public
| will call for banning basically anything they don't like,
| even if it doesn't impact them at all.
| DrBazza wrote:
| There's no small irony that facial recognition isn't going
| to recognise the faces of those currently racing around on
| e-bikes stealing phones wearing their 'safety balaclavas'.
| Or, indeed, some of the more militant protesters that are
| turning up all over the place. It's a cliche, but if you
| have nothing to hide, and intend to protest peacefully, why
| are you covering your face?
| tharmas wrote:
| >if you have nothing to hide
|
| But it's not you that decides that what you are doing is
| harmless. It's what the authorities decide; and that can
| be quite different from what you or other people deem
| "nothing to hide".
| dathinab wrote:
| > It's a cliche, but if you have nothing to hide, and
| intend to protest peacefully, why are you covering your
| face?
|
| because who says the state (and the people acting for it,
| e.g. police) are always the good guys
|
| there is a VERY long history of people being
| systematically harassed and persecuted for things which
| really shouldn't be an issue, and might not have been
| illegal either (but then the moment a state becomes the
| bad guy "illegal" loses meaning as doing the ethical
| right thing might now be illegal)
|
| like just looking at the UK, they e.g. "thanked" Alan
| Turing for his war contributions by driving him into
| Suicide because he was gay
|
| or how people through history have been frequently
| harassed for "just" not agreeing with the currently
| political fraction in power, and I really mean just not
| agreeing not trying to do anything to change it
|
| and even if we ignore systematic stuff like that there
| has been also more then just a few cases of police
| officers abusing their power. Including cases like them
| stalking people, or them giving the address of people to
| radical groups, or blackmailing them for doing stuff
| which is legal but not publicly well perceived. (E.g.
| someone had sex with their wife on a balcony not visible
| from the street but visible from a surveillance camera).
|
| And even if nothing of this applies to you, if there is
| no privacy and mass surveillance this can also help
| people in power to frame you for something you didn't do.
| Like e.g. to make you lose your job so their brother in
| law can get it instead.
|
| and even ignoring all that you should have a right for
| privacy and since when is it okay to harass people which
| just want to defend their rights?
|
| anyway if you think is through "I have nothing to hide"
| is such a ridiculous dump argument.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > like just looking at the UK, they e.g. "thanked" Alan
| Turing for his war contributions by driving him into
| Suicide because he was gay
|
| Well. Maybe[0].
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
| environment-18561092
| card_zero wrote:
| I'm thinking it through, and I've arrived at the puzzling
| conclusion _we shouldn 't make it too hard for people to
| break the law._
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't that precisely the point. If there are so many laws
| that are so easily broken, you have a _reason_ to pickup
| anyone of interest at any time.
| owisd wrote:
| You're mixing your definitions of authoritarian, there's
| authoritarian in the 'Nolan chart' sense of the word, which
| just means 'not a Libertarian', which is like 98% of
| people, which is different to the Hitler meaning of
| authoritarian, which means 'rejecting democracy'. If the
| people agree to ban things they don't like, that's
| democracy, so it's the Nolan kind of authoritarian but not
| the Hitler kind of authoritarian. Deciding the people
| shouldn't be allowed to agree collectively to ban certain
| things is rejecting democracy, so it's Hitler authoritarian
| but not Nolan authoritarian.
| orra wrote:
| > Must be a truly dangerous place...
|
| I don't know if you're awaee, but the number of arrests for
| terrorism has skyrocketed in recent months, in the UK.
|
| Sounds terrifying, until you realise people were arrested as
| terrorists for holding placards. (That fact is of course
| terrifying, but in a chilling way).
| tharmas wrote:
| Its Orwellian.
| lambdas wrote:
| I hope I'm not adding 2 + 2 to get 5, but it's incredibly
| convenient that a lot of people are being charged for
| supporting a proscribed group the same month as the online
| safety act is rolled out...
|
| The cynic in me almost wonders if when it comes to re-
| election time, these increased numbers in terrorist charges
| will be trotted out and the context conveniently forgotten.
| pmarreck wrote:
| It still arguably complies with the Paradox of Tolerance.
|
| Terrorists (as well as their supporters) are intolerant and
| non-pluralist. Therefore, for a pluralist society to
| survive, it must be intolerant of one thing- intolerance.
| gregorygoc wrote:
| It's basic game theory. If someone is not nice to you,
| you have to be not nice for them.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >* The UK has had an insane number of CCTV cameras for as
| long as I can remember.*
|
| Per-capita it's less than the US.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But with the smaller space for the population, it's nearly
| total coverage from multiple angles vs the wide distances
| separating the equivalent number of cameras in the US.
| noqc wrote:
| The form of government matters a lot, when evaluating its
| security apparatus. I feel a lot differently about the death
| penalty in America than in Iran too.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| that is very funny thank you
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Well, China got away with it.
|
| More than got away with it, actually... they prospered.
|
| There has to be an incentive to _not_ do these things as a
| government. There is none in the UK.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >There has to be an incentive to not do these things as a
| government. There is none in the UK.
|
| The only incentive governments ever have to not do bad shit
| is that the people will hate it so much that the government
| will wind up with less power than they started with.
|
| But, decisions are ultimately made by individuals or small
| groups of them who have interest (profit, legacy, etc) in
| doing what the people wand and what is good for the people.
|
| If enough people in government's personal interest is aligned
| with that of the people you get more outcomes that are
| aligned with the people.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > The only incentive governments ever have to not do bad
| shit is that the people will hate it so much that the
| government will wind up with less power than they started
| with.
|
| Well, that's the trick, isn't it? You have to give people a
| way to reduce government's power if the government does
| something the people don't like, but do it in a way that
| keeps society from flying apart.
| varispeed wrote:
| This is what Western governments miss: China didn't get rich
| from its surveillance state - it got rich from manufacturing,
| much of it handed to them by the West. If we were serious
| about prosperity, we'd be copying their industrial base, not
| their domestic spying. But rebuilding skills and factories is
| hard; building tools to monitor and manage a population in
| decline is easy - and far more entertaining for a state that
| seems to prefer watching the poor struggle to fixing the
| conditions that keep them there.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If we were serious about prosperity, we'd be copying
| their industrial base,
|
| Why would we work _down_ the prosperity chain?
|
| There's a pretty clear prosperity heirarchy in the world
| economy and the financing/services dominant economies are
| ahead of the manufacturing economies who are ahead of the
| ag/raw materials economies.
|
| Yeah, industrialization has been important for China's
| recent development just as it was for the US in the late
| 19th to early 20th centuries or for Britain a bit earlier.
| But it was important _because_ it happened at a time when
| China was at a lower tier in the heirarchy.
| tharmas wrote:
| >financing/services dominant economies
|
| But these said economies all seem to just focus on asset-
| buying. Hence the massive house inflation. They don't
| make anything. No production, only asset-accumulation.
| Building a Feudal Economy.
| varispeed wrote:
| That "hierarchy" only works if the foundations stay
| intact. A service/finance economy without domestic
| manufacturing is like a skyscraper with no lower floors -
| great view until the support gives way. Manufacturing
| isn't just a rung you discard, it's strategic
| infrastructure. Lose it and you become dependent on those
| "lower tier" nations for essentials - and your position
| in the hierarchy is theirs to decide.
|
| And participation in the service economy isn't even open
| to everyone. In the UK, a working-class person can't just
| start a small service business - IR35 and similar rules
| ensure they can't make a profit. The rich have captured
| both the economy and policymaking, shifting into pure
| wealth extraction mode. Everything gets more expensive,
| ordinary people get poorer, and with no stake in
| production or ownership, there's no one left to buy the
| services the "upper tier" depends on. Western capitalism
| is eating itself.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > There's a pretty clear prosperity heirarchy in the
| world economy and the financing/services dominant
| economies are ahead of the manufacturing economies who
| are ahead of the ag/raw materials economies.
|
| Drive through the metro areas of the Great Lakes and
| Great Plains states and tell me that's universally true.
|
| There's a bump in prosperity _for the people doing the
| financing and servicing_ in a given country. If you 're
| not doing that, it's at best a wash. At worst it's turned
| otherwise sustainable communities into impoverished
| deathtraps.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Cynically, it's just another form of infrastructure we are
| behind the curve on.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Suppose it depends on what it's used for. We could trust the
| government to be good, but governments are made from people,
| elected by people. And people are often shitbags to each other.
|
| For all the CCTV in London I've been mugged twice and nothing
| was captured on CCTV nor were the police all that interested in
| doing anything about it. As an outsider living here I think the
| UK has huge social problems that are neglected in favour of
| retaining classism. America has the same problems but at least
| it's more "ah, what can ya do about it huh" rather than "we are
| a perfect polite society British values bla bla".
| runsWphotons wrote:
| I commented about this on another thread, and probably most
| around here disagree with my general point there, but this
| fact amazes me. We have gotten all this tech creating a
| surveillance state but then it isn't even used to give better
| policing. You will just get mugged on camera by someone with
| ten prior charges and then be ignored by police.
| ryandrake wrote:
| All the recent policy, technical leaps, and innovation
| around policing seem to be focused on cracking down on
| protesting and speech, and not really on what people would
| consider "fighting crime". You could get mugged on the
| street corner in broad daylight (or worse) and the police
| won't even answer your phone call, but the minute you show
| up on that street corner with 10 friends carrying signs and
| shouting, 20 officers will show up in riot gear, and every
| one of you will be identified using technology.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The purpose of the system (the police in this casse) is
| what it does.
|
| Always been that way, always will be. It's just a little
| harder to bury your head in the sand than it used to be.
| breppp wrote:
| the purpose of circular logic is circular logic
| codedokode wrote:
| The surveillance is there not to catch small thieves, but
| those who are against the government, against wars etc. A
| small thief doesn't threaten the regime in any way so he
| can be dealt with after more dangerous people are dealt
| with.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| In fact, the petty criminal may _benefit_ the regime, if
| his crimes damage those the regime sees as a greater
| threat to itself and its goals.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The petty thief causes the useful idiots to clamor for
| more dragnet.
| andrepd wrote:
| CCTV can absolutely be made to be effective _and_ protect
| citizen 's privacy at the same time. A legal requirement to
| store only encrypted data, which can only be decrypted via a
| court warrant (so a similar standard to searching your home
| or tapping your phones, not the blanket panopticon they wish
| to create), plus enforcement and heavy fines + prison time
| for anyone caught storing unencrypted data.
|
| You need political will for this and for enforcement to take
| it seriously, since the technology to do so is almost trivial
| nowadays.
| spurgu wrote:
| And so it's just a bill away from the data is suddenly
| being available for any purpose. For public safety of
| course. The same people who want Chat Control to scan our
| messages for sure want to scan and raise alarms for
| suspicious behaviors in public places too. They just can't
| implement it all at once or there'd be an uproar. But if it
| happens slowly like this, bit by bit... frogs getting
| boiled in the UK (and elsewhere too).
| varispeed wrote:
| This is the kind of techno-utopian fantasy that keeps
| authoritarianism looking respectable. "Just encrypt it and
| only decrypt with a warrant" sounds lovely on paper, but in
| practice you've still built the infrastructure for a 24/7
| panopticon - you've just wrapped it in a legal fig leaf.
|
| Governments break their own rules all the time, warrants
| get rubber-stamped, and "heavy fines + prison time"
| magically evaporate when the offenders are the state or its
| contractors. The technology isn't the hard part - it's the
| fact you can't meaningfully enforce limits on a system
| whose entire purpose is to watch everyone, all the time.
| You don't make mass surveillance safe by adding a padlock.
| You stop it by not building it.
| codedokode wrote:
| If you trust that the law works then the data is protected
| by it and there is no need for encryption. But it seems
| that you don't trust. Aren't you planning something illegal
| by chance?
| Xelbair wrote:
| > We could trust the government to be good
|
| no. you cannot. ever.
|
| even if you have perfect faith in current government, you're
| one election away from something different.
|
| CCTV is also extremely ineffective in crime prevention in
| general, and actually catching criminals - one of few
| studies(back when i did write my thesis on subject related to
| it) used different areas of UK to measure crime fighting
| capability and effect of CCTV - by finding similar areas with
| and without CCTV and comparing crime statistics.
|
| they only worked on parking lots, there was no measurable
| differences in plazas, alleys, roads, highstreets etc.
|
| and a bit of anecdotal evidence - once cameras at my older
| workplace caught robbery to a place next door. With criminal
| looking directly at the camera, before bashing the window
| with a brick, jumping in, and hopping out with accomplice.
| They never got caught. This was quite decent camera, with
| face clearly visible - i know this because we directly
| cooperated with police.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Even if you have a "good" government that goodness will
| make it a target for those who seek to co-opt it as a means
| to their desired end, and their desired ends are never good
| because if they were they would pursue cheaper less
| circuitous paths to them.
| dathinab wrote:
| This is how Germany ended up with a ton of organized crime.
|
| The organized crime organizations just mostly focus on crime
| which mainly hurts immigrants and people racist police
| personal might not see as German even if they have a
| passport, and also mostly only crime which isn't publicly
| visible.
|
| In turn a mixture of corrupt and racist police/politicians
| and having other more visible problems lead to there not
| being any large scale actions against them hence why they
| could grow to quite large size.
| righthand wrote:
| No the world is actually much much safer especially in these
| first world countries.
|
| However our society is now flooded with Fear, Uncertainty,
| Doubt campaigns that foreigners, terrorists, criminals, are out
| to get you.
|
| This creates the dellusion that all these security companies
| are here to help and protect us. Really it's just politicians
| handing out tax money to private corporations (cronyism) for no
| improvement to security or life. But at least you'll tell
| yourself you feel safer because of it.
|
| These disgusting corporations run by wealthy people want to
| make everything a TSA line, because they think you are cattle.
|
| It means everyone suffers and your 4th Amendment is taken away
| (in US).
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The fact that these people and corporations are successful as
| they are is a condemnation of a subset of the people in our
| society and the public policy that has been pushed at their
| behest.
|
| In the same way that moralizing karens create drug cartels
| rich off trafficking scared morons unable to think a few
| steps ahead create Peter Theils rich off building 1984.
| MaxPock wrote:
| Whatever they accuse China of is always a projection.
| varispeed wrote:
| At least China has manufacturing, jobs and thriving middle
| class.
| varispeed wrote:
| It's a sign that Labour and Conservatives are worried they are
| about to lose power. They "fumbled" the economy by selling
| everything out to the highest bidder, created captive labour
| market cementing the class divide - free market only for big
| corporations. Now they have to protect it and themselves. They
| need to know what people are talking about.
|
| Paranoia gets bigger every year. They are addicted to money and
| power.
| dathinab wrote:
| > The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology
| that people once decried China for.
|
| they always had been or at least tried, for decades by now, the
| only thing which had been holding them back was the EU
| frequently being like "no wtf UK, that is against human rights,
| EU law, etc."
|
| > Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy
| these things?
|
| no, and it also has a long track record of not only marginally
| improving your crime statistics. And especially stuff like
| facial recognition vans are most times not used to protect
| citizens but to create lists for who attended demos and
| similar. Which is most useful for suppressing/harassing your
| citizens instead of protecting them.
| JFingleton wrote:
| > EU frequently being like "no wtf UK, that is against human
| rights, EU law, etc."
|
| And yet they are still pushing [0]
|
| [0] https://edri.org/our-work/despite-warning-from-lawyers-
| eu-go...
| temporallobe wrote:
| Now I understand why Black Mirror is a British show.
| oliyoung wrote:
| Quickly? London is one of the most CCTV covered cities in the
| world, and has been since the 70s
|
| As shocking as this is, it's not _surprising_
| josefritzishere wrote:
| The UK is broke but has infinite money for a surveillance state.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| One justification for increased surveillance is that it is
| cheaper than hiring police officers.
| righthand wrote:
| Is it if equipment maintenance and building/installing costs
| keep going up?
|
| Replacing police officers is about removing a human decision
| element from lower class suppression.
| jl6 wrote:
| > Various privacy considerations are made with each LFR
| deployment in the UK, the cops say. These include notifying the
| public about when, where, and for how long LFR will be used in a
| given area, allowing them to exercise their right not to be
| captured by the technology.
|
| Are they trying to normalize wearing masks, helmets, burkas and
| balaclavas everywhere?
| grepnork wrote:
| Currently, the police are catching up with shopping centres and
| entertainment chains who've been using this tech for years.
|
| The Police themselves have been using facial recognition to
| scrub tapes for far longer than LFR.
|
| Amusingly, the firm the gazanaughts have been complaining was
| being used to spy on Palestinians was recently sold to an
| American Parking Lot operator.
|
| The time to complain about high street facial rec sailed by a
| decade ago.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Orwell was _way_ too kind.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| He just had no conception of all the fun technologies that
| would later come along in a digitized, microprocessor-rich
| world of the future. Reading 1984 today, you want to laught at
| the simplistic and almost benign weakness of telescreens for
| surveillance.
|
| Were Orwell to have been deeply informed about the surviellance
| mechanisms of the future, he'd likely be both surprised into
| horror at their innovative intrusions, and completely
| unsurprised that such a vast percentage of the UK's (and
| world's) population completely accepts them with hardly a sigh.
| andrepd wrote:
| The last part wits the nail on the head. Orwell envisioned a
| future where everyone was forced to have a telescreen
| watching them at all times. He never for a second _dreamed_
| of a future where people would _buy a telescreen_ for the
| most trifling convenience of going "alexa, is it going to
| rain today".
| maxwell wrote:
| Huxley and Bradbury did.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| This is actually why I always considered Brave New World
| to be much closer in predicting the future, at least in
| spirit if not in hard details. Let people access personal
| distractions, conveniences and pleasures on your road to
| total surveillance, and attempts at social control, and
| you can apply them with very little need to ever enforce
| miseries like those of "1984"
| grepnork wrote:
| Orwell turned in his friends and acquaintances. He was against
| totalitarianism and that is all.
| random9749832 wrote:
| They don't trust the people they are allowing into the country
| while allowing them into the country.
| bbqfog wrote:
| This has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do
| with the UK being a addicted to surveillance. They have a long
| history of spying on their own citizens.
| rhubarbtree wrote:
| More, the country is approaching an impasse and they know it.
| bbqfog wrote:
| What kind of impasse?
| immibis wrote:
| The country hasn't produced anything of real value in
| decades - its economy is entirely held together by
| selling money laundering services to the rich - which
| brings in an enormous amount of money in percentage fees,
| but is only available to a few people. Since the money
| involved is so large, this crowds out actual production.
| account42 wrote:
| On the contrary, they don't trust that the native population
| will put up with them letting dangerous people into the country
| forever.
| extraisland wrote:
| > The government also insists the tech is independently tested at
| the National Physical Laboratory, which found the underlying
| algorithm to be accurate and free of age, gender, or ethnicity-
| related bias.
|
| I feel so much better! /sarcasm
|
| How tone deaf can they be?
|
| Whenever there are serious privacy concerns about how this sort
| of technology, you have a statement like attached. It doesn't
| address what people are worried about. They never directly
| address it.
| epanchin wrote:
| The vast majority of newspaper articles/videos about this tech
| relate to innocent black people being flagged.
|
| Racism is certainly the biggest concern of the media, which may
| or may not reflect the publics general concern.
| extraisland wrote:
| I was listening to an interview with Dominic Cummings while
| walking this evening. It was about two hours long. I don't
| really know what to make of Dominic Cummings, I did think it
| would be interesting to hear his perspective.
|
| During the interview he explained how many people in the
| government essentially wanted to please their own, which
| includes their own class of people (city people essentially)
| and the media. He said that ministers were much more worried
| about how media was covering them, than anything else.
|
| The same people essentially see see the normal general public
| and people like myself as criminal. They see us a criminal
| because by in large much of the general public and people
| like myself don't agree with them.
|
| This sort of statement is very "on brand" if what he said is
| true.
| dathinab wrote:
| Well there had been system with very high rates of false
| positives for certain ethnicities which if wide scale deployed
| would in effect be like systematic harassment of this people.
|
| So it is a thing people which in general are okay with mass
| surveillance might worried about.
|
| And convincing the people you have a chance to convince is much
| more useful the pointlessly trying to convince the people which
| anyway won't like what you do no matter what you say.
| extraisland wrote:
| It reads more like something to appease some media outlets
| and activist groups than the general public.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| As a Brit my feeling is that the state has basically given up on
| the concept of doing the right thing (not even from an ivory
| tower moral perspective, but from a realpolitik grow the economy
| / fix the issue sense) and is just throwing sticking plasters
| everywhere.
|
| The recent issues with crime are, at root, apparently down to the
| fact that we don't have enough prison places and we don't have
| enough police.
|
| The obvious solution is to hire more police, raise the wages,
| compulsory purchase a big field somewhere, make a massive prison
| and lock up the worst offenders for a long time.
|
| There is some obsession with "making the books balance" as if
| this even matters. The Government is sovereign but acts as if
| somehow they have to do everything at market price like a private
| individual would.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| The British state is actually very effective at doing what it
| wants to do - it just doesn't want to do the things we consider
| to be 'right'.
|
| The government prioritises order over law, liquidity over
| solvency and the status of our politicians at international
| dinner parties.
| poszlem wrote:
| They seem to be doing everything except actual policing.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In itself this is a storm in a teacup.
|
| The important question, only important question IMHO, is how they
| handle positives. Do they go all guns blazing and arrest the
| person on the spot? Or do they use a restrained approach and
| first nicely ask the person if they have any ID, etc? That's the
| important bit.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| Then what happens if you don't have ID on you (which, for now,
| is entirely legal in the UK)? What if you're hours from home?
| Do you then need to completely cancel your day to spend it with
| the cops instead satisfy some shit algorithm that misidentified
| you as some known threat? What if you refuse to cooperate
| because you have better things to do than waste your time with
| the police? I'm sure that'll go well for you.
|
| What if your child falls victim to a false identification, and
| then given that children are far less likely to have some form
| of ID on them than adults, they're stuck for much longer?
|
| Do you trust the British police to take good care of your
| child? Or will they strip-search her and threaten her with
| arrest like they did with the then-15-year-old Child Q because
| they decided that she "smelled of weed"?
|
| Do you really want more unnecessary interactions with the
| police for yourself or those you care about when your
| "suspicious behaviour" was having an algorithm judge that your
| face looked like someone else's?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| What happens when a police constable thinks they recognise
| you from evidence they have in an investigation or a wanted
| person notice?
|
| This is nothing new. It is all about what is reasonable in
| the circumstances.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| A constable is not going to be scanning the faces everyone
| going to Wembley in one night. Even 100 constables looking
| at faces entering faces going to Wembley is not going to
| scan everyone and recognise someone they know from a wanted
| poster (of maybe a couple hundred faces in their head).
|
| The Met have already lied about the scale of false
| positives[0] by nearly 1000x, and it's not obvious how much
| better it will get. With the current tech, this rate will
| get worse as more faces are being looked for. If it's only
| looking for (I'm guessing) a thousand high-risk targets now
| and the rate is 1/40, as more and more faces get searched
| for this problem gets exponentially worse as the risk of
| feature collisions rise.
|
| Of course, it'll also disproportionately affect ethnic
| groups who are more represented in this database too,
| making life for honest members of those groups more
| difficult than it already is.
|
| The scale is what makes it different. The lack of
| accountability for the tech and the false confidence it
| gives police is what makes it different.
|
| [0]: Met's claim was 1/33,000 false positives, actual 1/40
| according to this article from last year
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-69055945
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _[0]: Met 's claim was 1/33,000 false positives, actual
| 1/40 according to this article from last year
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-69055945_
|
| The article does not claim this:
|
| " _The Metropolitan Police say that around one in every
| 33,000 people who walk by its cameras is misidentified.
|
| But the error count is much higher once someone is
| actually flagged. One in 40 alerts so far this year has
| been a false positive_"
|
| These are 2 different metrics that measure 2 different
| things and so they are both correct at the same time. But
| I must say I am not clear what each exactly means.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Again worth mentioning something I've mentioned in other
| comments, and it's enormously obvious: There's a massive
| differene between unluckily being misindentified by some
| random copper who needs to get his memory or eyesight
| checked, and the percentage of false positives that's
| nearly guaranteed from a mass digital facial rec
| surviellance system working around the clock on
| categorizing millions of faces all over the country. The
| first is a bit of bad luck, the second will likely become
| pervasive, systemic and lead to assorted other shit
| consequences for many people being cross-checked and
| categorized in all kinds of insidiuous ways
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You raise a good point that if the system wrongly ID you
| once it means that you're probably liable to be flagged
| every time you walk past one of those vans...
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| I think it's almost inevitable. The very nature of the
| bureaucratic procedures that grow up around these sorts
| of flag lists is that effort tends to accumulate at those
| points, right or wrong, and your being listed on them
| becomes almost self-reinforcing through bureaucratic
| inertia and over-caution, mixed with laziness about
| investigating if their own systems are wrong and
| repairing the problem.
| Lio wrote:
| It's also worth noting that if you are arrested for a serious
| offence your DNA and biometrics will taken and held for ever
| even if you are release without charge and the real
| perpetrator latter convicted.
|
| In the eyes of the law you will be innocent but you'll still
| be treated like a criminal.
|
| The same could accidentally happen for a minor offence too.
|
| West Yorkshire, West Mids, The Met and Great Manchester
| Police have all made admin "mistakes"[1] where they failed to
| delete DNA evidence since the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012
| came into force.
|
| No one has been sanctioned or fined for those mistakes.
|
| You might not think being on that list matters but during the
| good ol' days of the 1980s innocent trades union activists
| were placed on a secret list by the Met's Special Branch and
| that list passed potential empoyers to bar them from getting
| jobs.
|
| Again, no one punished for that and if it's happend once it
| can happen again.
|
| See the Scott Inquiry for details.
|
| 1. These scare quotes are because I don't beleive this always
| happens through incompetence. I'm not saying it's always the
| case but some of the time the police are just ignoring the
| rules because the rules have no teeth.
| grepnork wrote:
| >Then what happens if you don't have ID
|
| On arrest, you're required to provide your name and address,
| not proof. For the absolute majority of UK adults, it takes
| exactly 2 minutes to verify that data against public records
| - passport, driving licence, council tax, voter registration.
|
| Lying in that situation is a separate criminal offence all of
| its own.
|
| >satisfy some shit algorithm that misidentified you as some
| known threat
|
| Matches with a confidence rating of <0.64 are automatically
| deleted >0.7 is considered reliable enough to present to a
| human operator, and before any action is taken a serving
| police officer must verify the match, and upon arrest verify
| the match against the human.
|
| >What if your child falls victim to a false identification
|
| The age of criminal responsibility is 10, and absent any
| personal identification parental identification is the
| standard everywhere.
|
| >15-year-old Child Q
|
| The good old slippery slope fallacy. Both the officers who
| strip searched that child were fired for gross misconduct.
| North of 50,000 children are arrested each year and this
| happened once.
|
| >Do you really want more unnecessary interactions with the
| police for yourself or those you care about when your
| "suspicious behaviour" was having an algorithm judge that
| your face looked like someone else's?
|
| Thing is 12 months on, 1035 arrests, over 700 charges, and
| that hasn't happened because the point of testing the scheme
| thoroughly was to stop that from happening.
|
| What proof do you have that it doesn't work.
| raspyberr wrote:
| Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 means authorities
| can request encryption keys (passwords) from you and you can't
| say no.
|
| Investigatory Powers Act 2016 literally nicknamed Snoopers'
| Charter. Means ISPs keep all your traffic for minimum a year,
| police are given access to it, but politicians are exempt and
| need a warrant to have their data viewed?!?!?
|
| UK police have been rolling out Live Facial Recognition in
| London and Wales for the last few years. Seven new regions are
| being added. 10 new vans coming in.
|
| Supermarkets are using facial recognition to keep a database of
| people they deem criminals.
|
| UK tried to make Apple put in a backdoor to its encrypted
| storage. Apple removed the ability for UK citizens to use that
| feature.
|
| Online Safety Act forced online services to implement age
| verification for "adult" content. Many niche forums closed down
| because they would face large fines and jail time if they
| didn't comply. Larger businesses offloaded this requirement
| onto third party companies so now if you want to see "adult"
| content online you need to share your face or bank details or
| government ID with a random third party likely from a different
| country.
|
| None of the major political parties care about digital rights
| and in fact want MORE surveillance.
| jon-wood wrote:
| > None of the major political parties care about digital
| rights and in fact want MORE surveillance.
|
| This is because most of the public don't care about those
| rights either, and are entirely happy with surveillance.
| You've got nothing to hide right? If you don't the government
| to know what you're looking at its probably because you're a
| paedo, or maybe a terrorist. Maybe even both.
|
| Its not the government who need to be convinced on this, it's
| the general public, and currently there's not really anyone
| out there explaining how you can't have a backdoor that only
| the government and good guys will be able to use.
| grepnork wrote:
| Those 'niche' forums you mention are explicitly excluded from
| the Act.
|
| Apple made the change to advanced security in advance of the
| bill being finalised, now the government has gone in another
| direction.
|
| All the online safety act does is implement online the law as
| it stands IRL. British folk have been using the same ID
| verification systems to validate identity for nightclub
| admission, passport applications, driving licence
| applications, benefits claims, state pension claims,
| disclosure and barring checks, tax filings, mortgage deeds,
| security clearances, job applications, and court filings
| since 2016.
|
| All the reaction is just pearl clutching - 5 million checks a
| day are being performed, the law itself is wildly popular
| with 70% support amongst adults after implementation.
|
| There are three levels of checks - IAL1 (self-asserted, low
| confidence), IAL2 (remote or physical proof of identity), and
| IAL3 (rigorous proof with biometric and physical presence
| requirements).
|
| IPA 2016 affords police access to your domain history, not
| content history, provided police can obtain a warrant from a
| senior High Court Judge. The box which stores the data is at
| ISP level and is easily circumvented with a VPN, or simply
| not using your ISP's DNS servers.
|
| IPA 2016 doesn't exempt politicians from surveillance. It
| includes specific provisions for heightened safeguards when
| intercepting their communications. The Act establishes a
| "triple-lock" system for warrants targeting members of a
| relevant legislature, requiring approval from the Secretary
| of State, a Judicial Commissioner, and the Prime Minister.
| This heightened scrutiny is in recognition of the sensitivity
| involved in surveilling politicians, particularly given the
| surveillance of Northern Irish politicians and others in the
| 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.
|
| Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000
| (in force 1 October 2007), and Schedule 7 of the Terrorism
| Act 2000 provides powers over encryption keys/passwords etc.
| Section 49, RIPA can be used to force decryption, Section 51
| to supply keys or passwords. These are identical to powers
| the police have IRL over safes, deposit boxes etcetera, and
| the penalty for non-compliance is identical.
|
| You cannot use encryption or passwords to evade legal
| searches with a scope determined by a court on the basis of
| evidence of probable cause shown to the court by the entity
| requesting the search. A warrant from the High Court is
| required for each use.
|
| Notable cases:-
|
| - Blue chip hacking scandal - corrupt private investigators
| were illegally obtaining private information on behalf of
| blue chip companies.
|
| - Phone hacking scandal - corrupt private investigators were
| illegally hacking voice mail on behalf of newspapers.
|
| - Founder of an ISP using his position to illegally intercept
| communications and use them for blackmail.
| jadamson wrote:
| > Those 'niche' forums you mention are explicitly excluded
| from the Act.
|
| No, they are not.
|
| > Our research indicates that over 100,000 online services
| are likely to be in scope of the Online Safety Act - from
| the largest social media platforms to the smallest
| community forum. We know that new regulation can create
| uncertainty - particularly for small organisations that may
| be run on a part time or voluntary basis.
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-
| harmful-c...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Yes, they are in scope but a "small community forum" has
| nothing to do but to fill and keep a few self-assessments
| just in case. There is no requirement to implement age
| verification across the board (hence why current official
| guidelines target only porn sites in relation to age
| verification).
| jadamson wrote:
| > a few self-assessments just in case
|
| Ah right, just a couple of forms how bad can it possi...
|
| > Step 1: identify the 17 kinds of priority illegal
| content that need to be separately assessed
|
| lol.
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-
| harmful-c...
| grepnork wrote:
| >identify the 17 kinds of priority illegal content that
| need to be separately assessed
|
| If you're a site with lots of child users, or if your
| site holds pornography.
| jadamson wrote:
| No. What you have in mind is probably a Children's Access
| Assessment[1], which is not what I linked.
|
| [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-
| harmful-c...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You are being facetious as "priority illegal contents"
| are the sort that are the ones that are obviously very
| unlikely to be encountered on a "normal" small community
| forum. So this is no more than a box-ticking exercise,
| really.
|
| Regarding age verification, the OSA is explicit states
| that if you ban all such content in your T&Cs you do NOT
| need to have age verification.
| jadamson wrote:
| > this is no more than a box-ticking exercise, really
|
| You won't mind getting rid of it, then.
| grepnork wrote:
| I take it you didn't read your own link, the language
| used is "services".
|
| If you happen to be running the UK panty wetters forum
| from your own server, then you have a problem, but
| grandma Jessie's knitting circle is explicitly not in
| scope.
|
| YOUR link goes on to say
|
| >the more onerous requirements will fall upon the largest
| services with the highest reach and/or those services
| that are particularly high risk.
|
| Even if your forum falls in scope, you're only required
| to do a risk assessment, if at that stage you are likely
| to have a lot of underage users, then there might be an
| issue.
|
| However, if you're not an adult site, you only need to
| comply by providing the lowest level of self certified
| check. Handily, most of the big forum software providers
| have already implemented this and offer a free service
| integration.
|
| Storm meet teacup.
| jadamson wrote:
| > I take it you didn't read your own link, the language
| used is "services".
|
| I do love it when people lie and then try to get sassy
| when called out.
|
| > Even if your forum falls in scope, you're only required
| to do a risk assessment, if at that stage you are likely
| to have a lot of underage users, then there might be an
| issue.
|
| I also like it when people who accuse others of not
| reading prove themselves incapable of reading - as
| pointed out below, what I linked is required regardless
| of the assumed age of your userbase.
| grepnork wrote:
| All positives are verified by humans first before action is
| taken, all the system does is flag positives to an operator.
| Once verified, then the action movie starts.
|
| Match quality below 0.64 is automatically discarded >0.7 is
| considered reliable enough for an enquiry to be made.
|
| So far ~1,035 arrests since last year resulting in 773 charges
| or cautions, which is pretty good when you consider that a
| 'trained' police officer's odds of correctly picking a stop and
| search candidate are 1 in 9.
|
| In the UK you don't have to provide ID when asked, appropriate
| checks are made on arrest, and if you lied you get re-arrested
| for fraud.
|
| The system has proved adept at monitoring sex offenders
| breaching their licence conditions - one man was caught with a
| 6-year-old when he was banned from being anywhere near
| children.
|
| Before anyone waxes lyrical about the surveillance state and
| the number of CCTV cameras, me and the guy who stabbed me were
| caught on 40 cameras, and not a single one could ID either of
| us.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Thanks, very informative.
|
| > " _In the UK you don 't have to provide ID when asked_"
|
| Well if you are suspected of a crime they can arrest you if
| you refuse to identify yourself. I 'suspect' that being
| flagged by this system counts as such if you match someone
| who is wanted or similar.
| grepnork wrote:
| You can't make an arrest on the basis of refusal to verify
| identity, unless a specific law is in play, or the Police
| officer has proof you are lying.
|
| If the police have probable cause to suspect you've
| committed an actual crime, then you have to ID yourself,
| you are entitled to know what crime you are suspected of.
| Yes, facial recognition does count, but it has to be a high
| confidence match >0.7, verified by a police officer
| personally, after the match is made, and verified again on
| arrest.
|
| If you are suspected of Anti-Social Behaviour then you have
| to ID (Section 50 of the Police Reform Act)
|
| If you are arrested, then you have to provide your name and
| address (Police and Criminal Evidence Act 2000).
|
| If you are driving, you have to ID (Section 164 of the Road
| Traffic Act).
|
| Providing false information or documents is a separate
| criminal offence.
|
| Essentially, police can't just rock up, demand ID, and ask
| questions without a compelling reason.
| quibono wrote:
| > You can't make an arrest on the basis of refusal to
| verify identity, unless a specific law is in play, or the
| Police officer has proof you are lying
|
| > If the police have probable cause to suspect you've
| committed an actual crime, then you have to ID yourself,
| you are entitled to know what crime you are suspected of
|
| It's always been my impression that this kind of
| ambiguous phrasing combined with the power imbalance
| gives the public absolutely no protection whatsoever.
| Let's say you don't want to provide ID: the copper could
| come up with some vague excuse for why they stopped you /
| want your ID. Good luck arguing with that
| grepnork wrote:
| >the copper could come up with some vague excuse for why
| they stopped you / want your ID.
|
| In which case, their sergeant will tear them a new one,
| right after the custody sergeant has finished tearing
| their own hole because the careers of both of those
| people rely on supervising their coppers and supervising
| their arrests. If the custody sergeant has to release
| someone because the copper can't account for themselves,
| that is a very serious matter. The sergeant's can smell a
| bad arrest a mile away.
|
| The copper has to stand up in a court of law, having
| sworn an oath, and testify on the reasonable suspicion or
| probable cause they had. If they are even suspected of
| lying, that's a gross misconduct in a public office
| investigation.
|
| Assuming they weren't fired over that, any promotion
| hopes are gone, any possibility of involvement in major
| cases or crime squads, hope of a firearms ticket,
| advanced driving, or even overtime are gone. Their fellow
| officers will never trust them to make an arrest again.
|
| It's not consequence free, I'm not saying it doesn't
| happen, or that some officers rely on you not knowing
| your rights, but it is a serious matter.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It appears that the kosher way of doing this by US standards is
| to partner with a for-profit company(ehm Palantir, Meta, Google
| etc.) to do it for you or you become a surveillance state.
|
| Not saying to bash on US, it's just a curiosity of mine. In a
| similar way USA&UK diverge from most EU by not issuing national
| ID cards and not having central resident registries but then
| having powerful surveillance organizations that do that anyway
| just illegally(Obama apologized when they were caught).
|
| I don't say that Europeans are any better, just different
| approaches to achieve the same thing. The Euros just appear to be
| more open and more direct with it.
|
| The tech is there, the desire to have knowledge on what is going
| on is there and the desire to act on these to do good/bad is
| there and always has been like that. Now that it's much easier
| and feasible, my European instinct say that let's have this thing
| but have it openly and governed by clear rules.
|
| The American instincts appear to say that let's not have it but
| have it with extra steps within a business model where it can be
| commercialized and the government can then can have it
| clandestinely to do the dirty work.
|
| IMHO it is also the reason why extremist governments in US can do
| decade worth of work of shady things in few months and get away
| with it when in Europe that stuff actually takes decades and
| consumes the whole career of a politician to change a country in
| any way.
|
| Also, the Brits are usually in between of those two extremes.
| burkaman wrote:
| Honestly a pretty good point, the US already has "facial
| recognition vans" on the road in the form of Waymos that will
| provide video to police upon request. In most states, I think
| police could also just buy a Tesla, have an officer drive it
| around and set up a system to continuously upload video to a
| facial recognition service.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Right, also regulations on data collection and processing in
| America are much more relax anyway which results in
| proliferation of abundant data collection for business
| purposes and this moves the barrier to "data is collected and
| being processed but you can't touch unless for profit". In
| Europe the barriers are on the collection and processing
| level.
|
| This perverse desire for commercialization is almost comical.
| It is so effective that I feel like America will be the first
| country to implement a form of communism once they figure out
| the business model and produce profit charts showing
| promising growth expectations.
|
| The American businesses are already coming up with stuff like
| "sharing economy", billionaires re-invent the metro and call
| it hyperloop or communal housing and call it AirBnB, public
| transport and call it Uber :) Publicly traded corporations
| that are not making any profits from the services they
| provide and yet providing value for the customers which are
| often also the owners through stock trading.
|
| What a fascinating country. Being free of baggage and
| tradition and hacking around a few principles is so cool and
| terrifying at the same time. Nothing is sacred, there are no
| taboos and everything is possible.
| simmerup wrote:
| Musk didnt try the hyperloop to be altruistic
|
| He did it to kill any chance of the state improving the
| train/tram network so that Tesla cars would have less
| competition for public transport
| burkaman wrote:
| Source: https://x.com/parismarx/status/116741046012509799
| 0/photo/2
| mvieira38 wrote:
| Sao Paulo (the city) just rolled out facial recognition for
| police bikes, too, despite evidence showing[0] the program
| doesn't reduce criminality. Smart Sampa even has a feature where
| you can become a snitch yourself, lending your camera spot to the
| network... Great stuff
|
| [0]: https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-
| paulo/noticia/2025/08/01/reconhe... (don't know how to link a
| translated page)
| righthand wrote:
| I would honestly start looking to flee the UK.
| betaby wrote:
| And go where? Also how to do that legally? You just can't show
| up to say Moldova and start living there.
| codedokode wrote:
| Most of European Union?
| octo888 wrote:
| 5 years too late for that!
| dathinab wrote:
| trying to become a EU member state citizen as a UK
| citizen is still much easier then for many other
| countries
|
| through often not on paper, but in practice, like the
| people which can throw rocks in your path do that less
| likely
|
| in the end it's a question of job (in country you want to
| move to), money/liquidity, and moral restraints you have.
|
| Like e.g. buying yourself citizen ship through an
| arranged marriage should be something like 30k-50kEUR
| depending on EU state, context etc. And that is if you go
| through organized crime rings which take a cut.
|
| And if are rich there probably should be a lot of more
| legal-ish ways to get citizenship. Some countries
| outright allow buying citizenship, but I think besides
| the "buying" cost you need to be quite stacked.
|
| And if you have good job qualifications you might get a
| job in the EU -> long term right to stay -> and then find
| one way or another to convert it to citizenship. It's
| probably ethically most upright but also hardest path.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| They are just a couple of years behind. Currently trying to
| ban private communications. Ahead on locking up political
| rivals.
| immibis wrote:
| If you think every politician in every country hasn't
| been trying to ban private communications since forever
| I've got a bridge to sell you.
|
| They're certainly ahead on locking up the people who
| dislike Israel - you're correct on that count. Though I
| think the USA's still the undisputed king of that.
| maxwell wrote:
| There seems to only be a single free country left sadly.
| immibis wrote:
| Namely, the Netherlands.
| octo888 wrote:
| Ireland, Isle of Man, or Gibraltar.
| johnisgood wrote:
| What is the point if there are people on many streets with CCTVs
| doing drugs openly. I saw a cop simply walk by someone
| overdosing. Nothing will happen.
|
| Again, what is the point exactly? Can anyone tell me?
|
| (Again, what is the point of the down-vote? I am asking for
| people's thought and opinions in the hope of a fruitful
| conversation).
| betaby wrote:
| > Again, what is the point exactly? Can anyone tell me?
|
| To haras and punish people disagreeing with the ruling class?
| grepnork wrote:
| Out of curiosity exactly who is this ruling class?
| betaby wrote:
| Let's say those people for example
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partygate
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| The Conservatives are out of power. They were defeated in
| the last election.
| grepnork wrote:
| You mean idiots who went to private schools then?
| bevhill wrote:
| You can just say it.
| grepnork wrote:
| Overdosing is not a crime, it's not even the job of the Police
| to help, and possession of drugs is being ignored by most
| forces because an arrest takes two officers off frontline
| services for 4 hours, when it will most likely result in a
| caution.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Here, if the cop sees someone overdosing, they immediately
| call the ambulance, not walk by and do nothing.
|
| Also if someone is overdosing, they are probably possessing.
|
| People should do it at home or somewhere else, not on the
| streets. I don't care if someone is consuming inside their
| home.
| grepnork wrote:
| >Here, if the cop sees someone overdosing, they immediately
| call the ambulance, not walk by and do nothing.
|
| This unevidenced claim is probably nonsense in any case, no
| police officer would simply walk by. They may very well
| walk by and talk into their radio to summon the right kind
| of help, or they may be responding to a higher priority
| call.
|
| Just because your mate Bob claims they saw something,
| doesn't mean Bob had any real idea what was going on.
|
| It's like the old saw about a window blind for a hospital
| ward costing PS200, when you can buy one for PS20
| elsewhere. Thing is the one for PS20 doesn't come with a
| specialised coating that eliminates bacterial or viral
| spread, or with a bloke that installs it according to the
| relevant safety regulations, or the supervisor who
| certifies the installation. It certainly doesn't come with
| a number you can call to fix the blind if there's a problem
| with it that includes on site service.
| bevhill wrote:
| You're right! Your anecdote is much better than theirs.
| You won me over at least.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Lmao. Hey, I have it on video. I will post it if he
| really wants it.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I saw it on video (inb4 deepfake), I did not hear it from
| Bob. So yeah, the cop in London did just simply walk by
| and did nothing. I can give you the video if you so want.
| grepnork wrote:
| Go ahead and post.
| account42 wrote:
| Why are you making excuses like this? Demand better from the
| people that would hold authority over you.
| grepnork wrote:
| They don't have "authority over you" unless you've
| committed a crime.
| const_cast wrote:
| The point of the police state is not to prevent crime, but to
| silence dissent and foster cooperation with whatever government
| propaganda and initiatives are popular at the time.
|
| In fact, often defeating crime is bad for this purpose. If you
| want to maintain a propaganda machine of an enemy within, you
| need crime. You might even, say, give drugs to those
| communities. Looking at you, CIA.
| la_mezcla wrote:
| One doesn't do drugs. One consumes or sells them.
|
| Next time do HN better :)
| TheChaplain wrote:
| Never been a better time than now to engage yourself politically.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| See also
|
| https://adam.harvey.studio/cvdazzle
| Aachen wrote:
| ^camouflage face paint against facial recognition
|
| Some context with a link, beyond "just click this", would be
| nice
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| If it's used to track folks out on bail or already convicted of
| violent crimes then great. However seeing what the UK police are
| like right now it's likely to be applied to harass genteel
| retirees protesting about Israeli barbarity in Palestine.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| It's very sad how quickly their culture is devolving. I was in
| the UK last year and I probably won't be back.
|
| The weirdest thing to me was that all the news stations covered
| US politics extensively, but said little about domestic politics.
| Not sure what to make of that.
| ozlikethewizard wrote:
| It's also now the law to remove a face covering when requested by
| the police (it's supposed to be under certain conditions, but
| have fun arguing that with a jake). Actually love living in a
| police state. At least we repealed the law making cable ties
| illegal I guess.
| dfawcus wrote:
| We shall have to adopt a new fashion for Australian style cork
| hats:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_hat
| la_mezcla wrote:
| Isn't UK a democracy? Why then have the people not rejected the
| initiative? Ah, right - they haven't even been asked.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
| https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/uk_expands_police_fac...
|
| (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44887373, but we merged
| that thread hither)
| kleiba wrote:
| They should have stayed in the EU.
| physarum_salad wrote:
| Brass eye came true! What is this for? Laser audio mics into the
| bedrooms of suspected anime forum members?
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Suitably organised protest folks need to roll out anti facial
| recognition tools. Maybe even turn facial coverings into a source
| of revenue.
|
| One tool would be methods to blind said facial recognition vans.
| Cameras are relatively easily "blinded".
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