Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide The government is to encourage police forces across England and Wales to adopt live facial recognition (LFR) technology, with a minister praising its use by the London's Metropolitan Police in a suburb in the south of the city. A CCTV camera against the UK flag UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in …
You should see the bots/clowns online praising it. Completely oblivious to what Digital ID actually is or will become. Biometrics as in face recognition will be central to it's workings. Palantir are drooling right now at the thought of all this lovely information and confirmation of identity.
We are all doomed.
Worth keeping in mind that most of the people on the internet live in a country where they have had mandatory ID their entire lives... And are confused why those people from the UK and US think it is a problem.
In the UK people with no intention to ever drive still need to register for a DVLA ID card for practical reasons. Except, this database isn't very useful as an unofficial and not technically mandatory database.
That's true. I've also explained to those people a few times the difference between a physical ID and digital ID. I control the physical ID. It's in my pocket and no one can take it away from me or stop me using it where I need to and what I need to use it for. They can but it will be through a court or some other mechanism that can be challenged. They can restrict or withdraw a digital ID whenever they want. They can do this by passing amendments that bypass the judiciary. For example: Been arrested? Automatic travel restrictions. Arrested for for anything involving alcohol? Alcohol ban. No judge decisions needed. Then there's the tracking but I don't need to go into that as we all know it will use location services.
Tony Blair who just can't keep his hands off the Middle East gets to run Gaza. -> Link
His best friend is Larry who gives him lots of money. -> Link
Larry will need a testing ground for his mass surveillance cloud servers and Tony running Gaza will let him have that. -> Link
Quote from a certain Andrew Orlowski who may be familiar to the commentariat: -> Link
The Government's digital identity system creates lucrative new opportunities for Oracle, a database company. It has already hoovered up major government IT contracts in recent years and will be in pole position to land future work linked to ID cards. Tony Blair is really just a salesman for the tech companies, and flies around the world looking for naive Governments who want to believe in magical solutions.
The name of the fringe event at the Labour party conference mentioned in the article was the Tony Blair Institute fringe event. -> Link
So when the UK rolls out digital ID the next step will be linking it to Larry's mass surveillance cloud servers which have already been tested.
I didn't even need to set up a conspiracy wall for this one, there's just one degree of separation.
Bemused Europeans outside of the UK who ask "Why can't the UK government be trusted with a modern ID system? We've got one and everything's fine", well it's because of stuff like this. The only thing that's saved the UK so far is government IT contracts repeatedly failing.
Only 1/2 a billion for a nationwide rollout? Given the inglorious history of government IT, we're talking at least 10 times that - probably more like £20 billion + a few loose coppers (pun intended).
The only upside of this dystopian measure is that the government, Crapita, Fushitsu et al are so incompetent that it will take more than five years before they finally complete it. Mysteriously though, when us proles ask for it to help to identify the latest criminality from the Met these self-same cameras will have developed a fault for the relevant period of time.
Whilst Starmer, Kyle, Cooper and their chums (I think that maybe the character list from South Park) like to imagine that they're creating 1984 on the ground, in reality it will be more like Terry Gilliam's Brazil or Carry On Dictating.
Not particularly having a go at Labour although they do deserve it. Farage or Badenoch (who she?) would do the same.
They're espousing all the benefits that *they* receive - or think they receive from this. When they advocate for a single-issue platform, there are of course no drawbacks whatsoever!
Onward and forward! Toward the single issue platform! Probably sideways, backward, zigzag, and falling off the bridge else-wise though.
The phrasing is important: "it has helped make many arrests", carefully avoiding the question of was the arrest lawful or at a higher rate than existing methods and what was the cost of the equipment/manpower deployed to achieve those arrests.
There's also the question of whether the arrests were in the public interest (i.e. violent and dangerous criminals) or just easy targets for the statistics.
@ should coco
I'm one of those brits who despise Dubai.
Myself (& partner) boycott lots of potential holiday areas on ethical grounds, Dubai (UAE being a place with heavily entrenched misogyny & other issues such as virtually no duty of care to migrant workers & thus high migrant death rates) is one of them. I never understand why UK women (specifically those not from an Islamic background and so would expect to be less culturally conditioned to being treated as far less important than a man) want to visit there & even more strangely live there. .. Though I am sadly aware that many brits do not care about what a country is "really" like so long as they get to experience an enjoyable holiday bubble, happily ignorant that is bears no relationship to what they would experience if not a privileged tourist.
Also, it is their job to collate the evidence in a reasonable and timely manner, to respond in time to witness/interact when the opportunity arises and/or to behave in a professional manner when doing their role (not to waste time intimidating members of the public to no recourse). My experiences over 25 years would overwhelmingly tip to suggest the misalignment between arrest/summons and conviction rates just might have something to do with this.
But is IS their fault if they don't even get charged.
Unfortunately this isn't quite accurate - the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are the organisation responsible in England and Wales for authorising charges against individuals, and on all too many occasions, despite a perfectly good arrest, voluminous and detailed evidence packet, and plenty of witnesses, the CPS will, for their own reasons, decline to prosecute. This can be down to a number of issues, some of which include (but are not limited to):
1. The cost of prosecution is more than the "cost" of the crime (ex. petty theft, shoplifting, growing Marijuana for personal use etc)
2. The backlog of court cases is too large so lower-level crime gets dropped to reduce it getting larger
3. The suspect is already being tried for something "more important" so will likely get a conviction off of that anyway
So sometimes it isn't the police's fault for a lack of a charge.
just bought a Chinese no name, exterior, solar powered, wifi router. Came with an eSIM built in and just connected to the internet when I switched it on, no harm, no hoo-ha.
Bit easier than the bureaucratic hell of trying to activate a SIM these days. Great British wall or Great Chinese wall....mmmm. Well at least there's less chance of the Chinese police rousing me at 4 in the morning.
At the time it said the two forces have used LFR to make 580 arrests over the previous 12 months.
The number of arrests is meaningless. They could all be innocent people.
What would be more relevant would be the number charged - on its own, and compared to the number arrested.
The number convicted would also be of interest.
Come on, let police wank themselves blind over the arrrrrests. They desperately need a win.
These cameras are a godsend for the idle bones. They can fart in the van whole day and eat cookies, only occasionally get a beep about suspect they have to check out.
police 1> Do you know why we stopped you today?
pedestrian> No?
police 1> We suspect you might have had unauthorised thoughts.
pedestrian> Could you be more specific?
*police people look at each other*
police 1> He is not cooperating, James.
police 2> Facial scan shows he is likely to commit crime.
police 3> He?
police 4> He has male genitals, have a look, that's from his last doctor's appointment. That's clearly a penis.
police 2> Are we doing this again? Kristen, I just got a beep that *you* have unauthorised thoughts.
police 3> Just looked at his partner's recent chat history with someone called Steve. That penis does seem inadequate. Can I see the picture again?
police 4> FFS, have a look.
police 3> Yeah, she is cheating on him and it's obvious why.
pedestrian> What are you on about?
police 3> Nothing to worry, it's okay to have a small penis.
police 1> Ok, you are under arrest.
pedestrian> But I have done nothing!
police 2> You had unauthorised thoughts!
pedestrian> What thoughts?
police 3> You know exactly what thoughts!
Some time ago young guy - OK a miscreant - was caught after 2 months because CCTV caught the registration of the (stolen) car he was driving.
Honestly - young fellow can't boost a car to take his girlfriend out at the weekend without risking arrest? [Shakes head in disbelief}
The fix
National ID mandatory
Weird that everyone complained about the Covid masks but we will all soon be wearing them to have a semblance of privacy.
Funny the police now also have the power to ban face coverings ( for some )
Dear Minister for the Stazi
Just to be clear 1984 was a film about a world we do not want, it is NOT a hand book for government.
Yours
Innocent until proven guilty
Queue the next LLM - minority report
With the
