Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England

Yeah, I always wonder: is the tail wagging the dog or vice versa? Like maaaybe society is going through some organic disruption at the moment, but it’s so easy to foment a sense of crisis through mass media that it seems more likely it’s just being done to serve an agenda (start a war, consolidate power, disrupt opposition, extract wealth upwards, etc…).

My measuring stick is how “on message” the people reporting it tend to be. A real disaster or crisis is chaotic, and authentic reporting about it tends to be too (think about mixed messaging during the early days of COVID). If something happens and there’s a very clear narrative from the start about who the good guys and bad guys are, especially if it is trying to make me scared or mad, I just assume I’m being manipulated.

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Go to any hospital waiting room, and 80% of the time there will be a 60+ year old woman playing some inane phone game with the sound on max.

Callous anti-social phone behavior isn't just the prerogative of teens.

I have a far bigger problem with adults having calls in public places with their phones on speaker... should they be "restrained" as well?

Older persons are more often guilty of making noise with their phones, like talking loudly, having an obnoxious ringtone or watching a movie in full volume.

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It is fascinating, isn't it. It is like a downwards spiral with a line most people would not even think of considering crossing. That said, current version of the surveillance appears a little more pervasive ( and to an extent a little self-imposed ) so I wonder if that 'feeling justified' will even matter. Examples do exist of enduring dictatorships with extremely efficient intelligence apparatus turned on its populace.

sure, we will trust USA to talk about human rights.

Anything coming out of a US government institution today is not trustworthy. Not sure why you'd reference the 2025 report. It's a laugh and a half that the country deploying the national guard in their own capital and putting the capital's police under federal government control is saying Germany is unsafe. The country that's rounding up immigrants and even US citizens to be deported to random countries.

Please. Stop falling for the right-wing propaganda.

except no, the EU has specifically outlawed facial recognition in public places

and they will race ahead if they get chat control through.

It's almost like huge organizations built off the backs of many different parties working in tandem, will at times have contradictory aims.

I vouched for this, because there is spirited discussion happening here.

Also, since the UK has now criminalized calling the Gaza situation a genocide under terrorism statutes, the camera vans make sense in driving by peaceful protestors and getting all their faces for arrest later.

For all the Chinese surveillance hatred I've seen over the years, what the UK is doing is loads worse.

It's a war, not a genocide. Gaza is under seige. Hamas should unconditionally surrender but they prefer to put their children in harm's way than to surrender.

Tell me, if this is a genocide, what has happened to all the Jews in Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan since 1950?

No, defense of Israel is the last stand of a people that has been slowly eradicated from their indigenous region for the last 80+ years.

Hamas simply needs to surrender in this round of the war they started. But they won't unless they control Jerusalem.

I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the Daily Mail or that comes out of Farage or Yaxley-Lennon‘s mouth

I often think about how much of an effect things like "see it, say it, sort it" and "we do not tolerate abuse to our staff" and "you are being watched, cctv" and "thieves will be prosecuted" and "smartwater in operation" and "cash not left in tills overnight" in otherwise wealthy and low crime areas contributes to a feeling of unsafety and dog-eat-dog world

That's been the biggest thing in the news for years now.

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.

It does sound terrifying that arrests for terrorism have skyrocketed lately, given that I'm pretty sure that it's neither the case that the number of terrorists has skyrocketed lately, nor the ability of the police to catch terrorists.

Its Orwellian.

You forgot to mention those people are holding placards in support of an illegal "terror" group whose objective is to protest the unnecessary human loss of life in Palestine by spray painting British military equipment.

Obligatory legal notice that I obviously do not support said group, but historically terrorists would actually need to commit acts that instil a sense terror in people to further their political objectives. N one I've spoken to feels even remotely terrorised by Palestine Action, and it wouldn't even make sense to be given what they stand for.

I say this as someone who neither supports Palestine Action or shares their concerns.

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.

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.

I don't think this is true. Apparently the operation of a large majority of those private cameras is in fact outsourced to a handful of big security companies, and many of them are remotely operated. This makes getting access to private cameras a lot easier for police than you think.

> despite what TV shows and films would like to tell you they're not actually a single coherent CCTV network

Isn't that the CC in CCTV? Closed circuit implies that it's restricted to an on prem network

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?

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.

You think it would turn into an impromptu de facto purge (of The Purge fame)?

The 2 best surveillance methods for crime investigation are LPR Cameras and cashless public transport.

Both of them then rely on the next step after providing information, following the people who triggered the first layer with CCTV.

If I went into my local CBD right now, and comitted some badass crime. explode a cop car or something we all yearn to do. All the exits are covered. I wont get anywhere walking and covering my face. I can get on a train but the rozzers will know where I get off. Likewise, if I jump in a car, they can track it almost anywhere for the next 100 kilometers.

I dont think the goal is prevention, its the guaranteed catch. Its the body of evidence that starts piling up when you burn cop car 1.

When brisbane introduced the go card system, we had our first arrest based on go card travel data within a month.

Sad really.

>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.

I helped an employer comply like this once. Someone had been brutally killed by a driver. The victim only existed for like 3 frames on the recording. But the cop wasnt interested in that anyway. They had managed to sneak drugs out of their car, into their pocket and then hide them in our garden, mid arrest. Embarrasing for the cop you see. The cop already had the driver on vehicular manslaughter, but thanks to the power of CCTV, they could also add a charge for drug crimes.

Totally agree; because us humans are animals. Without editing the genetic history of our evolution and hence all a manner of behaviours out of ourselves this will never change - because would we be human afterwards?

It's human to help your friend because they're in need; that's how tribes work. But it's just as human to disparage or sabotage someone who isn't a part of your tribe, to not care about them. To lie and cheat and be corrupt.

As for police effectiveness; there are shady groups of people that hang out in dark alleys in some central London areas every single weekend. You need only walk around/down the wrong place to meet them. All it takes is sting operations where a plainclothes officer acts drunk and hits a "get 'em, boys" button to bring in the fuzz when they inevitably get attacked.

There are all sorts of socio-economic-political issues that contribute to all this, though. But the root problem is in the apathy of the general public, none of us care about anything unless it affects us personally.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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).

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?

It's not 2027 yet!

it's always easier to get funding if there's a threat

There’s Flock, there’s police drones, there’s Ring cameras everywhere, etc. yes I’m aware

My point wasn’t to say there’s no monitoring in the US. It’s that there’s extreme variance in population densities which therefore means less opportunity and necessity for the same uniform surveillance in many places compared to countries with more even population densities. Whether the power of the federal government keeps expanding and eroding the federalist design the US was founded on to push uniform surveillance policies is another matter

> Also: not being subject to pervasive surveillance when you're in the middle of nowhere hundreds of miles from another person or human settlement is a pretty low bar.

OP was comparing the US to Europe and the UK, which have much more even population densities than the US. Finding sparsely populated areas there is a much higher bar than in the US

If the US government requests such access, do you see a world in which Waymo says no, given the current landscape?

It is definitely different. I do think they could put in a request like "give me all footage between these hours in this area", and then do the facial recognition themselves.

It's conceptually pretty similar to cell tower dumps, where they ask for all data from a cell tower during a particular time frame. This was recently ruled unconstitutional (https://www.courtwatch.news/p/judge-rules-blanket-search-of-...), but they used it for like 15 years before that (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/how-cell-tower-d...). I can imagine blanket car footage dumps working for a similar amount of time.

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

Not true.

If the CCTV gives a clear and obvious result they will pursue it. If there’s a string of thefts they will investigate and use the CCTV to provide evidence. CCTV won’t always provide that but sometimes it does.

What they won’t do is send Columbo to track down your laptop, because your laptop is worth a few minutes of police time at best, and by the time you report it it’s already been fenced and there is almost zero chance of recovery. They should prioritise violent crime.

The ECHR was signed in the 1950s, not 1990s. 1998 happened to be the point the UK actually made it national law too. It's complicated, I'm not going into it here. I was simply using it as an example of EU governments passing pro-liberty legislation in the 90s.

Hard to take the rest of your post seriously as that is EU history 101. Pre-101 really, they teach it to teenagers.

Internal movement doesn't count. Only a real hell-hole like North Korea will prevent you moving around in your own country.

The European Union has, in practice, lacked genuine free movement of people across internal borders for some time (I went through complete and very aggressive border control entering France via airplane three years ago). Schengen arrangements have been curtailed in Germany[^1]. Part of the challenge is that Europeans appear out of touch with rapidly changing realities (I say this as a European). Additionally, some argue that the European Parliament is operating under an unofficial coup[^2].

The rearmament initiative is particularly concerning. Over the past three years, communities in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Germany have been devastated by flooding, wildfires, etc. Rather than prioritizing investment in resilient infrastructure, leaders are channeling resources into rearmament to confront Russia and China (or so they say - since they are acting as clowns anyway no one really pays attention). My concern is that these weapons may ultimately be used by Europeans against one another; It happened twice already.

[^1]: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/temporary-border-controls-to...

[^2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-europe-...

EU is not a single country. Most if not all countries allows free travel between their own regions, provinces or states.

A better example would be Americans being able to travel freely to USMCA countries.

Singapore has a much lower crime rate though.

This was the Brexiteers' biggest folly, I think. They blamed the EU for the fact that power had become completely unaccountable to the public. But the call was coming from inside the house: in theory we reclaimed our sovereignty, in practice your vote still doesn't matter and your opinion still isn't wanted.

Now the same crowd is turning their attention to the ECHR. It won't help.

It worked until the people who manipulated elections worked out how to manipulate elections and started forming parties. Breaking it down to policy level makes it far harder to manipulate an election.

A good example is the UK Labour party. People want the social side of their policies but not the surveillance. They could have voted for the social policies and against the surveillance. But no we have to eat the surveillance if we want the social policies.

> but I've managed to convince the staff that I'm old enough to cut the letters from a newspaper.

So that you can write ransom notes? They should have locked you up.