How is it possible that the land of Orwell and "1984" permits this kind of surveillance?

Reminds me of my visit to China in 2014. Got picked up by one of our employees at about 11.30 pm from Hangzhou airport. Roads very quiet but many bright flashes from overhead gantry's at road junctions.

'What are all these flashes - are we speeding or something?'

'No - they just like to know who is around at this time of night'.

Some people might think that is ok.

I don't.

!950s - shhh! big brother is listening

2020 - het Alexa got a recipe for fondue

I couldn’t give a shit about facial recognition. I’d rather be safe

I suppose all those complaining will also refuse to accept cookies on any web sites they visit, will eschew the use of mobile phones because they can track your movements for commercial purposes, and certainly won't use the biggest of all Big Brothers: Facebook

We have been conditioned for some time OP, and this is a good test of how easily society conforms.
Big Brother has been here for a long time now, but the worker bees are happy to be governed like this, and of course have their rights taken away for nice fat pay cheque.
just keep working for the new state which we have become.

The reason we get accurate, clear pictures of the moon is they are taken from space, no atmospheric interference, the computers at NASA that clean up wobble are somewhat more powerful than the CCTV hardware, NASA uses very expensive lenses.

ExEUCitizen "how would we know if we were living in North Korea?" I gather that they are required to say and think things they don't believe to avoid getting a visit from the police.. ah just like here then.

I think we established in another thread that hardly anyone thinks the police want to deal with crime. So it's not like they will be using it to catch burglars, and when the police commit crimes CCTV tapes mysteriously disappear anyway (or if someone inconvenient commits suicide)

I'm torn on the whole thing - along with ID cards. Both would be a small price to pay for safety, but a high one if only used against the population and not for it.

So the problem is not the tool, but those wielding it.

There's also the question of where do you stop with these things. Wouldn't it be useful to link in cameras inside places like libraries, Doctor's waiting rooms and so on?
And really if you added a microphone (and only accessed recordings when it was REALLY IMPORTANT) wouldn't that be better still....

Yeah, bunch of interfering bastards, who do they think they are? The government always knows what's best for us so they should be allowed to just get on with it.

Who gave these "civil liberty" organisations the right to speak for me.

The ‘don’t do anything wrong and you’ll be fine’ line isn’t reason enough for me to be comfortable with this at all.

Nor me but as we've already been softened up to an enormous amount of surveillance cameras I expect the majority will just go along with it. It's up to civil liberty organisations to try to curtail it but they'll get precious little thanks for it.

The whole point of 1984 was Orwell telling us that it was already happening at the time he was writing

Should this be stopped for civil liberty reasons?

Yes.

The way we actually stop the terrorists planning mass murder and mayhem is to have more police officers, and more Intelligence officers. Fund our public services better through higher taxes. But as people don't want higher taxes you get general facial recognition and all the rest. We have created this and we can solve it, but we - as a population - are simply not going to.

A lot of people back in the 60s and 70s clearly thought that 1984 was an instruction manual.

Yes, I have started threads about it before, I never use the vote option but very few people were worried about it.

Hasn't this kind of thing been in use in China for a while?

Isn't it the kind of totalitarian crap the west is supposed to look down upon? I have sometimes asked people to try and make them think, how would we know if we were living in North Korea?

Unfortunately this is now becoming a practical question.

I don't like it as it isn't that great with people who aren't white and isn't that great with women.

I don't like it either

but I suffer the double whammy of being a non white woman and they are notorious for their error rate here.

Facial recognition is not accurate by any means, the computer looks for likeness but still needs checking by a human eye apparently. I will try find the article I read (may be in a text book I read recently).

The EU are considering banning facial recognition in public places for the next 5 years until it's properly tested and accuracy improves.
San Francisco also decided not to use the technology because of the accuracy rate.

I fear that the Met are using the technology because it's cheaper than actual officers

Facial recognition technology is not accurate enough to be used by police at this moment.

It is most accurate for white males and least accurate for dark skinned people because it has been programmed to recognise faces primarily using white male faces as data.

I suspect that there will be lawsuits, wrongful arrests and even people mistakenly killed because of incorrect results. Until the software us 100% accurate I don't want it to be used,

Remember, this is what we're talking about: not targeted, suspicion based surveillance, but CCTV/ numberplate recognition everywhere. Of everyone.

And, why does every website now have to ask our permission to allow it to spy on us? Because they got away with misusing that data for financial, and political gain (cf 'Brexit').

They cannot he trusted with this data.

And- why do we have clearer images from the Moon that the average 6 o'clock news CCTV images of someone 'wanted in connection with...'? 😂

Has any stabbing, or suicide bombing ever been foiled by the generalised 'CCTV everywhere' surveillance? Genuine question.

All right then, just how are we supposed to conduct surveillance on the raving nutters in this country who want to go on killing sprees?

If it means 'they' have the means to check everyone, then so be it. I'd rather be being watched by 'them' than get stabbed in the street.

Why am I uneasy? Because I don't trust 'them'

Haven't we had enough reason to know our data is already being misused?

It's all fine and dandy. Til the people in power start misusing that power (cf the weekend No 10 briefing where the political journalists were divided into 2 groups; those who'd report positively, and those who couldn't be relied upon. The latter group were asked to leave. Thankfully because integrity isn't entirely dead in journalism, they all walked out).

It's fine, the 'if I'm not doing anything wrong, I have nothing to fear'- as long as the people deciding whether what you're doing is okay are on your side.