Would you support national CCTV, facial recognition and DNA collection at birth?

[Rostio]

For the purpose of law and order, would you be for or against:
A) More CCTV and facial recognition, all connected to a national system.
B) DNA collected and recorded from babies at birth.

(Ironically, the first time I've used the AI title generation!).

Certainly not the DNA collection, that will likely end being used to detect which people are more likely to have health conditions in the future that will cost more money in healthcare and then they will be constricted in some way or taxed extra. Data will almost certainly be stolen and used for nefarious reasons.

Of course it won't be used to track down deadbeat dads to make them pay.

Agree, and the other chilling method of state control, digital black outs so people can’t go online to criticise it.

I wouldn't support it because I don't fully understand it. On the face of it, I can't think of a reason I wouldn't want my DNA recorded, but I've never had to think too much about it or do any sort of reading about it.

The facial recognition technology is a bit hit and miss and has already led to wrongful convictions I think..? I saw an article about someone in the USA who spent time in federal prison (I think) when she hadn't even done anything - the tech just 'recognised' her face and it wasn't even her. It would be a huge problem to rely too much on technology when it isn't 100% accurate.

Editing to add link to news article about this woman^^

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud

It does all sound very dystopian and Chinese doesn’t it? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? What is going on in this country that we can no longer assume good faith from the majority of the citizenry going about normal everyday life, and merely have police to deal with the occasional bad ‘un?

Absolutely not. Obviously.

If you need that level of control over ordinary citizens going about day to day life then in my book, you’re admitting we have no overall law and order @Rostio. You asked for reasons to be against it. Does this help?

Wouldn't be against the collection of DNA, although I think it should be voluntary.

Not sure about facial recognition as I've watched all the three series of The Capture 😄

You trust, implicitly, the authorities would only ever use the data for good? Or you don't mind the times they don't?

DNA is already done voluntarily when there's a serious murder case. Most men, and it's nearly always men, are very happy to rule themselves out.

No

Absolutely not- for so many readers but among them would be 1. Who owns the data 2. Are there any limits on its permitted uses? And if so what would they be?3. How would you prevent the sale or theft of the data to foreign adversary countries such as China (too late on that one, they’ve already bought the data)

We already have a national CCTV system and lots of people say we are over-surveilled... but then equally people avail themselves of technology such as Ring doorbells, just to see who is at the door and monitor parcel delivery!

I've never heard of a victim of crime or a relative of a victim of crime ever complain when CCTV has been integral to the prosecution of someone for that crime. Also we already have numberplate recognition, is facial recognition really that different if, again (and as with numberplate recognition) it is used to help the police to tackle crime? Most 'normal' CCTV could be said to incorporate facial recognition (although not to the level of finding, say, convicted football thugs in a crowd going to Wembley). But if someone stole your garden gnome off your lawn and you had Ring... well that's facial recognition in a nutshell. I keep thinking of that poor mother of the newsreader in America who was kidnapped and they had Ring (or equivalent) and the alleged perpetrator covered his face...

DNA is a whole other kettle of fish however...

When I when to America I was held for quite some time as my fingerprints were matching a crime committed in the 1980 when I was a very young child living the UK. I was allowed to enter eventually but I was treated like a criminal with no justification for a quite a while and might well have been unfairly if I closer in age to person they were looking for.

That's not the same at all, that's voluntary and targeted.

I don’t trust anyone I don’t know implicitly, no

But I still think it could be so useful in clearing crime backlogs, cold cases, freeing the wrongly accused, proving crimes

There will always be those willing to
misuse information, but there is so much personal info out there already I still think DNA could be used for good

You could have said this at the start. No wonder you're a big fan of state surveillance. Bias wasn't disclosed. Are you collecting our answers as part of a covert data harvest/test balloon for your friends? Game over. Next.

You could have said this at the start. No wonder you're a big fan of state surveillance. Bias wasn't disclosed. Are you collecting our answers as part of a covert data harvest/test balloon for your friends? Game over. Next.

You sound a little unhinged/manosphere.

I'm a middle-aged mum of teens. I actually didn't stay long working with the police. It was the most toxic workplace I've known and I lost a lot of trust and respect for the police force (or at least Major Crimes). But, I stand by this, "I would say most of the crimes we investigated that were committed in public had either been caught on camera or had footage that provided very strong evidence".

But you're still confirming that you trust the authorities to only use their powers in this for good and not for bad?

Wayne Couzens, the police involved in the Hillsborough disaster, the police who ignored the 100 or so potential leads that they were given who had been seen in Jill Dando's street on the day of her murder, but were happy to pin it on a vulnerable man and leave it there?

What's happened to it?
Sold to Palantir?

For sale apparently after a data breach, according to BBC etc.

Back when I worked specifically in TV, we were considering a series called (working title): When CCTV Saved The Day.

It would definitely NOT have been called that. More something like 'When CCTV Caught The Criminal'. We were going to syndicate to the USA and Australia based on the amount of cases in both other countries where CCTV had been used as almost irrefutable and yet circumstantial evidence (no one seems to really understand what circumstantial means I have found) and maybe even New Zealand (but in the cities - well like with Australia really).

It only didn't get commissioned because a lot of the evidence was still used in cases or held back for appeals, so we couldn't get it off the ground for the cases we wanted to cover. Probably could do it now though... but now I live a quieter life working for a charity!

As it tool it has underpinned so many major cases - people just don't want to open their eyes to it and see it as a 1984 fear factor...

Wayne Couzens was identified primarily through CCTV, both on the street, via the local bus dashboard camera and through where his hire car was paid for and then travelled - it is how the police found her body.

If there had been CCTV during Hillsborough it would have been a much shorter journey to even remote justice rather than relying on what people witnessed - and that's holding the police to account as much as anybody,

I don't see how Jill Dando comes into this conversation however - please enlighten me, what am I missing? Do you mean DNA? There was none at the scene.

I think that DNA collection would be handy to solve crimes, or perhaps in the cases of foundlings (i.e. matching them to a certain family based on genetic markers). However... I'm not sure that I would be comfortable with my newborn baby having blood drawn for DNA collection, when they are all squishy and cute, partly because it would inflict pain on them and, well, if their DNA or a database got into the wrong hands, what would be done with it? It's also not nice to think of your newborn as a potential future criminal either, I suppose.

How would facial recognition work to differentiate between very identical twins?

I don't think that national CCTV will ever take off, particularly in very rural and remote areas. We had sheep rustlers locally and people were saying, "Is it not covered by CCTV?" Erm, no, it's several miles up a mountainside, in a field that's not next to a road. I mean, people whinge about the lack of phone and internet around here (rural area), so good look getting sufficient signal for CCTV 😂

Did you really just use 'manosphere' as a way to justify your non disclosure at the beginning of this faux discourse?

I didn't ask you about your private life. Maybe when you're on CCTV, with your DNA on our phones, I won't need to, eh?

I don't care what you stand by or don't. You asked what we thought, then why and then tried to persuade everyone else about how your thought was best because it was backed up by your experience in the "police".

When that doesn't work, you resort to name calling?

Bad form, OP.