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

[MsAmerica]

I just find this so hard to believe. Yes, it's the way things are heading, but can't believe there aren't more objections.

London police are taking surveillance to a whole new level, to start using facial recognition to spot criminal suspects*
By Adam Satariano
London’s police department said Friday that it would begin using facial recognition to spot criminal suspects with video cameras as they walk the streets, adopting a level of surveillance that is rare outside China.

www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/business/london-police-facial-recognition.html

www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-london-facial-recognition-surveillance-20200124-dbgm2lc2ezcx5i5vssh35jkvam-story.html

and that would be a problem, because........... ?

As my face isn't on a list of 'wanted' murderers, child abusers, or other known criminals, then I wouldn't have an issue with anything that assists with tracking those who are. In fact, it sounds like a positive to me.

My face will be on CCTV every day as I walk down the High Street , into shops, banks, schools, Nurseries, get on and off buses, etc etc etc.
Improved technology that can then use those images that are captured throughout the day to track the country's 'most wanted' sounds like a good move to me.

It is not beyond the realms of possibility that data gets used for nefarious reasons or that it gets stolen. 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.

What if you are unlucky enough to look very
Similar to a most wanted criminal?

If this is going to help stop Islamic terrorists killing people then I am all for it.

Haggisfish, yes, it is not only that surveillance information can be used in ways that are detrimental - a vendor charging you higher prices, or an insurer refusing you - but the video surveillance has a very high error rate, as this article (and others) says.

Walkingdeadfangirl, I will point out that there are few - if indeed any at all - instances where general public surveillance (as opposed to targeted surveillance of specific suspects) stopped a terrorist. In the U.S. the attacks that were thwarted were pretty much always due to the intervention of ordinary citizens - as with the Times Square bomber.

Currently the London Underground uses a movement recognition system to try and spot typical pickpocket behaviour before the strike.
Should this be stopped for civil liberty reasons?

As an aside they accidentally discovered that the system also spots people planning to suicide.

Apparently it’s very terfy. It recognises sex, and no, I’m not kidding. There were actual concerns about this. 😁

Yeah, all good until we get to a 'Juden Raus' or 'Muslims out' moment and the fascists go crazy again and call all dark people terrorists.

Both those articles are from American sources, and no, I haven't read them. Their system of justice and policing is totally different from ours, so their opinions are irrelevant.

As far as I'm concerned, anything that has the potential to stop marauding psychopaths, murderers and terrorists can only be a good thing. It seems we aren't allowed to keep them locked up, so we have to come up with other ways of preventing their despicable acts.

If you have some other bright idea of how to do that, then great. What is it?

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.

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.

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

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...'? 😂

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,

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 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).

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Should this be stopped for civil liberty reasons?

Yes.

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