London Underground Begins Scanning Passengers' Faces
The British Transport Police have expanded their Live Facial Recognition (LFR) trial to London Underground stations. The technology, which scans passengers' faces in real time, is being tested to identify individuals wanted for serious crimes. The trial has raised privacy concerns among civil liberties groups, who argue that such surveillance infringes on public anonymity. The police, however, maintain that the system is a targeted tool to enhance public safety and deter crime.
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- _fw
It’s a moot point. I’m saddened at the invasion of privacy and the intrusion on an individual’s civil liberties, but anonymous travel on the London Underground died when they made bank cards and contactless the primary way to get through the barriers.
I’m not saying that “this doesn’t matter because it’s slightly worse than before”. I’m saying the frog has been boiling for a long time.
I don’t want people being surprised as though THIS is the nail in the coffin of untracked movement across the city. As others have said, we’ve always been tracked. This is just them being open about their latest methods.
I hope this serves as a warning for citizens elsewhere: this is a slope that governments will only slide down further. There is no coming back from this in the UK.
Supermarkets in the UK point cameras at your face at self-checkout.
Roadside CCTV captures your registration plate and tracks your vehicle across the country.
Your ISP proactively shares your web history with the state.
Being an anonymous citizen in the UK has been an impossibility for at least 20 years.
Any weapons can and will be utilised against a perceived enemy. When that perceived enemy becomes /you/, you should expect these things to be used against you.
History has taught us that before.
We have seen in the last 10 years that liberal democracies are fragile things. Robust restrictions on the state’s ability to monitor, interfere with and restrict the daily lives of its citizens aren’t a luxury; they’re essent […]
- cagz
It is BTP, not London Underground, they are not the same thing.
- hn_submit
Britain is the original Orwellian society!!
They even practice DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink in Blighty, especially in government and parliamentary circles.
- cedws
The surveillance of China without the prosperity or safety. At least in China I can leave my bag or laptop out of sight for a moment, same cannot be said of my home city of London. What good is all of this when hard criminals are let out of prison after 6 months. Clown country.
- type0
The hubris for surveillance in UK is staggering, what will they do next - roll out the social score system so you'll be banned from taking the tube if you express too much non sanctioned thoughts online?
- rob74
> People who prefer not to enter the recognition zone will have alternative routes available and images of anyone not on the authorised database will be deleted immediately and permanently.
So, massive invasion of privacy, but will only catch stupid criminals (and unsuspecting people who happen to have a strong resemblance with a criminal in the database?).
- freakynit
The issue with all this surveillance is that it always ends up with suppression of dissent and silencing of opposition by abusing enforcement agencies.
All such surveillance should start with 24-hour live video feed of private lives of all politicians... they carry immense power and control, and thus, warrant an equally powerful monitoring and scrutiny compared to common people.
- Traster
I really don't understand why they do trials for this. What would be the failure case for the trial? "We carried out the trial for 6 weeks over X period of time, we arrested Y people, at that rate we've decided this is not compatible with modern liberal democracy, we would've traded a free society for Y+2 arrests over X period but we just didn't quite get there"?
As suggested by other people - this is just going to be used to identify, infiltrate and disrupt the numerous peaceful protests that the police aren't keen on in London.
- proc0
21st century authoritarianism. Humans learned nothing from the 20th century.
- danw1979
Putting aside the social and legal implications of this trial, I find it very interesting how projects like this are often trumpeted to be successful and celebrated at launch (rather than when proven to work, or save costs or whatever) as though the hard bit was actually wading for months or years through several government and private IT bureaucracies, not making a system that delivers what it promises.