Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

btp.police.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 511 posts

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#491

Post by cwmoore »

lazide wrote: post #482
philipallstar wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's of course partly selection bias, but the number of YouTube videos where UK police are upset at someone filming in public, and not even focusing on people, is incredibly ironic.

It’s typical creepy authoritarian behavior. Want to guess how much stalking is going on?

I recently saw mugshots of a police officer arrested for misusing the surveillance data they have access to for personal reasons. In the mugshot, this officer of the court looked just like a criminal.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#493

Post by ulfw »

gordian-mind wrote: post #492

Good. It’s high time we used modern technology to make public transportation safer. Soon there’ll be nowhere left to harass strangers in public. If that’s too Orwellian for you, feel free to bike.

You think people on bike's won't get picked up and facially recognised by the several million of CCTV cameras in the UK?

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#494

Post by gordian-mind »

ulfw wrote: post #493
gordian-mind wrote: post #492

Good. It’s high time we used modern technology to make public transportation safer. Soon there’ll be nowhere left to harass strangers in public. If that’s too Orwellian for you, feel free to bike.

You think people on bike's won't get picked up and facially recognised by the several million of CCTV cameras in the UK?

I'm sure you'll find some trick to not get recognized, wear some glasses or a surgical mask.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#495

Post by mxmilkiib »

cwmoore wrote: post #491
lazide wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s typical creepy authoritarian behavior. Want to guess how much stalking is going on?

I recently saw mugshots of a police officer arrested for misusing the surveillance data they have access to for personal reasons. In the mugshot, this officer of the court looked just like a criminal.

"The police service in England and Wales is "not good enough" and its leadership needs an "ethical reset", Lord Blunkett has said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0429yx1k9o 4 July 2026

"Speaking exclusively to the BBC ahead of the publication of a major report he co-authored on police leadership, the former Labour home secretary said its findings point to weaknesses in leadership, morale and culture across the service.

The report, to be published on Monday, will conclude there are "significant causes for concern" and that police leadership requires a "fundamental overhaul".

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#496

Post by ornornor »

Why is Britain police and government seemingly sp eager to build a panopticon? I get it’s the trend worldwide but I’ve always had the impression Britain goes the extra mile and is well above the general level of surveillance typically found in western societies.

I remember about 20 years ago when I lived in London, you had to provide ID to enter clubs. Ok, to check your age. But the bouncers would also scan your id into machines at the entrance that recorded you were there “for your security, and if you don’t want you don’t get in”. Why? See also the vast number of CCTV cameras all over London, more than most capitals in western societies have.

And I suspect it started way before that, see Orwell 1984 for instance.

Where is this obsession coming from??

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#497

Post by heyitsmedotjayb »

tpholland wrote: post #182
heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #179

[flagged]

OK. There's not much antisemitism in London though. It's a major world city.

British jews are some of the most scared and under threat in the entire world. Please open any newspaper, pretty much every single day there's another piece explaining how scared Jews are. In Golders Green for example, the Jewish segregated ambulance service was antisemitically targeted.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#498

Post by blini-kot »

crimsoneer wrote: post #365
blini-kot wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add: same happened in russia around 2018 on a couple of subway stations in St.-Pete and in moscow at first the result? faster tracking and arrests of people for checks who were deemed too problematic + (i.e. with anti-war protests in 2022) the cameras were used to track or threat tracking almost everyone who protested, and lowering the load on the police by coming to the dwellings afterwards in the next several da…

It's worth pointing out this is specifically not mass tracking. LFR scans faces against an existing database of outstanding wanted suspects. If a match is made, it alerts the officers who are manning the camera there and then. It doesn't store anything that wasn't a match.

the definition of "wanted suspects" is the key here, with proper legal loopholes everyone is a suspect, and everyone is wanted

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#500

Post by bobthepanda »

windowliker wrote: post #155
bobthepanda wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you don't even need all of that to track people. there was a bit of a kerfuffle where a dataset that literally only contained the start, end and time, and some deanonymized data of NYC taxi rides was successfully deanonymized and used to track celebrities. Most people have fairly sparse, unique travel patterns, and so armed with only a few known paparazzi photos you could accurately derive their whole travel history.…

Yes, but as I said it is possible to use a separate ID for entry and exit, so unless they were willing to perform a CCTV trawl then your entire journey could not be assessed. The penalty for this kind of anonymity is paying top fare for entry and exit, so only a very rich tube user could bear the cost. The thing that got people to use Oyster in the first place was 'discounted' prices, as in they bumped the price for…

IIRC the big push to contactless and Oyster before it is just reducing the cost of handling money. Transit agencies do not really want to be in the business of banking, and physically printing paper tickets and maintaining the machines to accept them properly is a lot more expensive than an RFID reader.

In particular for paper and magnetic strip, you have to keep the reader clean enough to accept reads properly, and the machine also needs to not damage the ticket. This is a non issue with tapping.

Post reply on HN