181–190 of 216 posts
Britain is the original Orwellian society!! They even practice DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink in Blighty, especially in government and parliamentary circles.
If it helps stop antisemitism then i'm all for it
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Perhaps facial recognition would have saved him? It's not like humans are 100% accurate as this demonstrates
Or perhaps facial recognition would leave even less time for decision making. Someone who's face resembles that of a known terrorist was detected entering the station 8 seconds ago. He's carrying a backpack and will be on a crowded platform in 37 seconds time. There are armed police in the ticket hall. What do you do? Only 31 seconds now...
Walk up and place him under arrest. He might have a bomb. He might have a trigger for it, or he might have a dead-man's switch. It might detonate and kill you along with bystanders. That's a risk you take.
Unless you know with certainty that he has a bomb and does not have a dead man's switch, you don't just take his life because you're concerned about what-ifs.
It's no different than cops killing a man because he was holding a wallet, which they imagined might be a gun (e.g. Amadou Diallo).
Police need to stop pretending that they exist within fiction, where the outcome is known by the author. Just because you're afraid of something doesn't mean it's an actual threat.
Since 2001, there's been a real uptick in confusing fear and suspicion for evidence and knowledge.
Living in the UK is fantastic.
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 surpr…
Or in another anecdote - there's a dude on my street who drives a 20 year old BMW. I can see on DVLA's website that it hasn't been taxed in 4(!!!!) years. He continues driving it every day. There are ANPR cameras around every major road here - and nothing continues to happen to him. For 4 years. Why am I paying taxes for my car then, if clearly there are no consequences for so blatantly and visibly breaking the law.
And one more - there are literally gangs of people in balaclavas riding electric motorcycles around where I live, in parks, on cycle paths, on the roads...I keep reporting them, only to be told that the force has no available officers to deal with them, but even if they did it's pointless chasing them. So I ask again - What's the point of having a surveillance state with cameras on every street, if you can't actually use them to catch criminals????
There is this just massive disconnect between Britain the surveillance state and Britain which has given up on upholding the law. I don't know how to reconcile that in my head.
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The 1960's was about the time in history when investment went in to surveillance programs. Computer recognition has been around for a very long time, and has always been on the edge for spying on citizens. It's accelerated now because we have future technology that they didn't have back then.
But stemming from which need? Cold war?
can't wait for these to normalize https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cyberpunk+oni+mask&iar=images
Britain is the original Orwellian society!! They even practice DoubleSpeak and DoubleThink in Blighty, especially in government and parliamentary circles.
It will be fine. Most Brits are comfortable with the poor quality of Orwell commentary from over the pond. American Orwell fans mostly don't even read his key novels like Keep the Aspadistra Flying, just his juvenile science fiction stuff.
Let me guess - you live in the UK?
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What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future?
Either. Where there is a need. The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait? Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance polic…
e.g. when they do things like holding illegal employment blacklist[1][2][3] of innocent people.
I don't want to live in a country where, for example, the police can punish you just because they don't like trade unions.
What's I find ironic is that all this police state bullshit never seems to actually deal with antisocial behaviour or low level crime, it's always for political infractions.
We have more CCTV in London than almost anywhere else on the planet and you still get harassed outside tube stations by organised gangs of soliciting very forcefully for "charity" collections.
1. https://www.parliament.uk/external/committees/committee-news...
2. https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/ico-40/construction-employ...
3. https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-do...
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This is a mature and considered take. But I’m sure you’ll agree: incompetence is not a reliable defence. So what happens when using and optimising these systems becomes a priority for the state? The apparatus is there, and capabilities can catch up to opportunities it presents.
I have to tell you I am not that bothered. Twice I nearly lost my father to terrorism in London. (Sliding Doors commuter moments both times — by sheer chance not being in the very usual place at the very usual time). I remain pretty relaxed about the idea that people who wish to bomb trains and tubes and buses can't get across London without the awareness that they could be tracked. You cannot live your life paranoid…
I don't know a single American that has ever expressed any sentiment that London is unsafe. I know a few that have some stupid notions about immigrants in the UK, but that isn't exclusive to people on this side of the pond.
Genuinely, though. Americans just don't worry about safety in London outside of scams and petty crime inherent to any big tourist city.