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London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

btp.police.uk

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Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#91

Post by dofm »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #88
dofm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of the UK "surveillance state" is actually quite overcooked. It's largely based on myth and dramatisation. BTP probably have a national live feed of railway station cameras. I bloody hope they do, considering it's a rather small, quite centralised police force that covers an enormous rail network, but they are known to have hired "super-recognisers" — skilled CCTV operators — instead. We have had generati…

Getting political here a bit, but: > We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations. (And the most long-term and persistent of those threats was Irish republican terrorism bankrolled by Americans, for that matter) Did it ever cross Britain's mind that the whole IRA debacle is of its own doing? Can't you just leave Ireland for good and let them be?

> Did it ever cross Britain's mind that the whole IRA debacle is of its own doing? Can't you just leave Ireland for good and let them be?

That people still ask this question betrays only that they aren't well-informed about what actual issues led to the Troubles.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#92

Post by [deleted] »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #88
dofm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of the UK "surveillance state" is actually quite overcooked. It's largely based on myth and dramatisation. BTP probably have a national live feed of railway station cameras. I bloody hope they do, considering it's a rather small, quite centralised police force that covers an enormous rail network, but they are known to have hired "super-recognisers" — skilled CCTV operators — instead. We have had generati…

Getting political here a bit, but: > We have had generations of terror threats to and attacks on our railway system, trains, railway stations. (And the most long-term and persistent of those threats was Irish republican terrorism bankrolled by Americans, for that matter) Did it ever cross Britain's mind that the whole IRA debacle is of its own doing? Can't you just leave Ireland for good and let them be?

[deleted]

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#93

Post by wickedsickeune »

danw1979 wrote: post #75
dandaka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what happened in Moscow after same tech was launched. It is much 'safer' on streets, since every entrance door and traffic intersection is equipped with cameras now. But I pick Portugal's approach every time — no public cameras, no dashcams, it is forbidden to record private persons in public without permission.

I’m in Portugal with kids right now and I can not think of a country where dashcams would be more useful. The standard of driving and adherence to the law of the roads is some of the worst I’ve encountered in Europe. I haven’t let go of my 9yo’s hand since we arrived in Porto a few days ago. Speeding is chronic and nobody gives a shit for the safety of you or your children here.

In Greece and Italy they drive at least as bad as in Portugal, if not much worse, and dashcams are perfectly legal.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#94

Post by brettermeier »

foldr wrote: post #36
brettermeier wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facial recognition could be used to identify people who are likely to participate in protests and prevent them from doing so in advance by intercepting them at their boarding station or somewhere near it. You could also scan for persons arriving in a city where a protest might be plannend and arrest them beforehand.

As with your sibling comment, what you’re describing is theoretically possible, but it’s also more difficult and resource intensive than the simple dumb alternative of blocking off the area of the planned protest and putting some police officers outside nearby tube stations to arrest anyone who’s clearly intending to head to the protest. It’s already easy for the police to prevent protests in a practical sense. It’s…

There might not be a publicly known area for that protest.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#95

Post by steve_gh »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #78
steve_gh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that make us not a democracy? You are confusing the constitutionally based US system with the parliamentary based UK system. They work differently. We have elections typically every 4-5 years and elect a new government. That's the democracy bit. The laws that our elected representatives make are sometimes good, and sometimes bad. But they are made by the people we elected.

So what you are saying is this is what you want as citizens, to be surveilled and tracked by police 24/7?

My point is that the technology exists, for good or ill, and we cannot put the genie back in the bottle.

What we can do, and should do as a society, is decide on how that technology should be used. And that means regulating it, in the same way that we regulate other technologies. For example, we regulate cars. Not just who can use them, but how they have to be constructed too. And we also place limits on how the authorities can use them, for example the rules that the police must obey when in an emergency response situation.

We are a democracy, so these rules are made by the people we have elected. so when it comes down to it, yes, this is what we as a people have asked for. And we are responsible for the conditions that the police can use this technology under.

FWIW, the capabilities and resources that the police have to track us 24/7 are an order of magnitude less than Google or Meta has. And they are an awful lot less accountable.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#96

Post by iamnothere »

wickedsickeune wrote: post #93
danw1979 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in Portugal with kids right now and I can not think of a country where dashcams would be more useful. The standard of driving and adherence to the law of the roads is some of the worst I’ve encountered in Europe. I haven’t let go of my 9yo’s hand since we arrived in Porto a few days ago. Speeding is chronic and nobody gives a shit for the safety of you or your children here.

In Greece and Italy they drive at least as bad as in Portugal, if not much worse, and dashcams are perfectly legal.

I’d also suggest searching for the classic “Russian dashcam videos” on YouTube.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#97

Post by doublerabbit »

bobim wrote: post #84
doublerabbit wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's never just one. Mainly political.

Those who in power of the state don't want to loose power. A protest, revolt is the best way to overthrow that. So to eliminate that threat is to survey. Install fear and you have control.

> The idea that emerged around the time of the French Revolution that the political spectrum can be divided into a right- and left wing in the first place – it becomes clear that the Left, in its essence, is a critique of bureaucracy, even if it’s one that has, again and again, been forced to accommodate itself in practice to the very bureaucratic structures and mindset it originally arose to oppose. [1]

[1] Computers and Surveillance Scandals in the 1960s-70s - https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03952774v1/document

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#98

Post by noman-land »

foldr wrote: post #18
Traster wrote: post #13

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 b…

How would that work? Easiest way to stop protests is to block off the area of the planned protest and arrest people who try to enter it. It’s not clear to me how facial recognition on the tube would help from a practical point or view. Also, this seems to just be a trial expanding existing time and location scoped deployments of live facial recognition into a new environment, rather than a trial run for always-on liv…

The easiest way to stop protests is to listen to your constituents and implement the changes they desire. That's what a representative democracy is.

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#99

Post by iamnothere »

kypro wrote: post #42

For what it's worth, as a Brit, I assure you no one cares about this, and it's likely that most people, if asked, would support it. The UK doesn't value liberty for liberty's sake like the US does. In the US there seems to be this notion that freedom is a universal good, where as in the UK people are quite comfortable with liberties being revoked if it means they feel safer or fewer people are doing things they don't…

I wonder what makes it different than Japan. Japan, also a large island nation with a developed economy, is also socially conservative in most areas—but the people rely on each other to enforce social norms instead of the law. The government is famously hands off, and tends to release statements and public service campaigns about what citizens should do rather than dictating to them what they must do. And the people generally follow the rules!

Re: London Underground begins scanning passengers' faces

#100

Post by coldtea »

Markoff wrote: post #69
coldtea wrote: post #25

Lest they commit the offense of buying a baseball bat or being stabbed?

TBH wrapped baseball bat is still a baseball bat, just because it's wrapped it doesn't mean you can't use it plus the beginning of the video was missing and it was clearly during some protest but I agree being stabbed should be legal for victim /s

It was not during some protest, many people of all colors nearby supported the person being arrested and told the policeman he's doing a stupid mistake.

Worse is that it's one of a long run of infuriating police state blunders (to put it mildly).

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