Police force facial recognition use ruled unlawful (UK)

Probably only a delay of the inevitable - with facial-recognition systems already part of daily lives in countries such as China, how long will the rest of us enjoy the freedom without?

Mr Bridges said: "I’m delighted that the court has agreed that facial recognition clearly threatens our rights.

"This technology is an intrusive and discriminatory mass surveillance tool.

“We should all be able to use our public spaces without being subjected to oppressive surveillance.”

Mr Bridges’ face was scanned while he was Christmas shopping in Cardiff in 2017 and at a peaceful anti-arms protest outside the city’s Motorpoint Arena in 2018.

He had argued it it breached his human rights when his biometric data was analysed without his knowledge or consent.

Any ideas on what your country’s stance is? Do you agree/disagree with it?

In a very rare twist of events, Aston is actually not child-like optimistic! :stuck_out_tongue:

Yep, I think it’s only a matter of time as well. Politicians will virtue-signal for PR purposes but I am pretty sure that they are using such surveillance systems for years. F.ex. we had these so-called “100 days of protests” in Bulgaria several years ago and then the cops got busted by journalists that dossiers have been compiled for every single person who attended them, utilizing face-tracking and face-recognition software.

And that’s Bulgaria! One small and – in general – a poor country. Imagine what a mastodon like the UK can afford to do.

1 Like

:joy:

I’m still banking on a Utopia :sunglasses: (if humanity survives that long, I’m pretty sure it will be attainable). Before we get there we’ll go through these types of more draconian/backwards phases - sometimes they can act as catalysts :smiley:

The UK used to be the most surveilled country in the world - back then they blamed it on the troubles in Northern Ireland. China probably holds the record now with satellite tech you can spy on pretty much anyone anywhere I guess :joy:

1 Like

I agree that this shouldn’t be a thing… The UK is one of those countries that already has lots of cameras everywhere. You can go a mile down the motorway and there are 4-5 cameras.

1 Like