GOVERNMENT plans to expand the use of ‘Orwellian’ live-facial recognition camera surveillance to every town and city in England and Wales will allow dangerous mass surveillance control of the entire population, its own consultation document warned yesterday.
As reported in the Telegraph newspaper yesterday, the Home Office itself admitted that the ‘use of biometric data of individuals will always involve some degree of interference with people’s rights, such as the right to privacy’.
The technology scans people’s faces and then cross-references the images against watchlists of known or wanted criminals, or to trawl through images of ‘possible witnesses’, protesters or trade unions strikers. Images of suspects can also be run retrospectively through police, passport or immigration databases to identify who they are and their backgrounds.
Other public bodies beyond the police, and private companies, such as retailers and shops, could be allowed to use facial recognition technology under the new proposals, which are not regulated, the Home Office admits.
The technology has been described by Sarah Jones, the policing minister, as the ‘biggest breakthrough since DNA matching’.
‘I want it as one of the tools that are available to the police. I certainly want to see this significantly increased. It’s very effective for policing,’ she said.
However, the plans were slammed by Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, who said the expansion would transform the UK into an ‘open prison’ and that passports would become ‘mugshots for a giant surveillance database, putting the British public at risk of misidentifications and injustice …’
‘Every search through this harvest of our personal photos puts millions of innocent citizens through a police line-up without our knowledge or consent. Sir Keir Starmer’s Government is committing to historic breaches of Britons’ privacy,’ he added.
But the Home Office itself acknowledges that facial recognition is different, because there could be interference with the rights of individuals who were not subject of a police investigation.
The consultation document confirms that police could obtain access to the UK’s passport database of 45 million people and also immigration records.
Ruth Ehrlich, Liberty’s head of policy and campaigns, remains unconvinced. ‘Facial recognition technology is a deeply invasive breach of our privacy rights, data protection laws and equality laws,’ she said earlier this year. She said it is Orwellian to put the public in a digital lineup and cited an independent report conducted in 2019 which found that 81 per cent of ‘suspects’ who were matched to the Met’s watchlist by FRT actually turned out to be innocent.
Even Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, said the technology was part of the ‘surveillance state. It is deeply sinister,’ he said.
Responding to government claims that it would help police fight crime, he said: ‘We always have this. We heard this with lockdown and before we knew it there were people being arrested for sitting on park benches.
‘I don’t trust this government with surveillance, with digital ID. I repeat the point that we are living in a country where you are punished for what you say and what you think rather than what you do.’
Sampson Fraser, Facewatch rector and Professor of Governance and National Security at ENTRIC, told BBC Radio 5 Live on Thursday that ‘The College of Policing has said it is legitimate for police to use retro-matching to find “potential witnesses”, a definition so vague it covers every living person in the UK. Armed with clear pictures, police can run the matching across every type of facial image available to them: crowds at international sporting events, political protests, CCTV, dashcams, doorbells – everything.
‘Mixing biometrics with public space surveillance carries a real risk of creating a Frankenstein effect and the public should be concerned about that too,’ Sampson added.
Coming just a week after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ inconclusive budget in which she hit the working class with billions of stealth tax rises by freezing tax thresholds, but failed to cut public spending to appease the bond markets, Labour is dashing full speed ahead to crush a militant working class with these police state measures.
With resident NHS doctors about to strike and lecturers coming out in January, among others, Justice Minister Lammy has now abolished jury trials for minor offences whereby courts can imprison on remand unconvicted suspects like trade union members and Palestine protesters for years, awaiting trials.
PM Keir Starmer is rushing to bring in national ID cards for all amid his crushing economic austerity policies, while Labour can proscribe any opposition from striking workers, protesters and youth as terrorists and jail them.
Now is the time for the trade unions to act by recalling the TUC and organising a general strike to kick out this Labour government and its police state plans, and set up a workers’ government to bring in Socialism and nationalise the big industries and banks. Join the Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists today to lead this struggle for socialism!
