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Police Scanning Every Face At UK Download Festival
AmiMoJo writes: Leicestershire Police have announced that they will be scanning every face at the popular UK Download music festival. The announcement article on Police Oracle (paywalled) reads, "the strategically placed cameras will scan faces at the Download Festival site in Donington before comparing it with a database of custody images from across Europe." The stated goal is to catch mobile phone thieves. Last year only 91 of the 120,000 visitors to the festival were arrested, and it isn't clear if the data will be deleted once checked against the database.
The linked article provides at least one image of a costume that would probably trip up any facial recognition technology yet devised.
Why would the festival cooperate? Basically they are saying to their customer that their privacy is of no value. Not only is this cruel but it also indicates that the festival will probably sell on any data they have gathered on the festival goers.
It is this callous disregard for privacy that screams for laws that clamp down on any organization, including the police, from being able to gather data. Quite simply I want a law that prevents any organization from gathering data that isn't crucial for the transaction and to not be able to share that data without a warrant. Thus I want this reaching the point where the power company can only gather the minimum amount of data to send me a bill and deliver my service. I don't even want them noting my gender. Then I pretty much want them not to be able to share that data with their own marketing department, let alone "trusted third parties".
The festival needs a license, the last labour government made it condition of the license that the police agree, so the police use it to add any arbitrary law to the agreement.
So here the police demanded mass surveillance as a condition of their approval and so the festival has no choice but to go along with it.
This is how the UK is, the police drive the democracy, its heavily over-policed, and if you try to tackle them, they send out PR people to talk trash on TV.
This specific venue because this is the only major UK festival held in the Leicestershire Constabulary. Leicestershire police have been trialling face recognition software for over a year now - they are merely extending their coverage to include festival goers as well as their regular surveillance of the local residents.