UK Police Plan To Deploy 'Staggeringly Inaccurate' Facial Recognition in London (independent.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes the Independent: Millions of people face the prospect of being scanned by police facial recognition technology that has sparked human rights concerns. The controversial software, which officers use to identify suspects, has been found to be "staggeringly inaccurate", while campaigners have branded its use a violation of privacy. But Britain's largest police force is set to expand a trial across six locations in London over the coming months.

Police leaders claimed officers make the decision to act on potential matches with police records and images that do not spark an alert are immediately deleted. But last month The Independent revealed the Metropolitan Police's software was returning "false positives" -- images of people who were not on a police database -- in 98 percent of alerts... Detective Superintendent Bernie Galopin, the lead on facial recognition for London's Metropolitan Police, said the operation was targeting wanted suspects to help reduce violent crime and make the area safer. "It allows us to deal with persons that are wanted by police where traditional methods may have failed," he told The Independent, after statistics showed police were failing to solve 63 per cent of knife crimes committed against under-25s....

Det Supt Galopin said the Met was assessing how effective facial recognition was at tackling different challenges in British policing, which is currently being stretched by budget cuts, falling officer numbers, rising demand and the terror threat.
A policy officer from the National Council for Civil Liberties called the technology "lawless," adding "the use of this technology in a public place is not compatible with privacy, and has a chilling effect on society."

But a Home Office minister said the technology was vital for protecting people from terrorism, though "we must ensure that privacy is respected. This strategy makes clear that we will grasp the opportunities that technology brings while remaining committed to strengthening safeguards."

Comments

Minority Report was right...

[DrTJ]

... one again.

How come that we in the West, who for half a century fought dictatorships with population surveillance and control, now willingly and without resistance walk into an unprecedented surveillance society?

The reasons cited ("budget cuts, falling officer numbers, rising demand and the terror threat") are not exactly new. Why is public face recognition, fingerprint recording and opening and reading mail acceptable nowadays?

Was the Ted Kazinsky correct in his prediction of the control society, that our modern society requires ultimate control of its citizens to function in an (post-)industrial setting and that our freedoms therefore must be taken away from us?

Because the children are in the control

[aepervius]

The guy who found so long ago all died, or are all but dead. The average MP and police chief in hierarchy is now 50, means they are the older children or grand children of those who fought, and were born in a time of boon. Those who have security and comfort are trying to keep it using method their parent would have blushed or cursed to. Frankly, this is the same type of people which deride millenial when at the same time 50 years ago they had comparatively cheap housing and a great potential. They are the same one predominentely wanting an empire they knew only in their stories. They are also the one wanting demographically brexit. that should tell you all. They are looking inward and going to the fetal position.

If they were serious

[reboot246]

This technology might be justifiable if the UK were serious about fighting terrorism, but they're not really serious. At best this is just security theater. At worst it's part of an ever-growing police state. Terrorism is just an excuse. They'll ignore it until it's impossible to stop the totalitarianism.