UK Police Are Testing Facial Recognition on Christmas Shoppers in London this Week (theverge.com)

London's Metropolitan Police is testing its facial recognition technology in the capital this week. From a report: It's the seventh time the Metropolitan Police, the UK capital's police force, has trialled facial recognition in public. The technology has previously been used at large events, including Notting Hill Carnival in 2016 and 2017, and Remembrance Day services last year. This year, the technology is being used Monday and Tuesday of this week in Soho, Piccadilly Circus, and Leicester Square -- all major shopping areas in the heart of the city.

Cameras are fixed to lampposts or deployed on vans, and use software developed by Japanese firm NEC to measure the structure of passing faces. This scan is then compared to a database of police mugshots. The Met says a match via the software will prompt officers to examine the individual and decide whether or not to stop them. Posters will inform the public they're liable to be scanned while walking in certain areas, and the Met says anyone declining to be scanned "will not be viewed as suspicious."

Comments

That's a yikes from me dog.

[negRo_slim]

Glad to see the Brits haven't given up on the 1984 dystopia!

Re:Good

[Oswald McWeany]

This is how you secure a nation aganst extremist muslim terrorism. Dispatch the cucks and get on with securing the country. Churchill would have done it, too.

Churchill was a great war time leader and is rightly commended for that, he was a terribly overhanded peace-time leader though and had more than a few negative characteristics. I've no doubt you're right and Churchill would have approved of this, but that doesn't make it right.

Very few people want to live in an overbearing police state. I certainly wouldn't.