{"id":66081,"date":"2023-11-01T06:11:13","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T11:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66081"},"modified":"2023-11-01T06:11:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T11:11:13","slug":"big-brother-unchained-uk-government-to-abolish-biometrics-and-surveillance-safeguards-as-it-embraces-facial-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=66081","title":{"rendered":"Big Brother Unchained: UK Government to Abolish Biometrics and Surveillance Safeguards As It Embraces Facial Recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"entry-header\">\n<h3 class=\"entry-title single-post-title\"><a class=\"nc-orange\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2023\/10\/big-brother-unchained-uk-government-plans-to-abolish-biometrics-safeguards-as-it-embraces-sweeping-facial-recognition-surveillance.html\">Big Brother Unchained: UK Government to Abolish Biometrics and Surveillance Safeguards As It Embraces Facial Recognition<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"pf-content\">\n<p><strong>\u201cThe lack of attention being paid to [public safeguards]<\/strong><strong>\u00a0at such a crucial time is shocking, and destruction of the surveillance camera code that we\u2019ve all been using successfully for over a decade is tantamount to vandalism.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The United Kingdom is at the leading edge of many of the digital authoritarian trends sweeping ostensibly democratic nations. In one of the many dark ironies of our age, it is the government of George Orwell\u2019s native Britain that is seeking to massively escalate its deployment of live facial recognition (LFR) technologies, despite the concerns raised about its potential impact. In late September, 180 rights groups and tech experts called on governments around the world to halt their use of facial recognition surveillance.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the English channel, the EU Parliament has voted for a blanket ban on the use of LFR in public spaces, as too have some US cities. By contrast, the UK government is escalating its deployment of the controversial surveillance technology.<\/p>\n<p>Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the son-in-law of Indian tech billionaire N R Narayana Murthy, is determined to transform the UK into a world leader in AI governance. Said governance apparently involves gutting many of the limited safeguards protecting the public from the potential downsides and dangers of AI, of which there are many. This, of course, is no accident; if there was any time the British public needed those safeguards, it would be right now, as the government unleashes facial recognition technologies across the urban landscape.<\/p>\n<p>As we reported in early August, live facial recognition (LFR) surveillance, where people\u2019s faces are biometrically scanned by cameras in real-time and checked against a database, is being used by an increasing number of UK retailers amid a sharp upsurge in shoplifting \u2014 with the blessing, of course, of the UK government&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Big Brother Unchained: UK Government to Abolish Biometrics and Surveillance Safeguards As It Embraces Facial Recognition \u201cThe lack of attention being paid to [public safeguards]\u00a0at such a crucial time is shocking, and destruction of the surveillance camera code that we\u2019ve all been using successfully for over a decade is tantamount to vandalism.\u201d The United Kingdom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2472,290,379,5570,12913,27230,820,2080],"class_list":["post-66081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-big-brother","tag-facial-recognition","tag-government","tag-mass-surveillance","tag-naked-capitalism","tag-nick-corbishley","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66082,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66081\/revisions\/66082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}