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London Police Deploy Facial Recognition at Protest for First Time
- stavros 6mo agoWow, that's... quite the precedent. Presumably this is a Reform UK event, which I'm not a fan of, but still, I don't think this escalation of surveillance will end well. The article says that drones "will scan the faces of suspects", suspects of what exactly? What crime has been committed that they suspect people for?
- hactually 6mo agoMust be some heinous crimes to enable dragnet surveillance. That or the rotten state of Britain really is trying anything from splitting at the seams. Must be the heinous crime thing tho.
- philipallstar 6mo agoIts definitely not heinous crimes. It's just recording people at events to know who's of what political persuasion.
- 4ndrewl 6mo agoOr maybe it's just that whenever Tommy ten names has one of his rallies it ends in violence?
- spwa4 6mo agoEver walked through the streets of London after essentially any rally? They all end in violence.
- asib 6mo agoAre you serious? This is so ignorant it's unbelievable. There are gazillions of marches that have ended without incident.
- 4ndrewl 6mo agoThe sad thing is that GP is not even being paid to spread this tripe. I just can't understand their motivation to post such patently false info based on what...Tiktok research from Russia? At least Farage/Yaxley and their hangers-on are clearly on the make.
- spwa4 6mo agoI mean property destruction, and then it's just true.
- KaiserPro 6mo ago> They all end in violence. Odd way to say you've never been to london.
- baal80spam 6mo agoThought crime, obviously!
- rolph 6mo agofacial recognition is old news, the development of intent prediction is the edge.
- 1shooner 6mo agoI don't personally support this surveillance, but that isn't what the articles says. It says they will be "scanning for suspects from above." And later quotes the Met making reference to 'intelligence'. So conceivably they could have information about the plans of specific individuals at this event.
- stavros 6mo agoRight, but suspects of what? Just in general, all the crimes they know about?
- futter9 6mo ago[flagged]
- suburban_strike 6mo agoIt doesn't matter what the article says. There is no penalty for lying and no incentive to be honest. The media exists to broadcast their lies at scale. Back in the 2000s, upon arrest it was pretty common practice for cops to page through your phone contacts to see who you knew. I don't know if Cellebrite was used back then or if it was manual but the inferences were made and the point was to map out suspects' social networks to find suppliers and upstream orchestrators they had in common. They're doing the same thing here but lying about it. By capturing all faces associated with whatever protest is going on and mapping them to known identities (because everyone has to provide ID to do anything nowadays), they gather intelligence on entire groups of dissidents. The crowd ARE the suspects. By the time you're hearing about it in the news they've already been doing it for years. I wouldn't dare set foot near any anti-Israel rally myself, suspecting the NYPD has been field-testing this for a while and activist NGOs like Canary Mission explicitly performing such recon and mapping themselves. All those DHS counter-terrorism grants weren't spent exclusively on MRAPs and bomb disposal robots. That money trickled down to a lot of interesting places.
- conradludgate 6mo agoIt's worth stating that historically these right-wing culture protests have been a bit more violent in nature than most protests are. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the protest is violent, but there's enough mob mentality that makes me (someone who lives in London) uncomfortable.
- stavros 6mo agoSure, but there's a difference between surveillance after a crime vs before.
- nailer 6mo ago[flagged]
- KaiserPro 6mo ago> Keep is mind the UK left is aligned with Islam The Left has a fascination with Palestine, not islam. People who push the "the left love poltical islam" are usally trying to sell you that London is a wasteland, or that white people can't speak in public
- conradludgate 6mo agoAI enhanced misinformation campaigns working as intended
- KaiserPro 6mo agoI'm sorry I don't understand? are you saying that I'm the one affected by AI propaganda?
- graemep 6mo agoDepends how you interpret "aligned with" and "Islam". They "left" has formed alliances with Islamist extremists so i think the "aligned with" bit is accurate. The "Islam" is inaccurate and conflates Islamism with Islam. Most British Muslims are not extremist nutcases, and there are plenty on the "right" too - numerous Conservatives, some in Reform (e.g. Zia Yusuf), etc.
- NooneAtAll3 6mo agoif protest expects confrontation (for either side reasons), it's possible for roads to be preemptively de-surfaced to get stones to throw at police
- graemep 6mo agoNo, nothing to do with Reform. Organised by Tommy Robinson. The guy Reform think is such a nutcase that they turned down a huge donation from Elon Musk because Elon made it conditional on letting Robinson join Reform. Its hard to find anyone more loathsome than Tommy Robinson in British politics, but being horrible is not a crime.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 6mo agoTo Reforms credit while I do think they started off as a bit of a looney party that relied on theatrics they managed to evolve into a more mature party ever since Zia Yusuf joined and you see how the tone of Nigel Farage has already become more serious. To some that will look like they became "Conservatives 2.0" but I don't think we have another real conservative party left anyway.
- KaiserPro 6mo ago> ever since Zia Yusuf joined The same one that threatening concentration camps in areas that don't vote for them? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c362e9p385yo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c362e9p385yo Farage is not the most extreme in his party. Sadly.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 6mo agoIronic. You are admitting that you yourself don't want to be near these people who are going to get put in detention centres (who would probably otherwise be free).
- KaiserPro 6mo agoCan you please explain to me how you managed to divine my preference for immigrants from my post? I would gently point out that if the immigration system worked like it used to, then we wouldn't need large amounts of detention centres. For two years it was illegal to process asylum claims. This meant that the backlog stacked up, costing a fuck tonne of cash. More egregiously instead of sorting the problem. Various Home secretaries chose politics rather than building systems to track and efficiently process claims. Detention centres are a massive sign of failure. I don't want them anywhere, I want my money to be spent on sorting the problem not showboating how cruel we are to people we don't like. (Which I would point out is directly against biblical teachings)
- KaiserPro 6mo ago> this is a Reform UK event No, its a Tommy Robinson (not his real name) event. Whilst the venn diagram shows crossover in policy and beliefs, its not actually a reform demo. I am uneasy about the facial recognition being used here. In terms of actual differences to how "oh shit this is going to be a violent one" protests are actually policed is not that much. There are mobile CCTV units that are deployed with plods being issued cameras to record people doing stupid shit. However, given what happened last time he organised an event like this, I can see why it might be argued that its proportionate to deploy facial recognition. I still don't like it.
- skippyboxedhero 6mo agoThere has been no violence at any of the previous marches iirc. I think people assume there must have been because Starmer and co are foaming for violence...but there weren't. Also, they have banned 11 people from getting visas because they were "agitators" and are deploying 4k police officers. Just as a reminder though, the UK has people standing for political office who were convicted of terrorist offences, we have people here leading terrorist groups in other countries, we have people turning up illegally who are carrying out terrorist attacks in the UK regularly...it is a very odd situation. One of the groups at the pro-Palestine protest is also funded by the same groups that fund Labour. There has obviously been quite a bit of violence at these events and adherents of this ideology have carried out terrorist attacks in the UK...but they are allied with a group that funds Labour so...all good.
- onetokeoverthe 6mo agofirst time they admitted it.
- phyzix5761 6mo agoThe UK is one of the most effective and longest running surveillance states so this should not be a surprise to anyone.
- Joker_vD 6mo agoWell, Orwell wrote about what he knew.
- xeonmc 6mo agoAnd Alan Moore
- Leonard_of_Q 6mo agoWhether they're 'effective' is unclear but that this has been a long-growing trend is clear and with that I wonder why this post was downvoted.
- skippyboxedhero 6mo agoYes, the fact that large number of criminal activities have effectively been decriminalized would tend to beg the question why this is being deployed at a political protest. The implication of police state is that they care about crime, but they do not care about crime. Anyone can turn up in Britain, claim asylum and will be sent to a hotel closed down for their comfort. Many visas were denied for speakers at this protest. It is a politician state, not a police state. Facial recognition is being deployed against political opponents, not criminals.
- KaiserPro 6mo ago> most effective I mean its not. Plus with the court backlogs rising, the chances of you getting convicted are rapidly diminishing
- Joker_vD 6mo ago> the court backlogs rising Well, I guess they'll have to raise the custody time limits to something more reasonable then, like a year or so. I mean, as long as you get a trial eventually, this is fine, right?
- fidotron 6mo agoI'm old enough to remember when my colleagues were vigourously expressing concern about the potential for Oyster cards to be used to track who was protesting where. What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to find who did it. Given things like that you really have to wonder what is all the surveillance for exactly?
- dgellow 6mo agoI’m sure we can find a better anecdote than a bike being stolen…
- unethical_ban 6mo agoOmniscient government surveillance in practice will be of far more use for harassment and suppressing political dissent than it ever will be used for the public good.
- bluefirebrand 6mo agoThe road to hell is paved with good intentions Even if the people who are putting all of this surveillance in place genuinely do want to do good, the surveillance will still be in place if someone less scrupulous gains power
- krisbolton 6mo agoDid that risk materialise? I suppose it would be only the same as credit cards. With a valid warrant authorities can gain access to information. But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament. I'm more concerned about ensuring the legal powers are checked and balanced, and stay that way.
- like_any_other 6mo agoWarrants aren't all you think they are (this is for the USA, but the UK is not exactly a beacon of liberty in comparison, so I doubt it's much better): https://web.archive.org/web/20140718122350/https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liberty-or-paper-shield/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140718122350/https://www.popeh... > But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament. Ah well if it's an elected government then the risk of it turning hostile to its people is zero, of course! And ask "did that risk materialize?" to the people in China, or North Korea, or Russia, or Belarus, or Germany [1], or USA [2]. There are countless examples of the dangers of surveillance, in the present and in history - you don't need a specific example of exactly Oyster cards being used, to know they are a danger. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/03/germany-deporting-pro-palestine-eu-citizens-chilling-new-step https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/03/german... [2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-administration-argues-it-can-deport-prominent-anti-israel-activist-over-his-beliefs/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-administration-argues-it-ca...
- krona 6mo agoPerhaps it will be the first protest where FR is used, but the first pilot (which ended in March) just put 2 FR cameras on a street in Croydon and they arrested "170 wanted criminals" in 6 months. https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-makes-one-arrest-every-35-minutes-during-live-facial-recognition-pilot-509256 https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-makes-one-arrest-every-3...
- croisillon 6mo agowondering about that line: A 36-year-old woman who had been unlawfully at large for more than 20 years and was wanted for failing to appeal at court for an assault in 2004. so she was 16 when she "disappeared" (how, where, sleeping in the streets?) and the camera can link a 16 y.o. face to a 36 y.o. one after probably rough years?
- nomel 6mo agoWhat's the argument here? Thats crimes should be forgiven after 16 years, or that facial recognition is demonstrably robust?
- sverhagen 6mo agoThat it's a fishy story?
- novok 6mo agoHe is implying he doubts the accuracy of that 'match'.
- walletdrainer 6mo ago> Thats crimes should be forgiven after 16 years That’s very common, yes.
- croisillon 6mo agonot understanding written words is one thing, but your lack of basic maths is appalling
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- cjs_ac 6mo ago> Live facial recognition will scan the faces of those heading to the “Unite the Kingdom, Unite the West” rally in the borough of Camden, marking the first time the technology has been authorized for use at a protest in the UK. The rally was organized by activist Tommy Robinson who says the rally is for “national unity, free speech and Christian values.” Let's have a look at Tommy Robinson's Wikipedia article*: > Robinson has a history of criminal convictions,[5] including for crimes such as assault,[6] threats,[7] harassment,[8] and fraud,[5] as well as contempt of court rulings relating to his videos, and has served five prison terms between 2005 and 2025. In June 2022, Robinson said that he lost £100,000 in gambling before declaring bankruptcy in March 2021. He also said he owed an estimated £160,000 to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). In August 2024, The Times said that he owed in the region of £2 million to his creditors, and was the subject of a HMRC investigation over unpaid taxes. The Metropolitan Police are (justifiably) expecting this protest to turn into a violent riot, and have planned accordingly. British police forces have a long-established procedure for collecting CCTV evidence during riots, and then using that to prosecute rioters afterwards. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson
- Vaslo 6mo ago[flagged]
- multjoy 6mo ago[flagged]
- mrighele 6mo agoFrom the article: > a pro-Palestinian march marking “Nakba Day,” happening in London on the same day with an estimated 30,000 attendees, will not face the same biometric surveillance.
- Vaslo 6mo agoMods here are getting ridiculous- who is the mod that removed my comment for just saying literally the opposite opinion of the original commenter? Why would my comment come down but not the OPs??
- Leonard_of_Q 6mo ago[flagged]
- KaiserPro 6mo ago> OK, London Police, how about doing the same with the recurring 'pro-Palestine' manifestations? The Palestine Action demos are far easier to police, because its a proscribed group, anyone expressing support for them are instantly nicked. Hence why there are something like >2000 arrests. Now one could argue that this is an affront to freedom of speech, but given the way you've written this I suspect that you might not agree with me. > 'two-tier justice' in the UK, a record which launched people like 'Tommy Robinson' (a pseudonym hence the quotes) into the spotlight I would strongly contest that the justice system launched him. Given that he founded the EDL, and spent most of the time headbutting people, I would say he's famous because of the work he put in, to be famous. Side note: its the Met, not london police, and the police are distinct and separate from the courts
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> how about doing the same with the recurring 'pro-Palestine' manifestations? Genuine question: has there been physical violence (against people, not property) at their protests in the UK?
- skippyboxedhero 6mo ago[flagged]
- Caracas288 6mo agoRegarding the broader picture, it’s interesting that despite the ineffectiveness of even major protests over the past decades—Iraq being the prime example—governments are introducing more obstacles to disincentivise them. From the perspective of government, why not simply ignore such events, use existing (extensive) laws which cover them? It’s like states are unconsciously preparing for the large-scale disruption which may yet come to pass.
- pbhjpbhj 6mo agoYou think police should ignore situations in which violence and destruction of property are highly likely? Why? How does that benefit society? At what point do you allow intervention? After they've destroyed £x,000 of property? After people are assaulted? How are you proposing police get deployed safely in those circumstances with 10s of thousands of protesters/rioters in the streets? Don't you think maintaining law& order is a necessary activity of the state in a democracy? You can't seriously think we should stand back and give over or streets to whoever can be most violent?
- Caracas288 6mo agoNo, I didn’t say police should ignore violence, I actually said that existing laws would be sufficient. I was referring to governments ‘ignoring’, i.e. not further restricting rights to protest, not the police ignoring protests. To address it though, I think we are in a bad situation when widespread violence is even a risk; it indicates that civic pride has completely broken down. I don’t know what the answer would be in that situation, and I’m not proposing a solution to it. (I’m not sure we’re there quite yet either) More important than people trusting authority is authority trusting the people. The more trust in a society, the less ‘law and order’ needs to be handled by structures external to the social mass.
- nuyarusskii 6mo ago"Why not ignore such events?" Because then (when mass protests are simply ignored) the "Russian disinformation" about UK not being precisely a "democracy" suddenly starts looking true? If you have no protests, it means that the public is ok with what the government is doing. In a democracy (whatever one understands by it) that is.
- sureglymop 6mo agoIt's crazy how little hardware is required to do facial recognition, OCR and CLIP. Immich on my little raspberry pi swiftly chewed through 100k pictures over night.
- yamillove 6mo agoTons of terrorists are wondering what to do now.
- lorecore 6mo agoI'm staunchly pro-Palestinian, despise Tommy Robinson and still think this is not a good thing. The UK has been draconian with its anti-free speech and surveillance. Even if you hate what this guy stands for (I do), it's only a matter of time before these techniques are used against causes you do stand for. Somehow I don't think Tommy Robinson would take such an approach to say the classification of Palestine Action as a "terrorist" organization by the UK government though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Action#Proscription_after_RAF_Brize_Norton_break-in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Action#Proscription_...
- pbhjpbhj 6mo ago[flagged]
- lorecore 6mo ago[flagged]
- nailer 6mo ago[flagged]
- lorecore 6mo agoPalestine Action did none of those things. Lying about it may start to give you an answer to your question. I also don’t follow the mythology surrounding religion.
- chadgpt3 6mo agoNotice how you've lumped in "support of terrorist groups" (i.e. holding placards) with raping people's daughters?
- nailer 6mo ago[flagged]
- xeonmc 6mo agoRemember, remember, the 5th of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason Why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot.
- mancerayder 6mo agoI've just finished watching 'The Capture' which is a UK spy show about AI facial recognition and deep fakes, which takes all of this one step further. While it's fictional, they're show these central command type rooms with big screens that let a group of people on PCs manage automated tracking of people based on criteria they pop in, and various probability statistics of recognizing people. I've always wondered how it looks, all these thousands of camera feeds, when the authorities are searching and monitoring all those feeds.