5 ms·

What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you

What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you exit the tube?

dofm 2mo ago
It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality. If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less. A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence. But I think the idea that face recognition is being used to suppress protest is pretty overcooked; apart from the utter silliness around the banning of Palestine Action, we have a solid right to protest and we do. The main problem is London has far too few police officers, and it has a transport system that is under consistent terror threat.
- fragmede 2mo ago
  Last one was in 2017 though.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- _heimdall 2mo ago
  What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future?
  - foldr 2mo ago
    We’re talking about the practicalities of arresting protestors and whether or not face recognition on the tube would be a practical aid to police officers for this sort of purpose. Who should or shouldn’t be arrested is a separate question (and no-one here is suggesting that peaceful protestors should be arrested).
  - dofm 2mo ago
    Either. Where there is a need. The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait? Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance policing is arresting people who are clearly about to do a thing. That might indeed be disruptive protest where it is illegal — for example if you know someone is intending to deface a painting or a monument, or has been planning to attend a protest to disrupt it. I think people look at face detection policing in this context and imagine thoughtcrime, when the reality is e.g. finding a disturbed person who has been doing a dry run on pushing a stranger off a tube train platform (a real problem that seems to happen every couple of years), catching someone who has been reported sexually assaulting fellow passengers or who has violently assaulted another passenger or someone above ground (a regular problem), trying to disrupt county-lines drug distribution etc. (absolutely constant), or, heaven help us, finding someone who has been spotted at a national railway station with someone on terror watchlists who has then disappeared into the underground. London Underground isn't a thing that can be effectively managed with ordinary policing. It has 272 stations, over 70 in central London alone. During rush hour there are up to half a million people in that system at any one time. Tube exits are choke points.
    - _heimdall 2mo ago
      I don't know English law, and I'm american so I have a bent towards protecting freedoms. That said, no I don't see it as necessary to arrest someone before they do anything wrong. There's a gray area for sure, and in the US you can, for example, be charged with conspiracy to commit murder without actually getting to that end goal. I'm always uncomfortable with how a court decides to allow a trial in such a case, though if someone has actively been surveiling their target, collecting materials or weapons, and ideally documenting their intentions somehow then I do understand why most would consider that itself punishable. If a person without a warrant gets off the tube and walks in a general direction of a protest, I wouldn't see any grounds for arrest. I'm sure there's still gray area there, say they're carrying smoke grenades or flash bangs or something - though in that case I'd assume the potential crime is possessing those items rather than walking in a direction.
foldr 2mo ago
Same grounds as for arresting them anywhere else, more or less. I am not saying that the police should ban protests (and they generally don’t). I’m just talking about the practicalities of how they could go about doing it.

What would be grounds for arresting someone at the tube stations? Is it illegal in the UK for police to believe you intend to go a certain area based on how you exit the tube?

dofm 2mo ago

It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality. If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less. A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence. But I think the idea that face recognition is being used to suppress protest is pretty overcooked; apart from the utter silliness around the banning of Palestine Action, we have a solid right to protest and we do. The main problem is London has far too few police officers, and it has a transport system that is under consistent terror threat.

fragmede 2mo ago
Last one was in 2017 though.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
_heimdall 2mo ago
What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future?
- foldr 2mo ago
  We’re talking about the practicalities of arresting protestors and whether or not face recognition on the tube would be a practical aid to police officers for this sort of purpose. Who should or shouldn’t be arrested is a separate question (and no-one here is suggesting that peaceful protestors should be arrested).
- dofm 2mo ago
  Either. Where there is a need. The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait? Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance policing is arresting people who are clearly about to do a thing. That might indeed be disruptive protest where it is illegal — for example if you know someone is intending to deface a painting or a monument, or has been planning to attend a protest to disrupt it. I think people look at face detection policing in this context and imagine thoughtcrime, when the reality is e.g. finding a disturbed person who has been doing a dry run on pushing a stranger off a tube train platform (a real problem that seems to happen every couple of years), catching someone who has been reported sexually assaulting fellow passengers or who has violently assaulted another passenger or someone above ground (a regular problem), trying to disrupt county-lines drug distribution etc. (absolutely constant), or, heaven help us, finding someone who has been spotted at a national railway station with someone on terror watchlists who has then disappeared into the underground. London Underground isn't a thing that can be effectively managed with ordinary policing. It has 272 stations, over 70 in central London alone. During rush hour there are up to half a million people in that system at any one time. Tube exits are choke points.
  - _heimdall 2mo ago
    I don't know English law, and I'm american so I have a bent towards protecting freedoms. That said, no I don't see it as necessary to arrest someone before they do anything wrong. There's a gray area for sure, and in the US you can, for example, be charged with conspiracy to commit murder without actually getting to that end goal. I'm always uncomfortable with how a court decides to allow a trial in such a case, though if someone has actively been surveiling their target, collecting materials or weapons, and ideally documenting their intentions somehow then I do understand why most would consider that itself punishable. If a person without a warrant gets off the tube and walks in a general direction of a protest, I wouldn't see any grounds for arrest. I'm sure there's still gray area there, say they're carrying smoke grenades or flash bangs or something - though in that case I'd assume the potential crime is possessing those items rather than walking in a direction.

foldr 2mo ago

Same grounds as for arresting them anywhere else, more or less. I am not saying that the police should ban protests (and they generally don’t). I’m just talking about the practicalities of how they could go about doing it.