Revealed: Home Office secretly lobbied for facial recognition ‘spy’ company
www.theguardian.com
Officials reflected policing minister’s enthusiasm to roll out controversial technology across the country, particularly in retail settings

From the article:

Senior officials at the Home Office secretly lobbied the UK’s independent privacy regulator to act “favourably” towards a private firm keen to roll out controversial facial recognition technology across the country, according to internal government emails seen by the Observer.

Correspondence reveals that the Home Office wrote to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warning that policing minister, Chris Philp, would “write to your commissioner” if the regulator’s investigation into Facewatch – whose facial recognition cameras have provoked huge opposition after being installed in shops – was not positive towards the firm.

  • jsdz@lemmy.ml
    80·
    1 year ago

    I’m not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but damned if it doesn’t look a little like what might happen if a powerful cabal of billionaires was making concerted efforts to use their political influence to lock down the remaining parts of the world where people have some degree of liberty in order to prepare for installing the authoritarian fascism they think will keep them safe in the coming apocalypse.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
      12·
      1 year ago

      The UK has always been a place were the power elites firmly believe they’re inherently superior and have a right to treat the plebes however they see fit (even the highly celebrated ending of slavery was quickly undone not long after by the - nowaydays never mentioned - invention of indentured servitude).

      The post war period with the creation of social security, the National Health Service and a more broad spreading of prosperity was a blip, not a change in trend.

      So yeah, no suprise that the toffs once again feel completelly free to treat the plebes as a different, lesser kind of being.