Sky News – Home Office pushes for expanded police use of facial recognition

The Home Office released a survey asking companies how they can make use of facial recognition within Government security services. The Government plans to introduce even more facial recognition surveillance operations over the next 18 months across 43 police forces in England and Wales. This move is not welcome by privacy rights campaigners. Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said: “It’s disturbing and deeply undemocratic that the government is planning to expand facial recognition surveillance in the UK. This is an Orwellian mass surveillance tool rarely seen outside of Russia and China and has absolutely no place in Britain.

“The government has no mandate at all to do this, and the fact that the rest of the democratic world is legislating to ban live facial recognition surveillance shows just how backwards the Home Office’s approach to this is.

“Live facial recognition has the potential to invade the privacy of millions of Brits and turn us into walking ID cards living in a surveillance state.

“It is totally unnecessary, un-Conservative and un-British, and the policing minister would do best to focus on fixing our broken law enforcement rather than spending taxpayers’ money on dystopian, experimental software.”

Sky News – Home Office eyeing expansion of ‘Orwellian’ facial recognition

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