Facial recognition cameras in Croydon should alarm all Londoners
The instalment of permanent facial recognition cameras in Croydon should worry us all, writes Big Brother Watch interim director Rebecca Vincent
Croydon, Big Brother is watching you
It’s been a busy month at Big Brother Watch. Amidst a number of worrying bills being rushed through parliament at breakneck speed and the Home Office’s relentless battle to break encryption, we’ve also seen alarming escalations in the roll-out of live facial recognition (LFR) technology that should have everyone worried.
Things were bad enough when South Wales Police trialled the use of a network of LFR cameras across an entire city centre in Cardiff – a UK first – for two of the Six Nations games earlier this month. In the LFR zone were places of worship, a family court, abortion and health clinics, and other sites where anyone would want their right to privacy respected. This represented a gross violation of privacy of anyone who had reason to be in Cardiff on a busy Saturday.
The grand total of arrests during the Wales vs England rugby match on 15 March, when police scanned 162,680 faces? Zero – evidencing a shameful waste of police resources, on top of serious rights-based concerns.
Now the situation has reached an even more disturbing new low, with reports emerging over the weekend that the London Metropolitan Police Service is installing the UK’s first permanent network of fixed LFR cameras in Croydon town centre. Previously, the Met has only used CCTV cameras mounted on police vans, which are clearly marked and used only during time-limited deployments.
The move represents an alarming expansion of the surveillance state, and a further slide towards a dystopian nightmare that could quickly take hold across the UK. It also underscores the urgent need for legislative safeguards on LFR, which to date has not been addressed in any parliamentary legislation. Police forces have been left to write their own policies on how they plan to use LFR, and can choose how and when to employ it. For its part, the Met’s “LFR watchlist” expands beyond those suspected of criminal activity, including vulnerable persons and even victims of crimes.
Enough is enough: it’s time to halt all use of LFR technology and ensure full parliamentary scrutiny and oversight. This Orwellian technology should never be installed in or used in conjunction with live CCTV networks. Legislation must be developed without delay to ensure proper oversight and safeguards for any permissible use of LFR, before it rolls out any further.
France protects encryption… but the UK?
Last week the French National Assembly voted down a dangerous legislative proposal that would have forced all secure messaging services to create an encryption backdoor, in the name of fighting drug trafficking. But embarrassingly, the UK Home Office is still seeking to do precisely that, through its encryption-breaching order to Apple.
The matter is currently under consideration by the secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which convened behind closed doors on 14 March, ignoring the dozen or so journalists and campaigners – myself included – lining the corridor outside the courtroom, hoping our submissions urging the Tribunal to open the hearing to the public would be considered and we might be allowed in. But so far, not a word about what happened that day or what will come next. What’s at stake is overwhelmingly in the public interest, as once encryption is broken for anyone, it’s broken for everyone – and this will not stop with Apple. The Home Office should revoke this draconian proposal and ensure encryption and our privacy rights remain intact.
Quote of the week:
“We have ceded so many of the core operations of our lives and institutions to tech, we must recognise that strong encryption isn’t the enemy of security — it is security. The argument that weakening encryption will make any of us safer is as wrong as it is dangerous.”
Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, in The Financial Times
The Bill turning banks into spies
As we await tomorrow’s spring statement by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, there’s been widespread attention to the Labour government’s expected welfare cuts. But a related threat continues to loom in the background, in the form of dangerous proposals in the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error, and Recovery) Bill, which will soon come to the report stage in the House of Commons. Alarmingly, in the name of rooting out welfare fraud, this bill would give the government unprecedented powers to force banks to spy on everyone’s bank accounts, regardless of whether they’ve ever received benefits. It also takes a disproportionately punitive approach to those who are suspected of fraud, as well as those who may have received erroneous payments due to the Department for Work and Pensions’ own mistakes. This flawed bill is in dire need of amendments before it progresses further.
A recommendation:
All eyes seem to be on Netflix’s four-part miniseries Adolescence, which has triggered a divisive public discourse about the harms children face online. My take? The series is worth a watch, and it’s a jarring reminder to parents of the need to be fully involved in our children’s lives, both online and offline. But beware the calls this has triggered for a further clampdown on everyone’s rights under the pretext of online safety. We must educate our children about online harms and ensure they are fully supported at home, in schools, and in local communities, but the popularity of this fictionalised programme does not justify calls for mass censorship or surveillance.