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
    87·
    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.

  • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.mlEnglish
    60·
    1 year ago

    The UK is starting to look a lot like they watched V for Vendetta and thought it was about a perfect government system, betrayed by some dirty hippies.

  • Bonehead@kbin.social
    53·
    1 year ago

    Ok, so the Britain in V For Vendetta wasn’t meant to be a model to build on and improve, you guys know that right?

    • leftzero@lemmy.ml
      16·
      1 year ago

      It was inspired by Thatcher’s Britain, which is what the current breed of British fascists are trying to recreate and “improve” on, so… yeah, they probably see Norsfire as a good inspiration for what they want to achieve. Sadly, wizard as he might claim to be, Moore’s curses seem to be mostly ineffectual…

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    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.

    The heavily redacted correspondence also reveals that, even before the alleged threat, an internal February ICO briefing into its Facewatch investigation – codenamed Operation Kegon 3 – indicates that the Home Office had made it plain to the regulator that facial recognition to combat retail crime was being pushed aggressively by Philp.

    “The Home Office have flagged that LFR [live facial recognition] in a commercial setting for crime detection/prevention purposes is an area that is high on the minister’s agenda,” states an executive summary of progress in the ICO investigation into Facewatch, weeks before it officially concluded.

    The ICO concluded its investigation into Facewatch on 31 March – several weeks after the Home Office warning – with a blog explaining that no further regulatory action was required against the firm because it was “satisfied the company has a legitimate purpose for using people’s information for the detection and prevention of crime”.

    “This disclosure is utterly damning and appears to show that Chris Philp intervened in the data regulator’s investigation of a private facial recognition company he was having meetings with,” said Mark Johnson, advocacy manager of Big Brother Watch.

    A Home Office spokesperson said: “As the documents show, the minister made it clear that he was not seeking to influence any ICO investigation but to inform them of the government’s views about the seriousness of retail crime and abuse of staff.

    The original article contains 990 words, the summary contains 271 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!