zlacker

[return to "Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England"]
1. Shank+Bj[view] [source] 2025-08-13 13:23:41
>>amarch+(OP)
The UK is quickly deploying surveillance state technology that people once decried China for. Whether or not this is ethical or useful, I wish the hypocrisy would be acknowledged. The OSA, the Apple encryption demands, LFR, …, it’s clearly a trend. Has society really become this dangerous that we must deploy these things?
◧◩
2. fennec+Du[view] [source] 2025-08-13 14:20:51
>>Shank+Bj
Suppose it depends on what it's used for. We could trust the government to be good, but governments are made from people, elected by people. And people are often shitbags to each other.

For all the CCTV in London I've been mugged twice and nothing was captured on CCTV nor were the police all that interested in doing anything about it. As an outsider living here I think the UK has huge social problems that are neglected in favour of retaining classism. America has the same problems but at least it's more "ah, what can ya do about it huh" rather than "we are a perfect polite society British values bla bla".

◧◩◪
3. andrep+7E[view] [source] 2025-08-13 15:03:25
>>fennec+Du
CCTV can absolutely be made to be effective and protect citizen's privacy at the same time. A legal requirement to store only encrypted data, which can only be decrypted via a court warrant (so a similar standard to searching your home or tapping your phones, not the blanket panopticon they wish to create), plus enforcement and heavy fines + prison time for anyone caught storing unencrypted data.

You need political will for this and for enforcement to take it seriously, since the technology to do so is almost trivial nowadays.

◧◩◪◨
4. varisp+aQ[view] [source] 2025-08-13 15:56:32
>>andrep+7E
This is the kind of techno-utopian fantasy that keeps authoritarianism looking respectable. “Just encrypt it and only decrypt with a warrant” sounds lovely on paper, but in practice you’ve still built the infrastructure for a 24/7 panopticon - you’ve just wrapped it in a legal fig leaf.

Governments break their own rules all the time, warrants get rubber-stamped, and “heavy fines + prison time” magically evaporate when the offenders are the state or its contractors. The technology isn’t the hard part - it’s the fact you can’t meaningfully enforce limits on a system whose entire purpose is to watch everyone, all the time. You don’t make mass surveillance safe by adding a padlock. You stop it by not building it.

◧◩◪◨⬒
5. gg82+JC2[view] [source] 2025-08-14 05:24:12
>>varisp+aQ
Because if you build it, they will come and use it for any purpose they can think of in the end!
[go to top]