Revealed: Home Office secretly lobbied for facial recognition ‘spy’ company
Revealed: Home Office secretly lobbied for facial recognition ‘spy’ company
Officials reflected policing minister’s enthusiasm to roll out controversial technology across the country, particularly in retail settings
Facewatch uses cameras to check faces against a watch list and, despite widespread concern over the technology, it has already been introduced in hundreds of high street shops and supermarkets.
The use of facial recognition has provoked fierce criticism over its impact on privacy and human rights, with the European Union seeking to ban the technology in public spaces through proposed legislation.
Stop using passive language if you want it to stop. All of this privacy invasive nonsense is stalking. Use the words stalking and stalkerware. Call it exploitation, authoritarian, feudalism, and theft. It must be universal. This is the direct result of selling ownership of yourself for the ads based internet. All of it must die now. We are on the path to a new age of feudalism. "You will own nothing." - The only difference between a citizen and a serf is ownership. A serf is just a slave that might cause minor repercussions if a feudal lord rapes or murders them.
“Passive language” is a specific thing that doesn’t apply to what you’re talking about.
I think the words you’re looking for are “propagandized language” or “pacified language”
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!