The couple of times I’ve even done as little as fly through Heathrow it has been apparent to me that the UK is on its way to becoming an unfettered surveillance state, and I never hear anyone talking about it.
oniony · 8h ago
We're too scared to talk about it lest our faces get added to a list.
EA-3167 · 3h ago
You say "on its way" as if it hasn't been at the forefront of this for decades. Until China and post-9/11 US ramped up facial recognition and CCTV projects MASSIVELY, the UK didn't just have more CCTV units per capita than anywhere else on Earth, they had the most in absolute terms. Even now last I checked the UK has about 1 camera for every 11 people.
conartist6 · 9h ago
If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.
We are going to be hearing that argument a lot as the AI police state evolves
EliRivers · 2h ago
I have so much to hide.
I want to hide what I had for breakfast. I want to hide what books I read recently. I want to hide which TV shows I watch. I want to hide who I have conversations with. I want to hide who I avoid. I engage in so much completely legal behaviour, much of it quite laudable, that I simply want to hide.
ebiester · 7h ago
And you’re not trans. And you don’t perform drag. And you don’t go to an event with a lot of gay people. And you don’t get mistaken for someone because ai isn’t perfect. (Especially if your race doesn’t have many people in the dataset.)
But the people that don’t have anything to fear don’t see anything wrong with “inconveniencing” these groups.
spwa4 · 6h ago
This is the UK, and it's the police controlling these vans. So trans, drag and gay are not at issue here.
And somehow, the countries where it is a problem are never discussed. All muslim countries, for example, almost like not all religions are equal ... if you read hrw or amnesty you'll find that even the most moderate muslim countries like Morocco or Turkey deal violently with sexuality (all forms, really, yes, being trans drag will, of course, attract immediate attention. But let's not pretend they leave public displays of straight sexuality (including subtle and tasteful) alone). And Morocco and Turkey are absolutely nothing like something like Afghanistan or even Iran.
But in the UK the line is drawn pretty damn far. Are you seriously complaining about that?
ebiester · 2h ago
I'm in particular speaking about the UK, actually. consider how much anti-trans backlash there has been in the country. Consider how in Weimar Germany there was a fair bit of acceptance for the LGBT community that was quickly undone - all it takes is a charismatic leader or a king that goes along with it.
ivell · 5h ago
I guess at present the UK is very tolerant. But no one can predict the future. It can go downhill. Even for developed western countries. Once surveillance is setup, it is hard to restrict its usage. Especially when the society gets used to it.
arethuza · 8h ago
HN title is wrong - the article title says "...across police forces in England".
oniony · 8h ago
It's not wrong as England is within the UK: it's just not as precise as it could have been.
arethuza · 7h ago
HN Guidelines say "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait"
thebruce87m · 7h ago
The changed title is actually misleading since it includes three other countries that didn’t appear in the original.
amarcheschi · 6h ago
That's on me, i made a mistake when writing the title
sidewndr46 · 8h ago
Doesn't the UK have cameras everywhere doing this anyways?
spwa4 · 7h ago
Nope. They started a long time ago with the cameras and didn't upgrade them, because money. Which means a pretty large part of the cameras have pathetic resolution and are black and white, as well as being too far away from much of their vision. Useful for locating protestors sorry ("getting a general idea of criminal activity"), not so useful for recognizing anyone.
sidewndr46 · 4h ago
That is interesting because it implies either the UK's camera infrastructure has simply amazing reliability with parts never failing. Or it could be that they have huge stocks of the hardware that they haven't yet exhausted.
beardyw · 8h ago
10 vans works out at one for every 10,000 square miles. Hardly a "roll out across the UK".
holsta · 8h ago
> Hardly a "roll out across the UK".
What's your threshold for when it becomes a problem? Should we wait until it becomes a problem, or should we try to stop this level of facial recognition?
You should also assume this is a proof of concept. It'll get improved and scaled down to run on every police vehicle, and on every camera the police already control.
spwa4 · 6h ago
It has already been scaled down to android phones (you'll find phones are an excellent platform for this), where you can find apps that are meant to let venue-owners guard entrances against specific individuals. That's illegal, but obviously common enough to make such apps.
davesmylie · 8h ago
Well, that's some distopean shit right there ain't it
Also from the country that pissed on the request of its population to curb immigration decade after decade, for cheap labor force, political gains, and globalist ideology...
dole · 6h ago
Also from the country with television detection vans so you can pay your TV tax, what CAN'T vans do?
Colonial powers are not entitled to that argument, it's hypocritical.
philipallstar · 6h ago
> Colonial powers are not entitled to that argument, it's hypocritical.
Yes they are. Everyone everywhere has invaded or otherwise traded their way into power in other countries (or pre-country equivalents). It's extremely foolish to bucket the world into Britain and not-Britain if one isn't entirely ignorant of history.
rangestransform · 6h ago
They are entitled to that argument by virtue of having guns and borders. I would rather be hypocritical than have my government expend resources on other countries altruistically
coldtea · 4h ago
Did the people suffering the consequences of illegal immigration today performed that colonialism?
Not even their ancestors at colonial times benefitted much from it: the industrial working class of Britain was in dire position despite Britain being a colonial Empire. That money and power went to the ruling classes and their middle class bootlickers.
drcongo · 8h ago
I'm so embarrassed to be British these days. We're a small island of small minded people.
potato3732842 · 8h ago
Small mindedness (to use your words, though I think other sets of words are perhaps more descripitive) is a condition that spreads like the plague. If you don't constantly stamp it out through ostracizing and marginalizing the infected and those who intentionally create the conditions for it then you will be overrun.
ThrowawayR2 · 5h ago
We're already well into the process of being overrun so that strategy obviously didn't work.
mrangle · 6h ago
Are your ideas not good enough to persuade?
joseda-hg · 3h ago
Good ideas don't have to be persuassive to be good
chownie · 6h ago
If "just persuade them with your good ideas" was a workable solution it would've worked at least once by now, instead the means of persuasion are owned by psychopaths who continually convince the public to vote self-destructively. The enshittification of society continues.
mrangle · 2h ago
>If "just persuade them with your good ideas" was a workable solution it would've worked at least once by now
If I have this right: your measurement for whether or not people are in their right mind is if they take to your specific ideas?
Have you considered the possibility that people are most often persuaded by good ideas and your ideas are awful?
And insofar as you present them in an ostensibly good light, you are lying somewhere in the presentation and people can see that.
To be clear, your perspective is that everyone else is a psychopath or so much dumber than you, personally, as to be led by psychopaths.
And it's not you that's dumber than most others, nor who is led by the psychopath(s), nor who is the psychopath that needs to advance their ideas by marginalizing people who have other ideas.
And the strategy is to marginalize people because...checks notes... your ideas are unpalatable to the population. For no good reason.
Why are your ideas unpalatable to the population, from their perspective?
Any good policy wonk will know that much, will be able to explain the opposition's reasons accurately and in detail, and will be able to steel-man their own argument utilizing that perspective.
Whereas a manipulative person will avoid that level of analysis.
lm28469 · 8h ago
Largest empire in history in 1920 to small isolated island speedrun any %.
It's a good modern historical example of how you cannot take anything for granted on a long enough timescale (wink wink USA), and it wasn't even that long, no matter how good or bad things are looking right now all it takes is a couple of generations to radically change the situation
spwa4 · 6h ago
That's because empires don't work. In order to make them work what's needed is to have the center of the empire maintain infrastructure on the borders of the empire. The center grows when you get an empire, but ... it's an absurdly small growth compared to the border growth. Hence empires exhaust themselves attempting to guard borders and you start seeing absurdities like military fortresses manned by 5 unarmed (because too expensive) soldiers. Both the English and Roman empires did that. And then they abandon their borders to save some more money, and it all just ... fades away.
And this is a cursed choice because empires need resources (as they will find themselves in a war with just about everyone else at some point, so imports don't work). Those resources are only available in far away mines. So you need to have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure everywhere..
But you can't have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure because you can't defend it, you can't build, you can't pay for it.
So ... no empires. Or at least, no permanent ones. People keep trying though.
philipallstar · 7h ago
We're so small-minded we let in more than basically anyone else as a percentage of our population and land area.
I mean, if by small minded you mean "stupid" you're probably right, but I don't think you can mean much else. Unless you've never been anywhere else.
bbg2401 · 7h ago
Being embarrassed by your nationality or citizenship is certainly a feat of small mindedness.
We are going to be hearing that argument a lot as the AI police state evolves
I want to hide what I had for breakfast. I want to hide what books I read recently. I want to hide which TV shows I watch. I want to hide who I have conversations with. I want to hide who I avoid. I engage in so much completely legal behaviour, much of it quite laudable, that I simply want to hide.
But the people that don’t have anything to fear don’t see anything wrong with “inconveniencing” these groups.
And somehow, the countries where it is a problem are never discussed. All muslim countries, for example, almost like not all religions are equal ... if you read hrw or amnesty you'll find that even the most moderate muslim countries like Morocco or Turkey deal violently with sexuality (all forms, really, yes, being trans drag will, of course, attract immediate attention. But let's not pretend they leave public displays of straight sexuality (including subtle and tasteful) alone). And Morocco and Turkey are absolutely nothing like something like Afghanistan or even Iran.
But in the UK the line is drawn pretty damn far. Are you seriously complaining about that?
What's your threshold for when it becomes a problem? Should we wait until it becomes a problem, or should we try to stop this level of facial recognition?
You should also assume this is a proof of concept. It'll get improved and scaled down to run on every police vehicle, and on every camera the police already control.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funkmesswagen_(Fernmeldewesen)...
Yes they are. Everyone everywhere has invaded or otherwise traded their way into power in other countries (or pre-country equivalents). It's extremely foolish to bucket the world into Britain and not-Britain if one isn't entirely ignorant of history.
Not even their ancestors at colonial times benefitted much from it: the industrial working class of Britain was in dire position despite Britain being a colonial Empire. That money and power went to the ruling classes and their middle class bootlickers.
If I have this right: your measurement for whether or not people are in their right mind is if they take to your specific ideas?
Have you considered the possibility that people are most often persuaded by good ideas and your ideas are awful?
And insofar as you present them in an ostensibly good light, you are lying somewhere in the presentation and people can see that.
To be clear, your perspective is that everyone else is a psychopath or so much dumber than you, personally, as to be led by psychopaths.
And it's not you that's dumber than most others, nor who is led by the psychopath(s), nor who is the psychopath that needs to advance their ideas by marginalizing people who have other ideas.
And the strategy is to marginalize people because...checks notes... your ideas are unpalatable to the population. For no good reason.
Why are your ideas unpalatable to the population, from their perspective?
Any good policy wonk will know that much, will be able to explain the opposition's reasons accurately and in detail, and will be able to steel-man their own argument utilizing that perspective.
Whereas a manipulative person will avoid that level of analysis.
It's a good modern historical example of how you cannot take anything for granted on a long enough timescale (wink wink USA), and it wasn't even that long, no matter how good or bad things are looking right now all it takes is a couple of generations to radically change the situation
And this is a cursed choice because empires need resources (as they will find themselves in a war with just about everyone else at some point, so imports don't work). Those resources are only available in far away mines. So you need to have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure everywhere..
But you can't have the huge area and borders, and infrastructure because you can't defend it, you can't build, you can't pay for it.
So ... no empires. Or at least, no permanent ones. People keep trying though.
I mean, if by small minded you mean "stupid" you're probably right, but I don't think you can mean much else. Unless you've never been anywhere else.