https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/20/police-to-be-able-to-run-face-recognition-searches-on-50m-driving-licence-holders
Exclusive: Privacy campaigners say clause in new criminal justice bill will put all UK drivers on ‘permanent police lineup’
Remember how back when the Snowden Revelations came out that the UK had civil society surveillace network just as big or bigger than the US (both of which being a lot more like what Russia and China do than what one would naivelly expect in Democractic countries)?
Well, in the US some of it was actually rolled back because it was unconstitutional.
In the UK, which has no written Constitution, even though what they were doing was unlawfull at the time, it was simply all made retroactivelly lawful by a law passed by that government. Then the Editor of the newspaper who brought out the Snowden Revelations - which is this very newspaper - was kicked out never to be hired to any important position by any large media company over there again, and the whole thing was never again mentioned including by this very newspaper that has been producing "what a surprise!" articles like this every time their government passes another "lets be more like China" law like this.
That country has a voting system as rigged as the one in the US (hence how the current government has 60% of parliamentarians on 42% of votes), no Constitution to protect even basic rights from a government with a mere "37% of votes" (enough for this party to get a parliamentary majority) and political and money elites which are far more elitist (think people who see most other people as "plebes") and authoritarian-leaning than pretty much all other democratic nations (I suppose the jury is out on whether the UK Tories are worse than Orban or not, though they're certainly much posher sounding)
Well that's one way to deter car usage in future generations.
You could almost call it a "war on motorists", Mr Sunak?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The police will be able to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of Britain’s 50 million driving licence holders under a law change being quietly introduced by the government.
Should the police wish to put a name to an image collected on CCTV, or shared on social media, the legislation would provide them with the powers to search driving licence records for a match.
The move, contained in a single clause in a new criminal justice bill, could put every driver in the country in a permanent police lineup, according to privacy campaigners.
The intention to allow the police or the National Crime Agency (NCA) to exploit the UK’s driving licence records is not explicitly referenced in the bill or in its explanatory notes, raising criticism from leading academics that the government is “sneaking it under the radar”.
The policing minister, Chris Philp, made a first explicit reference to what appears to be the unsaid purpose of the legislative change during a first committee sitting of MPs scrutinising the bill on 12 December.
Questioning Graeme Biggar, the director general of the National Crime Agency, Philp said: “There is a power in clause 21 to allow police and law enforcement, including the NCA, to access driving licence records to do a facial recognition search, which, anomalously, is currently quite difficult.
The original article contains 1,028 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
On one hand, ugh, on the other, I can see how it would be useful, if only the police had the resources to do something with the information
How is this not a fourth amendment violation? If the government can ignore the rules the people should do the same.
How is this not a fourth amendment violation?
Because this is the UK and they don't have a 4th amendment...
The UK doesn't even have a written Constitution, much less one with at least 4 amendments.
They have a government with 60% parliamentary seats on 42% of votes (theirs is a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, not a presidential system) who are not that far from Fascist and moving towards it (what's in this article is far from the worst liberty-curtailing things they've done) only the posh education of its members give them that special posh-sounding language accent (yeah, rich people have a different unique accent over there) and posh manners and language use that so dazzles some foreigners and a certain old and undereducated slice of the locals.
In the absence of a written Constituton and now that, having left the EU, they are not bound by treaty to be members of the European Convention Of Human Rights (which, by the way, was one of the very reasons some of the current government members stated for supporting Brexit), they're leading the country towards Fascism one step at a time (though they're too poshly educated to do something as unseemly as actually goose-stepping)