Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: The Todal Newsgroups: alt.privacy,comp.security.misc,uk.politics.misc,uk.legal,uk.misc,soc.culture.europe Subject: Re: UK man fined after avoiding facial recognition scanner on street Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2019 10:12:43 +0000 Lines: 70 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net dQ9J0yDp0/R80UKCBXTs6wOHj57XzkfavCQe8ptZzcl7iSIZ7/ Cancel-Lock: sha1:DgnE6la5Tc+GBrCscc4gCYFCR/4= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.5.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Language: en-GB Xref: csiph.com alt.privacy:23203 comp.security.misc:1428 uk.politics.misc:921050 uk.legal:885691 uk.misc:66777 soc.culture.europe:35889 On 15/02/2019 09:55, Incubus wrote: > On 2019-02-15, --Soccer4Life>> wrote: >> >> >> A man has been fined after refusing to be scanned by controversial facial recognition cameras being trialled by the Metropolitan Police. >> >> The force had put out a statement saying "anyone who declines to be scanned will not necessarily be viewed as suspicious". However, witnesses said several people were stopped after covering their faces or pulling up hoods. >> >> Campaign group Big Brother Watch said one man had seen placards warning members of the public that automatic facial recognition cameras were filming them from a parked police van. >> >> "He simply pulled up the top of his jumper over the bottom of his face, put his head down and walked past," said director Silkie Carlo. >> >> "There was nothing suspicious about him at all _ you have the right to avoid [the cameras], you have the right to cover your face. I think he was exercising his rights." >> >> Ms Carlo, who was monitoring Thursday's trial in Romford, London, told The Independent she saw a plainclothed police officer follow the man before a group of officers "pulled him over to one side". >> >> She said they demanded to see the man's identification, which he gave them, and became "accusatory and aggressive". >> >> "The guy told them to p*** off and then they gave him the _90 public order fine for swearing," Ms Carlo added. "He was really angry." >> >> A spokesperson said officers were instructed to "use their judgment" on whether to stop people who avoid cameras. >> >> "Officers stopped a man who was seen acting suspiciously in Romford town centre during the deployment of the live facial recognition technology," a statement said. >> >> "After being stopped the man became aggressive and made threats towards officers. He was issued with a penalty notice for disorder as a result." >> >> Eight people were arrested during the eight-hour trial, although only three were a direct result of facial recognition technology. >> >> A 15-year-old boy identified by the cameras was arrested on suspicion of robbery but released with no further action. >> >> A 28-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of false imprisonment and another man, 35-year-old man, was arrested on suspicion of breach of a molestation order. >> >> The other arrests were two teenage boys accused of robbery, a 17-year-old boy accused of firing a gun and two men, aged 25 and 46, for drug possession. >> >> The deployment trial was due to continue on Friday, but rescheduled because of forecast snow and cold temperatures causing "low footfall". >> >> Monitors saw several other people stopped outside Romford station, in north east London, including a student who had pulled his hood up and a man handcuffed and put in a police van. >> >> Activists from the Liberty human rights group said they spoke to a youth worker who was stopped because he "looked like someone" on a watchlist, but had been misidentified. >> >> Scotland Yard said the two-day deployment of cameras in Romford would be the last of 10 trials of the controversial technology. >> >> The Independent revealed that more than _200,000 was spent on six deployments that resulted in no arrests between August 2016 and July last year. Two people wanted for violent offences were arrested after a trial in December. >> >> Critics have called the force's use of facial recognition a "shambles" and accused Scotland Yard of wasting public money. >> >> Automatic facial recognition software compares live footage of people's faces to photos from a watchlist of selected images from a police database. >> >> Any potential matches are flashed up as an alert to officers, who then compare the faces and decide whether to stop someone. >> >> The Metropolitan Police has described the deployments as "overt" and said members of the public were informed facial recognition was being used by posters and leaflets. >> >> But no one questioned by The Independent after they passed through a scanning zone in central London in December had seen police publicity material, and campaigners claim the technology is being rolled out "by stealth". >> >> Detective Chief Superintendent Ivan Balhatchet, Scotland Yard's lead for facial recognition, said a full independent evaluation will be carried out. >> >> "The technology used in Romford forms part of the Met's ongoing efforts to reduce crime in the area, with a specific focus on tackling violence," he added. >> >> "As with all previous deployments the technology was used overtly. We continue to engage with many different stakeholders, some who actively challenge our use of this technology." > > Police State 2019... > It's outrageous. It's what people would expect of Corbyn's socialist state of Great Britain. Labour does, of course, have a track record of imprisoning suspects without trial and being slapped down by our judges. It always made Blunkett very petulant, when he was slapped down.