Technology

Closer and closer to a social credit score system

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?

Stregth through unity and unity through faith?

Just wear juggalo facepaint on your commute, privacy maintained

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