[dsfyu404ed]

There's a reason they're doing it in London first. In a wealthy city like London you can get away with going full "law and order" because the ratio of rich to poor is better (i.e more rich people) and the rich generally view this as no threat to them. Then once it's normalized they roll it out to Liverpool, Belfast and everywhere else that the poors are less under the thumb of the government.

You see this in the US. Boston, DC, New York, etc are littered with surveillance cameras and ALPRs. Once it's normalized they'll roll it out to places like New Bedford, Norlfolk and Buffalo and all the other places where the government (as an organization, not as individuals) feels its respected less.

[arethuza]

If there is one place where the authorities might take a bit of care around implementing new surveillance technologies you would hope it would be Belfast.

[dsfyu404ed]

That's basically what I was thinking. I figure as soon as the system is sufficiently "mature" they'll use it there.

I hope they totally screw it up and touch off the kind of "civil unrest" that you need in order to remind the government that people have rights.

[foldr]

Romford is on the outskirts of London and is not especially wealthy.

[dsfyu404ed]

Exactly. You don't implement your Baghdad style checkpoints in Manhattan. You do it in the Bronx. The rich (the people who's non-disapproval you need) get told by the official statements (that the newspaper regurgitates) how it's the best thing since sliced bread while not actually being negatively affected by it themselves. The fact that you've got a bunch of rich people who never see the downside of each step toward the police state and don't come out strongly against it lends legitimacy to each step.

[sverige]

Your assumption is that the government is not controlled by the very wealthy already, so that their disapproval of the very thing they are engineering is possible. It's not designed to target them. It's for their benefit. There's no downside for the wealthy with this tech, it's all upside since it gives them greater control.

[dsfyu404ed]

Controlled is an odd word in this context. It's both controlled by them and seeking to diminish their capacity to resist it at the same time. I think there's some tragedy of the commons here since you've got many people advocating for more government control in specific cases and it adds up to a police state.

>There's no downside for the wealthy with this tech,

Wealthy people break petty laws (the kind of stuff these systems make it possible to crack down on) all the time. There's a reason you never see the cops running a DUI dragnet at the rich people boat ramp. The wealthy do not want to be subject to surveillance dragnets because while many people can pull strings to get out of trouble very, very, very few people can afford to pull string with the regularity that would be required if the rich were subject to a police state.

[devmunchies]

> because the ratio of rich to poor is better

I’m not clicking with this theory. I think it’s in cities that are more multicultural and thus have more hostility.

The government can get away with a lot when the people are frustrated about something else.

[dagaci]

I'm not sure your theories have a base. Population may not like whats happening, but the peoples will only rise to protest when they feel directly threatened.

People will feel directly threatened if these systems produce too many false positives which result in too many false arrests or "police harassment".

Government and vendors will get away with it by slowly and sporadically deploying these systems until "we" get used to being monitored by these "AI" type systems.

Mildly "sexy" news like this is perfect for letting the people gently feel aware that they are being monitored in this way without being too threatening.

The last thing authorities or vendors want is news that 250 <insert-triggering-ethic-minority> were falsely apprehended because of AI identification with a few citizens getting chased and "accidentally" shot in the process => That would be inescapable-incompetence compounding incompetence after all, reason to take to the streets.

[bgeeek]

Except it was used elsewhere in the UK before London.