[Zak]

Even if I accept your premise that privacy from facial recognition in public is to your safety as swinging my fist at your nose is to your right to not be assaulted (I don't), I don't think the police in the UK have done a good job justifying the benefits of using facial recognition this way. How much safety benefit does it actually produce?

[pif]

The main point for me is that policemen made it really clear that, once public procedures and policies have been defined by a legitimate government, unless those policies infringe internationally recognized human rights, it's not up to the single citizen to challenge them!

If you don't agree with them, democracies give you the means to start a public discussion. But, in the meanwhile, you comply. That is civilization!

Do you know that idiocy of sovereign citizens? Well, London police demontrated that none of that bullshit will be tolerated. And, while I personally dislike being continuosly filmed, I think that London police has just made London a better place to live.

London city is not the wild west.

[Zak]

This is not the point you made earlier. That point is:

> your privacy ends where my safety is concerned

and I dispute both the premise and that this is a legitimate instance of it.

Modern liberal democracies have until pretty recently come down strongly on the side of privacy. For the most part, in such societies, detaining people and making them answer questions or identify themselves has required significant objective evidence to suspect them of wrongdoing. Searches require stronger evidence, and often judicial oversight. Surveillance dragnets have traditionally been forbidden or strictly limited. In short, people have only been expected to give up privacy in the name of safety under narrow circumstances.

What the police are doing with facial recognition in the UK is anything but narrow. Nobody has made a good case for circumstances in the UK being so dire as to demand people be unable to walk down public streets in near-anonymity.