[no1youknowz]

Here is what's happening in the UK.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oJqJkfTdAg

All I can hope for, is that some activist group takes the police to court and the legislative branch reacts to then impose rules for spying on its citizens.

Some of the things I can think off the top of my head:

1) Citizens can legally opt out by putting on face masks. Especially when it's cold.

2) Video / Images are stored outside of government bodies and akin to a black box. Must require warrants to review footage.

3) Video / Images / Data are deleted after 1 year.

4) No data of citizens facial features, body structure, gate are transferred into a national database.

Honestly though, where the UK is going. I firmly believe in 20 years all citizens physical meta-data will be tracked and stored in a black box somewhere and then later leaked on-line.

1984 isn't just a book. It's a handbook by all accounts.

[ixtli]

By many metrics the UK is and has been the most surveilled country in the world for decades.

[blibble]

the metrics that include the privately owned CCTV cameras used by shopkeepers in the same category as those operated by governments?

the UK has issues with creeping authoritarianism in an number of areas, but millions of shops having crappy 2FPS black and white CCTV isn't a particular concern of mine

[blub]

The whole argument that they're private cameras is rather pedantic and ultimately pointless.

It doesn't matter who owns what as long as the government can request access to the data.

[blibble]

the concern amongst non-hysterical people is mass surveillance by government, not ad-hoc requests by the police for VHS tapes of people stealing packets of bacon

in this situation: the fact they're not controlled by, or accessible to the state without effort is neither pedantic or irrelevant, sorry.

[blub]

After the amount of leaks and revelations in the last decade you're only embarrassing yourself if you claim that any people concerned about privacy are hysterical. Whoever is not worried is simply clueless about the power of data.

The fact that there is some extra effort required to get to the tapes does make it a bit inconvenient, but that won't do you any good if you're caught by those surveillance cameras in the wrong place at the wrong time. The investigators will almost always make that effort, since it's part of the job.

[ixtli]

I get what you’re saying but it’s not just the fact that the whole country is covered in CCTV (private or otherwise, and btw I find private cameras to be more dystopian frankly because you can’t audit them.) There has always been a sentiment in UK government similar to America that justifies an all-seeing entity (GCHQ) who’s motives are implicitly good and thus they are beyond having to answer to the public. The secrets act itself is something that makes the UK even worse than America in this way.

[wott]

> 1) Citizens can legally opt out by putting on face masks.

You don't have (yet) some beautiful law like we have in France?

https://beta.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/texte_lc/JORFTEXT000022...

> Nul ne peut, dans l'espace public, porter une tenue destinée à dissimuler son visage.

Noboby may, in public space, wear an outfit intended to hide his face.

Clear and simple, I guess. That was directed towards radical Muslims but the definition encompasses everyone. And last year we got this extra one:

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticl...

It is about hiding all (or part) of your face, within (or near...) a demonstration, in which troubles arose (or might have arisen...). The first law was an infraction, this one is a misdemeanour with much harder sentence.

[dijit]

We have that law. That’s why balaclavas are hard to find in the UK these days. Nobody can legally use them in public.

[vintermann]

The algorithms are public, the data is public... even today, you can often feed a portrait image to yandex's image search (the best public one out there) and get back pictures of the same exact person. It seems to have some special case for faces.

And it's by no means certain that you and I can't do better. I think the reason Yandex image search is better than google's, is that Yandex entered the game later and thus could incorporate better methods from the start. There have been important advances in extreme classification even in 2019.

I think the best we can hope for is that this power of identification isn't exclusive to governments and police, but can be used by us as well. So that there aren't more Bob Lamberts than necessary.

[zelon88]

Here's an idea... Take down the cameras!

[wott]

They'll use drones then. Well, they already do, in addition to fixed and mobile ground cameras.

[Zenst]

Fresh in today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51237665

"Met Police to deploy facial recognition cameras"

[nomel]

For 1, Body shape/bone estimations and gait can't be easily masks.