[matthewdgreen]

The neat thing about these databases is that you’ll never know. Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?

There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.

[kotaKat]

> Can a lender buy access to them? How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop? The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?

Good news! Basically... yes! https://drndata.com

Lenders are already buying that data by the boatload along with everyone else throwing cameras up.

[threecheese]

Wow. They sell the data for marketing purposes, and buyers can generate contact lists with demographics for people who frequently travel near their business, or any other location. I dont even know what to type here, I am stunned.

[allthenopes25]

> Can a lender buy access to them?

In the UK (as in the case we're discussing)? No.

> How about your abusive ex, who knows and/or is a cop?

Like all other PNC access, this gets logged. Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired for abusing the PNC. Random officers cannot randomly look up plates on ANPR: only traffic police or more senior officers can and it, like every other access, gets logged.

The Data Protection Act allows us to find out who has been disciplined, demoted or fired, and the Met for example answer those.

> The stalker who somehow knew just where that woman would be when he killed her, was that just bad luck or did he slip someone a few hundred bucks or buy the data from a data broker?

Data brokers do not get PNC data in the UK. And you're imagining an unnecessarily fantastical, conspiratorial explanation of a stalker who "somehow knew where" some woman would be, when stalkers clearly manage this adequately by, like, ordinary stalking skills (and are rarely unknown to their victims in the first place; they usually have knowledge that was volunteered or was acquired firsthand). Women don't need this imaginary scenario to feel fear: old-fashioned hiding in a car and waiting will do it. More high-tech: hiding an AirTag will do it. Following on Facebook will do it.

Also imagining third party violence that happens due to police data access is irrelevant: police officers themselves commit violence. Probably start there.

> There’s a version of an answer to this where access to search these systems is so tightly logged that we never need to wonder about the answer to these questions. I doubt most of the systems being deployed worldwide are anywhere near that standard.

They are in the UK.

Are face recognition cameras a bad thing in the hands of the UK police? Probably sometimes yes. But these conspiratorial hypotheses don't need airing.

FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.

These facial recognition cameras cannot be instantly used on some big national police surveillance mechanism because in essence no such system exists: the vast majority of CCTV cameras in the UK are not operated by police at all.

Most cameras are operated by local and regional councils (access for which the police would need to issue warrants or make detailed subject/time requests) or private businesses (ditto).

And most of the huge number of cameras the police imagine aren't connected to anything more complex than Ring. Even with Ring footage, British police find that if they want to use doorbell camera footage, it is faster to arrange a time to visit the owner or at best knock on the door of the householder and ask for it to be emailed or copied to an SD card. They do not have broad instant access, much less broad, instant, warrantless access.

The biggest risk is not outright abuse but malfeasance/misfeasance overuse, much more dull-witted, instant and humdrum: for example some of the operators perceive the desire not to walk past one of them to be evidence of criminal intent, and they use that as a justification for a stop and search.

[terribleperson]

In the U.S., law enforcement misusing their access to existing surveillance technologies is already reality. Enlarging the capabilities they have access to, when they're proven to misuse what they have, isn't ideal.

[const_cast]

US law enforcement misuses literally everything they can. If it exists and they have access to it, it will be misused. Be it guns, SUVs, police cameras, whatever. It's a systemic problem with how we handle policing.

[inkyoto]

> FWIW, I still think the US perception of the UK "surveillance state" is largely misplaced and is based on poor journalism about simple numbers of cameras that has never been adequately put into context.

Whilst the UK is not a «surveillance state» in the authoritarian sense, and they were certainly not the ones who invented CCTV, we must credit the British for pioneering the concept of ubiquitous CCTV as a tool of urban surveillance, which was complemented by a long-standing tradition of overzealous law enforcement – a legacy with undeniably robust historical roots. It is irrefutable that the UK was an early adopter of CCTV for security and policing purposes[0], much to the bemusement of the guests of Her Late Majesty and His Majesty now.

The British have certainly been instrumental – if not bestowing or spreading it (which is partially true, at least in the case of Australia and New Zealand), then at least influencing – in the widespread adoption of CCTV as a tool for urban surveillance in a large number of Western countries.

[0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/

[allthenopes25]

> [0] One of the first significant deployments in Britain occurred in 1960, when temporary CCTV cameras were used to monitor the crowds at Trafalgar Square during a visit by the Thai royal family – https://www.farsight.co.uk/about-us/history/

Not sure I will take at face value the idea that the Thai royal family were shocked and surprised at overpolicing of potential protestors and that the Thai embassy advance teams had nothing to do with that.

Call me cynical.

[codedokode]

> Police genuinely do get disciplined and fired

So basically no punishment.

[allthenopes25]

There are prosecutions too (the law has only relatively recently been tightened up):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-62729737

https://policeprofessional.com/news/pc-to-stand-trial-over-m...

But being sacked as a police officer in the UK is a fairly big deal. There's no Fraternal Order of Police to ease you into a cushy security job, and there's no macho culture of celebrating corrupt police. Being charged for misusing one's position would be pretty devastating. Policing in the UK is "by consent" and people don't take too kindly to stuff like this.