SS: The Orwellian Surveillance State is already here in UK. Don't take the Boogeymen's names in vain, or as an example. Got nothing to do with them. This is pure UK homegrown mass surveillance
This news story came up on the UnitedKingdom sub. Just reading through the comments there, it felt almost like being on the Conspiracy sub. Another Conspiracy Fact – TICK
Police raid passport photo data in ‘historic breach of privacy’
Campaigners criticise ‘Orwellian’ use of facial recognition technology
Police have conducted hundreds of facial recognition searches on Britain’s passport photo database in a “historic breach of the right to privacy”, The Telegraph can reveal.
The number of requests by police to use passport and immigration information to identify criminals has “skyrocketed”, according to campaigners, despite concerns about civil liberties.
Dozens of forces across Britain now use retrospective facial recognition technology, which allows them to identify suspects on CCTV or doorbell camera footage without leaving their desks.
Ministers say that the system speeds up investigations, but opponents say it has become a branch of an “Orwellian” surveillance state.
Searches for facial matches are ordinarily restricted to the police’s own database of mugshots, but officers have increasingly been requesting to use the Home Office’s repository of more than 50 million passport photos.
‘Damaging public trust’
A passport holder whose face was included in a police search would never know that their data had been used for that purpose.
The UK’s former biometrics watchdog has warned that the practice has a “significant risk of disproportionality and of damaging public trust”.
Data obtained under freedom of information laws by Big Brother Watch, the civil liberties campaign group, found that the number of passport photo searches increased from two in 2020 to 417 in 2023.
In the first 10 months of 2024, another 377 searches were conducted, putting police on course for a similar number of searches last year.
The number of searches of the immigration database, which is formed of photos collected by Border Force, increased sevenfold over the same period to 102 last year.
The system means that photos of people who have never been convicted of a crime have been processed by police with limited legal or regulatory oversight.
Posted by FlabbyShabby