UK Government to Create 'British FBI', Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition

26 points by hentrep 8 hours ago|14 comments

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everyday7732 5 hours ago

The UK continues to slide into authoritarianism. This is not something the people have asked for. Not looking forward to how this plays out if they get a Reform (far right) government next election, like all the polls seem to think.

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blibble 4 hours ago

the problem is it IS something people have asked for

the average British voter likes the authoritarianism

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kevin_thibedeau 2 hours ago

There has been a legitimate issue with local police not having the resources to investigate crimes that exceed their jurisdiction or expertise. Most notably the case with computer-based crimes. This is the response. Do you have a better suggestion?

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OgsyedIE 3 hours ago

The polls are sharply delineated by age group, however. Giving the members of cabinet the direct power to order arbitrary criminal inquiries to be shut or created polled very well with over-40s and very poorly with under-40s.

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rich_sasha 54 minutes ago

It's weird. I would say politically, the UK has no aspirations towards authoritarianism. ANPR has been around for ages, but the state can barely enforce road tax payment. The police have no ambitions for a brutalised US style culture. Reform is a bit of an unknown, but even they started making murmurs about how Trump is taking it a bit too far.

And yet undoubtedly the UK keeps introducing these privacy-hostile mechanisms, and it's not even clear what for. There is no obvious reason, not a pragmatic one, not a nefarious one (IMO).

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ronsor 28 minutes ago

> the UK has no aspirations towards authoritarianism

I would say they're aiming more for a boring authoritarian dystopia than a bombastic one.

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rayiner 2 hours ago

Reform isn’t even close to “far right.” Are they trying to defund the NHS? Get rid of government pensions? Immigration restriction isn’t “far right.” The sharp curtailment of immigration from Britain’s colonies was enacted in 1968 under a Labour government. In the U.S., sharply restricting immigration was a policy that prevailed during FDR, who was the most liberal U.S. president in history. “Far right” is someone like Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan who thought the private sector could fix everything.

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tialaramex 40 minutes ago

I think Reform is best understood as the Temu Tory Party. What if you couldn't afford an actual Tory Party, but you saw this advertised for £0 on your phone ?

I think it'll be interesting to watch Tories who could never put together a PM bid that worked wriggle inside Reform to push out Farage. Farage is naturally the leader of an outfit like UKIP, actual Nazis in the trenches, led by a few people you can put in a suit who know not to do the salute and who make sure not to say the wrong thing on camera. But, he doesn't want to lead UKIP, he wanted to be Prime Minister, and that's a harder lift.

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gertrunde 3 hours ago

"British FBI"...?

And what exactly do they think the NCA is?

[National Crime Agency]

On digging further: OK, this is not really creating anything at all, it's just merging the NCA and various existing regional organised crime outfits together into one body.

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unethical_ban 2 hours ago

Epoch Times is not news.

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spants 2 hours ago

"Roll Out Nationwide Facial Recognition" - so that is why waste-of-space starmer is in China

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direwolf20 3 hours ago

Is it legal for a private individual to roll out nationwide facial recognition in the UK? Asking for a friend.

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bloqs 3 hours ago

Paywall

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janmalec 3 hours ago

Reader mode in Firefox worked for me, one click.