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

Posted by hentrep 18 hours ago

Comments

Comment by everyday7732 14 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.

Comment by blibble 14 hours ago

the problem is it IS something people have asked for

the average British voter likes the authoritarianism

Comment by OgsyedIE 13 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.

Comment by 14 hours ago

Comment by kevin_thibedeau 11 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?

Comment by rich_sasha 11 hours 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).

Comment by ronsor 11 hours ago

> the UK has no aspirations towards authoritarianism

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

Comment by rayiner 12 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.

Comment by tialaramex 11 hours 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.

Comment by rayiner 10 hours ago

How are Reform like Tories? Didn't immigration massively increase under Tories? I don't know anything about Farage, but I doubt your comparisons are accurate. I've seen one video of him, and he came across as far to the left of your average asian leader on immigration.

Comment by tialaramex 8 hours ago

> How are Reform like Tories?

I think the problem might be that you don't know anything about this at all?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2yrjqp4zvo -- Suella Braverman, who had been Tory Home Secretary deciding on these policies you think are the opposite of what Reform stands for, defected to join Reform just days ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gv9gyxgjjo -- that's Farage, only days earlier, insisting that his party isn't for failed Tories, like Suella.

It's Temu Tory Party.

Comment by tolien 7 hours ago

This isn’t a new thing either; Farage has been challenged over claiming to align with far-right Northern Irish Unionist parties like Traditional Unionist Voice while recording Cameos saying things like “up the ‘RA”.

The ignorance isn’t a mistake, it’s part of the brand that lets them spout whatever their audience wants ts to hear.

Comment by rayiner 7 hours ago

Several prominent Democrats defected to Trump’s GOP. Does that make that a “Temu Democratic Party?” Or is it just a sign of the ideological realignment that’s happening in conservative parties all across the west?

Comment by tialaramex 5 hours ago

I guess I hadn't heard this news. Who defected? I mean, you said "prominent" so presumably we're talking a few US senators or a Governor or something ? People I'd have heard of?

About half of Reform's parliamentary party were elected as Tories. Was Josh Hawley previously a Democrat ? Did Mitch used to be Bernie's best friend and then Trump swayed him to join the GOP ? Maybe Rand Paul or Tom Cotton ? No ? So we're not talking about the same thing at all.

Comment by rayiner 5 hours ago

Tulsi Gabbard, who was a House member and vice chair of the DNC, and RFK Jr., who is a Kennedy. In the other direction you have Michael Steele, who was chairman of the RNC, and Dick Cheney, who was the Vice President.

What you’re describing is just a party realignment. It’s a much bigger realignment than what you’ve seen in the U.S. for awhile, but every now and then when coalitions will break apart and reform. Many of the original GOP members were former Whig Party members (which was one of the two major parties that existed after the Federalist Party collapsed). Ir would’ve been weird to call the GOP “Temu Whigs” because they had a different coalition with different priorities, despite the overlap.

In the UK, it seems like Reform is prepared to moderate on the economic libertarianism of the Thatcherite Tory Party in order to bring culturally conservative anti-immigration voters into the coalition.

Comment by tialaramex 3 hours ago

I had heard of Gabbard. So that's one representative. It's not nothing but it's not "several" where I come from.

I can't count RFK Jr. I had never heard of him before the 2024 Election Cycle.

Comment by gertrunde 13 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.

Comment by unethical_ban 11 hours ago

Epoch Times is not news.

Comment by direwolf20 13 hours ago

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

Comment by Eddy_Viscosity2 10 hours ago

Given the ubiquitous CCTV coverage the UK has and has had for some time, I would suspect they've had nationwide facial recognition for a while already. Just on the down-low.

Comment by spants 11 hours ago

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

Comment by unethical_ban 8 hours ago

UK has problems with civil liberties but Epoch Times is not news. You're more informed reading about Aliens from the tabloid at Kroger than reading this.