I'm old enough to remember when my colleagues were vigourously expressing concern about the potential for Oyster cards to be used to track who was protesting where.
What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to find who did it. Given things like that you really have to wonder what is all the surveillance for exactly?
CTDOCodebases 5 hours ago [-]
This news from the UK is concerning and the UK is slowly turning into a dystopia but still your reasoning is flawed.
The cameras are there to discourage crime and for use in court as evidence. Solving a crime still requires time and energy. Policing is a resources game.
So of course petty crimes are still going to be committed because it’s resource intensive to have someone monitor all the cameras. That is until it isn’t and you have a backlog of video footage of crimes and AI powerful enough to detect crimes being committed in real time. Even then though police work is still required if AI isn't using face or gait detection and/or these systems aren’t hooked up to a database that has linked identifiers to real people. But even those can be defeated with a bally and a limp.
greenavocado 3 hours ago [-]
> slowly turning into a dystopia
*has already turned into a dystopian hell hole FTFY
At least China has more good weather
pbhjpbhj 3 hours ago [-]
Where in the UK are you living, what's dystopian about it?
deletedie 2 hours ago [-]
Arresting 1000s of pensioners for holding a disallowed placard
There isn’t the resources to watch all of this cctv. Sure someone could spend weeks watching all the feeds in the city to track the thief down. But the cost quickly exceeds the value of the bike.
Something that’s changing with computer video and AI powered video search tools. I’m very in two minds about it. Being able to solve bike thefts would be great, but a lot of evil could come from a system that actually can monitor and sort through all this video.
andrepd 5 hours ago [-]
What do you mean? Pulling a few camera feeds to track down or identify a theft occurring at a known location at a roughly known time is a few minute's work. It's worth the value of the bike let alone the value of prosecuting a criminal.
Gigachad 5 hours ago [-]
In my experience they will pull the video of the bike literally being stolen, but it simply shows someone in a hoodie and mask at night cutting the lock and walking off. There's nothing further you can do with this video.
What you need is something like being able to search all of the cameras from a wide area which contain a bike and x color hoodie so you can follow the person back to some other location that identifies them further. This is the part that's missing in most cities. It could be done manually, and it would be if it was a very serious crime like terrorism, but for normal theft it isn't worth the time. The tech does exist now though.
crimsoneer 3 minutes ago [-]
This is very naive.
1. The odds of the actual bike itself being covered by CCTV during the theft is pretty slim. Nearby? Sure, but probably not recording the offence. Then unless you're got a precise time window/know where the thief went, you're stuck watching hours of footage hoping to spot the right bike.
2. Even if you do get a clear, high quality facial picture of the thief, you have no magic way of figuring out who that is. You essentially email it to all the local cops and hope someone's recognises them.
The result is your bike theft turns into quite a big investigate, with a sub 5% likelihood of a position outcome.
monksy 5 hours ago [-]
> David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to find who did it.
Are we talking about flock cameras and the disapparence of Nancy Guthrie?
krisbolton 7 hours ago [-]
Did that risk materialise? I suppose it would be only the same as credit cards. With a valid warrant authorities can gain access to information. But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament. I'm more concerned about ensuring the legal powers are checked and balanced, and stay that way.
jolmg 5 hours ago [-]
> I suppose it would be only the same as credit cards.
> But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament.
Ah well if it's an elected government then the risk of it turning hostile to its people is zero, of course!
And ask "did that risk materialize?" to the people in China, or North Korea, or Russia, or Belarus, or Germany [1], or USA [2]. There are countless examples of the dangers of surveillance, in the present and in history - you don't need a specific example of exactly Oyster cards being used, to know they are a danger.
Bugger Oyster and bugger CCTV! How well protected do you think all those video doorbells are?
Your comment is right minded but miss-guided.
You are right to insist on privacy but you failed to note that your neighbours are not twitching their curtains beyond noting your cat is crapping on their veg. To be fair, they probably are but those door cams are probably available in forn parts, way beyond Gladys at no 9's wildest dreams.
I'm old enough to remember Badgers flying across the UK! Those are fucking huge Russian four engined plodders, wheezing across at high altitude in an attempt to cow us into ... some sort of submission. Invariably a flight of Phantoms or Starfighters would whizz on up. In the good old days we'd strap a decent chap onto a firework called a Lightning. I did see a pair do that job - spectacular and I'm sure the pilots probably ended up swallowing their teeth.
Russia does steam punk in some bloody odd ways.
Anyway, I would avoid worrying about our state watching you and worry about other states instead.
dgellow 7 hours ago [-]
I’m sure we can find a better anecdote than a bike being stolen…
drekipus 1 hours ago [-]
To control the "non elite"
unethical_ban 7 hours ago [-]
Omniscient government surveillance in practice will be of far more use for harassment and suppressing political dissent than it ever will be used for the public good.
bluefirebrand 6 hours ago [-]
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Even if the people who are putting all of this surveillance in place genuinely do want to do good, the surveillance will still be in place if someone less scrupulous gains power
hgs6 5 hours ago [-]
Illusion of Control. Oct 7th, 9/11, Snowden, Epstein are all examples of illusion being broken. The reactions are to restore illusion. But its getting harder and harder as things changes faster than reactions can happen. So we get Moises Naims prediction on the End of Power - power is easier to get, harder to use, easy to loose.
cjs_ac 6 hours ago [-]
> Live facial recognition will scan the faces of those heading to the “Unite the Kingdom, Unite the West” rally in the borough of Camden, marking the first time the technology has been authorized for use at a protest in the UK. The rally was organized by activist Tommy Robinson who says the rally is for “national unity, free speech and Christian values.”
Let's have a look at Tommy Robinson's Wikipedia article*:
> Robinson has a history of criminal convictions,[5] including for crimes such as assault,[6] threats,[7] harassment,[8] and fraud,[5] as well as contempt of court rulings relating to his videos, and has served five prison terms between 2005 and 2025. In June 2022, Robinson said that he lost £100,000 in gambling before declaring bankruptcy in March 2021. He also said he owed an estimated £160,000 to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). In August 2024, The Times said that he owed in the region of £2 million to his creditors, and was the subject of a HMRC investigation over unpaid taxes.
The Metropolitan Police are (justifiably) expecting this protest to turn into a violent riot, and have planned accordingly. British police forces have a long-established procedure for collecting CCTV evidence during riots, and then using that to prosecute rioters afterwards.
> The Metropolitan Police are (justifiably) expecting this protest to turn into a violent riot
Robinson has organised 4 London rallies in recent years and this is the second Unite The Kingdom rally. So what makes you think this will be the one which turns violent?
It's basically families listening to speakers on a stage.
deletedie 2 hours ago [-]
Each and every one of those rallies has been uniquely, relative to other rallies, violent
This is absolutely irrelevant. I don't fucking care whatever the police thinks a protest, any protest should turn into, because I don't want the police to have this power, because it will be abused.
aliasxneo 3 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately the outcome of massive division. People are gullible enough to go along with it while it's not being used against "their people" until it ends up being too late.
pessimizer 6 hours ago [-]
Yes. It's alright to do it when I don't like the person. Should a person I don't like really have rights, or privacy? Also, I'm sure that the people who don't like him like me, right?
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
> Should a person I don't like really have rights, or privacy?
For a society striking a British balance between security and privacy, I'd say it's fair to require people with violent convictions to (a) register public protests they plan to attend and (b) consent to facial-recognition surveillance in public. (One could hash, locally store and potentially hardware enforce the restriction on the device level.)
That doesn't mean I think it's okay for everyone around him to have to give up those rights. And I wouldn't support even that in America unless the individual is on probation.
pessimizer 6 hours ago [-]
People need to be allowed to speak in public without having their identities recorded by the police. Also, if you want to follow somebody around who has "violent convictions," you don't have to release them, you can parole them ("released on license" I think I want to say?)
There's a reason you choose to do this during a political protest.
Also, you included a bunch of gambling and tax debts for some reason? Do you think that they are justified because he, and the people who join him, will be publicly avoiding taxes and bookies?
edit: It's also important to note that in the 15th year of future Reform rule, when a "reformed" Tommy Robinson is appointed Home Secretary, he will entirely support drones doing facial recognition during protests. How else are you supposed to catch the anti-Semites?
JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago [-]
> People need to be allowed to speak in public without having their identities recorded by the police
Sure. But this isn't an absolute right. To be trivial, you don't have the right to do fraud in public without being recorded by the police.
I'm saying for a convicted violent criminal, particularly one with a history of inciting violence, I think there is a place where a reasonable line could exist.
> you included a bunch of gambling and tax debts
Where did I do this?
Vaslo 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
mrighele 5 hours ago [-]
From the article:
> a pro-Palestinian march marking “Nakba Day,” happening in London on the same day with an estimated 30,000 attendees, will not face the same biometric surveillance.
multjoy 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
krona 7 hours ago [-]
Perhaps it will be the first protest where FR is used, but the first pilot (which ended in March) just put 2 FR cameras on a street in Croydon and they arrested "170 wanted criminals" in 6 months.
A 36-year-old woman who had been unlawfully at large for more than 20 years and was wanted for failing to appeal at court for an assault in 2004.
so she was 16 when she "disappeared" (how, where, sleeping in the streets?) and the camera can link a 16 y.o. face to a 36 y.o. one after probably rough years?
nomel 5 hours ago [-]
What's the argument here? Thats crimes should be forgiven after 16 years, or that facial recognition is demonstrably robust?
novok 5 hours ago [-]
He is implying he doubts the accuracy of that 'match'.
sverhagen 5 hours ago [-]
That it's a fishy story?
suburban_strike 7 hours ago [-]
This is a bit of an oversell on their part. The offenses include:
> A 36-year-old woman who had been unlawfully at large for more than 20 years and was wanted for failing to appeal at court for an assault in 2004.
> A 31-year-old man who was wanted for voyeurism for more than six months.
> A 41-year-old man who was wanted for rape in relation to an incident which took place in November in Croydon.
> 37 arrests for breaches of court‑imposed conditions
> Darame was found to be in breach of tag conditions, in relation to an intentional strangulation and two counts of assault on an emergency worker on Monday, 8 September 2025 and arrested.
> Kastriot Krrashi, 35, of Dingwall Road, Croydon, was stopped by officers for being wanted on suspicion of breaching his conditions as a registered sex offender.
> Neville Cohen, 55 (25.05.1970) of no fixed address, was stopped by officers for being wanted for failing to comply with a condition on a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) which required him to attend Croydon Police Station in October 2025.
These are all pretty low-hanging fruit. Most of these are misdemeanors. None rise to the level of murder. None are "persons of interest." This is literally the "overpolicing" of petty crime critical race theory bemoans. Great job, UK-- fish are quite easy to catch once you've tagged them.
The ISIS-linked kid that bombed Manchester Arena was known to every intelligence agency and was even physically stopped by venue security before being released due to concerns about racism in enforcement. He went on to commit the deadliest terrorist attack in British history: 22 dead, 1000+ injured. The cameras would not have done anything everyone in a position to intervene refused to do. He wasn't a wanted criminal until after he was vaporized by his own bomb.
It doesn't matter what your politics are, if you let the state become this efficient at catching people for offenses are minor as "failure to appear," god help you if you ever turn whistleblower. They'll spend every resource tracking you down, but that stranger you were talking to before your "suicide" will never be found. No public or private agency should have this much power.
krona 6 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure what your argument is since the police enforce the law as it is, not as it should be. "Without fear or favour."
> The ISIS-linked kid that bombed Manchester Arena was known to every intelligence agency and was even physically stopped by venue security before being released due to concerns about racism in enforcement.
The bureaucratic solution to situations like the Arena bombing is to remove human judgment and replace it with 4k video analytics. The technology already exists. I don't like it either but if there is ever a way to remove decision making power from a person by means of technology or process, the bureaucracy will gleefully use it.
oliwarner 6 hours ago [-]
> Most of these are misdemeanors.
That's a very poor read. Most of these look like breaches of previous conviction release terms. Failure to appear isn't a non-issue. It's a bail skip to dodge a conviction.
I'll agree they're not fresh murders, but if you don't enforce the terms of a release on licence, it makes it a joke, and more importantly puts the public at risk.
basisword 5 hours ago [-]
> A 31-year-old man who was wanted for voyeurism for more than six months.
> A 41-year-old man who was wanted for rape in relation to an incident which took place in November in Croydon.
>> These are all pretty low-hanging fruit.
>> This is literally the "overpolicing" of petty crime critical race theory bemoans.
You listed voyeurism and RAPE. I'll take one less rapist on the streets thank you very much.
malfist 4 hours ago [-]
People who give up privacy for security will get neither.
pbhjpbhj 3 hours ago [-]
You think we should just let sex offenders roam the streets without apprehending them? Or it's only OK if you spent a lot of money to apprehend them, rather than picking people from a camera feed?
roenxi 2 hours ago [-]
The minimum standard for a "sex offence" in the UK seems to include [0] "Sharing or threatening to share intimate photograph or film" and "Sending etc photograph or film of genitals". Which (1) don't do either of those things. Ew. and (2) In a practical sense they can be pretty harmless. Maybe a fine or a strongly worded letter would be appropriate in more serious cases.
So there isn't any problem, in the abstract, with some sex offenders wandering the streets.
Regarding the broader picture, it’s interesting that despite the ineffectiveness of even major protests over the past decades—Iraq being the prime example—governments are introducing more obstacles to disincentivise them. From the perspective of government, why not simply ignore such events, use existing (extensive) laws which cover them? It’s like states are unconsciously preparing for the large-scale disruption which may yet come to pass.
pbhjpbhj 3 hours ago [-]
You think police should ignore situations in which violence and destruction of property are highly likely?
Why? How does that benefit society?
At what point do you allow intervention? After they've destroyed £x,000 of property? After people are assaulted? How are you proposing police get deployed safely in those circumstances with 10s of thousands of protesters/rioters in the streets?
Don't you think maintaining law& order is a necessary activity of the state in a democracy?
You can't seriously think we should stand back and give over or streets to whoever can be most violent?
nuyarusskii 25 minutes ago [-]
"Why not ignore such events?"
Because then the "Russian disinformation" about UK not being precisely a "democracy" suddenly starts looking true?
If you have no protests, it means that the public is ok with what the government is doing. In a democracy (whatever one understands by it) that is.
xeonmc 2 hours ago [-]
Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
sureglymop 4 hours ago [-]
It's crazy how little hardware is required to do facial recognition, OCR and CLIP. Immich on my little raspberry pi swiftly chewed through 100k pictures over night.
yamillove 4 hours ago [-]
Tons of terrorists are wondering what to do now.
lorecore 4 hours ago [-]
I'm staunchly pro-Palestinian, despise Tommy Robinson and still think this is not a good thing. The UK has been draconian with its anti-free speech and surveillance. Even if you hate what this guy stands for (I do), it's only a matter of time before these techniques are used against causes you do stand for.
Somehow I don't think Tommy Robinson would take such an approach to say the classification of Palestine Action as a "terrorist" organization by the UK government though.
Surely it's not necessarily what he stands for but the violent way he does it?
Palestine Action acted as terrorists, attacking national defence infrastructure, attacking police with hammers, and called for genocide of Israelis.
You can protest in support of Palestinians without being violent, and without supporting specific proscribed groups; the state asserting it's monopoly on violence is normal. With democracy and rule of law - both strong in the UK - that's not something that will bother protestors.
lorecore 1 hours ago [-]
Zionism is distributed and fighting against it must be as well. That’s not “terrorism”.
Regardless, like I said I don’t support crackdowns on freedom of speech or state surveillance. Even against those I consider my enemies. It will be used against people I agree with soon enough.
nailer 4 minutes ago [-]
I think people are saying the calls to harm Jews, cut off their heads, rape their daughters, actual violent incidents in London, and support of terrorist groups are terrorism.
That said, why do you need to fight Zionism? Jewish people deserve to live in their own country. Arab countries evicted 850K Jews when Israel was created and they’ll generally be killed if they return.
nailer 2 hours ago [-]
They hit a police officer in the spine with a sledgehammer. That seems like inspiring terror through attacking unrelated innocent victims.
7 hours ago [-]
phyzix5761 7 hours ago [-]
The UK is one of the most effective and longest running surveillance states so this should not be a surprise to anyone.
Joker_vD 7 hours ago [-]
Well, Orwell wrote about what he knew.
xeonmc 2 hours ago [-]
And Alan Moore
Leonard_of_Q 6 hours ago [-]
Whether they're 'effective' is unclear but that this has been a long-growing trend is clear and with that I wonder why this post was downvoted.
skippyboxedhero 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, the fact that large number of criminal activities have effectively been decriminalized would tend to beg the question why this is being deployed at a political protest.
The implication of police state is that they care about crime, but they do not care about crime. Anyone can turn up in Britain, claim asylum and will be sent to a hotel closed down for their comfort. Many visas were denied for speakers at this protest.
It is a politician state, not a police state. Facial recognition is being deployed against political opponents, not criminals.
KaiserPro 6 hours ago [-]
> most effective
I mean its not. Plus with the court backlogs rising, the chances of you getting convicted are rapidly diminishing
Joker_vD 6 hours ago [-]
> the court backlogs rising
Well, I guess they'll have to raise the custody time limits to something more reasonable then, like a year or so. I mean, as long as you get a trial eventually, this is fine, right?
stavros 8 hours ago [-]
Wow, that's... quite the precedent. Presumably this is a Reform UK event, which I'm not a fan of, but still, I don't think this escalation of surveillance will end well.
The article says that drones "will scan the faces of suspects", suspects of what exactly? What crime has been committed that they suspect people for?
KaiserPro 6 hours ago [-]
> this is a Reform UK event
No, its a Tommy Robinson (not his real name) event. Whilst the venn diagram shows crossover in policy and beliefs, its not actually a reform demo.
I am uneasy about the facial recognition being used here. In terms of actual differences to how "oh shit this is going to be a violent one" protests are actually policed is not that much. There are mobile CCTV units that are deployed with plods being issued cameras to record people doing stupid shit.
However, given what happened last time he organised an event like this, I can see why it might be argued that its proportionate to deploy facial recognition. I still don't like it.
skippyboxedhero 4 hours ago [-]
There has been no violence at any of the previous marches iirc. I think people assume there must have been because Starmer and co are foaming for violence...but there weren't.
Also, they have banned 11 people from getting visas because they were "agitators" and are deploying 4k police officers.
Just as a reminder though, the UK has people standing for political office who were convicted of terrorist offences, we have people here leading terrorist groups in other countries, we have people turning up illegally who are carrying out terrorist attacks in the UK regularly...it is a very odd situation.
One of the groups at the pro-Palestine protest is also funded by the same groups that fund Labour. There has obviously been quite a bit of violence at these events and adherents of this ideology have carried out terrorist attacks in the UK...but they are allied with a group that funds Labour so...all good.
Instead of "guessing" to promote your position, you could have done a 30s search and find your point was wrong.
Clearly your sentiments are with the violent fascists. Why?
1shooner 7 hours ago [-]
I don't personally support this surveillance, but that isn't what the articles says. It says they will be "scanning for suspects from above." And later quotes the Met making reference to 'intelligence'. So conceivably they could have information about the plans of specific individuals at this event.
suburban_strike 7 hours ago [-]
It doesn't matter what the article says. There is no penalty for lying and no incentive to be honest. The media exists to broadcast their lies at scale.
Back in the 2000s, upon arrest it was pretty common practice for cops to page through your phone contacts to see who you knew. I don't know if Cellebrite was used back then or if it was manual but the inferences were made and the point was to map out suspects' social networks to find suppliers and upstream orchestrators they had in common.
They're doing the same thing here but lying about it. By capturing all faces associated with whatever protest is going on and mapping them to known identities (because everyone has to provide ID to do anything nowadays), they gather intelligence on entire groups of dissidents. The crowd ARE the suspects.
By the time you're hearing about it in the news they've already been doing it for years. I wouldn't dare set foot near any anti-Israel rally myself, suspecting the NYPD has been field-testing this for a while and activist NGOs like Canary Mission explicitly performing such recon and mapping themselves. All those DHS counter-terrorism grants weren't spent exclusively on MRAPs and bomb disposal robots. That money trickled down to a lot of interesting places.
stavros 7 hours ago [-]
Right, but suspects of what? Just in general, all the crimes they know about?
futter9 7 hours ago [-]
Maybe one of them has quoted crime or immigration statistics on social media and must therefore be imprisoned.
hactually 8 hours ago [-]
Must be some heinous crimes to enable dragnet surveillance. That or the rotten state of Britain really is trying anything from splitting at the seams.
Must be the heinous crime thing tho.
4ndrewl 6 hours ago [-]
Or maybe it's just that whenever Tommy ten names has one of his rallies it ends in violence?
spwa4 5 hours ago [-]
Ever walked through the streets of London after essentially any rally? They all end in violence.
asib 4 hours ago [-]
Are you serious? This is so ignorant it's unbelievable. There are gazillions of marches that have ended without incident.
philipallstar 7 hours ago [-]
Its definitely not heinous crimes. It's just recording people at events to know who's of what political persuasion.
NooneAtAll3 7 hours ago [-]
if protest expects confrontation (for either side reasons), it's possible for roads to be preemptively de-surfaced to get stones to throw at police
rolph 7 hours ago [-]
facial recognition is old news, the development of intent prediction is the edge.
graemep 7 hours ago [-]
No, nothing to do with Reform. Organised by Tommy Robinson. The guy Reform think is such a nutcase that they turned down a huge donation from Elon Musk because Elon made it conditional on letting Robinson join Reform.
Its hard to find anyone more loathsome than Tommy Robinson in British politics, but being horrible is not a crime.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 6 hours ago [-]
To Reforms credit while I do think they started off as a bit of a looney party that relied on theatrics they managed to evolve into a more mature party ever since Zia Yusuf joined and you see how the tone of Nigel Farage has already become more serious. To some that will look like they became "Conservatives 2.0" but I don't think we have another real conservative party left anyway.
conradludgate 7 hours ago [-]
It's worth stating that historically these right-wing culture protests have been a bit more violent in nature than most protests are. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the protest is violent, but there's enough mob mentality that makes me (someone who lives in London) uncomfortable.
stavros 7 hours ago [-]
Sure, but there's a difference between surveillance after a crime vs before.
baal80spam 7 hours ago [-]
Thought crime, obviously!
onetokeoverthe 7 hours ago [-]
first time they admitted it.
Leonard_of_Q 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
KaiserPro 6 hours ago [-]
> OK, London Police, how about doing the same with the recurring 'pro-Palestine' manifestations?
The Palestine Action demos are far easier to police, because its a proscribed group, anyone expressing support for them are instantly nicked. Hence why there are something like >2000 arrests.
Now one could argue that this is an affront to freedom of speech, but given the way you've written this I suspect that you might not agree with me.
> 'two-tier justice' in the UK, a record which launched people like 'Tommy Robinson' (a pseudonym hence the quotes) into the spotlight
I would strongly contest that the justice system launched him. Given that he founded the EDL, and spent most of the time headbutting people, I would say he's famous because of the work he put in, to be famous.
Side note: its the Met, not london police, and the police are distinct and separate from the courts
JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago [-]
> how about doing the same with the recurring 'pro-Palestine' manifestations?
Genuine question: has there been physical violence (against people, not property) at their protests in the UK?
skippyboxedhero 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lorecore 4 hours ago [-]
No, to answer the parent's question Palestine Action has not harmed a single person. They use direct action against Zionist military targets, but they've never harmed a single individual.
pinewurst 3 hours ago [-]
The policewoman they maimed with a sledgehammer wasn’t an individual?
What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to find who did it. Given things like that you really have to wonder what is all the surveillance for exactly?
The cameras are there to discourage crime and for use in court as evidence. Solving a crime still requires time and energy. Policing is a resources game.
So of course petty crimes are still going to be committed because it’s resource intensive to have someone monitor all the cameras. That is until it isn’t and you have a backlog of video footage of crimes and AI powerful enough to detect crimes being committed in real time. Even then though police work is still required if AI isn't using face or gait detection and/or these systems aren’t hooked up to a database that has linked identifiers to real people. But even those can be defeated with a bally and a limp.
*has already turned into a dystopian hell hole FTFY
At least China has more good weather
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/11/met-police-mak...
Something that’s changing with computer video and AI powered video search tools. I’m very in two minds about it. Being able to solve bike thefts would be great, but a lot of evil could come from a system that actually can monitor and sort through all this video.
What you need is something like being able to search all of the cameras from a wide area which contain a bike and x color hoodie so you can follow the person back to some other location that identifies them further. This is the part that's missing in most cities. It could be done manually, and it would be if it was a very serious crime like terrorism, but for normal theft it isn't worth the time. The tech does exist now though.
1. The odds of the actual bike itself being covered by CCTV during the theft is pretty slim. Nearby? Sure, but probably not recording the offence. Then unless you're got a precise time window/know where the thief went, you're stuck watching hours of footage hoping to spot the right bike.
2. Even if you do get a clear, high quality facial picture of the thief, you have no magic way of figuring out who that is. You essentially email it to all the local cops and hope someone's recognises them.
The result is your bike theft turns into quite a big investigate, with a sub 5% likelihood of a position outcome.
Are we talking about flock cameras and the disapparence of Nancy Guthrie?
The cards seem to accept cash
> But that's within a legal system designed by an elected parliament.
Ah well if it's an elected government then the risk of it turning hostile to its people is zero, of course!
And ask "did that risk materialize?" to the people in China, or North Korea, or Russia, or Belarus, or Germany [1], or USA [2]. There are countless examples of the dangers of surveillance, in the present and in history - you don't need a specific example of exactly Oyster cards being used, to know they are a danger.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/03/german...
[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-administration-argues-it-ca...
Your comment is right minded but miss-guided.
You are right to insist on privacy but you failed to note that your neighbours are not twitching their curtains beyond noting your cat is crapping on their veg. To be fair, they probably are but those door cams are probably available in forn parts, way beyond Gladys at no 9's wildest dreams.
I'm old enough to remember Badgers flying across the UK! Those are fucking huge Russian four engined plodders, wheezing across at high altitude in an attempt to cow us into ... some sort of submission. Invariably a flight of Phantoms or Starfighters would whizz on up. In the good old days we'd strap a decent chap onto a firework called a Lightning. I did see a pair do that job - spectacular and I'm sure the pilots probably ended up swallowing their teeth.
Russia does steam punk in some bloody odd ways.
Anyway, I would avoid worrying about our state watching you and worry about other states instead.
Even if the people who are putting all of this surveillance in place genuinely do want to do good, the surveillance will still be in place if someone less scrupulous gains power
Let's have a look at Tommy Robinson's Wikipedia article*:
> Robinson has a history of criminal convictions,[5] including for crimes such as assault,[6] threats,[7] harassment,[8] and fraud,[5] as well as contempt of court rulings relating to his videos, and has served five prison terms between 2005 and 2025. In June 2022, Robinson said that he lost £100,000 in gambling before declaring bankruptcy in March 2021. He also said he owed an estimated £160,000 to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). In August 2024, The Times said that he owed in the region of £2 million to his creditors, and was the subject of a HMRC investigation over unpaid taxes.
The Metropolitan Police are (justifiably) expecting this protest to turn into a violent riot, and have planned accordingly. British police forces have a long-established procedure for collecting CCTV evidence during riots, and then using that to prosecute rioters afterwards.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson
Robinson has organised 4 London rallies in recent years and this is the second Unite The Kingdom rally. So what makes you think this will be the one which turns violent?
It's basically families listening to speakers on a stage.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/13/unite-the-ki...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/23/police-clash...
Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said officers had "policed without fear or favour", knowing it would be challenging.
"There is no doubt that many came to exercise their lawful right to protest, but there were many who came intent on violence."
Assistant Commissioner Twist said officers had suffered broken teeth, concussion, a prolapsed disc, a head injury and a possible broken nose.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwydezxl0xlo
For a society striking a British balance between security and privacy, I'd say it's fair to require people with violent convictions to (a) register public protests they plan to attend and (b) consent to facial-recognition surveillance in public. (One could hash, locally store and potentially hardware enforce the restriction on the device level.)
That doesn't mean I think it's okay for everyone around him to have to give up those rights. And I wouldn't support even that in America unless the individual is on probation.
There's a reason you choose to do this during a political protest.
Also, you included a bunch of gambling and tax debts for some reason? Do you think that they are justified because he, and the people who join him, will be publicly avoiding taxes and bookies?
edit: It's also important to note that in the 15th year of future Reform rule, when a "reformed" Tommy Robinson is appointed Home Secretary, he will entirely support drones doing facial recognition during protests. How else are you supposed to catch the anti-Semites?
Sure. But this isn't an absolute right. To be trivial, you don't have the right to do fraud in public without being recorded by the police.
I'm saying for a convicted violent criminal, particularly one with a history of inciting violence, I think there is a place where a reasonable line could exist.
> you included a bunch of gambling and tax debts
Where did I do this?
> a pro-Palestinian march marking “Nakba Day,” happening in London on the same day with an estimated 30,000 attendees, will not face the same biometric surveillance.
https://news.met.police.uk/news/met-makes-one-arrest-every-3...
> A 36-year-old woman who had been unlawfully at large for more than 20 years and was wanted for failing to appeal at court for an assault in 2004.
> A 31-year-old man who was wanted for voyeurism for more than six months.
> A 41-year-old man who was wanted for rape in relation to an incident which took place in November in Croydon.
> 37 arrests for breaches of court‑imposed conditions
> Darame was found to be in breach of tag conditions, in relation to an intentional strangulation and two counts of assault on an emergency worker on Monday, 8 September 2025 and arrested.
> Kastriot Krrashi, 35, of Dingwall Road, Croydon, was stopped by officers for being wanted on suspicion of breaching his conditions as a registered sex offender.
> Neville Cohen, 55 (25.05.1970) of no fixed address, was stopped by officers for being wanted for failing to comply with a condition on a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) which required him to attend Croydon Police Station in October 2025.
These are all pretty low-hanging fruit. Most of these are misdemeanors. None rise to the level of murder. None are "persons of interest." This is literally the "overpolicing" of petty crime critical race theory bemoans. Great job, UK-- fish are quite easy to catch once you've tagged them.
The ISIS-linked kid that bombed Manchester Arena was known to every intelligence agency and was even physically stopped by venue security before being released due to concerns about racism in enforcement. He went on to commit the deadliest terrorist attack in British history: 22 dead, 1000+ injured. The cameras would not have done anything everyone in a position to intervene refused to do. He wasn't a wanted criminal until after he was vaporized by his own bomb.
It doesn't matter what your politics are, if you let the state become this efficient at catching people for offenses are minor as "failure to appear," god help you if you ever turn whistleblower. They'll spend every resource tracking you down, but that stranger you were talking to before your "suicide" will never be found. No public or private agency should have this much power.
> The ISIS-linked kid that bombed Manchester Arena was known to every intelligence agency and was even physically stopped by venue security before being released due to concerns about racism in enforcement.
The bureaucratic solution to situations like the Arena bombing is to remove human judgment and replace it with 4k video analytics. The technology already exists. I don't like it either but if there is ever a way to remove decision making power from a person by means of technology or process, the bureaucracy will gleefully use it.
That's a very poor read. Most of these look like breaches of previous conviction release terms. Failure to appear isn't a non-issue. It's a bail skip to dodge a conviction.
I'll agree they're not fresh murders, but if you don't enforce the terms of a release on licence, it makes it a joke, and more importantly puts the public at risk.
> A 41-year-old man who was wanted for rape in relation to an incident which took place in November in Croydon.
>> These are all pretty low-hanging fruit.
>> This is literally the "overpolicing" of petty crime critical race theory bemoans.
You listed voyeurism and RAPE. I'll take one less rapist on the streets thank you very much.
So there isn't any problem, in the abstract, with some sex offenders wandering the streets.
[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
Why? How does that benefit society?
At what point do you allow intervention? After they've destroyed £x,000 of property? After people are assaulted? How are you proposing police get deployed safely in those circumstances with 10s of thousands of protesters/rioters in the streets?
Don't you think maintaining law& order is a necessary activity of the state in a democracy?
You can't seriously think we should stand back and give over or streets to whoever can be most violent?
Because then the "Russian disinformation" about UK not being precisely a "democracy" suddenly starts looking true?
If you have no protests, it means that the public is ok with what the government is doing. In a democracy (whatever one understands by it) that is.
Somehow I don't think Tommy Robinson would take such an approach to say the classification of Palestine Action as a "terrorist" organization by the UK government though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Action#Proscription_...
Palestine Action acted as terrorists, attacking national defence infrastructure, attacking police with hammers, and called for genocide of Israelis.
You can protest in support of Palestinians without being violent, and without supporting specific proscribed groups; the state asserting it's monopoly on violence is normal. With democracy and rule of law - both strong in the UK - that's not something that will bother protestors.
Regardless, like I said I don’t support crackdowns on freedom of speech or state surveillance. Even against those I consider my enemies. It will be used against people I agree with soon enough.
That said, why do you need to fight Zionism? Jewish people deserve to live in their own country. Arab countries evicted 850K Jews when Israel was created and they’ll generally be killed if they return.
The implication of police state is that they care about crime, but they do not care about crime. Anyone can turn up in Britain, claim asylum and will be sent to a hotel closed down for their comfort. Many visas were denied for speakers at this protest.
It is a politician state, not a police state. Facial recognition is being deployed against political opponents, not criminals.
I mean its not. Plus with the court backlogs rising, the chances of you getting convicted are rapidly diminishing
Well, I guess they'll have to raise the custody time limits to something more reasonable then, like a year or so. I mean, as long as you get a trial eventually, this is fine, right?
The article says that drones "will scan the faces of suspects", suspects of what exactly? What crime has been committed that they suspect people for?
No, its a Tommy Robinson (not his real name) event. Whilst the venn diagram shows crossover in policy and beliefs, its not actually a reform demo.
I am uneasy about the facial recognition being used here. In terms of actual differences to how "oh shit this is going to be a violent one" protests are actually policed is not that much. There are mobile CCTV units that are deployed with plods being issued cameras to record people doing stupid shit.
However, given what happened last time he organised an event like this, I can see why it might be argued that its proportionate to deploy facial recognition. I still don't like it.
Also, they have banned 11 people from getting visas because they were "agitators" and are deploying 4k police officers.
Just as a reminder though, the UK has people standing for political office who were convicted of terrorist offences, we have people here leading terrorist groups in other countries, we have people turning up illegally who are carrying out terrorist attacks in the UK regularly...it is a very odd situation.
One of the groups at the pro-Palestine protest is also funded by the same groups that fund Labour. There has obviously been quite a bit of violence at these events and adherents of this ideology have carried out terrorist attacks in the UK...but they are allied with a group that funds Labour so...all good.
https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclos...
Clearly your sentiments are with the violent fascists. Why?
Back in the 2000s, upon arrest it was pretty common practice for cops to page through your phone contacts to see who you knew. I don't know if Cellebrite was used back then or if it was manual but the inferences were made and the point was to map out suspects' social networks to find suppliers and upstream orchestrators they had in common.
They're doing the same thing here but lying about it. By capturing all faces associated with whatever protest is going on and mapping them to known identities (because everyone has to provide ID to do anything nowadays), they gather intelligence on entire groups of dissidents. The crowd ARE the suspects.
By the time you're hearing about it in the news they've already been doing it for years. I wouldn't dare set foot near any anti-Israel rally myself, suspecting the NYPD has been field-testing this for a while and activist NGOs like Canary Mission explicitly performing such recon and mapping themselves. All those DHS counter-terrorism grants weren't spent exclusively on MRAPs and bomb disposal robots. That money trickled down to a lot of interesting places.
Must be the heinous crime thing tho.
Its hard to find anyone more loathsome than Tommy Robinson in British politics, but being horrible is not a crime.
The Palestine Action demos are far easier to police, because its a proscribed group, anyone expressing support for them are instantly nicked. Hence why there are something like >2000 arrests.
Now one could argue that this is an affront to freedom of speech, but given the way you've written this I suspect that you might not agree with me.
> 'two-tier justice' in the UK, a record which launched people like 'Tommy Robinson' (a pseudonym hence the quotes) into the spotlight
I would strongly contest that the justice system launched him. Given that he founded the EDL, and spent most of the time headbutting people, I would say he's famous because of the work he put in, to be famous.
Side note: its the Met, not london police, and the police are distinct and separate from the courts
Genuine question: has there been physical violence (against people, not property) at their protests in the UK?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c75kp15xz4yo