A STATE OF SURVEILLANCE

The more of our lives we commit to social media and the internet, the more our data is vulnerable to exploitation. But what happens when the government is privy to that information?

- Chris Menon

IT MAY BE 2020 but for some it increasingly feels like 1984, George Orwell’s fictional dystopian world where citizens are spied upon 24/7, potentially guilty until proven innocent.

For instance, you’ve never committed a crime and are a peaceful, law-abiding citizen. Yet, your face may be routinely captured by live video and matched to a database of persons of interest to the police. If matched, the onus is then on you to prove your innocence.

This example isn’t taken from China or some other despotic regime but here in Britain, as both South Wales Police and the Metropolitan police now use automatic facial recognition (AFR) to perform identity checks in real-time.

“We now have cameras that are doing semi-covert identity checks en masse on hundred of thousands, even millions of people, who are innocent citizens going about their business. It is the hi-tech equivalent of show me your papers. We don’t have arbitrary identity checks in the UK but that is exactly what live facial recognition does,” says Silkie Carlo, Director of Big Brother Watch.

The technology also has particular problems accurately identifying people, specifically darker-skinned individuals and women. “When we did our first report on trials by the Metropolitan Police it was 98 per cent inaccurate—I think it's now 96.

Big Brother Watch, founded in 2009, seeks to roll back the surveillance state and it isn’t alone in calling for AFR surveillance to be outlawed. Other civil liberty groups, such as Liberty and Privacy International also want it banned.

WE'RE CONFRONTED DAILY WITH NEW REVELATIONS ABOUT GOVERNMENTS USING TECHNOLOGY TO EXPLOIT OUR DATA