As Orwell’s 1984 novel celebrates its 75th anniversary this month, British police are already implementing technologies that make Big Brother look modest by comparison.
From facial recognition cameras monitoring your shopping to algorithms forecasting crimes before they occur, technology increasingly used by UK police forces seem straight out of a science fiction novel.
Jake Hurfurt, Head of Research & Investigations at Big Brother Watch, said: “The use of AI in UK policing is growing and this comes with serious risks, from wrongful facial recognition stops to crude profiling of people as potential offenders. Big Brother Watch has spent years pushing back against dodgy technological policing – we have supported people misidentified by face scanning cameras and exposed Durham Police’s use of credit reference data to make custody decisions. We need to make sure that high-tech tools are fit for purpose and protect our rights.
It is clear that some, including Live Facial Recognition Technology, are incompatible with a democratic society and should be banned. Others, including Retrospective Facial Recognition, could have a limited role to play in policing, once robust protections for our rights and freedoms are in place. Britain needs to have a proper conversation about the role big data and AI plays in our policing, rather than allowing the government and the police to cobble together patchwork legal justifications to experiment on the public with intrusive and Orwellian technology. We’re sleepwalking into a high-tech police state .”