Surveillance Epidemic.

       There is a lot of concern by several states over the coronavirus in China, with fear that it could become an epidemic, and rightly so, but there is another epidemic that most states are willing and trying to spread, it's called surveillance. This particular virus is spread by authoritarian states and seeps into ever aspect of our lives. From a few CCTV cameras it has now spread to every pub, shop, street, public transport, hospital, bank and a multitude of other places we frequent. This particular epidemic has morphed from a simple camera to an extremely complex system among its tentacles are number plate recognition, monitoring and profiling individuals as they do what ordinary people do. The latest development in this particular epidemic is "facial recognition". This new phase has been silently developing in cities across the UK, waithing for the moment it can be set among the people, and we now learn that London will be hit with a full blown version of this anti-human rights virus.

       The Met in London have just announced that they will unleash this new phase on the general public in that city. This despite the fact that EU lawmakers are mulling over a temporary ban on this part of the epidemic, to safeguard individuals rights, as part of their risk assessment to regulate AI

      When it comes to the abuse of human rights we can always rely on the UK government to go it alone.
     This technology is lurking in cities across the UK all waiting to flip the switch and and get a good look at your face as you go about your daily chores.
     I don't know if it would work, but perhaps before we go out we could all wear very large sunglasses, a large nose from a joke shop, plus very large ear muffs and paint our face various colours, and finish off with a large floppy hat. Might be worth a try, at least it would brighten up our cities and towns.
The following From TecCrunch 

       The Met says its hope for the AI-powered tech is that it will help it tackle serious crime, including serious violence, gun and knife crime and child sexual exploitation, and that it will “help protect the vulnerable.”
     However, its phrasing is not a little ironic, given that facial recognition systems can be prone to racial bias, for example, owing to factors such as bias in data sets used to train AI algorithms.
       So in fact there’s a risk that police use of facial recognition could further harm vulnerable groups who already face a disproportionate risk of inequality and discrimination.

         Yet the Met’s PR doesn’t mention the risk of the AI tech automating bias.
Instead it makes pains to couch the technology as an “additional tool” to assist its officers.
       “This is not a case of technology taking over from traditional policing; this is a system which simply gives police officers a ‘prompt’, suggesting ‘that person over there may be the person you’re looking for’, it is always the decision of an officer whether or not to engage with someone,” it adds.
        While the use of a new tech tool may start with small deployments, as is being touted here, the history of software development underlines how potential to scale is readily baked in.
       A “targeted” small-scale launch also prepares the ground for London’s police force to push for wider public acceptance of a highly controversial and rights-hostile technology via a gradual building out process… AKA surveillance creep.

Read the full article HERE: 

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UK SHOW TRIALS.

         As usual The Commune  has come up with an excellent article on the upper class hatred of the working class as displayed in the recent "show trials" after the August riots. Taimour Lay explains the meaning of these post-riot show trials'.

         The criminal courts’ reaction to the riots was to instinctively follow the hysteria of a panicking government and a shocked police. Of 3000 people arrested, 1000 were charged in August alone. Magistrates have been sending hundreds to jail (an average of five months for theft or handling stolen goods), with the majority remanded in custody until a Crown Court can hand down an even longer term.

- 3000 arrested nationwide

- London’s Met police set ‘target’ of 3000 convictions

- six months jail for stealing a £3.50 bottle of water

- five-month sentence given to mother-of-two who ‘handled’ stolen pair of shorts

- burglary charge and jail threat for stealing two scoops of ice-cream

- rioters’ families face being turfed out of council houses, benefit cuts

        It is hard to overstate quite how extraordinary this spasm of rushed ‘justice’ has been. Sentencing principles have been thrown out the window: it hasn’t helped defendants to plead guilty, be young, have a clean record, turn themselves in, express remorse, come from an abusive home or take a bottle of water as opposed to a plasma TV. Bail rights have been systematically disregarded. These are show-trials if the only aim is deterrence.

Continue reading HERE.

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DEATH AT THE HANDS OF THE POLICE.

      In a recent post, UK armed police,  I mentioned the death of Mark Duggan, by armed police, and the three deaths at the hands of the police since that event. I referred to this as a recent spate, as it should be noted that death at the hands of the police goes away back in our history.
       We can start with Blair Peach, killed at an anti-racist protest in April 1979. In spite of the fact that 14 witnesses stated that they had seen Blair Peach being hit by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group, (SPG), nobody was ever charged with his murder. Prior to the Mark Duggan killing the previous high profile death at the hands of the police was Ian Tomlison. Ian was hit from behind and pushed to the ground by a police officer, he died shortly afterwards. This was April 2009 at the London G20 protest, Ian, however, was not at the protest, he was merely trying to find his way home through the protest, after work. He was walking with his hands in his pockets and his back to the police when he was brutally assaulted by the officer.
      There never seems to be much coverage in the media of the number of deaths at the hands of the police, but the numbers are considerable. From 1997 until 2007, in England and Wales, 530 people have died in police custody. Not one single officer has been convicted in connection with these deaths. During the period, 1990 until 2011, armed police have killed 53 people, 21 of these were by the London Metropolitan Police. A lot of deaths, no convictions, it doesn't seem to add up.

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