Response to facial recognition cameras consultation
To: fr-consultation@homeoffice.gov.uk
From: Neil Lock, neillock@aol.com. <Address redacted>.
This is my response to the “Consultation on a new legal framework for law enforcement use of biometrics, facial recognition and similar technologies,” to be found at [[i]].
I am responding as a member of the public, who has been active for many years in the civil liberties arena, including as a member of NO2ID, the campaign against ID cards, from 2006 to 2010. I am also a current member of Together Declaration, the radical civil liberties organization. And I have had to make myself over the decades into something of an ethical and political philosopher – a qualification very relevant to this issue. I also happen to be campaign manager for my local branch of the Reform UK party.
Political context
I take the view that every government must serve the governed, and everything it does must be for their benefit. And if it fails, with intent, to act in the interests of those who pay for it, it loses all legitimacy, and becomes a criminal gang. This is hardly controversial. It is no more than Enlightenment principles put into practical terms.
Rights and freedoms
In particular, every government must uphold the human rights and freedoms of all those who do not violate the equal rights and freedoms of others. If not, then what is the point in having a government at all?
These rights include, to give just a few examples: Dignity (being recognized as, and treated as, a human being). Life. Security of person. No cruel or inhuman treatment. No arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence. Liberty of action. Freedom of movement and residence. Freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Peaceful assembly and association. Recognition as person before the law. Equality before the law. And the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
What is going on today?
Today, government does not do things for us the people, as it should. Instead, it does things to us. For example, the “on-line safety” bill, that allows government to order removal, from the Internet or social media, of statements they brand as “misinformation,” even if those statements are simply the factual truth. Restrictions on the right to protest. The pursuit of unaffordable, unattainable and totally unnecessary “net zero” goals, which in several decades have never been subjected to any honest, rigorous cost-benefit analysis. And the ever-tightening noose around the necks of car drivers, with obstructions in the roads, ever tighter regulations, and ever-decreasing speed limits, ever more strictly enforced.
Things are not getting any better. Look at the desires of current and recent governments to abolish cash, and replace it by a central bank digital currency. And to force digital ID on us; which, despite a recent walk-back on requiring it in order to work in the UK, is still very much a live project. See [[ii]]: “Whether or not we have digital ID cards, there is a future where smartphones are used by all to access government provided forms of identification.”
Look, too, at their proposals for “15-minute cities” all over the country. For cameras on the roads that will snoop on everyone, looking for tiny “offences” that harm no-one; like riding in the back seat of a car without wearing a seat belt. And to abolish jury trials.
None of these bring us any benefits at all. And they are likely to help government accuse innocent people of trumped-up “crimes,” and punish them for their non-transgressions. Often by fines, payable to that same government. That’s extortion, if ever there was such a thing.
The home secretary’s position
And what is the current home secretary’s stated position on facial recognition? [[iii]]. She wants to “achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his panopticon”. Does she not know that Bentham’s panopticon was a prison?
Her desire is “that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.” Does she really think that will make people feel safe? I know how safe I feel in today’s UK – about as safe as a Jew in nazi Germany. And it isn’t common criminals that worry me, but the state itself.
I have good reasons for my concern. For the UK state, cruelly and arbitrarily, destroyed my career as a software consultant through a bad law called IR35. I regard the state as my enemy. And the tendency of any state is always to increase the strength and scope of its power.
A database state?
And remember that behind all this, there is a desire among those behind this agenda to create a comprehensive database, that records everything government knows about each individual among us. The existence of this desire was given away by a Labour peer all the way back in 2005. The database, so we were told, was to be regarded as a “single source of truth.”
A scary prospect, no? When evidence from the real world is to be disregarded, in favour of what is in a database? Which can easily be corrupted, hacked, or even deliberately edited by government to plant “evidence” on someone it doesn’t like? (Or “adjusted” by Artificial Intelligence; another of the home secretary’s wild ideas). And even if a case comes to trial, there will be no jury, and the judge or magistrate will be in the pay of the state.
If such a prospect does not concern you, consider what happened when the Post Office treated their Horizon system as a single source of truth, and committed perjuries and perversions of justice by maintaining in court that it was free from errors. (The offenders have not yet been brought to justice, as Operation Olympos grinds along like a snail).
Furthermore, such a database opens up the possibility of a “lifestyle police” trawling its contents, in order to identify who is disobeying the latest fad government wants to force on people. “You ate too much bacon (or drank too much beer) last week” and “You have exceeded your CO2 limit (or air pollution limit) for this year” are the kind of things I mean. Such a database could easily lead to a system that imposes strict conformism to arbitrary diktats, through a Chinese style “social credit” system or similar.
The perversion of the precautionary principle
Very relevant to the facial recognition issue, and the violations of human rights and freedoms that governments carry out more and more on claimed grounds of “safety,” is the perversion of the precautionary principle, which has taken place over the last 40 years and more. This perversion has been pushed on us by the unelected, unaccountable United Nations, and has been strongly supported by the EU and successive UK governments.
Rather than try to summarize it here, I will refer you to my analysis of the perversion of the precautionary principle: [[iv]]. I have attached as an appendix to this response a copy of that essay, to be treated as part of my submission.
Confidence in the police
There is also a more general problem of low public confidence in the police. As, indeed, there is a crisis of public confidence in government as a whole. Hardly surprising, given how they have behaved towards us in recent decades.
To be fair, on occasions police can be very helpful. When I fell over a trip hazard at an event in Oxford a few months ago, they not only picked me up and took me to the medical vehicle, but also arranged for the trip hazard to be removed.
But not all they do is so good. I know of a substacker, who was arrested for the “hate crime” of re-posting an anti-Palestine and anti-Islam meme on social media. He was driven across North Yorkshire late at night to a police station for a five-hour interrogation. He was released without charge, and eventually told there would be no further action. This was an out of proportion police response to what was not a crime in the first place. As well as costing the time of all involved, and a substantial amount of taxpayer money. Meanwhile, far too many perpetrators of real crimes, like burglaries, go undetected and unprosecuted.
And Surrey Police took an active part in promoting a UN World Health Organization (WHO) project called “Vision Zero.” This bills itself as “a global movement to end traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries by taking a systemic approach to road safety.” This is not only an unachievable pipe-dream, but also a recipe for unbridled state control over drivers. And there is no democratic mandate for such a policy to be imposed on us. Besides which, police should never be allowed to influence what it is that they are to be expected to enforce.
The place of facial recognition
I see facial recognition cameras in public places as no more than yet another brick in the prison, that today’s political class seeks to build around us. As no less than the home secretary has admitted, they want to hem us inside a panopticon, allowing them to take ever increasing control over us and everything we do.
Consultations
In the past, I have responded in detail to several government consultations. And I have not been impressed by the processes.
For example, in 2021, the UK government held a consultation on “bringing forward the end to the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 to 2035, or earlier if a faster transition appears feasible.” I submitted a 58-page, detailed response, opposing the scheme in every particular. My response, and those of others like me, to that consultation were totally ignored. And the ban was moved forward to 2030. The whole “consultation” was a sham.
More recently, I co-wrote a response (submitted on behalf of the local Reform party branch) to the consultation on the new structure for local government in Surrey: [[v]]. Subsequent events have made it clear that this “consultation,” too, was never real. Like a fig leaf, it was intended only to hide the reality that the outcome had already been decided. Labour and Tory parties had agreed on how they wanted to proceed; never mind what anyone else thought. And on the related subject of the introduction of a “Mayor of Surrey,” it looks as if we are not going to get even a token “consultation” on that issue.
I also responded to a consultation last year on “local street improvements” in my area. This was set up to take suggestions for improvements at particular places, and individuals could submit as many ideas as they wanted. But now that this is being pushed towards the next stage, the two highest aggregate suggestions, “there is too much traffic” and “the traffic is too fast,” are being treated as if they had been the result of a democratic vote, and that “the people” of our area consider them to be a problem. Yet from what I can see, these high counts were almost certainly a consequence of anti-car activist individuals voting multiple times.
Can I really be sure that my voice, and the voices of others who oppose the whole direction the UK has been taking under Labour, Tories and Coalition for the last 35 years and more, will be listened to this time around?
Response to the consultation
I shall now start to address the specifics of this particular consultation.
The minister’s foreword
I was concerned that, in the very first paragraph of the minister’s foreword, numbers of arrests were given, that were credited to the use of facial recognition. From my perspective, the metric that ought to be used is not arrests, but actual convictions. And only when use of the technology has an impact on the course of the case, such as supplying evidence which would not otherwise have been available, can it be reasonably credited to the technology.
Individual rights
I was even more concerned over the stated desire to “balance the seriousness of harm the police are seeking to detect or prevent with individual rights.” Individual rights are not something that can ever be “balanced” against claims or anticipations of harm, that are as yet unjustified. As long as they have been earned by respecting the equal rights of others, the rights of human beings must be sacrosanct. This is not negotiable.
In my view, no-one should be subjected to police surveillance of any kind, unless they are reasonably suspected of having committed, committing or planning to commit a real crime. This should apply to any kind of surveillance at all – and, most of all, to any intrusive new technology like facial recognition. For anyone who values human rights and freedoms, random surveillance of everyone passing by is arbitrary, and so unethical. No matter how it is done.
I also note that at least one innocent member of the public has already been wrongly identified as a suspect by a false positive facial recognition: [[vi]]. Does not the English law dictate, as William Blackstone put it, that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer?”
Executive Summary
The consultation is: “to help develop a new legal framework for the use of facial recognition and similar technologies by law enforcement.” And to develop rules “that police can rely on as they increasingly use these technologies.” So, in common with the other consultations I referred to above, it seems that I am wasting my time replying to this. The decisions are already made, and no dissenting voices will be heard.
For the avoidance of doubt, the option I would pick, given the opportunity, would be a total ban on the use of facial recognition technology in the UK, except for the sole purpose of checking passports at international borders. But that option is not even on the table.
There seems little point in my trying to answer any of the more detailed questions, so I will close with a friendly warning. If you really do want to restore public trust in the police and in government as a whole, you are going to have to start listening to the public. Really listening. To pass this exercise off as a “consultation,” when it is obvious that the decisions have already been made and no disagreements, however principled, will be entertained, is deeply dishonest towards the people you are supposed to be serving.
Image credit on main page: Freepik
[[i]] https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/legal-framework-for-using-facial-recognition-in-law-enforcement/consultation-on-a-new-legal-framework-for-law-enforcement-use-of-biometrics-facial-recognition-and-similar-technologies-accessible
[[ii]] https://theconversation.com/mandatory-digital-id-cards-abandoned-where-did-the-government-go-wrong-273603
[[iii]] https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/uk-home-secretary-dreams-of-ai-powered-panopticon
[[iv]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/predatory-precaution-by-neil-lock/
[[v]] https://reformpartygodalmingash.uk/reform-uk-godalming-and-ash-response-to-consultation-on-local-government-re-organization-in-surrey/