On the UK government’s plans to introduce widespread live facial recognition in combination with artificial intelligence
On 26 January, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced an unsurprising yet disturbing change to policing practice. According to government plans, England and Wales will imminently see a huge increase in the use of live facial recognition and artificial intelligence to combat crime.
Despite the actual fact that crime levels have remained more or less the same since the 1990s, if not decreased, it’s fair to assume that most people perceive the amount to still be excessive – no doubt we would all like to live in a society which feels slightly safer. And in fact, there are cases which make a persuasive argument for this technology. As of December, for instance, the Met Police made a report of their Live Facial Recognition having successfully identified a child sex offender. It seems the technology, despite reportedly being both error- and bias-prone, can boast the removal of at least one dangerous individual from the public.
Looking for a moment beyond its apparent successes, the software being used will be noteworthy to some for its being manufactured by Corsight AI, the private Israeli company known for its operations in Gaza. This includes the inaccurate targeting of innocent people and its non-consensual collection of Palestinian information. Wading through the manifold ethical problems here, you would be forgiven for forming the impression that our government is invoking military methods against its citizens. The United Kingdom, a democratic state, is in a sense waging war against its very own people, with guilty-until-proven-innocent seemingly the new status quo.
Indeed, Mahmood wasn’t shy about doubling down on this attitude when she interviewed with Tony Blair last December. In a stunning act of devotion to the population which she is elected to serve and protect, she stated: “my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.”
Lacking the wherewithal and morality to act independently, in Mahmood’s utopia we are all watched by a prison guard waiting for the inevitable moment where we transform into the criminals we really are. The way this brazen infringement is being presented to us is also worth scrutinising. It doesn’t necessarily seem coincidental that this remedy is frequently being framed for us in the specific context of “predatory men” and “child sex offenders.” Amidst the outrage generated by the release of the Epstein files this week, the knight in shining armour offered to combat such depravity is, like in all the good fairy tales, artificial-intelligence-powered facial recognition. And it’s frustrating, because we all know something is massively wrong. But this move exposes the conflation of cause and symptom which we see all too often in our society. That there is a problem is blatantly obvious. But in order not to let that problem topple systems of power as they stand, those in control must limit themselves to tackling the symptoms of it, not the cause; otherwise, they might find it to be the very nature of the state itself. And thus mass surveillance marches onward.
Illustration by Mio Shinohara for The Student
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Are we living in the panopticon?
On the UK government’s plans to introduce widespread live facial recognition in combination with artificial intelligence
On 26 January, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced an unsurprising yet disturbing change to policing practice. According to government plans, England and Wales will imminently see a huge increase in the use of live facial recognition and artificial intelligence to combat crime.
Despite the actual fact that crime levels have remained more or less the same since the 1990s, if not decreased, it’s fair to assume that most people perceive the amount to still be excessive – no doubt we would all like to live in a society which feels slightly safer. And in fact, there are cases which make a persuasive argument for this technology. As of December, for instance, the Met Police made a report of their Live Facial Recognition having successfully identified a child sex offender. It seems the technology, despite reportedly being both error- and bias-prone, can boast the removal of at least one dangerous individual from the public.
Looking for a moment beyond its apparent successes, the software being used will be noteworthy to some for its being manufactured by Corsight AI, the private Israeli company known for its operations in Gaza. This includes the inaccurate targeting of innocent people and its non-consensual collection of Palestinian information. Wading through the manifold ethical problems here, you would be forgiven for forming the impression that our government is invoking military methods against its citizens. The United Kingdom, a democratic state, is in a sense waging war against its very own people, with guilty-until-proven-innocent seemingly the new status quo.
Indeed, Mahmood wasn’t shy about doubling down on this attitude when she interviewed with Tony Blair last December. In a stunning act of devotion to the population which she is elected to serve and protect, she stated: “my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.”
Lacking the wherewithal and morality to act independently, in Mahmood’s utopia we are all watched by a prison guard waiting for the inevitable moment where we transform into the criminals we really are. The way this brazen infringement is being presented to us is also worth scrutinising. It doesn’t necessarily seem coincidental that this remedy is frequently being framed for us in the specific context of “predatory men” and “child sex offenders.” Amidst the outrage generated by the release of the Epstein files this week, the knight in shining armour offered to combat such depravity is, like in all the good fairy tales, artificial-intelligence-powered facial recognition. And it’s frustrating, because we all know something is massively wrong. But this move exposes the conflation of cause and symptom which we see all too often in our society. That there is a problem is blatantly obvious. But in order not to let that problem topple systems of power as they stand, those in control must limit themselves to tackling the symptoms of it, not the cause; otherwise, they might find it to be the very nature of the state itself. And thus mass surveillance marches onward.
Illustration by Mio Shinohara for The Student
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