England's already the snooping capital of the west, isn't it?

It seems that every time a new privacy-invading technology comes floating down the pike, England just instantly adopts it. They don't even hesitate -it's like, "Ooh... new survellance technology? I'll take that one and that one and that one and... you know what? Just give me the lot!"

And every time, I cynically reflect on the fact that Orwell was English.

fix the homelessness problem or trans rights issues or the home heating problem or improve the looks of the cities or fix the wealth gap or fix NHS or lessen sexism or improve public schools or lower emissions or improve nuclear power or reduce coal or subsidise renewables or improve privacy or fix all the issues created by the UK government over the last 30 years or help fix problems caused by colonisation in ireland or do literally anything useful for once? nah, too expensive.

a £230,000,000 mass surveillance program akin to that of russia or the ccp? of course we can!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Campaigners, experts and peers say the U.K. is fast becoming an outlier among democracies in the pace at which it is adopting live facial recognition (LFR) technology in the absence of firm legal underpinnings.

In contrast, the issue has rarely made headlines in the U.K. — despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seeking to position the country as a global leader in AI governance.

Civil society groups warn that facial recognition technology, particularly in its live form, is invasive, imperfect and risks exacerbating the same sort of structural issues in community policing that have marred policies like “stop and search.”

Under the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, the government is proposing to abolish the position of surveillance camera commissioner, a role responsible for encouraging compliance with one of the few statutory codes that does mention LFR.

The Home Office, however, argues that a combination of common law policing powers, non-binding guidance, and human rights, data protection, and equalities legislation forms a “comprehensive legal framework” with “appropriate safeguards.”

“The U.K. is increasingly an outlier in the democratic world in taking this approach, with European countries, the EU, U.S. states and cities banning or severely restricting law enforcement use of LFR.”

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It already is?