We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
“Live facial recognition cameras planned for every town centre”, reports today’s Telegraph.
Police could be given access to Britain’s passport database to catch criminals under an expansion of facial recognition technology that could be deployed in every city, town and village.
Labour is proposing that police be allowed to compare photos of crime suspects from CCTV, doorbells and dashcams against facial images on government databases, including the passports of 45 million Britons, and immigration records.
The plans are part of a Home Office consultation launched on Thursday to establish a legal framework for all police forces to use facial recognition technology to catch wanted criminals and crime suspects.
As a commenter on the UK Politics subreddit called Eldritch_Lemonade observes,
Oh look, it’s taken 3 months to go from rolling out 10 vans with facial recognition to be used in specific and targeted ways to every town in the country scanning your face constantly
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/live-facial-recognition-technology-to-catch-high-harm-offenders
That Home Office “news story” with the title “Live Facial Recognition technology to catch high-harm offenders” to which Eldritch_Lemonade linked was issued on 13 August 2025. Naughty Eldritch was exaggerating with the “three months”; it’s nearer four. A whole three months and three weeks ago the Home Office reassured us that…
The new vans will operate according to strict rules, which ensure they are only deployed when there is specific intelligence. The College of Policing has clear guidance on how the technology should be used.
These vehicles enable law enforcement to target and locate wanted criminals and suspects for the most serious crimes including sex offences, violent assaults, homicide and serious and organised crime. Forces already using LFR have used it to arrest rape, domestic abuse, knife crime and robbery suspects as well as sex offenders breaching their conditions. The technology has also been used to maintain safety at big public events.
Existing safeguards require checks only to be done against police watchlists of wanted criminals, suspects and those subject to bail or court order conditions like sex offenders. Watchlists are bespoke to every deployment, with officers following strict guidance from the College of Policing guidance when composing a list.
My computer is evil, so this will be brief.
“Justice secretary wants jury trials scrapped except in most serious cases”, the BBC reports:
Justice Secretary David Lammy is proposing to massively restrict the ancient right to a jury trial by only guaranteeing it for defendants facing rape, murder, manslaughter or other cases passing a public interest test.
An internal government briefing, produced by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) for all other Whitehall departments, confirms plans to create a new tier of jury-less courts in England and Wales.
The new courts would deal with most crimes currently considered by juries in Crown Court.
But the MoJ said no final decision had been taken by the government.
The plans, obtained by BBC News, show that Lammy, who is also deputy prime minister, wants to ask Parliament to end jury trials for defendants who would be jailed for up to five years.
The proposals are an attempt to end unprecedented delays and backlogs in courts, and do not apply to Scotland or Northern Ireland.
Here is what David Lammy said about juries in 2020:
David Lammy
@DavidLammy
Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement. Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea.
The Government need to pull their finger out and acquire empty public buildings across the country to make sure these can happen in a way that is safe.
12:20 pm · 20 Jun 2020
In May 2020, I wrote a piece called ‘Britain’s Covid Reich’. I commented:
One of the most remarkable aspects of the creation of Britain’s Covid Reich was that even in the middle of the Government’s witless, confused and ambivalent approach to the crisis it was able to rustle up overnight many of the key ingredients of totalitarianism. The ideology and the slogans, and the continual repetition of the message with the supine assistance of broadcast media all fell into place with frightening speed. The speed with which the Great British Public acquiesced was even more alarming.
One possibility I anticipated was:
In one direction lies the complete end of everything we have ever held dear and a life literally not worth living, a mere spectral existence in a paralysed and terrified surveillance state of agoraphobics queuing up like mendicant friars for government handouts.
I thought I was going over the top when I wrote that. But that’s exactly what’s happened – hasn’t it? Back then I thought there was a more optimistic possible alternative, but I was wrong.
Few politicians, few scientists and even worse few in the so-called free press seemed to be able to understand that the measures the Government was imposing were going to leave a legacy that would, and has, set Britain back by half a century and perhaps change it permanently. Anyone who dared to stray from the state propaganda line was shot down in flames.
So it is almost beyond belief to see that the confused and contradictory Covid Inquiry has continued to ignore the impact of lockdown…
– Guy de la Bédoyère
“Parents ‘vindicated’ after police admit unlawful arrest over WhatsApp row”, the Guardian reports. The subheading is “Hertfordshire police agree to pay £20,000 to Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, who were held for 11 hours after complaining about daughter’s school”.
I posted about this couple’s experience last April: Boiling frogs in Salem and Hertfordshire.
One aspect of the story that the Free Speech Union’s Frederick Attenborough highlighted at the time was that Hertfordshire Police didn’t just put the frighteners on Rosalind Levine and Maxie Allen, they also threatened – in writing – their local county councillor, Michelle Vince, that if she continued to advocate on their behalf she too might find herself “liable to being recorded as a suspect in a harassment investigation”. And they told Michelle Vince to pass on that warning to the local MP, Sir Oliver Dowden.
As Sir Oliver said in the Times, “Police risk ‘curtailing democracy’ by stopping MPs doing their job”.
Today’s Guardian article continues,
Allen claimed he and Levine were not abusive and were never told which communications were criminal, saying it was “completely Kafkaesque”.
A Hertfordshire police spokesperson said: “Whilst there are no issues of misconduct involving any officer in relation to this matter, Hertfordshire Constabulary has accepted liability solely on the basis that the legal test around necessity of arrest was not met in this instance.
“Therefore Mr Haddow-Allen and Ms Levine were wrongfully arrested and detained in January 2025. It would be inappropriate to make further comment at this stage.”
You wish. Further comment is both appropriate and necessary. There bloody well are issues of misconduct involving at least one officer in relation to this matter: whichever officer tried to frighten off both a local councillor and an MP from representing their constituents.
Macron insists he’s defending democracy from manipulation and hate. But that’s the excuse. His vision is of a Europe where free speech is tolerated only when it is traceable, and where platforms pre-emptively silence anything that might draw a regulator’s glare. He calls it a ‘resurgence of democracy’. It’s nothing of the kind. It’s the bureaucratisation of thought, and the beginning of a continent where debate survives only on licence. If Macron has his way, Europe’s public square will not just be regulated, it will be licensed.
– James Tidmarsh
Of course UK is no better.
The Guardian reports:
‘Reverse Midas touch’: Starmer plan prompts collapse in support for digital IDs
Public support for digital IDs has collapsed after Keir Starmer announced plans for their introduction, in what has been described as a symptom of the prime minister’s “reverse Midas touch”.
Net support for digital ID cards fell from 35% in the early summer to -14% at the weekend after Starmer’s announcement, according to polling by More in Common.
The findings suggest that the proposal has suffered considerably from its association with an unpopular government. In June, 53% of voters surveyed said they were in favour of digital ID cards for all Britons, while 19% were opposed.
In the UK right now, @X is performing the same function that Radio Free Europe did in the Eastern Bloc. Without this site, or if it still remained Twitter under the control of the American left, our government would be much more able to hide things they don’t want to discuss.
– Peter Hague
‘Fuck Palestine, Fuck Hamas, Fuck Islam. Want to protest? Fuck off to Muslim country and protest.’
– This got Pete North arrested
The Guardian has up a panel discussion with the title “Labour is in a mess. Is there anything Starmer can do to turn things around? Our panel responds”. One of the panellists is Ann Pettifor. She writes,
The Bank lacks tools and legitimacy to tackle inflation. Labour should transfer that role to a new Inflation Control Office, which could use taxes, price controls and even rationing to lower inflation. Then Reeves should change the Bank’s mandate, radically: to support the economic policy of the government, not the City.
As a means to “save” Keir Starmer’s government, I am not convinced by the rationing bit. True, price controls are nearly always popular – until tried. But the people’s cry of “We want an Inflation Control Office to stop us buying things!” is heard only in Ann Pettifor’s dreams. I would advise less rich food late at night.
DR, Denmark’s equivalent of the BBC, reports that:
The Danish presidency of the EU is currently working to gain support for the CSA regulation, which will open a backdoor to all Europeans’ phones in an attempt to trap and track down criminals who share sexual abuse material with children.
If the CSA regulation is voted through, police and judicial authorities will be able to access encrypted communication services such as WhatsApp and Signal – and thus the private communications of many millions of Europeans.
A leaked document from the European Council states that this will be done through client-side scanning . The technology works by scanning images, video and text on the user’s device before sending and encrypting them, including with the help of AI.
[…]
The CSA regulation was taken off the agenda of the EU Council of Ministers in June 2024 due to the risk of mass surveillance of EU citizens and a concern that the law could represent a setback for freedoms.
But two months later, the Minister of Justice [Peter Hummelgaard] stated to TV 2 that “we need to break with the completely erroneous perception that it is every man’s right to freedom to communicate on encrypted messaging services, which are used to facilitate many different serious forms of crime”.
Five, apparently. That’s five armed police officers, of course. Heaven knows how many unarmed officers it would take to bring down a mighty warrior like Graham Linehan.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
