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The UK's surveillance state must not be accepted

So it happened. London's Met police announced that the city will get its first permanent camera equipped with facial recognition. The first one will be deployed in Croydon, with the Met police saying they could extend the surveillance to other areas.

This is another step towards the UK's recent ambition to become a surveillance state -- some of you might have noticed that the government is also trying to gain access to Apple users' end-to-end encrypted data.

This isn't fine, and it doesn't matter how lofty the intentions behind these attacks on people's privacy are. "We're fighting crime" isn't a good enough excuse, not when crime in the city is going through the roof and the police is doing nothing about the amount of stabbings, thefts, and phone snatching that is going on in the capital. There are many ways to fight crime, but the Met seems to be more interested in merely logging crime and producing nice charts at the end of the week, something that can be comfortably be done from home.

Today's government is democratic, but we cannot give something as important as our freedom for granted. If permanent cameras are installed today, we don't know how they will be used in the future. We are deploying a technology that can track every citizen everywhere they go, with absolutely no guarantees on its future uses. Not to mention that one permanent camera in Croydon isn't going to change anything. The trials with facial recognition cameras were extremely successful because they were deployed in areas where people (including criminals wanted by the police) weren't expecting them: it is by accident that they ran into the cameras. One permanent camera in Croydon will not have the same type of advantage.

Unless, of course, the goal is to deploy so many cameras that they become unavoidable. And that is in itself a worrying prospect. As citizens, we should try not to give the government the kind of power that we wouldn't want to be used against us. By allowing the police to be able to track anyone, anywhere in London, I am afraid we're signing up to a much more dangerous future than we intend to. I could even be open to consider the temporary deployment of facial recognition cameras in targeted areas for specific purposes, but permanent cameras are an unacceptable breach of our privacy.

We already have extensive CCTV coverage in London, which makes it one of the most surveiled cities in the world. But for some reason, the Met police still can't fight crime effectively and fails to solve over 90% of car thefts and over 80% of burglaries. I can tell you right now, all the AI in the world will not solve London's crime problem: it will only improve the overreaching state's capabilities to monitor the average citizen. Do not ignore the warning signs of a state that is turning into the Big Brother: we are the only thing that stands between a free country and a totalitarian one.

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