Starmer exploits far-right to attack our civil freedoms and web access
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In so-called ‘opposition’, Starmer enabled the Tories every time they assaulted our civil rights to protest or to be free from spying and surveillance – and when they passed laws to protect undercover police and their agents from legal consequences for their crimes – including rape and murder. He went further, colluding with the Tories to defeat an attempt to overturn anti-protest legislation, to block measures to protect journalists from state persecution and to pass laws to prevent public bodies acting against apartheid.
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Starmer’s live facial recognition plan would usher in national ID, campaigners say
PM accused of ignoring civil rights and aping autocracies as he proposes new powers after far-right unrest
Civil liberties campaigners have said that a proposal made by Keir Starmer on Thursday to expand the use of live facial recognition technology would amount to the effective introduction of a national ID card system based on people’s faces.
Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, said it was ironic the new prime minister was suggesting a greater use of facial matching on the same day that an EU-wide law largely banning real-time surveillance technology came into force.
“Expanding live facial recognition means millions of innocent Britons being subjected to automated ID checks,” said Carlo. “These are the surveillance tactics of China and Russia and Starmer seems ignorant of the civil liberties implications.”
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Promising to create a national police capability to tackle the rioting, the new prime minister said forces needed to work better together, sharing intelligence and engaging in a “wider deployment of facial recognition technology”.
Details were scant but immediately after, Starmer suggested that trouble-makers could be subject to “criminal behaviour orders to restrict their movements before they can even board a train” – implying a wider use of live facial recognition at transport hubs such as railway stations.
Daragh Murray, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, said: “There is a clear danger that in responding to a tragedy and public unrest we expand and entrench police surveillance without appropriate scrutiny. Given that the police have responded to disorder and riots for decades, why is facial recognition needed now?”
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