August 2, 2024 - 7:00am
Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to increase government use of facial recognition surveillance in a Thursday press conference.
The announcement came in response to the Tuesday riots in Southport, where members of the far-Right English Defence League gathered outside a local mosque and disrupted a vigil by starting fires and throwing bricks at police officers.
“These thugs are mobile,” Starmer said. “They move from community to community, and we must have a policing response that can do the same shared intelligence, wider deployment of facial recognition technology and preventative action criminal behaviour orders to restrict their movements before they could even board a train, in just the same way that we do with football hooligans.”
This new “national capability” will involve the coordinated sharing of intelligence across the country on all varieties of “extremist troublemakers,” according to Starmer.
The Prime Minister also warned social media companies to curb misinformation on their platforms and suggested consequences may be in order, stating that “violent disorder, clearly whipped up online, that is also a crime. It’s happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere.” A social media account called “Channel 3 Now News” falsely claimed the killer was an illegal immigrant who’d come to the UK by boat in a since-deleted viral tweet.
Silkie Carlo, director of civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, called the technology “dangerously inaccurate” and said it “turns members of the public into walking ID cards”. While facial recognition surveillance is banned in the EU, it’s widely used in the UK and was ramped up considerably under the previous government. Rishi Sunak pledged in April to spend £55.5 million on facial recognition technology, including “bespoke mobile units that can be deployed to high streets across the country with live facial recognition used in crowded areas to identify people wanted by the police.”
“The far-Right is showing who they are,” Starmer said at the press conference. “We have to show who we are.”
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeProblem, reaction, solution.
Keir Starling. White people who notice are now officially ‘Kuluks’ under this vile hate regime. He, like Reeves, look like block robot Daleks. No nuance at all. No ability to talk to the people. They just exist in pre-defined ideological railroads, like automatons.
The Government, and especially Labour, have become the Borg – a set of cybernetic organisms linked in a hive mind called “The Collective” (see Star Trek). And we, of course, are to be assimilated into it. Not wanting to be assimilated is ‘proof’ that we are not worthy.
Dear oh dear another one who needs to get off his laptop/smart phone and get out more. Anyone for lizards with lasers in space?
Meanwhile, on Wednesday in Kirklees
“Twenty eight sexual predators who preyed on vulnerable females in Kirklees have been given jail sentences totalling almost 400 years.
A further two men were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court today (July 31) as part of Kirklees Police’s long running Operation Tourway investigation into non recent sexual abuse.
Ebrahim Pandor and Amjad Hussain were both sentenced for offences committed against a single female victim in Kirklees between the years 2004 and 2012.”
You will not have heard about his as the BBC and MSM chose not to cover it.
Actually in 2secs pulled it up on BBC News. Might have rightly got more publicity if a bunch of drunken yobbos hadn’t been all over the community of murdered children.
Anyway glad all those caught by Tourway now going down for long time. Perhaps Police will catch more if not having to deal with foresaid pissheads?
It has been deliberately buried and you know it
Well if buried not v well. Like I say 2s and you can find it on BBC News. I actually had a look in the Mail too, and couldn’t find it, but appreciate that was just the one edition on the same day.
I think your point may be it wasn’t the lead story. As I say when a bunch of drunken yobs start bricking Police in a community that just had to absorb a dreadful set of murders, it’s going to take up alot of the news.
You should stop watching the BBC. It’s just the greedy people talking to themselves.
Oh dear, you’re having a proper mouth-foaming week aren’t you VJ.
Is some personal abuse about how the PM talks and looks the limit of your intellectual engagement?
Crawl back under your rock, racist filth. Keep on making excuses for child killing racists.
Hmm, as I thought. Not sure you needed to confirm but helpful anyway.
Far right of what? Does the English Defence League really exist?
Why no Government initiative for every council to provide a public piano and player to play “Imagine” after stabbings, bombing, protest arson and graffiti on, say, war memorials?
Is Farage really wrong? https://youtu.be/qikeU5NGqp4?si=0XaPk7ogfZ6kAq-l
Yes, this is the sort of satire we need. Seriously. Leftists are evil at this point, not just ‘loony’ like we used to think of them.
Setting up a police state to combat the rise of far right. Interesting tactic.
The use of the term ‘far right’ is the crowning dishonesty.
Far right or fascist just mean non far left
Pissed up, easily mis-led idiots being a more accurate description for most of the rioters the other night don’t you think?
How about the police were sent in to start trouble and make arrests to discredit what might otherwise have been a peaceful protest
You’ll be believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy next ER.
I think that’s you
I’m sure your great, great grandparents said the same thing about Peterloo.
Were they pissed up.actually? No doubt some might have been.
Oh you certainly just did that, O’Brien.
Nice.
Speak to the local community affected by the riots and who knew the murdered girls. Seen or heard one who supported what the rioters did?
No of course not. In fact when the PM says something like that it’s you berks who don’t get that the vast majority happy with his intent.
Your comments are becoming increasingly foam-flecked. Take a deep breath and calm down. It might never happen in Surbiton.
Unfortunately.
I don’t write understand this. I respect unherd as a publication for original thought, but here we have a piece with no mame attached to it, that is just parroting what every other news outlet is saying.
Have they been bullied into publishing this. If so by who and why?
Unfortunately they are prey to the same clickbait monetisation.
Tate and Robinson been using the same to grift whilst helping stoke the violence. Remarkable really folks on the Right don’t see it for exactly what it is – a money making operation on the back of sowing division
This is a tediously predictable slur. I know nothing about this Tate fellow (I think you spend far too much time on tik tok, X etc), but I think it highly unlikely that Tommy Robinson is in it for the money.
“The far-Right is showing who they are,”
Says the creep who took the knee to the black clad fascists of antifa.
Indeed they are – largely drug and drink fuelled idiots easily grifted, and who if they couldn’t latch onto this would have been happy being football hooligans and petty criminals. Pathetic Men, and it’s largely Men, who run with a pack and like to bully.
If the Guardian told you that the moon is made of cheese you’d be kicking up a fuss in Waitrose demanding to know why they don’t stock it. You must try to think for yourself.
It’s not the ‘far right’ that is behind stabbings and murders.
It’s not ‘far right’ to be appalled by the murder of innocent little girls, the multiple stabbing of a soldier, the beating of police at Manchester airport and more.
It’s not ‘far right’ to be disgusted at two tier policing.
Starmer’s comment about controlling social media is sinister. Will discussion be blocked? I see that The Telegraph, among other ‘papers, is not allowing comments about this.
Starmer is not listening and we are being muzzled.
Merseyside and Sefton are now teeming with Far Right thugs, according to the Official Narrative.
You know… that Merseyside and Sefton.
The one where 14 out of 15 MPs are Labour , there are zero Conservative councillors in Liverpool and Knowsley, and where Farage is more likely to get a milkshake than a vote.
Social media strongly contributed to the riots. Misinformation and a call to attend the demos. Whether a Govt can sufficiently control it I have my doubts, but it clearly is being used for malign purposes
I’ve tried to raise the serious issue of the Covid mRNA vaccines and the damage they are doing to the paper I subscribe to and I get no reply. No one in authority is listening. Only taking to the streets like the left always do with placards will this issue be brought to the publics attention.
Starmer is a wooden cypher. Rayner is a loud-mouthed slattern without a single useful idea. Reeves is an utter moron promoted way way way above her very limited ability. They want control, silence, obedience and to punish wrong-think.
People voted for this. Let them have a good hard dose of it.
Thank you so much for this rivetingly insightful political analysis. Calling your political opponents morons – do you have the slightest basis for saying that?
“Slattern” – pure old fashioned sexist, not to say misogynist, terminology that can only be used against women. Why do so many people on the Right just do the Left’s job for them? That common would get an 85% disapproval rating from the British public!
And in any case SOME people voted for Labour but actually fewer than did in the previous two general elections!
“Ginger growler” = slattern. You may not like it but she put it out there herself. Perhaps you would prefer “trash” or “common”? Being working class doesn’t mean “common”.
I’ve long believed that a ‘multicultural society’ can only really hold together under a government that is authoritarian to a greater or lesser extent (Yugoslavia under Tito, the USSR, the PRC, Zaire under Mbuto, even Singapore).
Anyway, here we are.
Almost 60yrs since the ‘Rivers of Blood’ SL and here we still are. And loving our multi-diverse football and cricket teams et al. You keep hoping.
Even Saddam Hussein who allowed the Christian Community to sell alcohol. Of course when he was gone so were the Christians, their properties fire bombed.
Last week, facial recognition technology was racist.
It is hard to keep up.
Where is Starmer going to get the technology from? China? They have the most advanced systems.
Yup! That sounds like the reaction of a human rights lawyer!
At the same time he has the police promising to act robustly against these right wing thugs, but appears unworried by gangs rampaging in Southend and weekly mass threats of death and destruction on the streets of London. Hmmm…now what’s the difference between these groups?
Err which groups and weekly examples are you referring to?
Do you get out often or read too much on social media?
““The far-Right is showing who they are,” Starmer said at the press conference. “We have to show who we are.””
Well you’re certainly doing that, Keir. Ignoring the threats from virtually every other direction, ones that often involve bombs, machetes, knives, or simply well-organised and defended activists who can do billions worth of economic damage through obstructive protest, but you’re coming to come down like a ton of bricks on a few disorganised idiots and while doing so, tear into the defacto liberties that the rest of us presently enjoy.
I’m not surprised, but I am still disgusted.
Now as you should know the Just Stop Oil protesters been sent to prison, the leader for 5yrs. You happy the same for a yobs who lobbed bricks at the Police earlier this week?
Threatening violence and intimidation with multiple proposed similar actions requires a strong response and vast majority of Brits will be behind him. As it is the piss heads unlikely to turn up if they think they can’t rob a local shop again whilst at it.
I think the British people are far more authoritarian than many people all this forum like to think and also are not best pleased with anyone disrupting their lives I disruptive environment mod protest on the street, people blocking roads whatever
However, the sentence for Roger Hallam has been massively condemned by many people in the left liberal establishment, the Labour Party, celebrities etc. It is likely that the law – which after all was introduced by the previous government because of hugely protests by left wing and environmental activists will be applied in a while widely uneven manner just as the covid restrictions were (BLM kid gloves, anti lockdown protests ruthlessly suppresses).
Most of the protesters after Southport were not on the far right but were gullibly and easily persuaded the attack was by a Muslim immigrant. And even so It doesn’t justify them attacking a mosque. However there is a worrying context to this; many crimes, including murders committed by recent immigrants and asylum seekers been down being downplayed massively or even ignored by the establishment. That’s not the same thing as the police never prosecuting but it is worrying nonetheless.
I’ve read all the comments and don’t get where people are coming from on this one. Starmer was measured and thoughtful in his announcement. There is an outbreak of noxious and misinformed thuggery in several towns, especially in the north-west, and it seems to especially involve several fringe groups who characterise themselves in certain ways. It is, as Starmer said, about straightforward criminal activity.
I don’t like facial recognition camera techniques (or indeed police armed with guns or tasers) but on rare occasions – e.g. a major violent riot, it can be justified, to save lives and property. And it is best that use of such is openly admitted (perhaps as deterrence), than secretly used.
Facial recognition would have been very useful to eliminate the people attending the Southport vigil from the suspicion that some of them were also at the protests.
And facial recognition on people using the trains and buses to travel to Southport is also needed. I believe there is already CCTV at Liverpool Central and Moorfields, so it should be easy to install.
And perhaps stop-and-search people to see if they have any weapons that could be used in noxious and misinformed thuggery.
You are showing us who you are alright. Another tool of the globalists in their push for a surveillance society and economy. Rishi was too. They own the government and opposition.
The first opportunity Smarmer had was always going to usher in more authoritarianism and censorship. ID cards will be coming shortly.
Hopefully. Might help slow the Boats as lack of ID necessity one of the things that makes us more attractive when the People smugglers doing their marketing.
And besides Amazon already know all about you
Good. This is a major readon why I voted Labour
So the solution is….. to push a decades-old policy that has proved to be extremely unpopular with voters since it was first suggested?
Misnomer.
Left wing totalitarianism call normal people far right.
Expanding facial recognition = worse than ID cards.
Given that the far-Right is not the problem. Starmer’s proposals won’t solve it.
What good will facial recognition be if the miscreants are wearing balaclavers”
In a way I suppose it’s comforting to see that the U.K. state is still capable of mobilising an effective response to, well, anything really. Just needed the right target I suppose.
Does facial recognition work when they wear face masks?
Didn’t wait long for him to implement the tactics of his North Korean and Venezuelan friends.