"We don't want to become a nation of walking ID cards"

The debate over the threat posed to individual privacy by overuse of facial recognition technology continues to be crucial issue for society as a whole, explains Silkie Carlo, the director of civil rights group Big Brother Watch (BBW) in the aftermath of a High Court ruling. As reported by the BBC: "Privacy campaigners have lost a High Court challenge aimed at limiting the Metropolitan Police's use of live facial recognition technology. Youth worker Shaun Thompson, and Silkie Carlo [....] brought the challenge over concerns that facial recognition could be used arbitrarily or in a discriminatory way. In a major victory for the continued roll-out of the technology, the High Court rejected claims that the Met Police had broken human rights and privacy law by scanning faces in public". Carlo here lays out the reasons BBW has these concerns.

Keywords: Big Brother Watch facial recognition, BBW Shaun Thompson, Met Police UK, surveillance technology Britain, walking ID cards,