Privacy International’s campaign, “The End of Privacy in Public,” was launched as a way to allow UK citizens to ask members of parliament (MPs) about the ever-increasing use of facial recognition (FRT) in public spaces, and places in that country.
All the more so, since this – and by no means only this organization – spells out the situation as the UK essentially “sleepwalking towards the end of privacy in public.”
The campaign that sought to contribute to changing this mindset by allowing constituents to ask the MP representing them whether or not facial recognition tech is deployed in their area – has not returned results that can cause much optimism.
The non-profit has come out with the responses, covering the period between November 2023 and June 2024. Spoiler: MPs are, by and large, ignoring or obviously skirting the issue.
And even more bad news: Privacy International’s report released this week shows this is happening across party lines.
In the group’s own words, the goal of the campaign was to bring awareness and shed light on the “unfettered” use of FRT in their country; and, it says the MPs’ responses to the questions asked during the campaign have been “inadequate.”
From here on, it becomes the question of which comes first – the chicken or the egg? On the one hand, the Privacy International report points out that as many as 70 percent of UK MPs are unaware of the use (non-use, or misuse) of facial recognition in their constituency.
And if the chicken – or the egg – is unaware, how are those who elected them supposed to have their civil rights properly represented in the UK’s parliament?
Judging by the report, these politicians chose to act as politicians. Reads the article:
“(…) Most of the responses from MPs acknowledged their constituents’ concerns with the deployment of FRT and showed a basic understanding of some general developments in this area. Some didn’t engage with the harms of FRT at all, however, and none of them provided specific answers about the actual use of FRT in their constituency.”
So, politicians are simply doing some basic “politicking” – that’s further highlighted by Privacy International saying that the responses received by all the MPs covered by the report “ignored the questions that were actually put to them by their constituents.”
Those were, in the context of facial recognition tech, reasonable questions: is FRT used in my constituency; are large retail operators in the area, and those responsible for other public spaces using it, and – “contact the Chief Constable to demand information about the local police force’s deployment of FRT in local public spaces.”
Instead of concrete answers, these questions seem to have generated “responses” from political representatives – that might as well have been generated by GhatGPT.
