British police will use facial recognition to protect King Charles during his coronation procession. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected in London next Saturday to watch the Coronation Procession which, from Westminster Abbey, will parade through Whitehall to then reach Buckingham Palace via the Mall. The controversial technology, which scans faces and compares them to a list of people wanted by the police, will be used to identify criminals and terrorists who may be blending into the crowd.
A necessary operation, according to the investigators, to guarantee the safety of the new sovereign after, days ago, a crazed man managed to throw shotgun shells inside the fence of the Royal Palace. And so, while in Italy the Home Office is discussing the introduction of facial recognition in stations, Britain is moving with a massive security operation.
The announcement was made as the police were given new powers to repress the protest, passed into law before the coronation.
The number of people whose faces would be scanned would make it the largest live facial recognition rollout in the UK. In theory, the faces of all who access the streets through which the procession will pass could be scanned because the area can only be reached through gates manned by the police.
The biggest deployment of facial recognition equipment to date in Britain was at the 2017 Notting Hill Carnival, when 100,000 faces were scanned in just a few hours. Just to understand the power of this innovative technology. London Metropolitan Police believe it is a game-changing crime-fighting tool. But there are those who object. Privacy group Big Brother Watch believes that “real-time facial recognition is an official mass surveillance tool that turns the public into walking ID cards” and that “the coronation should not be used to justify the release of this discriminatory technology and dangerous”.
The use of facial recognition linked to fugitive databases is the next big thing for law enforcement, as big as the introduction of fingerprints. The English police have been working on this for years. Her Majesty’s Secret Service is also extremely interested.
Source: IL Tempo
John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.
