I’ve written before about how Britain is now the most surveilled country on earth, thanks to the profusion of CCTV cameras just about everywhere. Apparently, 10% of the world total is in Britain. No one here seems to mind, other than under-funded civil liberties pressure groups, but James Meek has done some interesting digging for The Guardian.
He volunteered a digital photo of his face for the surveillance database in Newham, an area of east London. According to Meek, the current facial recognition systems are laughably poor at actual field work. He is not spotted by the police system, which has apparently never had an actual match. Meek is good on the many practical problems as well as civil liberties issues facial recognition creates. What he discusses less thoroughly, however, is how rapidly the technology is developing.