Good morning.
Since the start of the tech boom, questions around privacy rights have become an increasingly pressing issue. In the decades since, a series of revelations has shown how large companies and governments are using rapidly advancing technology to surveil the public.
Britain has been labeled an “omni-surveillance” society, where the police have “extraordinary” access to images of millions of people. The government is seeking to expand this access by quietly legislating to allow the police and the National Crime Agency to run facial recognition searches on a database containing images of millions of driving licence holders. A single clause, buried in the criminal justice bill, would give the police powers to put 50 million people in a “permanent police lineup”, according to privacy campaigners. There has been no public debate, consultation or announcement, giving experts the sense that the government is trying to push this bill through as discreetly as possible, despite privacy and ethics concerns.
The only independent surveillance watchdog was scrapped earlier this year, meaning that there are effectively no checks. The former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, Fraser Sampson, told Daniel Boffey, the Guardian’s chief reporter, that the sector is unregulated. It is “effectively the wild west”.
I spoke with Daniel, who broke this story, about the details of the new clause and the impact it could have on the public. That’s right after the headlines.
Five big stories
Israel-Gaza war | The US has declared it is ready to support a UN security council resolution intended to boost the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza after a week of negotiations and substantial amendments, including the removal of a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities”. A vote on the resolution was postponed for a fourth day in a row until Friday.
Czech Republic | A student at Prague’s Charles University shot and killed 14 people and injured 25 others, before being found dead, in what is believed to be the worst mass shooting in the Czech Republic’s modern history. The city’s police chief said that the shooting had been “a premeditated violent attack”, apparently inspired by similar massacres abroad.
Food poverty | More than 800,000 patients were admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies last year, a threefold increase on 10 years ago, according to NHS figures that have prompted warnings about the devastating health impact of food insecurity.
UK news | Rising numbers of women are experiencing domestic abuse at Christmas, with calls to helplines still higher than pre-pandemic levels due to the cost of living crisis. Refuge’s Sarah Berry-Valentine said that demand for the charities helpline increased by 61% between 2020 and 2021, adding that recent data indicates that “demand has remained alarmingly high”.
Immigration | The Home Office has made a U-turn on its much-criticised plan to imminently raise the minimum salary requirement for British nationals bringing foreign family members to the UK, saying the threshold will first be raised to £29,000 instead of £38,700.
In depth: ‘Police believe facial recognition is a very useful piece of kit’
Currently, the legislation limits police access to driving licence records, and they must show they have good cause to search the database, usually relating to road traffic offences. The new clause gives the police full access to driving records for all law enforcement purposes. This means that, in theory, if the police have a picture of a person committing or witnessing a crime, or even just attending a protest, “they can run the facial recognition search across all the records to find out your identity from your social media picture or CCTV footage”, Daniel says.
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The technology | How does it work?
Facial recognition technology uses biometric measurements of a person’s face and works even if the face is partially covered. The measurements are then used to match a face that is already in the system – say, a photo from a passport or a driving licence. A significant problem arises when the image in the database and the one from social media or CCTV are similar, but not an exact match. When the threshold for matches is lowered, the technology has been known to falsely identify Black and Asian faces.
Facial recognition systems used to identify potential shoplifters have been shown to misidentify people – particularly women and Black, Latino or Asian people – on “numerous” occasions.
While there are guidelines on what thresholds for matches the police should use in order to minimise the chance of racial bias influencing the results, “the guidelines are drawn up by the police, which seems a bit like marking your own homework”, Daniel adds.
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The purpose | A useful, time-saving bit of kit
The government has been building a giant database that integrates data from the Passport Office, the Police National Database and the EU settled status database to find facial matches with one click of a button. Current law does not allow driving records to be included – the new clause is an attempt to add 50 million photos from driving licences.
“The reason they want to do it is because the police believe that facial recognition is a very useful piece of kit,” Daniel says. It is a way to cut down the hours that would have been taken up going through paperwork or manually searching databases. But it is not foolproof.
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The consequences | ‘Permanent police lineup’
Privacy campaigners and civil liberties groups have criticised the use of this software by law enforcement, saying that it infringes on basic rights of privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination and freedom of assembly and association.
Another significant problem is the lack of recourse: once a person is picked up by the system it is extremely difficult to make a challenge. “If a police officer says that you have veered from a designated route during a protest and that constitutes a crime, and the camera supports them, then they can hand over a large fine and a criminal record,” Daniel says.
“Once the computer says you’ve done it there’s not much you can do.”
It’s quite similar to speeding tickets, Daniel says. “If you get done by a speeding camera, very few people actually challenge it.”
The widening use of this technology also threatens the principle of policing by consent. No one has agreed to have their photograph put in a big digital pool and “to effectively become a member of a permanent police lineup”, Daniel says. Not only are the police using facial recognition technology to solve crimes, they are also using it to prevent crime. During King Charles’s coronation, where the Metropolitan police was accused of staging the largest live facial recognition policing event in the UK’s history took place, a man was searched and arrested “on suspicion of carrying eggs”. It sounds a hilarious charge, but experts are concerned about the implications of using the technology in this way.
We are living in an “omni-surveillance” society, Daniel says, where everyone is constantly watched, particularly in London. The consequences of a lack of oversight of this rapidly accelerating sector is already showing signs but the true extent of the impact will become more evident in the coming years.
What else we’ve been reading
In the long read, Darran Anderson recalls his childhood in Derry, “an edgeland of shifting identities, unreliable narrators, secrets and revelations”, and reflects on the personal cost of growing up in a low-level police state. Clare Longrigg, acting head of newsletter
This week, the Guardian released an investigation on TikTok’s moderation policies. Hibaq Farah, the tech reporter behind the story, spoke to an anonymous moderator to get a sense of what day-to-day life at the social media company looks like. Nimo
“It feels like a betrayal”: Charlotte Higgins mourns the decline of a beloved institution, the British Museum, that had lost its way even before accepting sponsorship from BP. Clare
Is a gut feeling enough to make a potentially life-changing decision? Elle Hunt tries to find out. Nimo
Helen Pidd’s report on the teenage killers’ text messages revealing their plans to murder Brianna Ghey gives chilling insight into how two people can wind each other up to cruelty and murder. Clare
Sport
Football | A committed performance against Brighton wasn’t enough for Crystal Palace to secure victory, after a late goal from Danny Welbeck left the match tied at 1-1. Meanwhile, Luton Town captain Tom Lockyer is recovering at home having been discharged from hospital on Wednesday after suffering a cardiac arrest in a match against Bournemouth.
Cricket | Australian batter Usman Khawaja has been charged by the ICC for wearing a black armband in the first Test against Pakistan in support of people in Gaza. ICC regulations bar cricketers from displaying messages of political, religious or racial causes during international matches, although Khawaja has argued his is a “humanitarian appeal”.
Ice hockey | Former NHL star Jaromír Jágr has made his season debut at age 51 for his home town Kladno Knights in the Czech league. Jagr began his 36th professional season with an assist to help Kladno come back from 3-0 down at league leader Pardubice.
The front pages
The Guardian leads with “Revealed: huge rise in hospital admissions with malnutrition”. The Times carries a call from ambulance chiefs, to cut down on queues in A&E with “‘Treat patients in corridors’”. After Esther Rantzen called for a national debate on assisted dying, the Mail asks “Is the tide turning?”.
The i says “Christmas travel chaos as storm and strike hit rail, roads, air and sea”. The Financial Times leads with comments from the chancellor, under the headline “Hunt envisages lift in economic mood next year with change of BoE rate cuts”.
The Telegraph reports “Royal family persuaded Queen to end her days at Balmoral”. Finally, the Sun has more on missing teen Alex Batty with “Alex: Why I had to come home”.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now
TV
The Winter King (ITVX)
We are well into December now. So where, I have been asking myself, is the dark ages/Arthurian/druidic-inflected piece of tomfoolery I crave at this time of year?
Lo, The Winter King is upon us – an adaptation of the Bernard Cornwell book of the same name. It plays so fast and loose with it that devoted fans of the original Warlord Chronicles should probably just go and have a lovely re-read of the whole lot instead of tuning in. But for non-purists – settle in, sit back and enjoy 10 hours of bloody warfare, heavy robes and pagan rites. Lucy Mangan
Music
Caroline Polachek: Desire
This album begins with a sizzle reel of what Caroline Polachek can do with her voice. Floating serenely on a high thermal of coos, it dips down in pitch and speeds towards the Earth, cracking as Polachek pushes it into the red. She pulls up with a Celtic folk ululation and heads back into the sky again, higher than ever, reaching the whistle register of Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande. After a final soulful flourish, the drums kick in and she begins merely talking: “Welcome to my island.” It is exhilarating to be hoisted in the air and carried on the back of pure talent like this. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Film
Priscilla (UK and Irish cinemas 26 December)
Based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir, the film shows how a naive schoolgirl became trapped behind the gates of Graceland in a bizarrely co-dependent relationship. Sofia Coppola presents an eerily gripping, queasily claustrophobic portrait of marital loneliness, while the king is away on tour, or shooting movies with glamorous worldly female co-stars and a creepily subservient male entourage. This film says a great deal about Elvis and the dysfunctional business he was in and Priscilla’s modest integrity and courage. Peter Bradshaw.
Podcast
June: Voice of a Silent Twin
BBC Sounds, all episodes from Boxing Day
For the first time, June Gibbons tells the story of her and her sister Jennifer – known as the Silent Twins – in her own words. After their parents moved from Barbados to rural Wales, the twins only communicated with each other. They then became the youngest women to be sent to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, where they stayed for 11 years. But they kept diaries, which are revisited here for the ultimate insight into their lives. Hollie Richardson
Today in Focus
How the Guardian covered 2023
The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, talks about how the newspaper covered a year that witnessed the Israel-Gaza war, the coronation of King Charles, the rise of AI and record high temperatures.
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
After becoming the first deaf contestant on Love Island, the model Tasha Ghouri urged others to learn sign language, saying people often felt uncomfortable trying to talk to those who are deaf or hearing impaired “because they don’t know how to communicate”.
For a generation of young people in England, that could be about to change, as the government today introduces the first ever GCSE in British Sign Language (BSL) in an attempt to boost inclusivity in schools and give would-be signers life skills.
Susan Daniels, chief executive of the National Deaf Children’s Society, said: “A GCSE in BSL will break down barriers and celebrate the rich culture and history of British Sign Language.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until Monday.
