From the article:
Senior officials at the Home Office secretly lobbied the UK’s independent privacy regulator to act “favourably” towards a private firm keen to roll out controversial facial recognition technology across the country, according to internal government emails seen by the Observer.
Correspondence reveals that the Home Office wrote to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) warning that policing minister, Chris Philp, would “write to your commissioner” if the regulator’s investigation into Facewatch – whose facial recognition cameras have provoked huge opposition after being installed in shops – was not positive towards the firm.
I’m not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but damned if it doesn’t look a little like what might happen if a powerful cabal of billionaires was making concerted efforts to use their political influence to lock down the remaining parts of the world where people have some degree of liberty in order to prepare for installing the authoritarian fascism they think will keep them safe in the coming apocalypse.
The UK has always been a place were the power elites firmly believe they’re inherently superior and have a right to treat the plebes however they see fit (even the highly celebrated ending of slavery was quickly undone not long after by the - nowaydays never mentioned - invention of indentured servitude).
The post war period with the creation of social security, the National Health Service and a more broad spreading of prosperity was a blip, not a change in trend.
So yeah, no suprise that the toffs once again feel completelly free to treat the plebes as a different, lesser kind of being.
“How to become a fascist, authoritarian shithole overnight: A United Kingdom story”
I hate your profile picture. It’s just flashing away on my screen while I look at comments.
No, no, I can explain,
It’s only bad when China does it.
The UK is starting to look a lot like they watched V for Vendetta and thought it was about a perfect government system, betrayed by some dirty hippies.
Ok, so the Britain in V For Vendetta wasn’t meant to be a model to build on and improve, you guys know that right?
It was inspired by Thatcher’s Britain, which is what the current breed of British fascists are trying to recreate and “improve” on, so… yeah, they probably see Norsfire as a good inspiration for what they want to achieve. Sadly, wizard as he might claim to be, Moore’s curses seem to be mostly ineffectual…
