It's not about grounds to arrest them, it's about practicality.

If you need to arrest someone in London (someone who might be about to cause harm) then there's a very good chance they will go through a tube station, and they tend to have relatively few, easily controlled exits. Most tube stations have two or less.

A few high profile tube stations occasionally have armed police presence.

But I think the idea that face recognition is being used to suppress protest is pretty overcooked; apart from the utter silliness around the banning of Palestine Action, we have a solid right to protest and we do.

The main problem is London has far too few police officers, and it has a transport system that is under consistent terror threat.

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_heimdall 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What do you mean by "need to arrest someone"? Would that be for someone who already committed a crime and has a warrant, or one who cops think may commit a crime in the future?

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dofm 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Either. Where there is a need.

The latter is legitimate, isn't it? Do we not anticipate trying to arrest people who might be in the process of committing a terror attack, on the balance of evidence about their conduct? Or are we just going to wait?

Not to say that hasn't gone wrong (infamously and tragically, although that was largely a failure of conventional surveillance) but one key part of mass surveillance policing is arresting people who are clearly about to do a thing.

That might indeed be disruptive protest where it is illegal — for example if you know someone is intending to deface a painting or a monument, or has been planning to attend a protest to disrupt it.

I think people look at face detection policing in this context and imagine thoughtcrime, when the reality is e.g. finding a disturbed person who has been doing a dry run on pushing a stranger off a tube train platform (a real problem that seems to happen every couple of years), catching someone who has been reported sexually assaulting fellow passengers or who has violently assaulted another passenger or someone above ground (a regular problem), trying to disrupt county-lines drug distribution etc. (absolutely constant), or, heaven help us, finding someone who has been spotted at a national railway station with someone on terror watchlists who has then disappeared into the underground.

London Underground isn't a thing that can be effectively managed with ordinary policing. It has 272 stations, over 70 in central London alone. During rush hour there are up to half a million people in that system at any one time. Tube exits are choke points.

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Lio an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Whenever someone suggests it's OK for the police to arrest people for future crime they haven't committed I feel the need to point out that the police do not always act in the public interest. Individuals abuse their powers.

e.g. when they do things like holding illegal employment blacklist[1][2][3] of innocent people.

I don't want to live in a country where, for example, the police can punish you just because they don't like trade unions.

What's I find ironic is that all this police state bullshit never seems to actually deal with antisocial behaviour or low level crime, it's always for political infractions.

We have more CCTV in London than almost anywhere else on the planet and you still get harassed outside tube stations by organised gangs of soliciting very forcefully for "charity" collections.

1. https://www.parliament.uk/external/committees/committee-news...

2. https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/ico-40/construction-employ...

3. https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/what-london-assembly-do...

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singleshot_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The latter is legitimate, isn't it?

No, arresting people for crimes they haven’t committed is horrifying and bizarre.

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_heimdall 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't know English law, and I'm american so I have a bent towards protecting freedoms. That said, no I don't see it as necessary to arrest someone before they do anything wrong.

There's a gray area for sure, and in the US you can, for example, be charged with conspiracy to commit murder without actually getting to that end goal. I'm always uncomfortable with how a court decides to allow a trial in such a case, though if someone has actively been surveiling their target, collecting materials or weapons, and ideally documenting their intentions somehow then I do understand why most would consider that itself punishable.

If a person without a warrant gets off the tube and walks in a general direction of a protest, I wouldn't see any grounds for arrest. I'm sure there's still gray area there, say they're carrying smoke grenades or flash bangs or something - though in that case I'd assume the potential crime is possessing those items rather than walking in a direction.

	▲	dofm 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If a person without a warrant gets off the tube and walks in a general direction of a protest, I wouldn't see any grounds for arrest. The police don't manage mass protests this way either. If they want to stop you joining a disruptive protest they just cordon off streets, close tube exits, stand in the way and tell you to turn back. But severely disruptive micro-protests are now a significant problem in London; I am quite relaxed about the idea that someone known to be planning to seriously disrupt might get tracked to their destination, and I suspect so are they, or they aren't very serious about it. I think people from the USA really misunderstand how policing works here. When we say we are "policed by consent" it is taken pretty seriously. Back when I was a student, this idea of facial recognition was only a glimmer of possibility and the idea of all of this would have got my freedom fighter hackles up. But if you've ever been in a tube station, one of the deep lines, when they've had to close exits and you're one of thousands of people who need to get out, you realise that these are high-pressure environments where even British reserve and fairness begin to fray. They are very vulnerable places. So I look at this plan and I am like… nope, doesn't bother me. Getting in and getting out at rush hour bothers me. I am not without my concerns about the mobile recognition vans; I think there is a risk that they have a chilling effect on gatherings that is disproportionate. I dislike that concept in much the same way that I dislike our regional police force's tendency to get the helicopter out when a bit more road policing might do the job. But inside the tube? Nope, facial recognition seems like a pretty worthwhile tool, not least because it could be so efficiently deployed.

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foldr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We’re talking about the practicalities of arresting protestors and whether or not face recognition on the tube would be a practical aid to police officers for this sort of purpose. Who should or shouldn’t be arrested is a separate question (and no-one here is suggesting that peaceful protestors should be arrested).

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fragmede 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Last one was in 2017 though.

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