{"id":19855,"date":"2015-06-15T16:47:36","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T14:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/?p=19855"},"modified":"2015-06-15T17:03:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-15T15:03:10","slug":"thousands-subjected-to-police-facial-recognition-at-weekend-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/thousands-subjected-to-police-facial-recognition-at-weekend-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands Subjected To Police Facial Recognition At Weekend Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 100K+ fans who attended this past week’s Donington Park-based Download\u00a0Music Festival, where subject to a first-of-its-kind facial recognition\u00a0technology\u00a0by the Leicestershire Police according to UK police\u00a0website Police Oracle<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though such technology has been utilised\u00a0before, most recently in Boston, USA at the Boston Calling<\/strong> festival, it should be noted this was in the immediate aftermath of 2013’s bombing of that cities marathon, rendering police and authority figures extra cautious surrounding instances of mass gatherings.\u00a0There may be dangers, but\u00a0the bottom line remains that such technology requiring the\u00a0expense of large sums of\u00a0money to spy on largely innocent music fans is an act steeped more in social control than issues of patron safety.<\/p>\n

The announcement regarding Download (a heavy metal event featuring the likes of Slipknot<\/strong>, Kiss<\/strong>, and Marilyn Manson<\/strong>) reads,\u00a0“the strategically placed cameras will scan faces at the Download Festival site in Donington before comparing it with a database of custody images from across Europe,” <\/em>which seems rather excessive given that (per Police Oracle’s article) the departments primary goal is to catch perpetrators who, “steal mobile phones”. <\/em>Instead, festival goers will be cross-examined with a continent wide database of criminal mugshots.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Leicestershire Police Department seems rather upset at the fact Police Oracle published the repost prior to the festival taking\u00a0place, (assumingly) wanting festival goers to be left in the dark regarding such privacy invasion. \u00a0According to The Register<\/a>, \u201cPolice Oracle’s publication of the interview has caused significant upset for management at Leicestershire Police, who did not want any advance publicity of their \u2018new\u2019 surveillance project. The public would have been informed that it had been placed under surveillance after the event had ended, presumably as part of a \u2018you didn’t know, therefore it wasn’t intrusive,’ justification for the scheme.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Though Ch Supt Chris Haward<\/strong> defends the technologies use, “The software provided an efficient and effective way of picking known offenders out of a crowd – something that officers would previously have been done using paper briefings,”<\/em> it must be understood that\u00a0a primary incentive\u00a0for most patrons who attend\u00a0festivals is to completely unshackle \u00a0from societies pressures,\u00a0the\u00a0knowledge of such\u00a0surveillance\u00a0can only be antithetical toward this desire of uninhibited freedom.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Facial Recognition Technology at Boston Calling festival<\/em><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0<\/em>Noisey<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 100K+ fans who attended this past week’s Donington Park-based Download\u00a0Music Festival, where subject to a first-of-its-kind facial recognition\u00a0technology\u00a0by the Leicestershire Police according to UK police\u00a0website Police Oracle. Though such technology has been utilised\u00a0before, most recently in Boston, USA at the Boston Calling festival, it should be noted this was in the immediate aftermath of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":19857,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"audio","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3972],"tags":[6004,6003,6005],"class_list":["post-19855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-audio","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-london","tag-boston-calling","tag-download","tag-surveillance","post_format-post-format-audio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deephouseamsterdam.com\/london\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}