“Without clear policies in place, we’re concerned that this extreme, militaristic form of surveillance could be used in ways that breach rights and harm democracy, such as spying on peaceful protests,” said the group’s director, Silkie Carlo. The campaign group Big Brother Watch expressed concerns that such technology could be misused to target people taking part in legitimate activity, such as a demonstration. “If we are to add new ‘eyes in the sky’ to a raft of land-based CCTV, algorithmic, vehicle and facial recognition technology, the government must bring forward public legislation, not change our way of life by private contracts to be operated with all the ethical probity we have seen from big tech giants.”
Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour peer and former head of the civil rights advocacy group Liberty, said: “The exponential growth of societal surveillance in the UK has taken place with insufficient public debate, parliamentary scrutiny and law. This has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners about issues including privacy, the role of private companies in state surveillance and the potential misuse of such technology to target legitimate protesters. The cameras should be able to operate on a drone that stays in the air for up to four hours and flies up to 50km (31 miles) from the base station from which they are controlled, the NPAS said.ĭrones have been used by English and Welsh police forces, including the Met, which said in March that they had been deployed to survey crime scenes and provide live footage of operations.īut the NPAS call for information indicates plans for a national rollout using updated technology.
Pixel people mounted police registration#
It said this would enable officers to pick out detail such as “facial features”, as well as clothing and vehicle registration plates, at a distance of between 500ft and 1,500ft. The NPAS told potential bidders that the systems should be capable of transmitting live, high-quality images even in low light, using “electro-optical” or “infra-red” systems. The callout, on a government outsourcing website, states: “The imaging systems are intended for use on BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) remotely piloted aircraft systems: ‘drones’.” The National Police Air Service (NPAS), which provides air support to 46 police forces, has asked private companies for information about systems that offer both “airborne imaging” and “air to ground communication”.
Police in England and Wales are considering using drone-mounted cameras that could film high-quality live footage from 1,500ft (457 metres) away, raising concerns among civil liberties campaigners.
0 kommentar(er)
