British Prime minister Keir Starmer has announced that the government will establish a “national capability” to deal with violent disorder in the wake of racist rioting across England, but campaigners and civil society groups say they are concerned about the surveillance implications of the initiative and its damaging effect on wider civil liberties.
Known as the National Violent Disorder Programme, the government said that it will bring together the best policing capabilities from across the UK to share intelligence on the activity of violent groups so that authorities can swiftly intervene to arrest them.
The programme announcement follows the outbreak of violent far-right riots in more than a dozen English towns and cities, which specifically targeted mosques, hotels housing asylum seekers, immigration centres, and random people of colour.
“We will establish a national capability across police forces to tackle violent disorder. These thugs are mobile, they move from community to community, and we must have a policing response that can do the same,” said Starmer.
“Shared intelligence, wider deployment of facial-recognition technology, and preventive action – criminal behaviour orders to restrict their movements before they can even board a train, in just the same way we do with football hooligans.”
A government press release provided more detail, noting that “local insight and data” will be used to gain a national understanding of how far-right organisers are operating, which will include the British Transport Police alerting where they see a spike in train ticket sales that could be linked to organised violent disorder.
It added that the programme “will also consider how we can deploy facial-recognition technology, which is already used by some forces, more widely across the country. This will mean criminals can be targeted, found and brought to justice quickly.”
The programme will further support the swift deployment of “surge teams” to bolster police forces faced with intelligence that suggests organised violence will take place in a particular area.“Communities have a right to feel safe without deliberate organised violence or thuggery in our streets. Criminals need to face the full force of the law and today we made clear that the police have our strong support in keeping the streets safe,” said home secretary Yvette Cooper.
Silkie Carlo, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, described the prime minister’s plan to roll out more facial recognition in response to recent disorder as “alarming”, saying it threatens rather than protects democracy.
“This AI surveillance turns members of the public into walking ID cards, is dangerously inaccurate and has no explicit legal basis in the UK,” she said. “To promise the country ineffective AI surveillance in these circumstances was frankly tone deaf and will give the public absolutely no confidence that this government has the competence or conviction to get tough on the causes of these crimes and protect the public.”
Both Netpol and Big Brother Watch – along with 28 other civil society groups – have now signed a letter to Starmer voicing their “serious concerns” over facial-recognition surveillance. “In times of crisis, upholding the rule of law is paramount – however, live facial recognition operates in a legal and democratic vacuum, and it is our view that its use for public surveillance is not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights,” they wrote.
“We join you in condemning the racist, violent and disorderly scenes across the country. However, to rush in the use of technology which has a seriously negative bearing on our rights and freedoms would not only fail to address the causes of this dangerous violence, but set a chilling precedent.”
