We know where you live

​Following up yesterday’s blog regarding the electronic monitoring of students’ engagement in their studying activities, I read in today’s paper that ‘China’s education ministry said in September it would “curb and regulate” the use of facial recognition after parents grew angry when the software was installed without their knowledge at a university in Nanjing to monitor students’ attendance and focus during class.” ‘Curb and regulate’ - not ‘cease and desist.’ Once this technological cat is out of the bag, we are likely to hear much more about regulating it, rather than stopping it. Police forces in the UK have already been trialling facial recognition technologies as has been widely reported. And currently, so far as I am aware, there is no ‘regulation.’ What would such regulation mean? No doubt in exchange for some loose controls, it will be designed to be permissive rather than restrictive. Regulation is just another word for permission. The UK already has one of the highest ratios of CCTV per head of population in the world. And as I discovered nearly two years ago, the guidelines governing its use are so weak they might as well not exist. Every CCTV camera in the UK is supposed to be accompanied by a notice alerting the public to its presence. Every CCTV operator theoretically, under Data Protection laws, should reveal any information (i.e. images) they have stored on you on your request. It’s all bollocks of course, and the same will be true once facial recognition takes hold. I think I might become a hoodie. Not that I’ve got anything to hide, you understand.