Smile for the State: The Home Office’s New Mechanical Fortune-Tellers


Ah, the Home Office, ever the industrious milliner of liberty’s coffin, has unveiled a new feather for the cap — ten gleaming Live Facial Recognition vans, trundling about like mechanical fortune-tellers in search of villains, ne’er-do-wells, and the occasional unlucky doppelgänger.

We are assured, of course, that the apparatus is “measured” and “proportionate” — much as a sledgehammer is to a walnut. The public’s face will be “pixelated” unless on a watchlist, which is frightfully comforting, in the way one might feel reassured that the guillotine is only for one’s neighbour.

Dissenters, such as Big Brother Watch, mutter darkly about privacy, false matches, and creeping surveillance, but are brushed aside in favour of catching the bad eggs before they hatch. After all, what’s a little facial mapping between friends?

If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, then this one’s just been resurfaced — with CCTV.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Man of Steel, Plot of Porridge

Image
 Ah, the latest Superman film, directed by that merry jester of cinematic chaos — the very same fellow responsible for Guardians of the Galaxy . One is tempted to say it’s like hiring a clown to perform brain surgery: technically possible, but you may find the patient wakes up with balloon animals where his frontal lobe used to be. Superman himself spends most of the film delivering lines with the emotional range of a slightly startled lamppost. The cape swishes, the jaw clenches, and the plot… well, the plot lurches about like a drunkard trying to hail a taxi in a hurricane. The film tries desperately to be witty and heartfelt, like a stand-up comic reading a eulogy — you’re never quite sure whether to laugh or demand your money back. The director has clearly taken from Guardians the lesson that audiences will forgive anything if there’s a talking animal. Sadly, the only creature here capable of speech is Superman himself, and his dialogue has all the sparkle of a damp sponge....
Read more

The Screeching Serenade of the Public Phone Pest

Image
There was a time when the great nuisances of civilisation were plague, pillage, and the occasional passing minstrel. Alas, in our enlightened age, we have refined our torments into something far more exquisite: the shrill blare of someone else’s mobile entertainment, forced into our ears like an overzealous dentist administering Latin recitations. The modern commuter, it seems, regards public space not as a shared realm but as a private salon in which their Netflix drivel or nasal sales calls must be heard by all. On trains, buses, even park paths, we endure these sonic peacocks, strutting their decibels as if to say: “My life, unlike yours, is important.” And then there is the unholy walk-along phone call, where a fellow ambles at precisely your pace, braying into their device, ensuring you absorb every tedious syllable. It’s like being handcuffed to a town crier announcing the weather in excruciating detail. In the grand pageant of human advancement, these people are proof that wh...
Read more