In an ongoing bid to combat retail crime, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office has launched a £55.5 million plan Wednesday to roll out state of the art surveillance technologies on the streets of the Anglo nation.

The new technology consists of a major increase in facial recognition systems used to identify people in public.

“This will include £4 million for bespoke mobile units that can be deployed to high streets across the country with live facial recognition used in crowded areas to identify people wanted by the police – including repeat shoplifters,” the official statement published Wednesday said.

The government funded plan will utilize mobile units that record people in towns and main streets, comparing the captured images to specific suspects the police are searching for, or those banned from certain locations. Law enforcement will then be notified to intercept the targets.

According to the government announcement the initiative expands on the Retail Crime Action Plan with 5 key points:

• creating a new offense of assaulting a retail worker
• expanding the use of electronic monitoring for frequent shoplifters
• using new technologies to prevent and detect retail crime
• designing out crime, to reduce opportunities to steal and sell stolen goods
• making it easier to report crime and share information between businesses and police

Civil liberties nongovernmental organization [NGO] Big Brother Watch has launched a campaign against the measure, and is seeking signatories on a petition against the program.

“It’s an abysmal waste of public money on a dangerously authoritarian and inaccurate technology that neither the public nor parliament has ever voted on. This will cost not only the public purse but the public’s privacy and civil liberties. Live facial recognition may be commonplace in China and Russia but these Government plans put the UK completely out of sync with the rest of the democratic world,” Silkie Carlo, Director of civil liberties NGO Big Brother Watch said Wednesday. “This Orwellian tech has no place in Britain.”

Carlo’s use of the term ‘inaccurate technology’ is especially concerning, as false positives will result in innocent bystanders being detained, swept up in an investigation which could potentially result in their arrest and imprisonment until they are able to prove their innocence.

“The UK is known for mass use of CCTV cameras, with London being the most surveilled city in Europe, and unsurprisingly, facial recognition has been welcomed with great enthusiasm,” Reclaim The Net’s Didi Rankovic wrote Friday.

The Prime Minister’s press release included numerous quotes from individuals lauding the new initiative, yet non detracting from its perceived benefits.

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