Live facial recognition vans coming to Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes is set to deploy mobile vans equipped with live facial recognition technology, bringing real-time biometric surveillance onto the city's streets.
Why this matters: A van that scans faces in real time is not a speed camera. It identifies people who have done nothing wrong, simply because they walked past. Everyone in range gets checked, not just suspects. That is a meaningful shift in how public space works. You lose a degree of anonymity just by going outside. Milton Keynes residents did not vote on this. The accountability question is simple: who decides whose face goes on a watchlist, and what happens when the system gets it wrong?
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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