Forget about privacy – unless you’re a billionaire
Forget about privacy – unless you’re a billionaire
https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/ros-taylorforget-about-privacy-unless-youre-a-billionaire/
Publish Date: 2026-06-23 19:00:00
Source Domain: www.thenewworld.co.uk
Although “respect for a private life” is part of the Human Rights Act, English law has never satisfactorily defined privacy. But the Knight Frank property website makes it clear that shelter from the public gaze is a boon the wealthy are prepared to pay for. Houses are “nestled behind security gates” with “24/7 concierge and security”. The privilege extends to the healthcare the better-off buy, their travel, their children’s education and the non-disclosure agreements signed by their staff.
For the rest of us – who go shopping, take the bus and crowd into the stands at football matches – physical surveillance is a given. The police are notoriously reluctant to look at footage when mere theft is involved, but the cameras are there, just in case: CCTV has been used in the capital since 1960, and Transport for London alone operated 27,000 cameras in 2023.
Recently, however, the police and supermarkets have begun using new techniques that do not just watch people but try to identify them too. Despite all the rhetoric about the liberties of free-born Englishmen, we do not make a lot of fuss about it.
“In the UK, there’s been a more experimental approach compared to how they use it in Europe,” says Pete Fussey, a professor at the University of Southampton who researches surveillance techniques.
For the past decade, police have been using live facial recognition to pick out people who have previously been in police custody. This usually operates out of a van with a live camera feed. Officers can quickly stop someone if their face matches one of the approximately 17,000 wanted individuals the Met is looking for. This technology has been deployed at major sports events, as well as at last month’s Unite the Kingdom march and permanently at a location in Croydon.
Police are now trialling the use of a handheld device to scan faces for the same purpose. “You could quite convincingly argue that’s an intrusive search,” says Fussey….
