• Migrants who have been convicted of a criminal offence will be required to scan their faces up to five times a day using smartwatches installed with facial recognition technology under plans from the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

    even taken at completely face value, this already sounds both insane and unreasonable. what if the technology fails? when will this be done? is the technology even reliable to do this in the first place? this of course is before privacy considerations and abuse by police or the government itself, both of which are completely nightmarish. and the details further down just underscore how ridiculous this is:

    Those obliged to wear the devices will need to complete periodic monitoring checks throughout the day by taking a photograph of themselves on a smartwatch, with information including their names, date of birth, nationality and photographs stored for up to six years. Locations will be tracked “24/7, allowing trail monitoring data to be recorded”.

    Photographs taken using the smartwatches will be cross-checked against biometric facial images on Home Office systems and if the image verification fails, a check must be performed manually.

    this sounds like a pain for literally everyone involved at even small scale. imagine trying to scale this up!