Scoop: From autumn, migrants will be required to scan their faces on smartwatches up to five times a day.
In May the @ukhomeoffice awarded tech co @wearebuddi a £6m contract to produce facial recognition watches, which will track location 24/7.
https://theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/05/facial-recognition-smartwatches-to-be-used-to-monitor-foreign-offenders-in-uk…
GPS tags are a dehumanising, invasive method of control that monitors people’s precise location 24/7.
The Home Office knows where they’ve been, when, every second of the day.
In an effort to monitor even more people and reach levels of total surveillance, the Home Office now wants to roll out smartwatches also recording 24/7 location data AND requiring people to scan their faces up to 5 times a day.
This is meant to be “less invasive” & “more proportionate” than GPS ankle tags.
Who is the Home Office trying to fool?
Facial recognition is a dangerous, discriminatory tech - it regularly misidentifies people of colour & is disproportionately used against minorities.
Wearables are the last frontier in total digitalisation and surveillance of our lives, leading to inevitable human rights abuses when used by powerful institutions against vulnerable populations.