TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Schrödinger's Pervert feat. Becca Wilks

Episode Date: June 30, 2024

For this week's TF bonus, we're speaking with Welsh journalist Becca Wilks about the Welsh government's usage of automatic facial recognition, the privacy nightmare it creates, and their frankly bonkers justifications for why they want to use it everywhere. Don't worry, it won't cause any.....actually we're just getting an update that it's already being used to stifle protests? The episode is available on Patreon here.   A note from Becca: "Myself and Devon are currently supporting Ahmed, a dad of four in Gaza, to raise money for the family’s living costs and eventual evacuation. We’re also trying to help Ahmed’s friend Rasha, who is a medical student in Egypt with her entire family trapped in Rafah. Both sets of families have been through absolutely harrowing ordeals, and every aspect of staying alive there at the moment is backbreaking work - fetching big containers of water over long distances in 35C heat, breaking up wood to try and get a fire going to cook, everything. Both families are raising money through GoFundMe." https://www.gofundme.com/f/a8jzz-help-me-and-my-family-get-out-of-the-gaza-strip https://www.gofundme.com/f/htdcj-evacuating-my-family-from-gaza *EDINBURGH LIVE SHOW ALERT* We're going to be live at Monkey Barrel comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe on August 14, and you can get tickets here:  https://www.wegottickets.com/event/621432   *MILO ALERT* Buy Milo’s special ‘Voicemail’ here! https://pensight.com/x/miloedwards/digital-item-5a616491-a89c-4ed2-a257-0adc30eedd6d   *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

It's interesting you bring that up actually, because that's the Tesco sort of fog defense system. I was thinking about this a lot as I was doing the notes this morning. To take you into the shoplifting bit actually, because I've just split things up into a couple of little trunks to try and condense this down. One of the big use cases for AFR being pushed is shoplifting. It's because as we've gone through the cost of living crisis, there has been a reported and alleged sort of uptick in shoplifting.

Because automatic facial recognition, a lot of the way that they've sold it to people is that it's to prevent what they say like risk of serious harm or serious crimes. Because shoplifting isn't generally considered to be a serious crime, the way that they've gone after it is to kind of stretch the term to fit the deployment they have in mind. And they're doing this through a thing called Project Pegasus,

which is where a bunch of sort of major retailers, things like Aldi Tesco, Marks & Spencer, things like that, Premark. They have part-funded a police team of specialist officers and analysts to build a comprehensive intelligent picture of the organized crime gangs that fuel many shoplifting incidents across the country. That's caught in from their website. This is like real cartoonish evil shit to be like, yeah, the police have stood up Project Pegasus, a shadowy network of corporate funding, but the corporate funding is fucking Tesco.

It's a distinctly British take on it. Yeah, speaking of cartoonish evil, what is buried in that press release announcing Project Pegasus was that among, they're talking about organized crime gangs, but in that definition, what they include, and they say this in the press release, is local families and young people. Well, I mean, a family is a unit of organization. So if you've got more than one people in a family committing crime, that is organized crime. The five families, but they're just like five families.

Yeah, selling bacon at the back of a van. It's the Blairite language of like community governance having slipped the leash and being like, well, we've got to put in some stuff about communities and local government in this press release and like hardworking families. So therefore project Pegasus will target local communities and hardworking families. Yeah. I mean, I guess there are some press releases that are written with the hope that no one will ever read them, that they need to have been written. This is why journalism is so important.

Someone has to be paid to like, read these things. Yes, yes. Pay me to read these press releases. It's it's final. It's an arms race between people who would rather not be writing this and people who would rather not be reading it. So right. That this is I think this is one way to look at it right.

Which is as you as you say Becca right. It's brought in under the background of austerity but of again like to prop up the sort of repressive arm of the state in the face of austerity at the behest of fucking Little basically. Yes. Yeah. But it's not just Little, of course, because... I mean, Little's a sort of broad church. It contains a lot of political tendencies. In the middle of the aisle you could find anything in Little.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got Aldi Nord and Aldi Sood. Take my fucking punchline. Oh shit, sorry. No, no, no. The centrist aisle at Lidl. You can find justification for anything in there. Changes every week. This isn't just about the Project Pegasus.

That's like, that's one facet of it. It's also about, I think, the police and crime commissioners in South Wales sort of getting their hands on a new toy, seeing a way to increase their power. And then I noticed in your article that you've written about this, one of the notes is that there are some members of the Senate that are like, hey, why are we doing this? Under what justification? And they're broadly just getting shut down by being told, and please correct me if I'm wrong here, this actually, automated facial recognition is covered under any kind of existing

sort of surveillance authorizations that the police have. We don't have to debate it. Yeah, so we have one Senate member who prior to becoming an elected politician was doing sort of academic research in digital privacy and digital rights and things like that, who has tried to get it debated in the Senate because it hasn't been debated really at all in the UK. And basically what she's been told is this constant sort of thing that you get with the

Welsh government where like, on the one hand, they'll portray themselves as doing something, you know, we're shielding you from austerity, we're doing this, we're doing that. But then when you try to scrutinize them about that thing, they then say, it's not a devolved matter. Go to the UK government for your questions. It's not relevant to us here. And that's kind of what is being bumped up against. But yeah, the other thing is that you speak to anyone. For the piece that I did, I interviewed the outgoing police and crime commissioner for South Wales. An older gentleman, he used to be a cabinet member under Tony Blair's government. And he was also the former first minister here in Wales as well. He's kind of gone down the rankings

and depending on which way you want to look at it. Was this Alan Michael? Alan Michael. Yes. Yeah. Who was this? Alan Michael? Alan Michael. Yes. Yeah. So he is a huge proponent of facial recognition for exactly the reasons to do with austerity. Are you saying that a former cabinet minister under Tony Blair is a huge proponent of something that will create a kind of permanent digital face print of every citizen in police computers?

Yeah. That's like a front page Yeah, perhaps like a front end. That's a bit of a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end.

That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end.

That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. That's like a front end. Yes, where was I? Yes, so he is a huge proponent of this. I asked him about facial recognition, despite the fact that it's been rolled out so widely. It's in use both across Wales, but also in London is the other big hub. They're catching up at the Met Police now. But there's no specific legislation that tells police when they can use this tech, what reason they

can use it for. There's no sort of official accountability process. So I asked him about this and his blanket answer was no. He said to me, there was no specific legislation brought in when police started using Panda cars, which I was very confused about. And then when I asked him about it, he meant police cars, when police first started confused about, and then when I asked him about it he meant police cars, when police first started riding around in police cars. He said that was a huge change to the way police did things then, and they didn't require any new legislation.

So I don't see why we need new legislation for this now, obviously. Just rotating in my mind the Guardian article about how many people the police kill by accident in car chases. Yeah. Although the police used to use Panda cars, but they had to stop because it was impossible to produce new Panda cars, so they wouldn't race. Yeah. It's really sad.

My favorite of the quotes from Alan Michael though, is his argument as to why it is necessary to deploy live facial recognition at, and this is very specific, Beyonce or Harry Styles concerts. Yes. So it's very like old people, old person's idea of young people activities. Well, it's quite simple. We're going to keep track of the straight boyfriends at Chapel Rowan. It's most important we know what sectors of the crowd they're in so we can keep track of whether they're harshing the vibe or not.

That's right. This is scarily close to the justification. Riley, you're going on the fucking database. Yeah. So the way I came to think of it when I was writing the piece was Schrodinger's nonce. And I am a bit of a fan of Schrodinger's nonce. There's the nonce and there's the young boy and they're in a box and there's a glass wall between them. We don't want that to be...

It might break or it might not. Sorry, Becca, please go on. Yeah. So the way police use facial recognition is on the one hand, they said as this will do all of the trivial stuff that will free up police to do the more important things like catching sexual predators and all the rest of it. Then they also say that AFR is a vital tool for catching sexual predators and stuff. In Wales, the main strategy with live facial recognition, that's when they have a live video feed of a crowd and the facial recognition algorithm

matches people's faces in real time and allows police to go out and bother people in real time. They've invented a new nonce detector. It's real. Yeah. So the main strategy is to deploy this live facial recognition tech at big events. And when I was having this conversation with Alan Michael, the outgoing police commissioner, a specific example he brought up to me when I was asking about this strategy was at a Beyoncé concert that had taken place a few years back. And what he said to me was, he said, number one, we have the example of the Manchester Arena bombing.

That was an act of terrorism. And on the other hand, there's, there were going to be thousands of young girls around the stadium for this event. If he had detonated some kind of nonce bomb, allowing him to molest thousands. And he said, so, you know, this event would almost have been a honeypot for pedophiles. What does he think Beyonce? Setting up the facial recognition outside the Drake concert. The calls coming from on stage.