UK: Cops turn Download Festival into an ORWELLIAN SPY PARADISE • The Register

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“What a nightmarish world we are heading into!”  Admin

As if being ankle deep in muddy field, surrounded by pretend hippies seemingly re-enacting highlights of the Battle of Waterloo was bad enough, attendees of the aptly named Download Festival will be subjected to a new police facial recognition system, and surveillance of their onsite location and expenditure via the debut of RFID wristbands.

The debut surveillance technologies are a new facial recognition system being rolled out by Leicestershire Police, and Download’s own RFID wristbands, provided by German RFID specialists YouChip.

Leicestershire Police have been trialling NEC Corporation’s NeoFace facial recognition system since April 2014, though only announced the trial in July of that year, and seem to have been delighted with its results to date.

NeoFace has compared facial images, captured by CCTV/IPTV recordings, with facial images stored in Leicestershire’s local custody database.NEC, however, advertises its NeoFace suite as able to offer much more in biometrics surveillance, and while the particular system to be used at Download has not been revealed, it may also be part of the company’s suite.

NeoFace Watch is the mobile surveillance platform from the NeoFace suite, which functions by “integrating face matching technology with video surveillance input, while checking individuals against known photographic watch lists, and producing real-time alerts” according to a product brochure.

According to an interview with DC Kevin Walker, published in Police Oracle on Monday, “Strategicall

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