Britain is becoming a surveillance state, but no one seems to care
The British government is expanding facial recognition nationwide, backed by dozens of new camera vans and wider policing reforms. A public consultation on biometric technologies already assumes broad consent for a national surveillance system that changes the state-citizen relationship. In the past year alone, police across England and Wales scanned the faces of more than seven million people using mobile and fixed cameras, operating largely without a comprehensive legal framework. Critics warn this shifts the presumption of innocence, erodes public anonymity and privacy, and paves the way for predictive tools based on body language or other indicators. The Home Secretary has referenced Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon ideal, where the state’s gaze is constant. The article argues that mass surveillance sits uneasily with a free society and risks undermining core liberal-democratic principles if expanded without proper scrutiny.