UK isn't doing much better [View all]

[SamuelTheThird]

They are going towards 1984

https://boingboing.net/2026/01/26/panopticon.html

Shabana Mahmood, Britain's Home Secretary, dreams the dream of the interior minister: total surveillance of everyone, everywhere, at every moment of their lives. Evoking the Panopticon-the circular prison devised by philosopher Jeremy Bentham to allow a single observer to see into every prisoner's cell-she said she hopes for an "AI version" so that "the eyes of the state can be on you at all times."

"When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times. Similarly, in the world of policing, in particular, we've already been rolling out live facial recognition technology, but I think there's big space here for being able to harness the power of AI and tech to get ahead of the criminals, frankly, which is what we're trying to do."

Mahmood's dystopian fantasy was offered in a conversation with former prime minister Tony Blair, himself a longtime advocate of surveillance technology. The "AI" angle is that "AI" would not only let them focus on the criminals, but people the "AI" is trained to predict will become criminals.