Britain in danger of turning into Orwellian state, Met chief warns
BRITAIN risks sleepwalking into a “ghastly, Orwellian, omniscient police state” unless it addresses the ethical dilemmas posed by new technologies such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence, the Met Commissioner has warned.
Cressida Dick said while the digital age presented numerous opportunities to help fight crime, it was vital there was a strict legal framework to ensure it was not used inappropriately.
In a speech delivered at the Lowy Institute think-tank in Sydney, Australia, Ms Dick said it was important to remember that the role of technology and data was to enable humans “to make better decisions”.
She said: “We’re now tiptoeing into a world of robotics, AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning … the next step might be predictive policing.
“People are starting to get worried about that … particularly because of the potential for bias.”
Ms Dick said while the police could be restricted in their use of data and technology by legislation, autonomous machines, robots and computers could not be controlled in the same way.
“If a machine kills someone, who is going to be held to account?” she asked.
Ms Dick, who joined the Met as a police constable 36 years ago, said the growth in the use of technology by crime fighters during that period was difficult to comprehend.
She explained: “In 1983, I had criminal records and fingerprints, [handwritten] intelligence on index cards, DNA as a tool hadn’t been thought of and if you wanted an image of a crime scene, you had to call a photographer.”
But she said her 22,000 officers now enjoyed the benefits of body-worn cameras, tablets with access to European criminal databases and huge amounts of evidence on social media.
Ms Dick said when the police investigated the most serious crimes, they were very good at making use of technology and data, but it was important the same skills and resources were put to use effectively in other areas.
She also explained that the explosion in data has created a headache for police, with vast amounts of information to be sifted through.
She explained: “In 2005, following the London terrorist attacks, police investigations into the seven attacks resulted in the seizure of four terabytes of data. Today, a current counterterrorist investigation has 81 terabytes of data.”