Aaron Naparstek is a cohost of the War on Cars podcast, and also the founder of Streetsblog.org.

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There have been a couple of stories about

facial recognition. This audio is from a BBC

report where the police set up a van with cameras filming passersby and

searching for records on them based on facial recognition. One man decided that

he didn’t like that, and pulled his sweater up over his mouth and nose to

frustrate the camera system; the police stopped him, forced him to be

photographed, and fined him £90, about $115 for what they called disorderly

conduct.

There was no suggestion that he was guilty

of any crime, at least of any other crime, if you call not wanting to be filmed

a crime.

This was a trial, the police brought a BBC

camera crew along with them to film the demonstration, and it was notable that

three other people were arrested when the cameras, and the associated computer

system recognized them as people who had outstanding warrants against them.

Compare that to the

story another British man, this time in the French port city of Calais who

will go on trial shortly for an incident that started when police noticed that

he was filming them. He says that the police attacked a woman he was with

without provocation; the two of them were recording police behavior.

There is an ongoing dispute at migrant

camps around Calais, where volunteers distributing food to migrants say that

they are suffering intense harassment from the French police. Amnesty

International have said that the charges are an abuse of process, and should be

dropped. The man faces large fines and up to five years in prison if he is

convicted.

This has echoes of the Glik v Cunniffe case

in the United States, where the Supreme Court ruled that citizens have the right

to film public officials, including police, who are working in public. There is