Biometrics – Dark Nights

Flyposter: ‘Against Surveillance State UK – Against Facial Recognition CCTV’ (PDF)

Posted on 2026/07/06 - 2026/07/06 by darknights

As requested, here is the ‘Against Surveillance State UK‘ CCTV article from Dark Nights #47 (2018) as an A4 PDF to be enlarged to A3 and flyposted as a spread, or printed out on to double-sided A4 and handed out. Attack the world of machines and the technological system. “Hit where it hurts”.

PDF: A4 – Against Facial Recognition CCTV

Against Surveillance State UK – Against Facial Recognition CCTV

Britain is an authoritarian surveillance State, which has pioneered how many modern societies look; entirely covered by security cameras at almost every urban point, place, square, road, corner, shop, bus, train, etc. Partially perpetually in a state of decay and disrepair, here they have built a life almost as in a vast prison, and it is what their world looks like. Prison society; endless drab shopping centres, housing estates, tower blocks, industrial and recreational areas capable of being on lock-down at short notice. Regularly practised large-scale multi-agency counter-terror response drills to terrorist attacks, inner-city riots. Mind-control media beams out lies, half-truths, distractions, impossible consumer desires, morning, noon and night. Every potentially disruptive mass event, social and environmental crisis, is hyped by the media as threatening such an abrupt end to normality that at least all the police’s resources will be stretched so thin that the military will have to be involved to restore order under martial law. Austerity, flooding, Brexit, immigration, Islamism. Reactionary, racist, nationalist discourses and ideologies are everywhere; religious and far-right neo-nazi groups are regrouping. Anarchist and eco-action is called “extremism” or “terrorism”, in the double-speak of the police-state. There will never be any chance of individual, social and environmental change without the recreation of daily life into an existence that reflects our desires, passions and joys, rather than a cog in their system of fear. Likewise there is zero possibility of any social change without an insurrection, a social war. Continue reading “Flyposter: ‘Against Surveillance State UK – Against Facial Recognition CCTV’ (PDF)” →

Italy: Techno-sharia, morality police and psychopolice

Posted on 2022/10/12 - 2022/10/12 by darknights

Adorno defined fascism in his time as “technically equipped barbarism.” While that definition stood out as one of the most precise, it nevertheless left the concept of barbarism in vagueness and ambivalence. Think, in the Marxist sphere, of the successful slogan “socialism or barbarism!”; loaded more and more with positivism and the ideology of a progressive advance toward classless society, Bordiga contrasted it with a resolute and outrageous “communism or civilization!” Not only does industrial and technological development not give birth to communism, it does not in itself “democratize” either customs or social relations.

More than a century ahead of those debates, the very young Leopardi had already centered the issue in one of the first thoughts of his Zibaldone: “Reason is a lamp: nature wants to be illuminated by reason not set on fire.” From this dazzling insight descends the reflection on the oppositional pair civilization-barbarie that runs throughout Leopardi’s work. Barbarie, for the poet-philosopher, is both that which precedes that light and the epoch of the overt and manifest fire, the triumph of a “geometrical reason” that is a “most false system of most true parts,” that is, “reasoned villainy,” the artificialization of lives and passions: in short, excess of civilization.

As the sequel showed, this was not merely a linguistic problem. The world still struggles, and more and more ruefully, with that ambivalence, although it changes its historical forms. Is not “technically equipped barbarism” Islam 4.0 under construction in Iran, a system that merges Sharia, social credit and facial recognition? We read, “Under the new hijab and chastity law enacted in Iran on Aug. 15, women who post their headscarfless photos on the Internet will suffer the temporary loss of certain social rights for a period of six months to a year. In addition, women deemed non-compliant will be barred from entering government offices, banks or traveling on public transportation. Government employees will be fired if their images on social media do not comply with what the Islamic laws dictate. Numerous women have been arrested for not complying with the dress code and forced to confess.” And again, “The Iranian government plans to use facial recognition technology on public transportation. The announcement comes directly from the secretary of Iran’s Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani.” Continue reading “Italy: Techno-sharia, morality police and psychopolice” →

France: Anti-shoplifting biometrics arrive in supermarkets

Posted on 2021/06/21 - 2021/06/21 by darknights

Extract from Mainstream Media

Biometric video surveillance in our supermarkets

In order to detect theft, Carrefour, Monoprix, Super U and Franprix [and Intermarché] are experimenting with biometric analysis software to monitor our every move in their stores.

The health crisis had already unleashed the desire of private companies for biometric surveillance: thermal cameras at company entrances, detection of physical distances in offices, tracking of eye movements for remote university exams… Several French companies are now proposing to automatically detect thefts in stores “in real time” thanks to biometric analysis software directly connected to the cameras already present in the stores [behavior detection software that then sends an immediate alert to the security guard’s smartphone with a copy of the images].

While the idea of automatically detecting theft in stores has already been tested in Japan, several French companies have not hesitated to develop their own software:

“Anaveo”, a company of 320 people with a turnover of 70 million euros works in video surveillance for mass retail. Its “SuspectTracker” software promises to capture the flow of images from the cameras to analyze “suspicious behavior”, for example “gestures towards a stroller, backpack, trouser or jacket pocket”. Their presentation videos mention in passing that theft detection feeds into a database to further improve the algorithm.

“Oxania, a start-up founded in 2019, has produced a “Retail Solutions” software that would be able to “recognize gestures associated with theft in real time, detect behaviors, dangerous situations, customer journey and much more”. The video presentation calmly assumes to make a biometric analysis of the behaviors of people present in the store (body heat, gestures, body …). Continue reading “France: Anti-shoplifting biometrics arrive in supermarkets” →