Following racist riots throughout the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer introduced a government programme to improve the police capabilities handling mass racist riots, but civil rights groups have raised alarm bells on the implication this could have in terms of surveillance.

On 1 August, the government announced their National Violent Disorder Programme which will “bring together the best policing capabilities from across the country to share intelligence on the activity of violent groups so the authorities can swiftly intervene to arrest them,” a press release claimed.

The programme intends to use “local insight and data” to understand the operations of criminals – for instance, British Transport Police will keep track of the upticks of train ticket sales to see if it will be linked to organised “violent disorder.”

In the announcement of the programme, the government will look into how it will deploy facial recognition technology, but so far, it has yet to be confirmed if this will take the form of live or retrospective facial recognition.

But this idea already has civil rights groups ringing alarm bells over what the entire programme means as far as human rights, surveillance, and government tracking.

The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), an advocacy group monitoring police conduct that is excessive and discriminatory – says that the programme will likely be used to target anti-fascists, rather than the far-right groups responsible for the violence and riots seen in the UK in recent weeks.

“Even though the recent public disorder is better described as race-rioting than protest, this first test of his leadership almost certainly means that any prospect of Starmer’s new government rethinking the expansion of anti-protest police powers created by the Public Order Act 2023 is now over,” Netpol wrote in a blog post.

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Further, the Prime Minister has backed the continued roll out of facial recognition technology across UK policing, despite call outs of its perpetuation of racial bias and risks of surveillance.

“After the immediate crisis recedes, expanded police surveillance is just as likely to focus on movements for social, racial and climate justice as it does on the far-right,” Netpol warned.

Indeed, following 2011 riots, the conservative government increased policing authority specifically for protesting, introducing the Public Order Bill making it increasingly difficult for people to exercise the right to protest.

Recently, DIGIT covered a report sent to the UN specifically describing the racism inherent in the UK’s police’s use of facial recognition, as well as other Home Office and policing programmes such as Prevent.

The use of facial recognition by police continues to prove controversial, and was even found unethical in a study two years ago. Further, The South Wales police force’s use of facial recognition was also found to be unlawful.

The support from the new government is therefore worrying to civil adovocates which previously hoped the Labour party would reverse new encroachments on protesting rights and privacy – now, Netpol’s hopes are dashed.

“What we can expect instead is more funding for, and more central coordination of protest intelligence gathering, including live facial recognition,” they warn.