Genetics was used by bigots to springboard eugenics into the public debate where it then nurtured racism at the highest level of politics for well over a century.

True, but it’s also done a lot of good. None of the good done outweighs the lives lost or ruined by the Eugenics nutters, though. I’m just saying "Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater."

The GPS-equipped smartphone gave rise to the Data Retention Directive which would have had every citizen in the EU carrying the equivalent of an electronic shackle – until fortunately the ECHR struck that directive down in bolts of thunder.

I love it when the courts protect us from politicians being politicians.

FRT is a way to make a computer TRY to identify a human and match a face against a list of known miscreants. The paradox of false positives guarantees that this will cause "death by triggerhappy cop" with fair excuses already provided.

Not in every case, but I get your point.

Worse, how many citizens will be quietly flagged without their or even the government’s notice by an algorithm which thinks it has seen John Doe in sufficiently many compromising places or situations to determine that s/he is a security risk?

You mean, "Already have been." The overzealous LEOs and their cohorts in the military-surveillance complex are already doing this to put people on no-fly lists, etc. The thing is, any Shiny New Thing will be abused to Hell and back. This doesn’t mean there’s a problem with the tech, but with people. Yes, I know the tech makes it easier for them to abuse us. The solution is to put curbs on their powers.

In 1984 the hazard with always being monitored was that you never knew when someone was watching through your installed monitor. FRT ensures there always will be something monitoring every step you take in public – and fuck up the conclusion of what you were doing and who you are, without any recourse available to fix whatever register you find yourself in.

I acknowledge that FRT is a part of the ubiquitous surveillance we live in but it’s not the only application. You’ve forgotten that the only time FRT or surveillance becomes an issue is when you’re a target. When you’re not, you’re just another piece of dried grass in the ever-expanding haystack; sooner or later the data must be parsed. We know from various TD stories that there’s not enough manpower to surveil each individual; there are too many of us. Result: they pick and choose who to spy on and unless they can demonstrate that we’re a clear and present danger, they usually let it drop. We saw this with a range of terrorist offenders who were being monitored. Basically, the monitoring ended because the suspects just weren’t suspicious enough to justify continuing the monitoring until they up and murdered people. So while surveillance apparatus is ubiquitous, the idea that all of us are being carefully watched all the time is inaccurate.

We know, cheat sheet in hand, just how badly this pans out from the archives in the old DDR where it was found that in addition to the genuine dissidents a significant proportion of the east german population had been flagged as security risks just because of bad linking.

A large proportion of DDR’s resources was spent on policiing the public. Detailed dossiers were kept on each member of the public and were constantly updated. Basically, more manpower was devoted to spying on the public, which is why it was so effective. The modern surveillance regime is being run on the cheap, which is why so many actual threats slip through the net.

FRT is an inherent force multiplier for the bad effects of mass surveillance. It needs proper debunking, not a fervent effort to roll it out in the wishful idea that "Hey, someday we’ll make it work".

If it’s only used for surveillance or the only identifier, yes, I agree. But it’s not. I get where you’re coming from but as I stated earlier, this is a people problem more than a tech problem.