Police in Denmark to implement facial recognition technology to combat violent crimes – recent increases in crime in Copenhagen involving gangs from neighbouring Sweden

Facial recognition has been unpopular in the tech space for a while because of growing privacy concerns and increasing evidence that it's wildly less accurate on people of color. I'm not exactly surprised that this did not deter the Danish police, given that they're cops and Denmark is host to plenty of racism. But I do think it's important to repeatedly point out the failures and downsides of these systems so people don't become acclimated to their failings.

Sadly Danish politicians are super keen on getting more surveillance and we have several statements in the vein of you probably have something to hide (as in probably a criminal) if you are critical of more surveillance and odd statements like more surveillance equals more freedom. We also famous for repeatedly ignoring an EU ruling that our surveillance on private internet and phone use is too broad, but every time it is just being ignored and Denmark just postpones it yet again with a new court proceeding.

And I am sad to say that they probably will get away with it, because most of the average Dane seems to be in agreement with that viewpoint. We generally have a real high trust in our society, which is a great thing to have, but it also means that few people really see a problem with this or fear that it can be misused or go too far.