Prevent scheme not fit for purpose, says Labour Peer
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Sky News
a day ago
- Sky News
Police to expand use of live facial recognition technology - amid concern from campaigners
The Metropolitan Police is more than doubling its use of live facial recognition technology. It will now be used up to 10 times per week across five days, up from the current four times per week across two days, the force has said. Privacy campaigners have called the expansion "incredibly concerning" at a time when its use is unregulated. However, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says the technology is currently only used "to look for serious offenders like wanted offenders and registered sex offenders". Earlier this month, the force said it had made 1,000 arrests using live facial recognition to date, of which 773 had led to a charge or caution. The technology is also due to be used at the Notting Hill Carnival in London later this month. "We routinely put it out there and capture multiple serious offenders in one go, many of whom have committed serious offences against women or children, or people who are wanted for armed robbery," Mr Rowley said. "It's a fantastic piece of technology. It's very responsibly used, and that's why most of the public support it." However, not everyone agrees. Charlie Whelton, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said: "Any tech which has the potential to infringe on our rights in the way scanning and identifying millions of people does needs to have robust safeguards around its use, including ensuring that proper independent oversight is in place." He urged ministers to act to regulate the technology in order to "protect people's rights, and make sure that the law on facial recognition does not get outpaced by the use". It comes as the force is restructuring to handle the loss of 1,400 officers and 300 staff due to funding cuts. As part of its restructure plans, the Met's public order crime team will increase from 48 to 63 members as protest-related crimes, particularly related to Israel, Palestine and the environment, have grown in the past two years. Sir Mark said laws are "very permissive and encouraging of protests, which is entirely understandable, and I've got no objection to that, but what we've seen, unfortunately, is a proportion of those create crime and offences". Neighbourhood teams are also being expanded to deal with street crime, including phone thefts, anti-social behaviour and shoplifting, with 80 officers moving to the West End team and 90 reassigned to robbery and theft hotspots in Brixton, Kingston, Ealing, Finsbury Park, Southwark and Spitalfields. Officers will patrol the streets, "taking on the pickpockets" and tackling gangs plotting to rob shops, Mr Rowley said. Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said they will focus on "tackling antisocial behaviour, phone robbery and shoplifting in key areas". The Met had more than 33,000 officers and more than 11,000 staff in February. Sir Mark warned in April that the force is facing a £260 million budget shortfall, with cuts removing the Royal Parks police and dedicated schools officers as a result.
Sky News
3 days ago
- Sky News
Prevent scheme needs to 'rapidly' adapt to online world, review finds after failures in Southport case
The Prevent scheme needs to "rapidly" adapt to the online world "where so much radicalisation takes place", an independent review has found. The anti-extremism programme has been under increased scrutiny after two recent terror incidents involving Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana and Sir David Amess's killer Ali Harbi Ali damaged its reputation. Lord Anderson KC was appointed as the new independent commissioner for Prevent in January and the long-awaited report into the scheme was published on Wednesday, outlining 10 recommendations to improve the programme. His recommendations can be summarised into five major themes, including adapting to the online world and applying Prevent to people who have no fixed ideology but "a fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks". 4:22 Lord Anderson recommended that "all feasible and right-compliant avenues should be explored as a matter of priority to enable evidence of online activity to be more effectively used". The online behaviours of self-radicalised extremists were "increasingly difficult to detect and interpret". This is because the average age of a person referred to Prevent is now 16, and 40% are aged 11-15, making them "digital natives", Lord Anderson told the Home Affairs select committee on Tuesday. "Wider decisions loom on how Prevent can be better tailored to the online world inhabited by so many of its subjects; how best to deal with those whose ideology amounts to little more than a fascination with extreme violence; and whether Prevent should ultimately be embedded in a more general violence reduction strategy," the report concluded. What is anti-terrorism programme Prevent? The aim of Prevent is to "stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism". The government-led, multi-agency scheme also helps to rehabilitate and disengage those who are already involved in terrorism, and safeguard communities from threats. Referrals to Prevent lead to a "gateway assessment", made by specialist police officers to determine whether there are "reasonable grounds" to suspect the person is "susceptible to becoming a terrorist or supporting terrorism". The individual will then receive tailored support to reduce their susceptibility to being radicalised into terrorism, if appropriate. The Prevent programme has three main aims: • To tackle the ideological causes of terrorism; • Intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation; • Enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate. Additionally, Lord Anderson said he believed Prevent "could work as part of a comprehensive violence prevention and safeguarding strategy" in the longer term. The report recommended that a Cabinet Office task force be set up to explore the possibility of formally connecting Prevent to a broader violence prevention and safeguarding system, as latest figures on Prevent referrals for 2023-24 included in the report show 36% of 6,921 cases were made up of concerns of vulnerability but no ideology or counter-terror risk. The review was launched following the killings by Rudakubana and Ali. Rudakubana, then 17, killed Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, in the attack at the Hart Space in Southport, Merseyside, on 29 July last year. He pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder in January and was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in jail, with the judge saying it's "highly likely" he will never be released. It was revealed that Rudakubana, now 18, was referred to the government anti-extremism scheme - known as Prevent - three times before the murders due to a fixation with violence. Each time his case was assessed, he was not deemed a terrorism risk, and he has never been subject to a counterterrorism police investigation or declared a subject of interest to MI5. Prevent report puts it simply - too many people slip through the net Social Affairs correspondent @BeckyJohnsonSky Prevent failed - and people died. This is the latest report to highlight the fatal errors made in assessing the risk posed by the Southport attacker and the man who murdered the MP Sir David Amess. Families of the victims are understandably demanding answers. Relatives of the three young girls murdered in Southport last summer are urging the government and the authorities to "do more than simply paying lip service". The report acknowledges that Prevent "lacks teeth". Put simply, too many people slip through the net. Many will be surprised that the Home Office needs to be told that Prevent needs to adapt to the online world. Radicalisation online is not new. We have known for years that worrying numbers of people are viewing graphic content online, disappearing down rabbit holes guided by social media algorithms. Human error plays a part: the murderer of Sir David Amess was "exited" from the programme after he convinced a case worker he did not pose a danger. But in the case of Axel Rudakubana who carried out the Southport murders, three referrals to Prevent led to no action being taken because, despite an obsession with mass killings, he was assessed to not subscribe to one particular ideology. The author of this report is clear that was the wrong decision. The nature of terrorism has changed, he says. It's harder to tell if someone has a terrorist ideology or something else. However, he warns the authorities should stop "fussing about" that - and instead put the safety of the public first. Chris Walker, representing the three bereaved families in the Southport Inquiry, said: "We note the findings of the report pointing to the failings of Prevent in the Southport case, in particular that referrals to other agencies who could have intervened with the defendant were not followed through with. Given the disturbing and violent behaviour exhibited, opportunities to intervene were then lost. "We now turn to the inquiry in establishing the key decisions that were made in this case, who made them and how, if they had not been made, would the results have been different. "We have been clear from the start of the Inquiry process that, as representatives of the bereaved families, real change needs to come in order to prevent other families going through what my clients face." Islamic State (ISIS) supporter Ali was referred to Prevent years before he stabbed Conservative MP Sir David Amess to death during a constituency surgery at a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea in October 2021. His case had been closed five years before, after just one meeting for coffee at a McDonald's to deal with his interpretation of "haram" (forbidden under Islamic law), as well as texts and calls with an "intervention provider". Despite Prevent policy and guidance at the time being "mostly followed", his case was "exited too quickly", security minister Dan Jarvis told the House of Commons in January. Lord Anderson said lessons "must continue to be learned" from the failure to stop both killers. "Prevent failed to provide what might have helped them. Whether different decisions might have spared their victims will never be known: both attacks came years later, and many imponderables intervened," he said. "But wrong decisions were taken; more should have been done; and from these failures, lessons must continue to be learned." Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to "immediately act" on Lord Anderson's findings. She said in a written statement that officials would clarify Prevent thresholds in guidance for frontline workers, who have a duty to refer individuals to Prevent, so they understand that those fascinated with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks should be referred to the counter-terror programme. This work would be completed by the end of September, Ms Cooper added. Sir David's family were left "deeply upset" and "frankly offended" by the way Lord Anderson's report had been handled by the Home Office, said Radd Seiger, the adviser and spokesman for the family. He said the family were given "next to no notice" of the timing or advance sight of the report published on Wednesday, but received a "dismissive" letter from the home secretary, which he said was designed to "protect the government following its failings" and not support them.
The National
3 days ago
- The National
Labour are engulfed in major online safety furore
It worked for rapper Kendrick Lamar; why not Technology Secretary Peter Kyle? Kyle delivered a quite extraordinary, spittle-flecked response to critics of the Online Safety Act on Tuesday morning. Nigel Farage is on the same side as paedophiles, Kyle spat. Not just any paedos either, the minister said that Farage would be on the same side as Jimmy Savile, were he still alive. Going even further later on, he said that anyone wanting to overturn the controversial legislation is 'on the side of predators'. That includes more than 400,000 people who have signed a petition calling for the Act to be repealed and could expand to organisations like Liberty, Big Brother Watch, Index on Censorship and the parent companies of Facebook and Wikipedia. Even Ian Russell, the chair of the Molly Russell Foundation, a child protection charity, said that the Act was not up to snuff and had to be replaced by something even tougher. Who knew paedophiles had so many allies? Quite why Labour are defending a Tory piece of legislation – the Act was passed by the Conservatives but is only coming into force now – is a question with a couple of answers. The first is a political one. 'Protect our children' has become a potent rallying cry for the right, identifying bogeymen in everyone from asylum seekers to drag queens. This is Labour's counterblast: You're putting children at risk. If you're against us, you're on the same side as child abusers. READ MORE: Labour respond as 400k demand repeal of Online Safety Act As a strategy it could work. Many parents will doubtless be glad to see the Government come down hard on the worst bits of the internet. It will certainly be welcomed by many that unregulated social media companies will be held responsible for removing content like child pornography and blocking children's access to sexual content or instructions for committing acts of self-harm or suicide. There is unlikely to be great amounts of sympathy for arguments about the sanctity of end-to-end encryption or free online speech. The flipside: are Reform UK railing against the Act – which this week enforced age restrictions on adult content – as a means to target the porn-addicted, misanthropic young men likely to make up its youth base at the next election? Quite possibly. (Image: James Manning/PA) The other reason that Kyle and his Labour comrades so aggressively back the Act is that they genuinely believe in it. They do not care about warnings that by introducing strict age checks, people might be pushed into downloading software to evade restrictions and access the darker corners of the internet. Demand for virtual private networks, which allow people to browse the web away from the prying eyes of regulators, is soaring. Kyle, as a rational being, must consider it plausible that the Act could have unintended consequences, though he shows no signs that he does. He seems to believe that the intention of legislation is its effect. He appears to care only about why laws were introduced, not how they work. Keir Starmer's response to criticism of the Act earlier this week took a similar approach: 'I don't see that as a free speech issue, I see that as child protection.' It surely cannot be beyond him that the two are not mutually exclusive. So it was with the SNP's doomed Named Person Scheme. Ministers were warned in 2016 that while the aim of the policy was 'unquestionably legitimate', it would violate people's human rights. It took another three years before it was officially ditched by the Scottish Government. With Donald Trump's sidekick JD Vance threatening consequences for governments insufficiently amenable to his definition of free speech, perhaps Starmer and co might catch up with the laws of unintended consequences sooner rather than later.
