in england liverpool lifted the league championship for the 1st time in 30 years the supporters left to celebrate a triumph and weren't allowed to witness inside the stadium. innovation and commercial imperatives have ensured short term survival for the financial and physical fallout from the pandemic is still tumbling through every level of every sport. and the richardson al-jazeera. to have a quick check of the headlines here on al-jazeera the u.k. has completed its split from the e.u. after formally leaving the bloc single market and customs union the prime minister barak's johnson hailed it as a new beginning after 4 years of political drama. this is an amazing moment for this country we have our freedom in our hands and up to us to

make the most of it and i think it will be the overwhelming instinct of the people of this country to come together as one united kingdom england scotland wales and northern ireland working together to express our values around the world leading both the g 7 and the cop $26.00 climate change summit in glasgow well the u.k. is also dealing with an escalating coronavirus pandemic surging infections in england are forcing all thora has to reactivate emergency hospitals set up when the pandemic began most so-called nightingale hospitals have been largely unused but officials say they are now being prepared to admit patients if other medical centers which capacity at least a 140 congressional republicans are reported to be ready to oppose counting electoral college votes next week and president elect joe biden's victory is expected to be certified. although it could trigger a long debate president donald trump supporters have no chance of returning results

a peacekeeping operation run by the african union and united nations in darfur is closing after 13 years the mission in sudan will gradually wind down until it fully ends in june next year it was launched to end the conflict that's killed more than 300000 people since 2003 about 2500000 others were forced from their lives and in new york the final hour of 2020 is ticking down but this year new year's eve celebrations are on a much smaller scale because of code with 19 in time square only a few invited guests including health care workers are gathering to watch its crystal ball drop at midnight just over 30 minutes from now at least fenced off the site prevent others from entering the area. but those were the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera after the stream starts with that's a lot of. fun and a toy highway to go through this young 10 wickets close to. one home on his

travels to the villages where the parents tell their underwrites doing their thing . one ounce of the. pay they're welcome to the stream home edition i'm josh rushing sitting in for that here replaceable for me ok and i'm coming to you from my home today in fairfax virginia and i have a question for you well 1st let's talk about you're watching us on you tube look over here see that box right there that's actually a live you tube chat and we have a stream producer there now waiting for your comments in your questions so look at them to me and i can get into the panelist during the show so i hope that you engage here and that you're actually a part of this with us and do it right there in that box ok now i have a question for you right off the top of the show who wants to live in a full on police state with with complete surveillance powers right now for those of you who are on the bits going to show you

a video on my computer here check this out let me start this at the beginning this is what a police state looks like these are scenes coming out of portland oregon well recently those are a crowd of american citizens exercising their constitutional right to gather in protest you can see them being beaten with baton. charge that by police and police vehicles i mean if you're worried about attack against america or americans the calls coming from inside the house that this is what it looks like let me take you to another video real quick this one's gone viral recently and we pull up the van video. what are you doing to use your words what are you doing. doing wrong here in the arts. what is going on if

we don't know who are you are you thinking then she wants you out what's your name ok your final gets you out bro with her we got you friend we got you here the picture in the world the media would be called they got disappearing a citizen it's deadly serious but at the same time just watching police dressed up like their delta force of putting someone in a vehicle of choice for soccer moms makes us realize how ridiculous they are and of course all this really is about silencing protests right so surveillance is a tool used by the powerful to as one of our guests will say today immunize governments from the forces of change so don't look to those same governments to do something about it in fact here's what president trump thinks about what's going on in portland right now. more federal law enforcement that i can tell you in portland they've done a fantastic job they've been there 3 days and they really have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time no problem they grant them lot of people in jail their

leaders these are advocates these are not protesters people say protests and these people are baracus these are people that hate our country and we're not going to let it go forward and i'll tell you what the governor and the mayor and the senators out there they're afraid of these people so do you want him knowing everything about you where you're going when you're going who you're talking to what you're planning on the can we do about it we're joined by in exciting panel of guests today to talk about exactly that and i'm going to ask them to introduce ourselves themselves and begin with silky in london. hi yes i'm so call i'm the director of big brother watch with a privacy and civil liberties organization. it being silky i appreciate that and claire in washington d.c. hi i'm claire garvey i'm a senior associate with the center on privacy and technology based at georgetown law we focus on the relationship between privacy and new technologies particularly

as the impact historically vulnerable communities in a course in the open i focused on port link that's getting a lot of big news where i live here in the states but this is an issue all over the world from portland to d.c. to london to where my next guest is sitting in hong kong mary communities yourself sure hi everyone i mean it's very her home base a home call among course of course. most of us here since last june to clearly at the moment she. can't see and how is that it's more summers and you're there on the front lines of what a massive protest now for what a couple couple years they've been going on that long in hong kong can you tell us what it were some of the surveillance techniques that police had been using and how people have been trying to protect themselves from the. yeah we see the surveillance photo of the official on the fishing line so balance the high tech and

learn tech kind so let's take a look at a place that they are using a lot of the video cameras to their home protesters process why as a way to keep iraq what was for themselves i think also to send a very clear message people are being watched and so even if you have no entirely kiesel assembly it's technically unlawful because the police have not wanted or at what we should say the sense needs to ask the commission to process these 48 but that's the way it is comb the local assembly they were for example sat in front where them someplace else having the same every single person about to go in there and that sends a very very clear signal that the police right away to date even if the assembly remains entirely peaceful. the police often have also over the past year cracked

into thousands of digital devices found that a compass a said from. people protesters activists souness i. have been arrested and in many cases this is recorded. and documented as well as in question this practice in the judicial review the police have actually used very warrants to such a sensually to search their own have says where the phones a few 1000000 cases and so that's one way to chance it get access one of them and nation and then finally i think we also have a very low tech kind of surveillance right now especially in light of the national security law that was just and all that in all of this money that i think. with people is instigating this is. way but snitching when people are reporting

and calling out cully and so activism members and saying you know these people are suspected of violence so that's a metaphor very low to every. so many players that there are what have we seen in the u.s. with some of the master class matters protests that happen another in drone aircraft surveillance and you know what what are they doing here. we have heard about the use of drones there is of course the use of cameras as well. now a lot of law enforcement agencies in us have a clip most of their officers with body cameras the aspect about this that i'm particularly concerned about but we have very little information about is the use of face recognition as a tool to identify who is at these protests we know that over half of all american adults are in face recognition databases that are accessible or searched by law

enforcement and the question really becomes are law enforcement agencies using the strains that they have from videos from photographs from even protest videos and photos posted to social media to try to identify the individuals at these protests here's why it's so concerning in the u.s. there's a very strong. relationship between the right to anonymity and the 1st amendment right to speech protest assembly the supreme court said anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority while face recognition is a tool to be anonymised people participating in 1st amendment protected activity so we do not have concrete evidence there's a huge lack of transparency around the use of this tool but it is a huge concern here. we have is going is it is good or gabrial this is paetec is modern warfare against protest. basically primarily used by russian the

trumpet ministration i would argue is more broad than that it's ok why was this such a just such a threat. it's a huge threat because the mere fact of this type of surveillance is towards having a chilling effect and so you know that you're being watched and that's certainly the case if you turn up a protest with a facial recognition van we've actually had that in the u.k. the u.k. after say is one of the worst surveillance states in the democratic world and actually. rivals china for the amount of surveillance cameras that we have a person we have around 6000000 cameras in this country is about one for every 10 people who are an incredibly watch nation and then when you hire long that kind of surveillance at protests you're telling people that they're being watched and to put this into context. we have

a very or thora tarion history actually of of surveillance in the u.k. of protests where we've had spotted cards being you to identify organizes a lot of infiltration we've had for example place offices using the identities of dead children to create fake personas infiltrate peaceful environmental groups and race equality groups even the family of the grieving family of a murdered boy in in the u.k. in the ninety's was in for traits by undercover police offices who acted as their friends sometimes even as romantic partners and basically collected information on them and. so we have in that context where surveillance is used to prevent social movements from advancing and to deter people

from taking part and sometimes to criminalize people. this has a clear effect on the kind of society that we live in and i would argue the extent to which we can really call us out it's a democracy. and i know you must have noticed that i stole your line in my intro from the pre-interview that. it's meant to immunize governments from the forces of change keep the roof on the. yeah i think the aim of. heavy surveillance of protests i was really thinking about this watching the intro and what trump was saying about how you know describing people is as an a case to hate their country nothing could be further from the truth especially if you look at the that lives not a movement where people are striving for equality for fairness for the principles that the united states is built upon and we can never be complacent about

values in society or about what kind of whoa whoa what kind of country wants to come in a lot of social reasons at the moment are striving towards those goals the purpose of having this all sorts hereon oppressive surveillance is to stop that and to to tear it and to create obstacles and obstructions and and really using these surveillance instruments of of power. to preserve the status quo. it's not about security it's not so bad. with criminals it's about preserving and it's a cool power 11 thing i'd add on that is that it's interesting in u.k. of recovered in a state like many other countries of emergency powers one main power remains in the u.k. because a lot down is more or less lifted it's a restriction on gatherings and this is the time when that close matter is growing

massive names are mental movement is going message me but you can be. criminalized you can be arrested you can be prosecuted just for going on a process yet you can go to the chimney and go to cinema you can go to work but we can to is exercise your right to freedom of expression freedom of assembly in the west fundamental democratic way. so i have a comment from joseph eddy in the you tube says that if they're tracking protesters via cell phone and e-mail communications find low tech means of communicating that can't cannot be tracked so no in hong kong they develop some some different ways to communicate and they also were going to pay mr bring in the umbrella as to the protests that's a low tech response right he talked a little bit about that and in fact what i want to do mary is while you're talking or maybe after we can bring up these. i don't know what you would call them is like a different form of communication by using maybe you can describe my head i'm like

no my computer now if we can go to make it so what we're looking at here. we're looking at a new form of code essentially this came up. earlier this month of government action and a protest that's been rallying coal the entire movement and that goes on coal revolution times and government set this is now legal slogan because it is seditious it's intense messaging and so what we're seeing now is hong kong protests that's taking up the sense that it's in mainland china has long had to find ways to get around senses and what we see here. all the taxes of in chinese. and those characters have now been replaced by the symbols but of course if you know what they're supposed to save and you know that even though the symbols

actually look like anything they ought to mean changing the very message. so that's just one creates a way. that princess as a trying to get around the city sets and as you mentioned. the umbrella as young as good nat yes exactly the umbrellas. initially not with seems to protect themselves that it's from tear gas and are projectiles it's. beginning to mostyn and increasingly use to shield concepts as far as. surveillance cameras and possibly drones. he said. and often that is used for weapons us is what is meant when various social spraying. graffiti in malls or transporting. breaks down the road to barricades and.

so here i let's go to my computer one more time to share something with you this is pretty cool it's called the atlas of surveillance it was put together by the electronic frontier foundation. encourage people just to google doesn't go look now this is about the u.s. but there are 5300 data points in here showing all the different types of surveillance around the country it's being used and you can kind of zoom in and click on it something you know to play around in wherever you live to see what's going on with with the surveillance but clear to me what will we do about this. that's a great question i think the main thing is to pressure on our legislators to pass laws and reinforce existing laws to make sure that this type of surveillance is not happening we would like to think that the 1st amendment protects us or the 4th amendment the right to privacy protects us against this type of surveillance and

this sort of what we call perpetual lineup created by the use of face recognition for example but the reality is these technologies have largely been deployed far in advance of any sort of legislation that is a democracy it should be up to the communities that are being policed the communities on this technology is being used to decide whether or not that's appropriate and we need to get to that point i'm optimistic we're going to counter yes i swear i'm going to have a cowboy go for it from this is from twitter you can respond to claire since you since you have the mike it's i'm someone who goes into the handle be humble. seba muhammad looks like his name but i don't see why one would hide their identity while involved in peaceful protests protestors are not criminal unless they turn violent but what i support about these surveillance cameras is the possibility of tracking and fishing out of endures from amongst the peaceful protesters. that is

the point that's raised by by law enforcement i would actually point you to the case law in the united states saying that that's actually not what the 1st amendment says though there is a case that's sort of controversial because the plaintiff was the k.k.k. the k.k.k. won the right in a couple of states to wear their hoods during peaceful assembly and protest why not because the law enforcement didn't have a right to or didn't have an interest in knowing who those people were not because communities were did not feel threatened by the masked. k.k.k. members walking to their communities but that the 1st amendment right of yes even deeply unpopular deeply wrong ideals held by the k.k.k. are protected under the right the 1st amendment and that includes their right to

wear a hood so that they are not identified so let me bring in this is from someone in our community named jocelyn mcdonald approaches this guy but you're going to make up check it out this is actually pretty critical. for about a year now i think conducting workshops where teach participants how official detection and facial recognition systems work so they can alternately go and undermine the systems using make up and facial coverings that were as been greatly inspired by recent maker trends that you know seely's artists really push on the open terms of artistry and sculpture and i thought you know what if we could use the same techniques that make about us using to make really compelling looks to ultimately undermine the power efficient missions ability to detect a face and at least as a member station authority of communities about the increasing reach of surveillance into all of our daily lives. so let's go to our web site check out my

computer this is some of the stuff he's talking about you know from an artistic perspective this seems really beautiful and cool but from a practical perspective of. i mean one just practical where wearing this out i can imagine in the heat it was just melt but to doesn't this kind of make you just pick out in a way that you were hoping to to not in the 1st place look you like is this is a practical. plainly no but i agree it's very beautiful and i love the way the. artists are engaging with counter-surveillance in 'd a way that i don't expect and and haven't seen before i completely agree with clare we need legislative to do something i actually think we need radical popular action and the responsibility is on all of us and the responsibility is on everyone

watching this because if you're watching this you've got an interest in it and you know i think the alarm bells have been ringing 'd on surveillance especially in the u.k. and the u.s. god knows whole goal for some time and when our very pivotal point in time where the world is changing rapidly the technological revolution is taking pace is the greatest i would suggest change the any society has probably ever been through i think this is far more drastic than the industrial revolution and we have very limited time we have this. a short window of time in which to set the norms for what the future is going to look like for us and future generations and there is a great chance that and certainly there are economic incentives to build this kind of small its surveillance grid in which we are all tracked we are watched and any operations. pursued and that's the nightmare

we we don't want to live in that's why we called big brother watch and i think is fundamentally hostile to democracy said this is the time to be taking action and speed resisting surveillance and speed to taking radical action like banning facial recognition that's the way that's what it is that actually this is not something that will feature in democracies. so the question becomes though that if we can take a legislative route that seems fine for you can us what do you do if your new authoritarian regime where you may not have that option open to marry that's what you're seeing on the streets there right what are the options there be options are increasing looks at us saying. to. you cheap comment we were looking only at 2 why peace process that should be worried about some parents while they are that. even the most he's for us even if it were just standing outside

a government building holding up something as simple as. as opposed to that sense who live in it or perhaps even a black princess do that to protest against the banning of the slogan that he actually get you charged on the national security law so it's a joke for intentionally 20 years who even thinks of us to china's are like that is a very worrying trend and right now our whole call. bury it less or room to push back against. our national security has been forced by diktats by beijing. so to bring another you to comment here this is from jay to. say here in hackers were a cause of war a 1st firey spying and now it looks like governments are also stepping up for spying do we need to worry about privacy will be left after all this will privacy

be left after all this and i often think like if you want to know what's going on with technology look at what they're doing with silicon valley san francisco san francisco actually banned the use of special recognition technology amazon has put a pause on their facial rick recognition technology until they get clear clear guidance from the government the problem is when you have tech companies looking to the u.s. government for guidance the u.s. government the least the body that makes those laws the congress is full of really very very well wealthy mostly white old men who aren't particularly tech savvy so i don't know how you do you chazan that are you how do you get over that channel but somebody needs to realize what's happening and i think voices like all of yours today helped bring this conversation to the forefront that the people really need to consider what this means for them and their society for our guest i want to thank you all for being here today and for everyone watching i hope you take this morning wonder what you can do about it as well he was.

moved out of his parents' house after he got to me he says he found more space to make it difficult after renovating it last year it's now his home along with his wife and home but there's way to go for it said the cables to be constructed to be kept in permit and this or that the militia or to. our interview with cut short as he hears that the israeli army has arrived in the village with the. residents say soldiers gave them one minute to. get to the family. months to build their brick and dust on an hour to see it get demolished. the american people have finally for pocono america is our steward when america is all balanced or will become more dangerous the world is looking to the mixture of sadness and beauty. with the

election behind us will the republican party trump the feel we can take on us politics and society that's the bottom of. one of the last remaining ancient forests in southeast asia is a lifeline to hundreds of lumber jacks and drive as. we follow that treacherous journey as they walk through extreme conditions. together and transport this dangerous but precious cargo risking it all. on al-jazeera. across europe immigration is high on the agenda and in hungary it's presented as a pressing issue we didn't have immigrants' at all 0 in the race but this is the one political topic anybody and everybody is discussing the far right is preparing

for battle and their opponents or anyone who is different. prejudiced some pride in hungary on al-jazeera. already. london's big ben rings in the u.k. as formal departure from the european union's single market. but i wonder in jordan this is out as they are live from doha also coming up a leading expert on infectious diseases in the u.s. says despite bank scenes the pandemic will get worse before it gets better. donald trump cuts in speculation short to seek more republican support for opposing the official approval of joe biden's election when.