Smile, Citizens: Download attendees to be scanned by cops

From the "the innocent have nothing to fear" files of our police state: Download Festival goers are all going to have their faces scanned by Leicestershire Police.

You weren't supposed to know that, though:

We have also learned that the Police Oracle's publication of the interview has caused significant upset for management at Leicestershire Police, who did not want any advance publicity of their "new" surveillance project.

The public would have been informed that it had been placed under surveillance after the event had ended, presumably as part of a "you didn't know, therefore it wasn't intrusive", justification for the scheme.

This isn't really justified by any disruption at Download - indeed, last year Leicestershire Police were rightly proud of how little crime was recorded at the festival.

So, at a mostly well-behaved festival, everyone is going to be treated as a suspect and even have their faces looked at to see if they're 'wanted'.

The official site explains what police will be doing on site. As you'd expect from a sneaky surveillance project, there's no mention that they'll be scanning people to see if they're wrong 'uns.