London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Oct 04, 2025

London sets standard for surveillance societies

London sets standard for surveillance societies

London has around 420,000 CCTV cameras, making it the second-most monitored city in the world after Beijing, with its 470,000 cameras (Washington DC, in third place, has just 30,000). That makes the UK capital a valuable test bed for visual surveillance technology and the application of artificial intelligence is supercharging cameras to monitor events such as crowd build-up, aiding smarter city planning. But the mass use of cameras by law enforcement for facial recognition is another matter in a democratic society.

Madhumita Murgia's Big Read today looks at facial recognition experiments in London, where members of the public were arrested for avoiding cameras, and highlights the court case in Cardiff brought by Ed Bridges against the South Wales Police for scanning his own face twice, including during a protest.

In his crowdfunding appeal for the case, Mr Bridges laid out his view of the high stakes for human rights. “The inevitable result is that people will change their behaviour and feel scared to protest or express themselves freely — in short, we’ll be less free.”

That's already the case in authoritarian China, which uses facial recognition as part of its extensive and highly intrusive surveillance of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province. Yuan Yang describes her visit to the province and says while she could always spot awkward plainclothes officers trailing her, monitoring by cameras means you never really know when you’re being watched. On her way to visit an orphanage for the children of detained Uighur Muslims, officers put up a roadblock just as her car was approaching. Coincidence or cameras playing a sinister role?


The Internet of (Five) Things


1. AI will invent itself
In a landmark challenge to the international patents regime, a band of legal experts has called on authorities in the US and EU to recognise the “inventorship” of artificial intelligence. Two patent applications filed this week, for a food container and a flashing light, were the work of a machine called Dabus (“device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience”). Separately, AI can now warn critical care doctors that their patients are at risk of developing severe kidney damage up to two days early, with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year. The machine learning model was developed jointly by DeepMind Health, a division of Google, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

2. UniCredit and Ford have Capital One fears
Italian bank UniCredit and US carmaker Ford have launched investigations into whether their data have been caught up in the Capital One data security breach. On Tuesday, cyber security researcher Brian Krebs said in a blog post that he had accessed a Slack channel in which the arrested former Amazon Web Services employee Paige Thompson had listed other databases she had found, by hacking “improperly secured Amazon cloud instances”. A screenshot of the databases included one labelled “unicredit”. Lex says cloud fans are of the opinion the breach could have happened just as easily if the data were held on an on-site server.

3. Earnings round-up: Qualcomm, Western Digital, Zynga

Qualcomm complained of “continued weakness in China” as it anticipated fourth-quarter sales of between $4.3bn and $5.1bn, compared with $5.8bn in 2018 and below the $5.7bn expected by Wall Street. Western Digital said it saw signs of improvement in the flash memory market as it reported an in-line quarter. Mobile game publisher Zynga upped its full-year guidance and beat second-quarter forecasts, adding fuel to a stock that has already soared 60 per cent this year.


5. LSE clinches $27bn deal for Refinitiv
The London Stock Exchange Group has agreed to buy data provider Refinitiv for $27bn, sealing a deal that will turn it into a global markets and information powerhouse to rival Michael Bloomberg’s financial data empire. The deal may signpost the future of the City of London, says the FT’s editorial board. David Schwimmer, not the one from Friends but the LSE chief executive, hopes to be remembered as the guy who transformed the LSE.

Bird's description and launch of the Bird Two comes less than three months after it unveiled Bird One, its next-generation electric scooter designed to be more durable, powerful, and longer-lasting than previous versions, reports The Verge. The new Bird is apparently even more durable, powerful, and longer-lasting. Rolling out next week, it features over 50 per cent more battery capacity than Bird One, self-reporting damage sensors, antitheft encryption, and puncture-proof air-filled tyres.


Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
×