Greetings all, and hope you’re keeping well.
Am in sunny Oxford this month, teaching an AI & Human Rights module on a summer school, which is really nice. Its good to be back in the classroom, and quite nice to be out of London during the weks – although also very nice to head back at the weekend.
I’ll begin this week with some AI and policing news from the UK. First up is the reports that shops using facial recognition are going to instantly send alerts to police. This is really a dramatic increase in the police’s surveillance capability. It also raises a host of additional questions about watchlist construction – if the policies surrounding police watchlist construction are unclear (or overly broad) what will they be like for shops? This comes at the same time that Mark Rowly, the Met Police chief, is both pressing ahead with a dramatic increase in police AI use, while essentially arguing that the police should be able to work outside the law: “We cannot legislate for every incremental development in technology. The pace is simply too fast, and the legislative process is too slow.” This, of course, overlooks the ‘in accordance with law’ requirement established by the Human Rights Act (/human rights law genearlly) which requires that a rights interference have a legal basis. The quotes from Mark Rowley are really troubling, in that they are quite disingenuous. He talks, for example, of the retention of custody images (which should not be retained for non-convicted persons, but are) saying that:
“If you’ve had a caution for the 14-year-old shoplifting, you’re a 30-year-old, and you get stopped because we’ve kept your image, and we’re using it in our facial recognition, that would be disgraceful,” he said. “And, of course, we’re not doing that. If we were doing anything like that, I’m sure the High Court would have absolutely castigated our approach.”
This overlooks the fact that (a) watchlists are absolutely constructed on the basis of custody images and (b) that the High Court simply did not look at that issue. To suggest that the High Court didnt have a problem with something they didnt address is, well, problematic. This occurs too frequently – a narrow Court decision is interpreted as providing blanket authorisation.
Anyway. Time for a break in the sun.
I’ll leave ye this week with Fionnghuala’s Bothy by the Bothy Band. Mad tune. Honourable mention to ‘Europe Endless’ by Kraftwerk.
Be well. Stay lovely.
Investigate Europe, Made in Spain: Surveillance tech banned in EU booms in India
The Guardian, Alarm over launch of facial recognition in UK shops that instantly alerts police Sao Paolo
Tech Policy Press, The UN Scientific Panel on AI’s Preliminary Report Does Not Establish Its Independence | TechPolicy.Press
BBC, Outcry as Meta lets users make AI images from public Instagram profile pics
Computer Weekly, Metropolitan Police chief warns against law updates amid substantial tech expansion
WITNESS, C2PA Content Credentials and the Surveillance Risk
ASPI, China’s military AI logistics: peacetime gains, wartime vulnerabilities
ASPI, Job ads show DeepSeek aims for an AI agent with cybersecurity capabilities
The Hill, Illinois becomes first state to require third-party audit of AI models
The HIll, New York imposes first-in-the-nation statewide freeze on ‘hyperscale’ data centers
The HIll, Musk’s xAI sues man accused of using Grok to create explicit material
Big Brother Watch, Big Brother Watch comments on Sainsbury’s plans to roll out live facial recognition in 200 shops
404 Media, Madison Square Garden Made Dossier on Activists Who Opposed Facial Recognition
The Guardian, ‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre
Privacy International, When algorithms go to war
Rest of World News, India’s crackdown on a new WhatsApp feature risks setting a global precedent
SMEX, New report on the militarization of tech in the SWANA: Produced, tested, deployed
BBC, Facial recognition technology use results in 28 arrests in Bradford
Business Insider, This startup wants to turn the world into a searchable video feed, starting in San Francisco (how is this legal?)
The Guardian, Perverts of the world rejoice! It’s Meta’s new dodgy old mate glasses | First Dog on the Moon
The Guardian, Brain implant helps paralysed man to feed himself and drink from cup
The Conversation, Who owns an AI generated song? What we can learn from the phonograph and the evolution of copyright laws
Financial Times, Will cheap specialised AI models threaten the Big Tech chokehold?
Financial Times, Chinese AI start-up Moonshot to launch model challenging Anthropic’s lead
New York Times, India Is Moving Fast to Build A.I. Data Centers. A Coastal City May Pay the Price.
The Guardian, Robots, AI and drones: how the Dutch navy is using tech to transform its sea defences
Washington Post, An Ivy League professor suspected AI cheating, so he decided to fight back
WIRED, An Inventor of Apple’s FaceID Wants to Analyze Your Brain’s Health With AI
The Guardian, I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all