We’re back!!
Greetings friends, and happy September (although, how happy is September ever really?)
I hope you all had a wonderful summer, and are calm, happy, and suitably re-charged as we enter the final quarter of 2025. My summer was unexpectedly busy, and although I wasn’t producing a newsletter, unfortunately I wasn’t spending all that time sipping cold beers on a hot beach. Instead, I shall be doing that over two weeks at the start of October 🙂 All going to plan.
That said, although unexpectedly busy, the summer was productive. Prepare yourselves, propaganda incoming (to avoid, skip two paras). I secured just over £500,000 in funding, for a three year project working with the UN SR on Freedom of Assembly, Lighthouse Reports, Open Lab Athens, and Amnesty Tech. We are going to be doing work on the chilling effects of surveillance (but of course) and we will also be building open source AI decision making or decision supporting tools. The idea is that we will replicate (as close as possible) government tools – say in the field of child protection, or social welfare fraud detection – so that we can test them for adverse human rights impacts (discrimination being the obvious one, but the idea is to investigate as comprehensively as possible). We will generate large synthetic data sets for this. Importantly, we are also interested in seeing what happens when these AI tools are chained together, so a key part of the study is looking at the impact of AI decisions, over time. I’m really interested to see if stratification – essentially of people into ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – occurs. Everything will be made available open source, with a how to, so that anyone can replicate and test systems (say from their own country). Very exciting. Watch this space!
As you know, Pete Fussey and I published our book: Facial Recognition Surveillance: Policing and Human Rights in the Age of AI. If you are interested in buying it, code AUFLY30 gives a 30% discount. The first book event is scheduled for 15 October in Cambridge at the Center for Governance and Human Rights, with drinks (i always appreciate drinks before an event, it just seems to make more sense?). There will be more events, once we get ourselves organised 🙂
And so to the newsletter proper. There is just too much news, and too little time, to recap everything that has happened while the newsletter has been snoozing, so i’m not even going to try it. I’ve added some stories to my notes as i’ve been going, so i’m including them here, and i’ll try to do a quick recap of the last week too.
The New York Times have a really good piece on what pervasive surveillance in the city looks like. There is also an interesting story on Google’s Deep Mind apparent breakthrough in reasoning, and developing code in response to real world problems. Its interesting reading that story in light of this piece discussing different approaches to AI, centred around the idea that brute force ever larger models may not be the best solution. Kashmir Hill also has a really shocking story on a teen’s suicide, encouraged by ChatGPT. And MIT has an interesting read on the TOR network (not strictly AI, but close enough).
There is also a really illuminating piece on Israel’s collaboration with Microsoft. This was originally portrayed (from memory) as ‘just’ the provision of cloud services, but it appears that they may have been using this to run analysis that likely contributed to targeting decisions.
There is also a lot of interesting facial recognition news, but i’m in a rush. As a starting point, check out the BBC on the rollout of permanent live facial recognition in Fulham and Hammersmith, and the NYT piece on has britain gone too far? Oh, and my perennial bug bear on the Met’s LFR-related crime stats: this really needs to be broken down. How many people are arrested for what crimes? The severity of these crimes is really essential to evaluating the necessity test, recalling that a ‘high level’ of justification is required by ECtHR case law. I could go on.
But instead, this week I will leave you with, ‘The Happy Dictator’ by Gorillaz. Not that it coincides with anyone’s State visit or anything.
Stay warm, stay safe, stay lovely
BBC, More than 700 arrests this year from live facial recognition
The New York Times, Has Britain Gone Too Far With Its Digital Controls?
BBC, Council to introduce facial recognition CCTV
Privacy International, How Data Drives the Militarisation of Tech
New York Times, Opinion | What You Need to Know About Police Surveillance
The Guardian, Google DeepMind claims ‘historic’ AI breakthrough in problem solving | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian
The Guardian, ‘I have to do it’: Why one of the world’s most brilliant AI scientists left the US for China
Financial Times, HMRC must disclose whether it used AI in tax credit decisions, court rules
The New York Times, A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.
The HIll, Parents call for guardrails on AI chatbots after suicides, self-harm
The Guardian, ‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft Cloud for Expansive Surveillance of Palestinians
The MIT PRess Reader, The Secret History of Tor: How a Military Project Became a Lifeline for Privacy | The MIT Press Reader.
WIRED, Encryption Made for Police and Military Radios May Be Easily Cracked
The Guardian, Sainsbury’s tests facial recognition technology in effort to tackle shoplifting
BBC, Met chief: Why facial scanning was not used at Robinson rally
BBC, Knife attacker caught using facial recognition
The Guardian, Met police to more than double use of live facial recognition
Tech Policy Press, UK Deepens Dependence on US Tech with New OpenAI Partnership
Rest of World, Meta brought AI to rural Colombia. Now students are failing exams
The Guardian, First NHS AI-run physio clinic in England halves back-pain waiting list
The Dissident, Digital Necromancy in the Age of AI
WIRED, OpenAI Ramps Up Robotics Work in Race Toward AGI
ASPI, AI’s national‑security risks are falling through the gaps
Rest of World, How Vietnam’s military built one of the hottest tech companies in Southeast Asia
Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco Gets An Invasive Billionaire-Bought Surveillance HQ
Rest of World, Countries are struggling to meet the rising energy demands of data centers
Blogs
Just Security, Quantum Supply Chains: A Test Case for a New Economic World Order Just Security, Dueling Strategies for Global AI Leadership? What the U.S. and China Action Plans Reveal