Search
Content type: Examples
Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 between 2009 and 2014, set up a meeting between Palantir CEO Alex Karp and the Cabinet Office permanent secretary, John Manzoni, in 2019; a year later the US-based company was awarded a £27 million contract to process border and customs data without competitive tender. Palantir's strategy appears to be to offer £1 contracts to provide services to gain a footing, and then raise prices once established. It has also hired former public servants and NHS executives.…
Content type: Examples
Republic Squiare, one of the cultural and social hubs of the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is under constant surveillance by equipment made by the Chinese company Huawei that recognises faces, identifies vehicle number plates, and judges whether activities are "suspicious". Despite controversy over the cameras, Belgrade plans to extend the network to 8,000 cameras as part of a "safe city" partnership with Huawei. Similar installations are taking place across the world, exporting China's values to…
Content type: Examples
When the Los Angeles Police Department opted to monitor the messages posted in forums on Neighbors, a companion app to Amazon's Ring doorbell cameras, the system forwarded over 13,000 messages in just over two years. Research shows, however, that this type of surveillance does a poor job of deterring property crime. A study of Neighbors posts in LA also shows that posters typically live in whiter, more affluent districts, and about 30% of posts did not describe criminal activity, just behaviour…
Content type: Examples
The UK Home Office has drawn up secret plans to draft a letter lobbying the Information Commissioner's Office to allow the privately held company Facewatch's matching service to spread into retail shops and supermarkets across Britain in order to curb shoplifting. The strategy was agreed in a meeting between Facewatch, policing minister Chris Philip, and senior Home Office officials. It is not known what contact, if any, between the Home Office and the ICO followed the meeting.https://www.…
Content type: Examples
The UK's Home Office is expanding its contract with the Portuguese company Tekever, which has supplied live-streamed drone footage captured by a combination of radar, video, and infrafred imagery through a £1 billion contract since 2020; this contract is now being extended to monitor large stretches of the English Channel in new ways. The UK is just one of many countries that see drones as a "game-changer" in patrolling borders and trapping human smugglers. The global drone market is expected…