Alex Klaushofer is an author and journalist. She writes about the changing times on Substack at Ways of Seeing.
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Supermarket customers in Britain are part of a growing experiment in surveillance. After an eight-week trial, Sainsbury’s has made live facial recognition permanent in a big south London store. That shop, the hypermarket in Sydenham, is not far from where I live. I donned a low-brimmed hat and a Covid mask and went to see.
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Shabana Mahmood’s announcement that facial recognition is to be rolled out across the nation is no vague statement of aspiration. Part of wider policing reforms and backed by the promise of fifty more camera-topped vans, the Home Secretary’s announcement signals the government’s determination to make mass surveillance part of daily life. Combined with the current consultation
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When the taps run dry in Tunbridge Wells you know something has gone very wrong in the heart of Albion. Some 24,000 residents had their water supply cut off for almost a week after South East Water found that water at the local treatment plant was contaminated with chemicals. Schools closed, businesses lost money and,
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If you think Britain’s free speech crisis is bad now, if Ofcom gets its way it could get a whole lot worse. The broadcasting regulator-turned-internet-policeman is currently consulting on proposals to beef up the Online Safety Act. The proposals in its blandly-title ‘Additional Safety Measures‘ document could reduce the internet in Britain to a shadow
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This summer I spent an afternoon, as I do every year, sitting with old friends in their garden a few miles from the Gloucestershire village where we grew up. Their garden adjoins fields, affording a clear view of the Malvern Hills. But this year, the view was different. We watched as trucks crawled across the
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It’s been 80 years since CS Lewis’ remarkably prescient, That Hideous Strength, was published. The final book in a sci-fi trilogy, the novel recounts the battle for the soul of humanity in the heart of England. Even in 1945, George Orwell saw that: ‘Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that
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The vexed issue of compulsory ID is, once again, on the cards. ‘BritCard’ is being billed as a ‘progressive digital identity for Britain’ by Labour Together, the think tank that put forward the scheme earlier this month. The digital ID card has been endorsed by dozens of Labour MPs, and No. 10 is said to be
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Tesco has followed Sainsbury’s lead by installing cameras above self-checkouts to identify when shoppers fail to scan an item properly, using the footage to provide a live-action replay of their misdeed. Predictably, it’s not gone down well: a video posted on Instagram involving a can of tuna got more than 3.5 million views. When will the supermarkets learn to stop
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Sainsbury’s is stepping up surveillance on its self-checkout tills. It’s hard not to laugh out loud. Not only will shoppers in some stores be recorded close-up by a VAR-style camera as they pack their groceries, but should anything appear amiss they may be shown a replay bearing the message: ‘Looks like that last item didn’t scan. Please
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Does Britain have a ‘two-tier’ attitude towards policing? The Home Affairs Committee, made up of 11 Tory, Lib Dem and Labour MPs, is dismissive of the suggestion. ‘It was disgraceful to see the police officers who bore the brunt of (the) violence being undermined by baseless claims of ‘two-tier policing’, its report, published earlier this
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At 3am last Thursday morning, council contractors and police descended on a Bristol neighbourhood to install roadblocks under the cover of darkness. Fadumo Farah was one of the residents who got up that night to see what was going on. She was shocked to see dozens of police officers and security guards with drones. It ‘felt like a
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“See that?” my friend pointed to a pylon on the hill opposite the window. “That’s the dawla.” The dawla (pronounced “dowleh”) is Arabic for state, and my hostess was telling me about an essential feature of life in contemporary Lebanon: the ability to understand when there is electricity and who is providing it. If the
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The timing couldn’t have been worse. Under leaden November skies, came news of what many have suspected: energy rationing for British households could be officially on the cards. The NESO-Miliband plan for a low-carbon future is going to involve a lot more than just waiting a while for a cup of tea The bearer of
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Does Britain have a two-tier policing system? Accusations that some protesters are treated differently to others have emerged in the wake of this week’s riots and the various counter-protests that have taken place. But while the blame is being directed at Sir Keir Starmer – with Elon Musk tweeting about ‘two-tier Keir’ – questions over
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On the day the election was called, I turned on the tap but nothing came out. The sudden stoppage was hardly a surprise: I live in a ‘Thames Water hotspot’ and can’t drive ten minutes in any direction without encountering at least one road closure as the water pipes are dug up. It’s got to
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Sainsbury’s has long had a special place in my heart. The weekly shop at the Orange Store offered excitement to a child and a comforting familiarity that my adult self has found hard to shake off. But roll on the decades and I’m standing, dismayed, in my local Sainsbury’s. The boss of Sainsbury’s has claimed
