(Guest post by Brian Mooney) My borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) has decided to spend millions on Artificial Intelligence (AI)-linked CCTV cameras and Live Facial Recognition that can pick out individuals – which are controversial due to concerns over accuracy. The council’s Cabinet report also proposed to use AI-linked cameras to enable automatic vehicle tracking and GPS tagging. It also pushes for surveillance drones, even though the whole borough sits within a congested ‘restricted flight zone’ with special permission needed. The stated purpose of all this tech is to work with the police (eg ‘identifying the routes taken by criminals’), even…

StopWatch has launched a new report #GIRLSMATTERTOO, looking at women and girls’ experiences of the police. Here is a guest blogpost by StopWatch about the issue… A failure to safeguard female victims of crime. Unlawful strip searches used as a disciplinary tool. Unnecessary use of force during routine stops, often resulting in trauma. These are some of the shocking encounters with police experienced by racialised girls and young women surveyed for an upcoming StopWatch report. Under a participatory action model of research, a team of girls and young women conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 Black, Asian and Mixed-race girls and young women…