Every now and again we like to go back and check in on a few subjects we’ve covered in past issues. Just to see if things have got any better… Or worse.
Today we’re checking in on the use of facial recognition (both by the Met and private companies), the state of homelessness and rough sleeping, and the seemingly perennial subject of driverless Tube trains.
This issue is not behind the paywall, so if you enjoy it please feel free to share it or post on social media.
Face/Off
In February we published this issue looking at the state of surveillance in London:
Two of the technologies we looked at were live facial recognition (a van driving around capturing images of people that are then matched against a database of persons of interest), and retrospective facial recognition (going back and examining recorded footage to try and find a specific person). Both of these are being used by the Met police right now.
Last week, an independent review into the governance of biometric data (commissioned by the Ada Lovelace Institute and led by Matthew Ryder QC) was finally published. The big takeaway is that the the current legal framework around biometrics is not fit for purpose and that the existing oversight is “fragmented, confused and failing to keep pace with technological advances”.
As well as the misunderstanding and misuse in the police forces, the paper looks at the increasing public-private collaboration around facial recognition, including the recent case of the development company Argent using it in Kings Cross “to track thousands of people” (and using databases from the Met and British Transport Police in the process), and the proposed ‘ring of steel’ for the Square Mile. They also touch on the use of biometrics in the workplace, including PWC tracking “traders’ loo breaks” in their City offices.
The full list of the report’s recommendations is here but, in regards to facial recognition, the it’s clear: “A specific code of practice for police use of LFR is necessary,” (as well as for use by private entities) and until that happens the UK should immediately ban the use of live facial recognition in public spaces.
Matrix resurrections
One of the other ‘technologies’ we talked about in that February issue was the Gangs Violence Matrix, the so-called ‘predictive policing’ tool designed to identify “those at risk of committing gang-related violence” by looking at things like social media activity and friendship networks.
What we didn’t touch on was ‘Operation Alpha’, the Met’s other “multi-million-pound social media surveillance operation” with a ridiculous name, that gathers data from both “private and open” social media accounts “to take action against online gang-related content”.
If that sounds equally nightmarish to you then don’t fret, a recent Freedom of Information request revealed that the Met had spoken to “several charities and youth violence experts” during a public consultation around the scheme.
Unfortunately (and maybe predictably) three of the organisations the Met claimed to have spoken to have since confirmed that there was no such consultation. On top of that, a data protection impact assessment of the scheme (attained via another FoI request) suggested that the Met would be “profiling” children as young as 15 on a “large scale”.
When the Guardian contacted the Met for comment on this, they responded by saying that they had ticked the wrong box.
Coming up on Wednesday… 🗞️
In our subscriber-only, midweek edition we interview Charlie Baker, the editor of our favourite new magazine, The Fence. We talk about the state of print publishing, why Soho isn’t dead, and the “sketchiest industry that has blossomed in London in the last 20 years”.
Subscribe to LiB today to make sure you don’t miss it:
Rough numbers
Right at the start of the year we published an issue asking how the hell we had got to the point where one in 53 people in London was homeless:
Last week the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) published some updated figures that showed the number of people seen sleeping on the streets by outreach workers in 2021/22 was 8,329. That’s down 24% on the 11,018 recorded in the previous year.
Cllr Darren Rodwell (the Executive Member for Regeneration, Housing & Planning at London Councils) wasted no time in calling this “a real success story for London.”
Let’s not get too self-congratulatory though, eh Darren?
The number of homeless people in London peaked between 2019 and 2021 thanks to lockdowns, and even though the numbers went down recently (mainly due to the ‘Everyone In’ programme), they’ve actually started to rise again in the last twelve months (despite campaign groups warning that nothing has been done to sustain the work done by ‘Everyone In’ or to address the underlying factors).
The recent CHAIN study also shows that, even though the number of rough sleepers fell overall, the number of people “sleeping rough more than six times throughout the year” actually went up.
The mayor was a little less bullish than Cllr Darren, saying that even though the figures were “encouraging,” there was still “more work to do to,” especially given the “cost-of-living crisis which threatens to reverse these hard-won gains”.
Sadiq is no doubt aware of the numbers which had come out just a few weeks ago, showing that councils in London had “spent more than £1.3 billion on temporary accommodation for families in the last seven years”. In response to that, the Mayor launched a £4m fund last week, designed to “help councils identify and unlock land on which to build homes and to boost the skills and capacity of boroughs’ in-house housing, planning and regeneration teams”.
Train in vain
The recent rail strikes have brought the topic of driverless trains back into the headlines.
The main culprit was Grant Shapps who, in an interview with the Telegraph, said that “Every hour of strikes will surely increase the enthusiasm from the travelling public to have their trains automated to get rid of this threat over their heads that the workers will strike.”
The Telegraph then embellished this a bit by claiming that Shapps was “already in talks with Transport for London (TfL) about making a London Underground line automated.”
While that’s kind of true, what they’re actually referring to is the existing TfL funding agreement (made a year ago) which says that “sufficient progress” has to be made “towards the conversion of at least one Underground line to Grade-of-Automation 3 (driverless, but with an on-board attendant, as on the Docklands Light Railway).”
And the line they’re talking about converting is the Waterloo and City Line.
That didn’t stop people like ‘London tech entrepreneur’ Daniel Korski writing impassioned editorials claiming that rail workers “are being led by their foremen not just to the picket lines but also, eventually, to the dole queues”.
In Daniel’s world everything would be much better if London didn’t have a union-sympathising mayor, the public wasn’t so ‘skittish’ about driverless trains, and bureaucratic caution wasn’t stopping innovation (after all, Daniel argues, if we had the first ever autopilot for a helicopter in 1949, how come we don’t have a robot Underground in 2022?).
If you want to know why Daniel is talking out of his arse then let us direct you to this recent issue in which we ask the transport journalist and historian ‘John Bull’ (of London Reconnections) to carefully dismantle the arguments surrounding driverless trains:
5 little bits
At the end of last week, TfL announced plans to axe up to 16 bus routes and change 78 others, in a plan to save £35 million a year (towards the target of £730 million per year). The full list of route changes is here (PDF) and you can have your say on the plan through this survey.
Two London Met officers who posted offensive WhatsApp messages, “including a racist slur against Meghan Markle” have been sacked for “abhorrent and discriminatory” behaviour.
As Google celebrates the “topping out” of its new King’s Cross ‘landscraper’ the Guardian profiles the building, which will house a 25-metre swimming, a Muga (multi-use games area), and a rooftop garden containing 40,000 tonnes of soil.
The ‘entirely vegan’ branch of Honest Burgers near Leicester Square is reverting to selling meat just six months after opening, as “there was simply not enough demand” for the plant-based menu.
A quick Pride London photo roundup: Vogue’s 100 Joyful Photos From London Pride, The Guardian’s London Pride march in pictures, Gay Times’ 35 pictures from Pride in London (and last week the LSE discovered a group of six photographs of the first gay pride in its library).