In 2025, more than 3.5 million Londoners’ faces were scanned by the Metropolitan Police — resulting in just 1,010 arrests, three per every 10,000 people scanned.


Live facial recognition is a form of biometric-enabled technology that works by scanning faces in real time, identifying them based on characteristics like the distance between their eyes and nose. 


In practice, the Met pairs this technology with surveillance cameras to scan faces against police watchlists. 


The technology was...

Hackney councillors have raised concerns over the NHS’s new Federated Data Platform (FDP) and its partnership with US tech firm Palantir, warning that the deal could threaten patient trust, data privacy, and local ethical commitments.In late 2023, Palantir won a seven-year £330m NHS England contract to collect and centralise data from up to 240 NHS trusts and care systems. The platform, delivered through a consortium led by Palantir, aims to improve data consistency and reporting while complying...

The UK is facing the largest expansion of live facial recognition across civil society, a study has revealed.


The research from Data & Policy has warned that the Met Police’s live facial recognition trials are little more than public performances to legitimise the use of powerful and invasive digital technologies before public debate and regulation have occurred.


The study analysed four case studies of live facial recognition by European law enforcement in London, Wales, Berlin and Nice b...

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside Downing Street demanding tougher action against antisemitism following the killing of two men at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur.


The rally, which was organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) and occurred on Thursday, accused the government of ‘cowardly appeasement’ and failure to confront what it called the growing threat of extremist violence in the UK.


Journalist Camilla Tominey told the crowd the media must shift its focus from e...

Most people do not spend a lot of time hanging out inside archives, but the new David Bowie centre at the V&A East Storehouse is attempting to flip this script.Launched on Saturday, 13 September, the centre contains more than 90,000 items from Bowie’s estate, ranging from stage costumes and instruments to photographs and notebooks. The Storehouse, a converted hangar once used as the 2012 Olympic broadcasting centre, feels like an IKEA — it allows visitors to browse rotating displays without glas...

Thousands gathered in central London to protest Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK.


The protest, organised by the Stop Trump Coalition, began at Portland Place, near Broadcasting House and progressed towards Parliament Square beside Westminster. 


Anti-Trump protesters were organised into various blocs. These included protesters representing Palestine, Ukraine, Europe, the climate, Migrants’ rights and Jewish people.


Zoe Gardner, an organiser of the Stop Trump coalition, said: “...

The average life of a webpage is 100 days before it is changed or deleted. The internet operates in a never-ending present, but it is by design ephemeral and unstable. Therein lies the great irony of a knowledge-based economy: everything is being digitized, but everything digital is completely impermanent.

At least 66% of links from the past nine years are dead. Formats go out of date, and websites disappear. This happens when pages on the internet are removed, redirected or updated, essentially causing the link to break. This needn’t even be intentional—when MySpace, Geocities and Friendster were sold, millions of accounts simply vanished. When this kind of digital loss is guaranteed, there is a real possibility that the twenty-first century could become an informational black hole

Photo by Olga Guryanova on Usplash


By Charlotte Lang


While the Brazilian butt lift has supplanted itself into popular celebrity culture, oft-neglected is Brazil’s unique relationship with plastic surgery. It is the second-largest consumer of plastic surgery in the world and since the 1960s, free and low-cost plastic surgery has been available through the public healthcare system. Under the backing of president Juscelino Kubitschek, surgeon Ivo Pitanguy tied ugliness with societal ill, arg...

Photo by Fabio Santaniello Bruun on Unsplash


By Charlotte Lang


In an age of purported sexual liberation, it can be easy to forget that mandates around sexuality occupy not just a social sphere but a legal one. Since major reforms to the Moroccan Moudawawa (family code) were implemented in 2004, the nation has been lauded for its balance of women’s rights within an Islamic legal framework. While it has been described by the EU as being the most advanced country in the southern Mediterranean...