Unpopular but necessary opinion when documenting issues at the intersection of police and technology. As this article recalls, “Derek Chauvin wore [one] as he knelt for more than eight minutes on George Floyd’s neck”. Yet, governments regularly accused of excessive use of force see it as a cure-all: France will deploy them nationwide next summer. Who are the two contenders currently battling to win the contract? The manufacturer of the Taser (Axon) and a Chinese company helping Beijing to profile Uyghur people in Xinjiang (Hikvision).

As this doctoral thesis points out, “citizens perceive a growing threat of crime to their society, but perceive a low risk that they themselves will fall victim of crime”. I will add that, addressing this “feeling of insecurity” and exploiting its political leverage (in France, it has become a mandatory rhetorical step for anyone aspiring to the presidency), liberal democracies have become obsessed with the growing “feeling of security” provided by technology.

Palantir is a crystallisation of contemporary anxieties: CIA-funded, shady and almost mythological. I was recently asked by the French Parliament to participate in their audition, and it was far from spectacular: On the contrary, their local president, who used to work for Airbus, acted and spoke like he was selling washing machines. It was all about boring plumbing work. To quote the article, “the whole activity becomes depoliticized precisely to the extent to which it is deemed ordinary and procedural”, and I think that’s exactly the point. I don’t think Palantir is a private NSA, but I do think it’s a big problem when a democracy subcontracts its political decisions to any company who owns the intellectual property of the tools upon which those decisions are made. That’s a convincing definition of kleptocracy.

Very insightful piece to understand the intellectual backbone of Thiel and Karp.

Last but not least: What level of cynicism have you achieved when, as the CEO of a surveillance company, you pose for a photo under a portrait of the late Michel Foucault?

Ten years ago, one could have thought that the sole purpose of China was to insulate its Internet from the Western world with the help of their so-called Great Firewall. But it’s now clear that the Chinese model described in this article is designed to be exported as a plug-and-play solution to other countries, particularly nations of the Global South. It’s not just a commercial operation: China, aiming to become an AI superpower, uses African faces to train their facial recognition datasets. To misquote William Gibson, the dystopian future is already here—and it could be becoming more and more distributed.

God bless the “safe city”. After years of innocuous, depoliticized “smart cities”, this new buzzword sheds some light on the perils of a militarized public space. About a year ago, I was strolling through the alleys of Milipol, one of the main international security fairs, and it was striking to see so many defense companies advertising for the public space of the future, filled with sensors, drones, cameras and one-way mirrors. Consequently, I agree with the authors of this article, “the governance of the smart city is intrinsically related to surveillance and social control”. It reminds me of an old and prescient slogan invented by art students during the May 68 riots: “Don’t say urban planning, say preventive police”.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve been trying to read as much literature as possible about the roots of public health, and Italy has provided some answers. This is a fascinating dive into the Bolognese office of the fango, created in the middle of the 13th century to be the noses, eyes and ears of the city officials to enforce social order. In times of Covid-19, the division between public and private spheres is crucial, and I strongly recommend a medieval perspective when looking at urban marginality.