Surveillance technology is advancing at pace – with what consequences?

Plans for facial recognition searches across UK driving licence records could threaten idea of policing by consent

In the summer of 2019, Nikolay Glukhin travelled on the Moscow underground with a lifesize cardboard cutout of a young political protester, Konstantin Kotov. On a banner he had scrawled of Kotov’s fate: “I’m facing up to five years … for peaceful protests.” A few days later, Glukhin himself was arrested.

Glukhin’s peaceful initiative is believed to have been picked up on social media and CCTV cameras. His image is thought to have been matched through facial recognition technology to a database of photos, the source of which has yet to be confirmed.