Hopefully none is flying back to south korea seeing as they are looking for people with that kind of hardware 😅

Two years ago, I warned in City

AM that the UK's Online Safety Bill risked undermining privacy and paving the way for government overreach into our digital lives.

Today, that concern feels more urgent than ever.

Last month, the EU Commission released its ProtectEU roadmap, outlining plans to provide law enforcement with access to encrypted data by 2030.

This is not about targeting specific suspects. It is about building the legal and technical infrastructure for mass surveillance.

Big Brother Watch have revealed that live facial recognition systems deployed in UK cities are wrong nearly 9 out of 10 times, scanning innocent people without their knowledge or consent. This is already happening in our streets, at stations, even at protests.

Now imagine that biometric surveillance linked to a centralised digital currency.

Imagine every payment, location, contact and movement tracked, stored and correlated.

This is not theoretical.

We risk building a society where privacy is gone, autonomy is restricted, and control is centralised in the name of convenience and safety.

The combination of decrypted messaging, facial recognition, CBDCs, and mandatory ID checks and full KYC creates a full spectrum surveillance regime. A system where dissent is not crushed by force, but quietly discouraged through constant surveillance.

What’s at stake is freedom of thought, movement and expression. We should be defending them, not trading them for the illusion of safety.

Once this infrastructure is in place, it is rarely rolled back.

Big Brother Watch has repeatedly warned that the UK is quietly creeping into a surveillance state. Live facial recognition is being deployed across streets, train stations, shopping centres and even at public protests. But this technology is not just targeting criminals. It is scanning millions of innocent people without their knowledge or consent.

False alarms with real consequences

Studies show that the vast majority of facial recognition matches are false. According to Big Brother Watch, in 80 deployments across the UK, 89.7% of alerts were false positives. In London alone, 150 out of 173 matches by the Metropolitan Police were incorrect, resulting in an error rate of nearly 87%. In some cases, people were stopped, searched or fingerprinted as a result.

These mistakes are not harmless. They are invasive, humiliating and difficult to challenge.

Be careful out there with your open ledgers and social media posts, friends...

Terrifying scene on the streets of Paris yesterday—just a few miles from where Kim Kardashian was testifying in the jewelry heist trial.

The daughter of a crypto CEO and her toddler were ambushed by a group of masked attackers who tried to shove them into a van in broad daylight. The child’s father jumped in to protect them, shielding their little one and taking several blows. The entire ordeal was caught on camera, and authorities are now investigating.

A short story.

Last week, Bill Gates visited Singapore.

Now this;

NEW: French media is shutting down social media rumors that French President Emmanuel Macron was caught with a bag of cocaine during a trip to Ukraine.

The moment was caught during a train ride from Poland to Ukraine when reporters entered the room.

Macron was meeting with the Chancellor of Germany Friedrich Merz, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Social media users are speculating that Macron was caught with a bag of cocaine, and some are suggesting that Merz was concealing a coke straw or spoon.

French media outlet Liberation is now rushing to defend the leaders, claiming there is "no evidence" to support the claims.

The outlet is suggesting that the item Macron grabbed was a handkerchief, and the item Merz had was a "stirrer."

Any other suggestion is a "conspiracy theory," according to the French outlet.