UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has shared her vision for the state’s use of AI and technology on the public. Inspired by 18th-century philosopher Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’, Mahmood says she wants constant state surveillance over UK citizens.
Mahmood’s controversial and authoritarian comments came in a Telegraph article, in which she said she’s aiming for ‘Minority Report-style’ policing. This should strike fear in the hearts of every citizen, as our Home Secretary appears to suggest that the advance prediction of crime is the goal, rather than to tackle crimes that have actually been committed.
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham attempted to introduce the ‘panopticon’ prison system in the late 18th century, arguing it was the ‘perfect’ prison. With prison guards at its centre, the prisoners would surround them providing a 360-degree view for ‘monitoring’ behaviour. However, it’s very design would have had such an impact on prisoners’ psychological wellbeing that Bentham was never able to realise his ambition of the ultimate ‘surveillance prison’.
This X post exposes Bentham’s history, showing that his ideas were seen as a step too far even in an era of limited citizen rights:
For those who do not know, the 'Panopticon' was a plan for a 'perfect' prison. The cells were arranged in a multistory disc around a central guard tower. Because the guards would have a complete view into any of the cells at any time, but the guards in the tower could not be… https://t.co/lkAxL9hngPpic.twitter.com/NE3dZCbLXW
Federal agents clash with protestors outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 15, 2026. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Milquetoast calls for better identification, bodycams, and training fall far short of what is required of you to meet this moment.”
A broad coalition of organizations is calling on the US Congress to block funding for the mass surveillance programs being used by federal immigration enforcement officials.
In a letter sent to members of Congress, the groups decry US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for “leveraging a multi-billion dollar budget to terrorize our communities and build a surveillance panopticon” with no accountability from elected officials.
The letter then singles out several mass surveillance projects being carried out under the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it says are worthy of defunding, including “building databases of biometrics, sensitive personal data, and daily movements of not only immigrants, but everybody in the US”; “purchasing technology to surveil all the phones in a neighborhood without a warrant”; and “recklessly relying on facial recognition technology that is banned in some states, and misusing that data to intimidate protesters and witnesses.”
The groups call on Congress to completely defund ICE or, if that is not politically feasible, to “severely restrict what ICE can spend money on, including a complete moratorium on the purchase and use of surveillance tech” such as facial recognition and license plate readers.
“We urge you to do everything within your power in order to block ICE’s reign of terror in our communities and halt the build out of surveillance tech infrastructure that will make it impossible for everyday people to do anything at all without Big Brother watching,” the groups conclude. “Milquetoast calls for better identification, bodycams, and training fall far short of what is required of you to meet this moment.”
Signatories of the letter include the Yale Privacy Lab, digital rights organization Fight for the Future, and several local chapters of progressive political organizing group Indivisible.
ICE’s big investments in surveillance technology were documented in an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report published earlier this month, which found ICE “is going on a shopping spree, creating one of the largest, most comprehensive domestic surveillance machines in history.”
The EFF report highlighted the role played by Cellebrite, a company that helps ICE unlock protesters’ phones and “take a complete image of all the data on the phone, including apps, location history, photos, notes, call records, text messages, and even Signal and WhatsApp messages.”
This is particularly important, the report noted, because the number of phones searched by ICE and other agencies has been steadily increasing, hitting a record high last year.
ICE also has a contract with Paragon, the company behind the spyware Graphite that “is able to harvest messages from multiple different encrypted chat apps such as Signal and WhatsApp without the user ever knowing.”
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US President Donald Trump holds up a signed ‘Board of Peace’ charter during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026
DONALD TRUMP’S new “Board of Peace,” launched today, appropriately enough at the billionaires’ confab in Davos, is a danger to international law, security and peace itself.
It is entirely right to dub it in reality a board for war, as the anti-war movement did.
The clear purpose of the board is to sideline the United Nations and replace the world body with a committee entirely subordinated not just to the United States but to President Trump personally.
Its initial make-up is dominated by despots and extreme rightwingers, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban or Argentina’s Javier Milei. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is of course on board, ever-eager to oblige the protector of his atrocities.
Trump himself is to serve as its chair, handing himself sweeping powers, including the right to veto any decision of which he disapproves.
It will doubtless function as a sort of far-right “international” to advance Trump’s imperialist and authoritarian agenda around the world.
The board’s creation was authorised by the UN — mistakenly in our view — specifically in relation to assisting to stabilise the notional ceasefire in Gaza. Its new remit, however, allows it to intervene much more widely.
If it is serious about peace will it stop acts of piracy like Trump’s seizure of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife?
Will it block moves by Trump to bomb Iran in violation of international law? Will it oppose his aggressive moves to annex Greenland?
Will it challenge his threats to Cuba and Colombia? Or his demand that he be handed control of the Panama Canal, and that Canada become the 51st state of the US?
We know the answer. Its only function will be to legitimise the campaign of aggression and plunder embarked on by the Trump administration, and to provide diplomatic cover for intervention in the affairs of nations across the world.
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A protester was pinned to the ground by federal agents and a chemical irritant was sprayed directly into his face, Wednesday, January 21, 2026, in south Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)
Organizers hope to have “tens of thousands of workers in the street in the Twin Cities” for the day of action.
Momentum for a planned general strike-like event in Minnesota is building amid increasing outrage over the actions of federal immigration officials in the state.
Schools and businesses across Minnesota are planning to stay closed on Friday as part of the “ICE Out! Statewide Shutdown” day of protest.
The event was first announced last week by a broad coalition of local labor unions and faith leaders with the goal of forcing federal immigration agents to leave their cities and towns.
Bashir Garad, chairman of the Karmel Mall Business Association and the owner of a Minneapolis-based travel company, told the Minnesota Star-Tribune that the planned shutdown is gaining “momentum and support from a wide variety of communities.”
“Already, thousands of businesses have declared that they will shut down this Friday,” Garad added, “and tens of thousands of workers and students have pledged to march in the streets, rather than go to work or school.”
Hundreds of Minnesota businesses have announced plans to shut their doors so far, according to running list posted by Bring Me the News, which also lists dozens of other businesses that are remaining open while vowing to donate at least a portion of sales on Friday to nonprofit groups such as the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota and the Immigrant Rapid Response Fund.
Keiran Knutson, president of Communications Workers of America Local 7520, told Payday Report that organizers are hoping to “have tens of thousands of workers in the street in the Twin Cities” protesting against the actions of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In addition to the events taking place in Minnesota, Payday Report has published a map showing solidarity strikes occurring in 120 different cities across the US.
The planned Friday strike is the culmination of weeks of resistance against federal agents carried out by Minnesota residents.
In a Wednesday thread posted on Bluesky, author Margaret Killjoy explained how people throughout Minneapolis have banded together to track the movements of ICE and CBP agents and to provide help to their immigrant neighbors.
“First thing this morning, I saw cars following an ICE vehicle down the street, honking at it,” she wrote. “Later, we didn’t drive more than three blocks before we found people defending a childcare facility… Half the street corners around here have people—from every walk of life, including Republicans—standing guard to watch for suspicious vehicles, which are reported to a robust and entirely decentralized network that tracks ICE vehicles and mobilizes responders.”
Taken as a whole, Killjoy said that she had “never seen anything approaching this scale” of what activists have pulled off in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis-based attorney Will Stancil, who has become one of the most high-profile legal observers following and documenting actions by ICE and CBP agents, argued on Thursday that the Trump administration is committing deliberately cruel acts with the hope of inciting violence.
In particular, Stancil pointed to federal agents’ decision to abduct a 5-year-old child and use him as bait to lure out and detain his immigrant father as a deliberately provocative action.
“They clearly believed that Minneapolis would riot after they killed one of us,” Stancil wrote, in reference to Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident who was gunned down by an ICE agent earlier this month. “We didn’t, we organized. We followed them, we monitored them. We alerted our neighbors. We fought them in the courts. And now they’re desperate, so they’re brutalizing us, without a hint of legitimate government purpose.”
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US President Donald Trump listens to a question from a reporter during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, January 20, 2026
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A recent You Gov poll showed that 55 per cent of the British people are ready to kick US bases out of Britain if Greenland was attacked. The poll showed that large majorities of Labour and Green voters and even most Tories supported the position, with just 22 per cent opposed.
Stop the War Coalition vice-chairman Chris Nineham told the Morning Star: “This poll shows that ordinary people in Britain are appalled by what Trump is doing and it is the basis for a mass campaign to expel the US military from Britain, which Stop the War will be launching shortly.
“The fact is that people are opposed to the appeasement of Trump by Starmer and the European leaders but also to their mimicking of him by ramping up arms spending.”
Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn said: “US bases should have been removed the moment they invaded Venezuela — a flagrant violation of international law.
“We need an independent foreign policy based on diplomacy and peace, which looks to collaborate with partners everywhere, including the global South, on the biggest challenges facing us all, such as the climate crisis and sickening global inequality.”
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US President Donald Trump holds up a signed ‘Board of Peace’ charter during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026
