Pointing that hairspray the right way, love. Facial recognition. Facial recognition. Tech that can identify someone from their face is fast becoming a thing. This biometric id has been used together with passports at immigration control in airports. In dubai, they want to do this without the gates, allowing passengers to walk more easily through the airport. And it has also found its way into apps as an alternative to passwords. Face recognition could be coming to shops. In china, alibaba recently premiered their smile to pay system at kfc. Unlike our passports, pin codes or passwords, our faces are on public display pretty much all the time. That makes it possible for the authorities or anyone else to automatically identify us in any public space something you may not be surprised to hear they are quite interested in doing. Dan simmons has been looking at the preparations made by several governments. To start, youve been to germany . Yes, it seems we could be moving towards a biometric cctv sort of state. And one of the places where it is first happening, which may surprise you, is in berlin. Catching a train in the german capital means you might be caught on cctv, perhaps while stamping your ticket. Neither system automatically tracks your movements, which at the least requires human intervention. But arrive at sudkruz, in the south of the city, your face will be scanned and analysed by computers. The testing of facial Recognition Systems began here last month. The authorities are not looking for criminals just yet. They arent really looking for me, either. Around 200 volunteers have had their faces scanned and been given a location tracker, so the authorities know when they pass through here and they can see how often the cameras can pick them up, just by looking at their faces. If the systems accurate enough, then it will be used much more widely which, for many, would be a breach of privacy. Being constantly monitored with no easy opt out. The germans have a history of being watched. This old listening station in berlin was how the west kept tabs on east germany. 0n the ground below, first the nazis and then the stasi kept files on the population. Since the fall of the berlin wall in 1989 and the decommissioning of id checkpoints, berliners have been fiercely protective of their privacy. What has changed is that a new threat has replaced the old. Police controlled the crowds in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. A truck mowed down shoppers in berlin, 12 were killed and more than 50 injured. At this time, cctv is still not widely used in public. Three months later, the government passed new laws to extend their use and the face recognition pilot was given the go ahead. Despite the trial offering a route that passengers can take to avoid the cameras, the countrys data commissioner and top lawyers have expressed concern about germany moving towards a surveillance state. No one is saying facial recognition couldnt help catch criminals but the public doesnt seem to have been asked. As germany goes to the polls, one member of the coalition in power told me he wasnt consulted about the trial and the technology has not been publicly debated in parliament. It does not bring more security. It is just collecting data, more and more. You dont know who, when, where this data may be used. It is a pill they tried to give it to the people which doesnt have effect because it doesnt solve the problems. Proponents of the scheme point to the dip in crime following the installation of cctv in 2011. We asked both the German Interior Ministry and the Police Authority for an interview and to take a look at the technology, but both declined, so we asked some travellers. I dont trust the system. I dont trust this new development. Like, everybody should be tracked and scanned. They showed on television that if you have a cap on or sunglasses, it doesnt work anymore, so maybe not so much. But if it catches one, we are very happy. It really shows that it will help, then i will be ok with it. In the hope that there is no misuse and nojust collecting tracking data. If those worries are widespread, it is not looking good. Questions hang over whether the German Police fabricated their records on the man behind decembers terror attack to make them look good. And earlier this month, a Privacy International report said 21 eu member states, including germany, are still unlawfully collecting and retaining personal data. Whos watching the watchers . That may be the key question if the technology proves its worth. 0k, first up, we are tracked by our phones every day anyway. What is the big concern around facial recognition . With our phones, we can possibly turn them off or opt to carry a more basic model. We do have some choice. It tends to be companies that collect data. So when the police or the state require that information, they do so on a case by case basis. The concern here is that if we introduce facial recognition, as we have cctv, there would be a very broad database, a sea rchable data base, to find out where each person was and with whom, whenever they were in public. 0k. To be fair, it is just a trial. This has not been released yet . No, it is a trial, absolutely. Just on those 250 volunteers and in public, where they are captured on camera. There is another capital city where this technology is already being used by the police to look for real suspects . Yes, here in london, where the most recent trials took carnival time in notting hill. Tens of thousands gathered, and were monitored above and by above and by officers on the ground. There were facial recognition cameras and, unlike in berlin, the london trial is not as visible to the public. The officers are using it to spot real suspects. The metropolitan police declined to show us the technology or to give us an interview, so we spoke to a human rights expert who was invited to witness what happened. In the ten minutes that i viewed facial recognition in action, i saw two misidentifications. In fact, both of them wrongly identified an innocent woman walking past as a wanted man from the police data base. Right, they didnt even get the gender right. Those are false positives are the Police Concerned about that . They werent worried about that. However, they were running it for four days. They told us that they had made many false positives. The system had produced many false positives. She says officers told her they had made one correct match in the four days of use. Believed to i met view this as a success. As long as they can prove that the software works, it can make a positive match, even if it is making a0 incorrect matches, then it works. Thats not a scientific approach. There is no balance or proportionality, let alone the Civil Liberties issues. That is not a success, to our view. Some people will say that the Technology Needs to be tested in real world circumstances and this is what the police are doing in this situation. They have to test it and it could be useful in the future. We all have something to worry about when the police are using intrusive biometric surveillance powers, and that they are doing largely in secret. But these kinds of surveillance tools present some really broad concerns and to simply say i have nothing to hide, therefore i have nothing to fear is to unconditionally submit to powers of government that are unchecked. And that is to say, whichever flavour of government comes in, would we be happy with biometric surveillance . I dont think we would. Londons metropolitan police told us they declined to comment on the effectiveness of the technology. That is slightly concerning, isnt it especially if the software really is that inaccurate . And i guess we havent had any kind of public debate about whether this technology should be used. No, not really. I mean, the police say there will be a public consultation. We asked them how long we would wait for that, and they said it would happen in due course. So we checked parliamentary records and although facial recognition has come up for debate within other bits of legislation around anti terror laws, there has never been any specific debate around the use of facial recognition in public in the uk. Meanwhile, the technology continues to advance and researchers are looking at even more complex technologies. In the last month, cambridge said they are developing a system which could potentially identify people with scarves over their faces or wearing hats, and Stanford University in the us say they have developed algorithms that can look at the results of what comes through the camera and determine somebodys sexual orientation. You are looking at something potentially in the futurem when this technology starts to take off, where you could walk past the camera and automatically be added to a database you would not necessarily know about. And therefore, as your human rights woudl say, you could complain and get something done, but you wouldnt even know that it had happened. A lot to talk about in the future. Thank you. From filming yourface to feeding it now this is londons borough markets. A foodies paradise, stuffed to the gills with gourmet grub. But this week, designers from the Royal College of art alongside inventors have descended on this bustling Street Market to show off a host of gastronomic gadgets. First up, bottle openers that are supposed to make beer tastes better. According to one student, the flavour will be better as a result of the satisfying sound. Instead of mixing vast quantities of a recipe before unveiling it to the public, this professor has been experimenting with crowd sourcing ingredients using a game that mimics the stock market. Having a large number of consumers and playing the game, and in other words telling is what their preferences are, which we took away and we are creating the formula. Bottoms up. Brilliant this student has created cutlery with handles that can be heated, which claimed to slow down child rens eating habits. Slower eating has been shown to make us feel for more quickly. It is hoped that these knives and forks will do just that, encouraging healthier eating habits in children. And finally, over in the kitchen, students hope to capture family recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation by analysing video of visitors preparing food and collecting data attached to cooking utensils. Recipes will be generated to record the way individuals prepare food. We believe people are better able to articulate their preferences around food using their bodies. We are putting sensors in kitchen tools to capture those ideas and developing a repository of recipes using the data. So those old family recipes need never be lost in the midst of time ever again. Yeah, anyone else peckish now . Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that apple released a new version of their operating system cunningly titled i0s11. Google announced an £800 million deal with smartphone maker htc and transport for london said they will not renew the licence for Ride Hailing Company uber when it expires at the end of september. Tfl said the company was not fit or proper to hold a license. Uber said it will appeal the decision. It was also the week that Prime Minister theresa may called for Technology Companies to go further and faster in removing extremist content from the web. The Prime Minister also called for social networks and Search Engines to find ways to take down terrorist materials within two hours of publication. And history was made this week as an electric vehicle broke a world record by travelling more than 1000 miles on a single charge. The ao foot long test bus travelled 1102 miles on a testing ground in indiana. The company has not revealed how fast it was going, though, saying only that it travelled slow and steady. And a while ago, we told you about the tragic demise of our good friend steve, the robot security car who sadly perished in a washington fountain. Well, steves parents are back and have spawned a new breed. The k7 has been specifically designed to fight crime in large areas with difficult terrain. Will it suffer the same ill fate as steve . 0nly steps will tell. Ah, that is the smell of a killer those the words of londons mayor, sadiq khan, who said that londons air pollution is way beyond acceptable levels. You cannot really smell much, i know, but the Health Problems are caused by petrol and diesel cars have caused france, the uk and now this week china to consider banning them in the relatively near future. Laura is up, in a few minutes, to look at pollution in unexpected places. But first, sumi das is off to west oakland, near San Francisco another place with lots of diesel pollution and a lot of people with breathing problems. We have been meeting the science and tech experts who are trying to pinpoint pollutants. Can you see them . Harmful pollutants. We cannot detect them, but this google street view car can. Inside is a minilab from environmental sensor start up aclima that monitors air quality. We have this system that weve mounted onto the street view camera platform that has both meteorological instrumentation as well as the inlets. This is where we actually sample the gas, the pollution, as were driving along. For one year, two street view cars, supped up with aclima tech, criss crossed west oakland, california roughly 12 Square Kilometres bordered by freeways and home to a bustling port and families. 37,000 kilometres and some serious number crunching later, researchers had this detailed pollution map. Steven hamburg, of the Environmental Defense fund a partner in the project explains how. You need Fast Response instruments that are collecting data every second, and then you need the analytical capability to actually then use that data to actually map it in a way that is just characterising that local spot. Each dot represents about 30 metres. The colour indicates air quality. The darker the dot, the dirtier the air. Red dots cluster around hotspots, like this Metal Recycling plant and this busy intersection. Researchers hope this data will spur governments to start regulating city officials could divert diesel vehicles away from schools, or retime traffic lights so lorries arent idling. All this equipment, crammed into this car, it is High Precision stuff and its pricey too pricey to put on a fleet of vehicles, so aclima developed a sensor system to measure pollution levels. That system will be about 100 times cheaper and about the size of a couple of shoe boxes. Imagine adding air pollution as a layer in your mapping app. It starts with the measurement, of course. The number of times we would need to sample a region to get something that we feel is baseline for that area and then understanding the variability around that baseline. Its ambitious and a massive big data challenge. For now, aclima has a real time tracking tool and that is more than just a breath of fresh air. It is easy to think of air quality as an outdoor issue but maybe it is time that we start to think about the air that we are breathing inside our own homes. Air pollution comes in many forms. In our homes that includes outdoor polluted air coming in through open windows as well as being caused by cooking, lighting candles, burning incense or the use of everyday products. So to test a couple of the latest Indoor Air Quality trackers, i have enlisted the help of professor roy harrison, an expert on the matter who also has his professional air quality monitor kit to hand. First off, time to take a base reading. Firstly we have the foobot. This gives us three different pollutant measurements. It gives us particular matter. Except that it is not telling us what size fraction its measuring. We are getting a little less than that on our device. Were getting between 5 and 10 micrograms per cubic metre. But it looks like a very plausible reading. And netatmos healthy home coach. In terms of air quality, this device is measuring Carbon Dioxide. Slightly strange because, from a health perspective, it is not one of the pollutants we are very concerned with. Some health releva nt pollutants will be high in Carbon Dioxide but others wont. Although the professor did add this reading was two low to be plausible. For our first experiment, lets burn some toast. Things are really peaking. Theres quite a reaction there to burnt toast. Those are very high concentrations. Its sort of beijing type air quality, in here at the moment, not london. So lets take a look at what the other device has been tracking, the netatmo. So actually, no, it has not reacted at all to this smoking episode but then burning toast does not generate much Carbon Dioxide, unless you actually set fire to it. Fair enough. The foobot turned from blue to red, half way through that so it obviously knew there was a problem. What do you make of the readings . If we look at the volatile organic compounds, that has gone up about tenfold and that is very plausible. Im just surprised that the particulate matter, which is still reading 17. 5, has not responded. Maybe it is a very slow, i dont know, but you do have the advantage that youre measuring three pollutants and the device is giving us a grade warning. On to experiment two and luckily the professor was happy to play along. The hairspray did not cause a reaction from the netatmo c02 sensor, whilst it did alarm the foobot triple sensors. It is responding to the particulate matter. The volatile organic compounds, which would be the main component of the hairspray is up to 8,400 so that has gone up a lot for the background. Its not hugely high. What is very strange is the Carbon Dioxide has gone up to 30,000. Which is a level that would worry me to be breathing, quite honestly. It is a little hard to breathe in here at the moment. It is a huge level. It is all very well to knowing the quality of the air you are breathing but you may want to do something about it. A device like this aims to purify the air by first of all tracking it, so it knows what the quality is, at any given time and if the quality is poor it will do more purifying to bring it up to a good level and if the air quality is ok, then it can paus