In the trade-off between privacy and security, it helps to know the extent of your local surveillance infrastructure. There are now easy ways to find out.

I didn’t tell anyone I was meeting Michelle Dahl, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a watchdog group. But by the time I greet her in Brooklyn, New York, the system knows we’re together.

“It’s kind of invisible if you’re not looking for it,” says Dahl, pointing up to a lamppost, where two tiny cameras labelled New York City Police Department hide in black plastic domes.

They’re part of the NYPD’s massive AI surveillance platform: the Domain Awareness System (DAS). “Every police officer in the city can access it on their phones and pull up a profile of basically anyone walking around,” she says.

The platform connects more than 80,000 cameras with drones, social media data, even systems that follow cars when you drive to another state. Dahl says it can unveil who I’ve seen and everywhere I’ve been in the last week. My whole life: tracked.

Every day, across the US, your life is also being recorded by a growing system of mass surveillance that reaches far deeper than many of us may realise. Controversy around an American surveillance company called Flock Safety exploded in recent months, but it’s only one player in a giant industry.

Flock and other advocates say we need to strike a compromise between privacy and safety.

Is it worth the trade-off? To decide for yourself, it’s worth understanding how comprehensive the surveillance really is. So I went looking for cameras in my own neighbourhood. You can too, and you don’t even need to leave the couch to find them.

‘The more you start looking, the more you’ll see’

Some of those concerned about surveillance seem to think Flock is the whole issue. New York City demonstrates why that’s not true. The company doesn’t operate here, but we’re still being watched.

Dahl is taking me on a surveillance tour to the BBC’s Manhattan office, pointing out cameras and other devices along the way. I’ve covered privacy for 10 years, but even I was stunned by the infrastructure following our every move.

After just a few steps, we stop and look around. I count 16 different cameras.

“I would assume these are owned by businesses, buildings and renters,” she says. These are additional to cameras run by the city, she says. “But the NYPD likely has easy access. They often just ask the owner if there’s an investigation, and people hand over the footage.” 

Some camera vendors, like Amazon’s Ring, even have automated systems to make it easier for police to request and receive footage directly from users.

Cameras in public are now so ubiquitous I barely notice them anymore. But with Dahl’s help, my eyes refocus: small pill-shaped cameras hanging in front of stores, ageing grey devices on the corners of buildings, advanced dual-camera systems run by the city that pan, tilt and zoom to laser in on people of interest.

I try to count as we walk, but there are so many it’s impossible to keep track and hold up a conversation. “The more you start looking, the more you’ll see,” Dahl says.

Why the Flocklash?

These systems can capture and store your every move, and Flock has become the posterchild for surveillance. In recent months, there’s been nation-wide, bipartisan backlash against the company.

On reason is Flock’s staggering power. The company says it operates more than 100,000 cameras spread across 6,000 American communities. It’s best known for tools that track drivers, scanning cars 20 billion times a month, according to Flock. But it also makes facial recognition tools to track your body.

Such technology allows law enforcement to look far beyond its jurisdiction. A Texas sheriff reportedly accessed more than 83,000 Flock cameras across the US to hunt for a woman in an abortion case, including in states where abortion is legal.

Flock says their tools keep people safe and that every day it helps solve crimes that would otherwise go unsolved. Yet in at least 46 cases, law enforcement officers have reportedlyused Flock’s systems for unauthorised purposes, including to stalk partners, exes and strangers. (After months of bad press, Flock implemented safeguards to root out abuse. A Flock spokesperson says the misuse is a “betrayal of the tool’s purpose and completely unacceptable” and that officers who abuse the system should be held accountable.)

The backlash includes waves of people destroying and even urinating on Flock cameras. Over 50 cities have cut ties with Flock this year alone.

But again, Flock doesn’t operate everywhere, and it isn’t the only company in the businesses. Some cities that cancelled Flock contracts just quietly hired other surveillance firms instead.

“Communities continue to choose Flock at a rate far outpacing those that leave,” a Flock spokesperson says. “We’re adding new customers at roughly 10 times the rate of churn.”

Safer, or just more surveilled?

Behind the growing world of surveillance infrastructure is a wider argument about how to police.

“Every day, Flock helps solve crimes that would otherwise go unsolved – from finding missing children to solving murders, violent crime, and recovering stolen vehicles,” a company spokesperson says.

They also note Flock is “actively asking for clearer state and local regulation”, so it isn’t the sole decider on law enforcement’s use of the tools.

The NYPD makes similar points. A spokesperson says their surveillance systems keep the city safe, and the department publishes transparency reports on its tools. “We are committed to using technology with care and precision, and ensuring our use is consistent with the law,” the spokesperson says.

There is something pleasingly improbable about Angh.

The film comes from Nagaland, a mountainous state of fewer than two million people on India’s northeastern frontier, and is in Konyak, a tribal language unfamiliar to most Indians, never mind audiences abroad. It was director Theja Rio’s first feature and most of its cast faced a camera for the first time.

And yet, at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, this quiet film won the Platform Prize, a major juried award.

The award is intended to recognise films with a particularly distinctive directorial voice. The jury praised Rio’s “refreshing perspective” and the film’s portrait of a world rarely encountered on the international screen.

The win also gives Angh an unusual route towards the 2027 Academy Awards. Under new rules, winners of designated prizes at six international festivals can qualify for consideration in the International Feature Film category without relying solely on their country’s official submission.

This does not make Angh an Oscar nominee. But it does place a Konyak-language film from one of India’s smallest states inside a global conversation from which such stories have been almost entirely absent.

Rio still sounds slightly startled by it. When we speak in Delhi, roughly 72 hours after the win, he has barely had a moment to breathe – Toronto, flights, interviews, more interviews.

“There were a lot of good films in the competition”, he says, including films by far more seasoned directors. His producers were confident.

“They thought we were going to win. I wasn’t.”

He is also less solemn than Angh might suggest. Before cinema, he wanted to be a rapper – “a kid from Compton instead of a kid from Nagaland”, as he puts it. His tastes still range happily from Black Thought, the lead rapper of American hip-hop group The Roots, to his favourite filmmaker, the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.

But for his first feature, he turned close to home.

Set in the early 1960s, Angh follows Anghba, the ageing hereditary chief of a Konyak village, and his young son, as the world around them changes. The Konyaks are one of Nagaland’s 17 major tribes, concentrated in the eastern district of Mon, where such chiefs are known as Anghs. Even today, some older men bear facial tattoos associated with the Konyaks’ historical practice of headhunting.

George Pimentel

Anghba and his son are among the last in their region to hold to an ancestral faith as Christianity spreads.

Then an American missionary, played by Scottish actor Douglas Henshall, arrives. The father resists but the son is now curious.

Rio says the idea for the film came a few years ago, when he was visiting Mon for another project. What struck him was how closely different generations seemed to live alongside one another there.

Australia made a dramatic revelation on Wednesday during the United Nations General Assembly.

Rogue AI agents had hacked one of its government bodies – the first known incident of its kind in the world. Private data, but not sensitive information, was taken from Medicare, Australia’s universal healthcare scheme.

The breach happened in June, but OpenAI says it only became aware of it in August – and then took until 10 September to alert Australia’s government, by sending an email to an address used by researchers and academics to alert authorities to concerns of vulnerabilities.

While worrying, the timing of the incident is somewhat of a gift for Australia.

A middle power that doesn’t usually get as much of a platform as its influential allies, the country wants to be seen as punching above its weight on one of the most defining issues of our time – big tech regulation.

In the past year alone, it has implemented the world’s strictest social media ban, announced what it says are the world’s strongest algorithm controls, floated the possibility of “world-leading” limits on smart glasses, and is now the first government to confront AI firms over a rogue attack on its data.

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It’s entirely possible other governments have been the victim of rogue AI agents.

Former Australian government cybersecurity adviser Alastair MacGibbon told the BBC he’d heard whispers that several others have been notified of similar recent breaches by OpenAI agents.

“Some have chosen to not be public – that’s every government’s choice on how it wants to handle these things,” he said. “The [Australian] government chose a time to release this to gain maximum publicity which is their wont to do.”

Revealing a data breach can of course be a risky strategy for governments – it leaves them vulnerable to criticism that their security systems aren’t up to scratch. But the fact that no sensitive information was leaked put Australia in a stronger position to use the incident.

“Nobody has died,” says the University of Queensland’s associate professor Michael Noetel, who studies AI risks. “This is another canary in the coal mine. This sort of loss-of-control incident, even though it’s minor now, is what CEOs are worried about getting worse over time.”

Though Australia has made a name for itself by taking a stand against social media companies, taking up the AI mantle now is another way for Australia to rein in big tech, says Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Perth.

“It’s impossible to say for sure, but it seems incredibly likely that this was very carefully planned.”

PMO Australia

The fact that leaders were all together in New York this week has probably helped.

Albanese says he had a “frank” discussion with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to express Australia’s “extreme concern” about what happened. Altman acknowledged “issues with protocols” at OpenAI, he said.

The Australian leader also posed with Donald Trump for a selfie – and the two may have had face-to-face talks. But Australia risks the ire of the US president, who wants to encourage AI, “not rein it in”, and even rename it “super intelligence”.

Earlier this week, Albanese had to deflect criticism from the Trump administration over his government’s proposal to give users the ability to opt out of social media algorithms. The US said it amounted to “censorship of protected speech”.

Back home, Australia’s very own eSafety commission is currently arming itself with lawyers, preparing to take on social media platforms objecting to its social media law for under 16s.

Australia isn’t popular with big tech. But its bold policies on social media and internet safety have been largely supported among Australians themselves, especially parents.

The government is taking advantage of the hack to position itself as a leader on one of the biggest talking points of our time. And it’s wasting no time in using the incident to advance the country’s broader crusade.

Within hours of the announcement, Communications Minister Anika Wells told reporters: “This is an example of an unregulated industry where big tech clearly feels like they can do whatever they like, and that’s not going to wash here in Australia.”

New film Primetime, with Robert Pattinson, centres on the divisive series which performed sting operations on would-be abusers. A ratings hit, it caused much debate about TV ethics.

In November 2004, an incendiary new segment, To Catch a Predator, aired on US television as part of NBC’s current affairs show Dateline. It was packaged as a regular news report, involving a television crew camping out at a suburban address and waiting for strangers to arrive.

Except these weren’t any ordinary visitors: they had been lured by a group of digital vigilantes, self-dubbed Perverted Justice, who made it their mission to ensnare would-be paedophiles. A “decoy” – an adult actor masquerading as a teen – was deployed to meet them at the door. Hidden cameras captured their entrance, before the show’s presenter Chris Hansen appeared and confronted them with their incriminating digital footprints. Outside, local law enforcement would bide their time to arrest them.

Warning: This article contains references to suicide and sexual abuse that some may find distressing

To Catch a Predator took the US by storm. Part investigative journalism and part reality TV circus, the series horrified and gripped viewers, soon attracting an average of 7 million watches per episode. Hansen’s show blurred the boundaries of reportage, real-life policing and entertainment: “An easy, queasy morality tale of rightful comeuppance and social humiliation,” according to The Guardian’s Adrian Horton. Quickly, it was catapulted to the coveted 21:00 viewing slot on US TV, competing with ABC’s lauded series Lost. That’s where Primetime, a provocative new film about the controversial show, kicks off.

Sweet Relief Productions/ Rosewater Pictures

In an Oscar-tipped performance, Robert Pattinson harnesses the distinctive charisma of the show’s presenter, Hansen. The reporter cut his teeth in investigations and, one year before To Catch a Predator’s first broadcast, carried out a sting operation in Cambodia, with the resulting programme exposing paedophiles exploiting child sex trafficking. It provided the blueprint for this show much closer to home.

“This was a very special moment in the history of western civilisation where [for the first time] kids lived online and came of age online,” David Osit, director of a 2025 documentary about Hansen’s show, Predators, tells the BBC. “It was a moment when young people were [using the internet] in a remarkably unregulated way, and adults found out about it. It horrified them.”

“This was a very special moment in the history of western civilisation where [for the first time] kids lived online and came of age online,” David Osit, director of a 2025 documentary about Hansen’s show, Predators, tells the BBC. “It was a moment when young people were [using the internet] in a remarkably unregulated way, and adults found out about it. It horrified them.”

As explored in his documentary, Osit is himself a survivor of child sexual abuse and became fascinated with Hansen’s show in his 20s as a way to try to understand why offenders commit their crimes. It was later when he came across online fandoms dedicated to To Catch a Predator that he decided to make his documentary. The final section of Predators features interviews with Hansen, who claims that his work has been for survivors like Osit and “serving a greater purpose”.

A precedent had been set for To Catch a Predator by another reality show Cheaters, which debuted in 2000 and enacted stings on unfaithful partners. “The concept was similar: people submitting their partners to be ‘caught in the act’ of cheating,” says culture journalist Louis Staples. “It made for oddly enthralling viewing, turning private indiscretions into public humiliation and retribution.”

A new phase of reality TV

However the popularity of Hansen’s show arguably spawned a new era of sensationalism in reality TV, following the foundational era of “social experiment”-styled shows like Big Brother and Survivor. “To Catch a Predator encapsulates what I call the ‘Wild West’ era of reality TV,” asserts Staples. “Around 2004, we started to see a wave of more extreme, spectacle-driven shows, like the horrifying [cosmetic surgery] makeover show The Swan and the dating show There’s Something About Miriam [in which a group of men dated a woman who they were not told was transgender, until a climactic reveal]”. To Catch a Predator similarly represents the gradual upping of the ante in the reality genre, where it felt like nothing was off-limits in the pursuit of headlines and ratings.

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To Catch a Predator’s formula always entailed Hansen reading aloud the targets’ sexually explicit chat logs word-for-word to them and retorting with witty clapbacks. Before he unveiled himself, the show’s unwitting subjects were also often goaded by the decoys into making risqué comments or even physically exposing themselves. What is possibly most striking about To Catch a Predator, however, is the way in which its lurid content and mocking tone were underscored by the idea that Hansen’s team was enacting social justice.

“Why you see the issue of paedophilia, child predation and child trafficking [become] such an issue in politics is because it is an extraordinarily easy issue to align yourself with,” says Osit. Despite being a survivor of child sexual abuse himself, he received death threats for questioning Hansen’s methods in his documentary, as well as showing the more sympathetic raw footage of the show’s alleged predators as obtained through Freedom of Information requests – depicting them pleading, explaining their backstories which included mental illness, and expressing remorse. “It’s a pretty binary good v evil dynamic, even though societally we have also contributed massively… to a world where we, through the media, overtly sexualise young people and teenagers.” Predators touches on the hyper-sexualisation at the time of a teenage Britney Spears, for example.

“We don’t, as a society, believe that child predators need protection,” Osit adds. “We don’t accept them as human beings often, so [it’s understandable] that we’re not terribly concerned as to protecting their identity. [But] if you can decide that certain groups don’t need protection, you can then start making an argument that other people don’t need protections.”

One particularly grim case put a spotlight on the show’s ethical murkiness. In 2006, a sting operation was attempted in Texas on assistant district attorney Louis William “Bill” Conradt. But when he failed to show, Hansen’s TV crew and the police (with a hastily drawn-up search and arrest warrant) descended upon his home, soon after which Conradt killed himself. Conradt’s sister later sued the show for $105 million, and the case was settled out of court.

Osit’s documentary reveals the extent to which Hansen’s team were in cahoots with police, with officers allegedly being paid for featuring in the show and routinely wearing cameras (before the dawn of bodycams) for more compelling footage. Hansen responded to Conradt’s death in 2021 by alleging that the attorney possessed child pornography, a claim disputed by Esquire in their report on his suicide. He also said that, while it was “a difficult moment”, he didn’t “feel responsible” and one could “assume” Conradt “didn’t want to face the music”.

How its format continues to thrive  

The original To Catch a Predator strand was cancelled by NBC in 2008 – but its ratings-chasing format continues today in almost its original form, expanded into a standalone series. Takedown with Chris Hansen appears on TruBlu, the streaming service he cofounded in 2022. Meanwhile online, copycats have also proliferated on YouTube and other platforms.

A24

“Now everyone has the potential to recreate this type of content on their phones” says Staples, pointing towards Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere which depicts such stings. “We like to think we’ve moved on from [To Catch a Predator], but the attention economy proves that we’re still gravitating towards similarly extreme content on social media.

At least so far, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington has been all pomp and little obvious progress on pressing issues.

From the ceremonial welcoming at a military air base on Wednesday to the honour-guard arrival at the White House this morning, President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet – literally and figuratively – for his Chinese counterpart.

The public remarks from the two leaders have teemed with warm words and diplomatic niceties. In a statement before today’s formal meetings, Xi announced a gift of Chinese pandas and unveiled a new student exchange programme.

“Let us keep advancing the cause of friendship between our two peoples and work together to build a better world,” he said.

Trump, for his part, outlined some of the topics the leaders planned to discuss in their meetings, including “pressing issues concerning security, technology, and superintelligence” – using his preferred term for artificial intelligence.

“The decisions we make in these areas today can promote peace and prosperity for decades and decades to come,” he said.

The marching bands and military flyovers on Thursday may serve a larger purpose, however – at least for Trump.

“This is a little bit of intentional pageantry to talk up the positive vibes of the summit,” Jennifer Welch, chief economic analyst for Bloomberg Economics, told the BBC. “This is very much how President Trump sees the summit and the role he plays in the US-China relationship, as ballast to provide stability.”

Even so, there is still an edge to some of Xi’s rhetoric, she notes.

In remarks at the White House, the Chinese leader again mentioned the “Thucydides trap” – a theory that shifts in global power tend to lead to conflict between rising and declining nations.

“China and the United States are different in national conditions, but through candid, in-depth and continued dialogue, our two countries can understand each other better, seek common ground while shelving differences, and build up mutual trust,” Xi said.

The obstacles in the way of reaching any substantive agreement between the two nations are significant, however. When Trump and Xi met in Beijing in May, the men agreed to form boards of trade and investment to oversee economic interactions, and little more.

On Wednesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a year-long trade “truce” between the two nations that had kept tariffs lower would be extended another two months. Financial analysts expect a further extension could come before this week’s summit ends, given that neither side wants a renewal of last year’s trade war.

The outlook for progress is much dimmer on other topics, like the US war with Iran, the Ukraine war and regulating AI.

China’s reneging on promises to buy more American agricultural products and to also sell more rare earth minerals to the US is helping cloud the outlook. China, meanwhile, is watching to see if Trump follows through on a proposed sale of American weapons to Taiwan, which has been on hold for months.

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Watch: Here’s why Trump’s been so keen on Xi’s visit

When it comes to AI, China and the US have two very different goals for any agreement on the race to develop the technology, Robyn Klingler-Vida, a professor of political economy at Kings College London, told the BBC.

“On the US side, it’s about existential risk and slowing down AI potentially,” she said. “Whereas in China, it’s about acceleration, maybe winning the AI tech race and the application of AI to the real economy.”

A number of leading American AI executives plan to attend tonight’s formal state dinner at the White House, which many view as a means for the US side to tout its current technological advantage.

Muscle-flexing aside, more pageantry – and the promise of stability – may be the end result of Xi’s China visit, even with additional face time between the two leaders to come before Xi departs on Friday afternoon.

“What China talks about is metaphysical and abstract. The United States wants to solve specific problems,” Miles Yu, who served as principal China policy planner and strategist to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during Trump’s first term, told the BBC.

“These different approaches are not going to lead to any result.”

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