• IF developers of King’s Cross, Argent, are using “Big Brother” face-recognition technology to keep us safe, as they claim to be, what stopped them consulting us before they went ahead and installed it?

More and more areas of our borough, and across greater London, are falling into the hands of developers who run them as their private fiefdoms, evidently beyond the reach of the democratic rule of law under which each and every citizen has a vote.

That democracy is by no means a perfect regime, and its credibility is undermined by councils, including Camden, abusing and sometimes completely ignoring the consultation processes they are, in some cases, legally bound to include in any of their proposals.

However, councils are ultimately accountable to us the electorate. Private companies such as Argent are answerable only to their shareholders.

Their boards of management are under a legal obligation to deliver up to their shareholders the maximum profit. The interests of the local community are of concern only in so far as they are relevant to those profits.

This scandalous use of face-recognition technology should trigger a campaign by us, the electorate, represented by councillors and MPs, to take back control of our public spaces and bring them back under the democratic rule of law.

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