In our streets, a face is no longer identity—it is evidence.
São Paulo, August 2025 — I have walked the congested avenues of Bogotá, the metro stations of Mexico City, and the invisible cameras guarding São Paulo’s highways. Everywhere, the pattern is the same: an intricate network of facial recognition devices and biometric surveillance that not only observes but records, classifies, and predicts. It is a new digital Leviathan, legitimized by public security narratives but driven by appetites far beyond citizen protection.
In 2024, São Paulo approved the expansion of its “Integrated Smart Monitoring System” under the banner of fighting organized crime. What few read in the technical annexes was that the cameras were linked to databases containing identity records, migration histories, and urban behavior metadata. The promise was efficiency; the risk, that this architecture could become a control apparatus capable of deciding who gains access to a space, a service, or the presumption of innocence.
As a jurist, I am concerned about the erosion of a basic principle: in the modern city, moving freely without being tracked should be a right, not an exception. The doctrine of “implied consent”—the idea that walking down a street means accepting to be recorded and analyzed by algorithms—does not withstand serious constitutional scrutiny. And yet, it has become the norm across much of our urban landscapes.
In Mexico City, the “Safe City” program has signed contracts with suppliers who also serve surveillance regimes in Central Asia. In Bogotá, the police proudly claim they can cross-check protest footage in real time against criminal databases—a practice that deters not only the criminal but also the dissenter. The line between preventing a robbery and suppressing a protest becomes so thin that, in the wrong hands, it vanishes.
This ecosystem is not fueled by public funds alone. Private companies, from transport operators to real estate developers, install their own systems, creating a parallel network that escapes any effective judicial oversight. Here emerges an even more troubling phenomenon: the privatization of surveillance power, where security becomes a premium service and privacy an unaffordable luxury.
I have reviewed contracts stipulating that data captured by private cameras may be “shared with competent authorities” without a court order. In practice, this means a shopping mall’s security consortium can hand over biometric information to the State—or vice versa—without the scrutiny that protects citizens from abuse. It is the outsourcing of sovereignty, signed in fine print.
The Latin American model, forged in high-crime contexts and chronic institutional mistrust, is now starting to be exported. Delegations from West Africa and Southeast Asia have recently visited São Paulo and Mexico City to assess their systems, drawn by the idea that a “networked vigilant state” can project force with fewer police officers on the streets. What is being sold to them is not just technology, but a lax regulatory package capable of operating in fragile democracies without the counterweights of strong institutions.
I refuse to accept that omnipresent surveillance is the only answer to insecurity. Cities cannot become laboratories where the freedom of the many is sacrificed for the apparent peace of a few. This is not a dilemma between security and privacy; it is a question of legal architecture: who designs the system, who audits it, and who is accountable when the algorithm is wrong.
Because in the biometric Leviathan rising over our avenues, the face that smiles at the camera today may be the same the system marks as a threat tomorrow. And in that instant, you will no longer be the protected citizen—you will be the perfect suspect.
Rafael Santoro, Brazilian investigative journalist and legal analyst at Phoenix24, dissects how biometric surveillance, predictive policing, and AI-driven governance are reshaping Latin America’s megacities—exposing the rise of algorithmic authoritarianism and the export of these security models to the Global South.