Conflow Power Group says its iLamp can generate solar power and support distributed AI computing, but the Guardian found no answer establishing which advertised functions are active in the British installations it examined, including lamp posts in a Warwickshire hospital car park. [1]

The company has also announced an agreement to supply 50,000 units to Katsina state in Nigeria, where it says the equipment could eventually support vehicle and facial surveillance, yet an agreement and a capability claim are not evidence of installation, activation, accuracy, or crime prevention. [1]

A University of East London academic told the Guardian that British solar output from the posts would be negligible for large AI tasks, while Big Brother Watch warned that installed infrastructure may gain functions later through software upgrades; neither assessment proves that face recognition or distributed processing is operating now. [1]

That leaves two rival stories ahead of the evidence: smart-city promotion presents adaptable street hardware as public protection, while surveillance alarm can describe every advertised feature as already switched on, when contracts, controllers, power budgets, legal authority, data retention, access, accuracy, bias, procurement, and independent audits remain undisclosed; the hardware's presence proves only that a pole, power system, and whatever disclosed equipment accompanies it have been installed. [1]

-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin