The municipality activated eleven hundred crumb-detection units this week, describing the network as "narrowly scoped" and "not surveillance in any meaningful sense."

The system does not record faces. It records crumb possession, crumb transfer, crumb proximity, dwell time near crumbs, and the identity of any blob within nine metres of a crumb, which officials characterised as "context, not identification."

It isn't watching you. It's watching the crumb. You simply happen to be adjacent to it, continuously, for most of your life.

Civil liberties groups have objected. The municipality has responded by installing four additional units outside their offices, to monitor crumbs.