An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: A National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program that accessed American citizens’ domestic phone calls and text messages resulted in only one investigation between 2015 and 2019 despite costing $100 million, a newly declassified study found. The report, which was produced by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and briefed to Congress…
Tag: civil liberties
US Gov’t Buys Location Data For Millions of Cellphones
America’s government “has reportedly acquired access to a commercial database that tracks the movements of millions of cellphones in the U.S.,” reports CNET. “The data is being used for immigration and border enforcement, according to sources and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.” Engadget’s report on the news notes it’s been going on “since at least 2017.”
The publication says the…
Government Privacy Watchdog Under Pressure To Recommend Facial Recognition Ban
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent agency, is coming under increasing pressure to recommend the federal government stop using facial recognition. Forty groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sent a letter Monday to the agency calling for the suspension of facial recognition systems “pending further review.”…
Met Police To Deploy Facial Recognition Cameras
The Metropolitan Police has announced it will use live facial recognition cameras operationally for the first time on London streets. From a report: The cameras will be in use for five to six hours at a time, with bespoke lists of suspects wanted for serious and violent crimes drawn up each time. Police say the cameras identified 70% of suspects but…
Brookline Votes To Ban Face Surveillance
The town of Brookline, Massachusetts, became the fifth municipality in the nation to ban its government agencies from using face surveillance. The passage of Article 25 comes as a new study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that many of the world’s top facial recognition algorithms are biased along lines of age, race, and ethnicity. The Electronic…
DHS Wants Airport Face Recognition Scans To Include US Citizens
The Department of Homeland Security wants to expand facial recognition scans in the airport to also include citizens, which had previously been exempt from the mandatory checks. TechCrunch reports: In a filing, the department has proposed that all travelers, and not just foreign nationals or visitors, will have to complete a facial recognition check before they are allowed to enter the…
Amazon’s Ring Planned Neighborhood ‘Watch Lists’ Built On Facial Recognition
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Ring, Amazon’s crimefighting surveillance camera division, has crafted plans to use facial recognition software and its ever-expanding network of home security cameras to create AI-enabled neighborhood “watch lists,” according to internal documents reviewed by The Intercept. The planning materials envision a seamless system whereby a Ring owner would be automatically alerted when…
US Police Already Using ‘Spot’ Robot From Boston Dynamics In the Real World
Massachusetts State Police (MSP) has been quietly testing ways to use the four-legged Boston Dynamics robot known as Spot, according to new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. And while Spot isn’t equipped with a weapon just yet, the documents provide a terrifying peek at our RoboCop future. Gizmodo reports: The Spot robot, which was officially made…
Senator Introduces Bill That Would Block US Companies From Storing Data In China
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Monday introduced a bill that would curtail the flow of sensitive information about people in the U.S. to China through large tech companies like Apple and TikTok. Hawley’s legislation would place new and wide-reaching limitations on companies with ties to China such as TikTok, the mega-popular social…
Are Amazon’s ‘Ring’ Cameras Exacerbating Societal Inequality?
In one of America’s top city for property crime, the Atlantic examines the “porch pirate” of San Francisco’s Potrero Hill. It’s an 8,000-word long read about how one of the neighborhood’s troubled long-time residents “entered a vortex of smart cameras, Nextdoor rants, and cellphone surveillance,” in a town where the public hospital she was born in is now named after Mark…