Mass Surveillance

Defending Black Lives Means Banning Facial Recognition

July 11, 2020 Tawana Petty, Wired. Strategize! Black America, Facial Recognition, Mass Surveillance, Racial disparities

Uprisings for racial justice are sweeping the country. Following the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, named and unnamed, America has finally reached its moment of reckoning. And politicians are starting to respond. But you can’t end police violence without ending police surveillance. That starts with banning facial recognition, a technology perfectly designed for the automation of racism. I live in Detroit, a city with more than 500,000 Black people. In my city, we live under constant surveillance. We are in a perpetual lineup. Our faces are caught on camera everywhere we go—harvested and analyzed by algorithms. Numerous studies have shown that facial recognition algorithms exhibit systemic racial and gender bias. Detroit’s police chief openly admitted that their software is wrong up to 96 percent of the time.

Washington State Law Puts Limits On Facial Recognition Technology

July 9, 2020 Michael Maharrey, Activist Post. Resist! Facial Recognition, Law Enforcement, Mass Surveillance, Washington

Olympia, WA - Last week, a Washington state law went into effect that requires a warrant for ongoing and realtime facial recognition surveillance. The new law will not only help protect privacy in Washington state; it will take a step toward hindering one aspect of the federal surveillance state. A coalition of 10 Democrats introduced Senate Bill 6280 (SB6280) on Jan. 14. The new law requires law enforcement agencies to get a warrant “to engage in ongoing surveillance, to conduct real-time or near real-time identification, or to start persistent tracking” with just a few exceptions. This includes using facial recognition technology to scan crowds, streets or neighborhoods. Police can utilize facial recognition without a warrant when exigent circumstances exist or with a court order authorizing the use of the service for the sole purpose of locating or identifying a missing person, or identifying a deceased person.

Facebook Told My Followers I Was Spreading Misinformation About Government Surveillance

May 24, 2020 Evan Greer, Medium. Educate! Big Data, Censorship, Facebook, Mass Surveillance

There is no silver bullet solution that will stop the spread of online misinformation without resulting in collateral damage and censorship of legitimate content and marginalized voices. Instead of calling for more aggressive moderation, we should address the problem at its root: Big Tech companies’ underlying business model of data harvesting, micro-targeting, and artificial algorithmic amplification maximized for engagement above all else. These inherent flaws have become societal crises as a tiny handful of companies have become so large that their policies become de facto law for the entire Internet, something that can only be addressed by either breaking them up or building decentralized alternatives.

Fighting Local Surveillance: A Toolkit

May 20, 2020 ACLU Northern California. Organize! Civil Liberties, Mass Surveillance, Tools, Transparency

In 2019, San Francisco passed a landmark law banning government facial recognition and requiring public oversight for local decisions related to the acquisition and use of other surveillance technologies such as cameras, drones, and more. That effort, led by the ACLU in deep partnership with civil rights partners, is part of a bigger movement afoot in the U.S. In more than a dozen cities and counties, communities have passed laws ensuring that decisions about high-tech surveillance are made by the community through the democratic process, not in secret by police and surveillance companies acting alone. Together, we are achieving important victories against secret and dangerous surveillance. We are raising awareness of how surveillance technology like drones, stingrays, and facial recognition exacerbate discriminatory policing, suppress dissent, and facilitate harm to immigrants and people of color.

The Dangers Of COVID-19 Surveillance Proposals To The Future Of Protest

May 3, 2020 Matthew Guariglia, EFF.org. Strategize! Civil Rights, COVID-19, Facial Recognition, Mass Surveillance

Many of the new surveillance powers now sought by the government to address the COVID-19 crisis would harm our First Amendment rights for years to come. People will be chilled and deterred from speaking out, protesting in public places, and associating with like-minded advocates if they fear scrutiny from cameras, drones, face recognition, thermal imaging, and location trackers. It is all too easy for governments to redeploy the infrastructure of surveillance from pandemic containment to political spying. It won't be easy to get the government to suspend its newly acquired tech and surveillance powers. When this wave of the public health emergency is over and it becomes safe for most people to leave their homes, they may find a world with even more political debate than when they left it.

These Activists Use Makeup To Defy Mass Surveillance

February 5, 2020 Moya Lothian-McLean, I-d.vice.com Strategize! Facial Recognition, Mass Surveillance

Anyone who happened to be loitering in the London borough of Greenwich on the evening of 16 January may have spotted a strange sight. Ten or so individuals, faces daubed in brightly painted patterns, winding their way in complete silence through rain-slicked streets, passing the borough’s sleek residential new-builds and empty redevelopment sites.

Stopping The FBI From Spying On Social Movements

November 18, 2019 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast FBI, First Amendment, Infiltration, Mass Surveillance

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a long history of monitoring, infiltrating and entrapping activists and social movements engaged in First Amendment activity. A new report by Rights and Dissent's legal counsel Chip Gibbons details some of these activities over the past decade. The report covers FBI surveillance from Occupy to racial justice movements, and from those who work to abolish ICE to peace activists. We speak with Gibbons about the history of the FBI, why it is not structured to be held accountable and how it fits into the whole practice of state surveillance. We also discuss how the FBI interferes with protected First Amendment rights and what people can do to stop these repressive practices.

The Hidden Costs Of High-Tech Surveillance In Schools

October 30, 2019 Priyam Madhukar, Brennancenter.org Educate! Mass Surveillance, Schools, Technology

The phrase “school-to-prison pipeline” has long been used to describe how schools respond to disciplinary problems with excessively stringent policies that create prison-like environments and funnel children who don’t fall in line into the criminal justice system. Now, schools are investing in surveillance systems that will likely exacerbate existing disparities. The costs of overly harsh measures fall mostly on students from marginalized backgrounds. For example, Black girls are six times more likely to receive an out-of-school suspension compared to their white counterparts.

Tracking Journalist Stoppages At The US Border

October 25, 2019 Kirsten McCudden, Cjr.org Educate! Borders, Journalism, Mass Surveillance

EARLIER THIS MONTH, Ben Watson, a news editor for Defense One, an Atlantic Media site, found himself the subject of an uncomfortable interview. He was held up at passport control in Dulles International Airport by a Customs and Border Protection officer, who repeatedly asked him, “You write propaganda, right?” Watson was allowed to pass only after he agreed. (He has since filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Homeland Security.) It was a notable display of hostility by a government agent toward an American journalist—and an act that is becoming increasingly common.

Alexa Everywhere – Homes, Cars, Phones, Body – Raises Privacy Alarms

September 28, 2019 By Jason Del Rey, Vox.com Educate! Amazon, Mass Surveillance, Privacy

During an event at its Seattle headquarters on Wednesday, Amazon unveiled 15 new gadgets — many of which are integrated with its artificially intelligent voice assistant Alexa — including a pretty ridiculous Alexa-enabled ring (yes, for your finger) called Echo Loop, a kind of intriguing set of Alexa earbuds dubbed Echo Buds, and a pair of Alexa eyeglasses called Echo Frames. But the day’s keynote presentation, delivered by top Amazon executive Dave Limp, began on a now-familiar note for Big Tech companies adjusting to a new era of media and regulatory scrutiny...

With Federal Facial Recognition Regulation Stalled, Local Legislators Step In

June 15, 2019 Beryl Lipton, Muckrock. Create! Facial Recognition, Mass Surveillance, Privacy

Unwilling to wait for federal regulations to develop, municipal leaders from California to Massachusetts to are pushing their own rules on the acquisition and use of facial recognition technology, balancing constituent concerns around privacy and bias with what police increasingly say is a standard part of law enforcement. The first of these local ordinances is expected to go into effect at the beginning of July in San Francisco, where councilors last month enacted a local ordinance to restrict access to surveillance equipment and prohibit the use of facial recognition technology by the city’s departments. Among other things, the measure calls for departments using surveillance technology to submit an annual surveillance technology report and includes provisions by which the Sheriffs Department and District Attorney can obtain surveillance technologies.

NSA Wants To Drop Mass Surveillance Program Revealed By Snowden – Report

April 26, 2019 Staff, Rt.com Educate! Mass Surveillance, NSA, spying

The National Security Agency (NSA) has reportedly asked the White House to drop its phone surveillance program that gathers information on millions of Americans’ calls and texts, revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013. According to a Wall Street Journal report published on Wednesday, agency insiders say the logistical and legal headaches of keeping the program operational outweigh its intelligence benefits. “The candle is not worth the flame,” one agency source told the Journal.

Before Ousting Assange, Moreno Government Spied On The Journalist For Over A Year

April 23, 2019 By Jimmysllama, Mintpressnews.com Resist! Ecuador, Julian Assange, Mass Surveillance, spying

LONDON — Like the proverbial “shot heard round the world,” the U.K.’s arrest and imprisonment of publisher and journalist Julian Assange officially signaled the Western world’s war on a free press. The Australian who founded WikiLeaks, but stepped down as editor-in-chief last year, was ousted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last week after Ecuador President Lenin Moreno revoked his political asylum, and arrested by the U.K.’s Metropolitan Police. He was seen holding a copy of Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State while men dressed in suits — perhaps in a futile effort to make the arrest look a bit less repugnant — dragged the publisher out, handcuffed and resisting.

Neither Rain, Sleet, Nor Snow Will Stop The Post Office From Spying On You

March 2, 2019 By John Kiriakou, Consortium News Educate! Mass Surveillance, US Postal Service

You may remember that last year some nut was arrested for mailing bombs to prominent Democrats, media outlets, and opponents of Donald Trump. Less than a week after the bombs went out, a suspect was arrested. Almost immediately, the video turned up of him at a Trump rally, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hate and chanting for the camera. He was soon tried, convicted, and jailed. End of story. But it wasn’t the end of the story.

3 Ways Facebook Is Increasingly Becoming An Arm Of The US Government

September 27, 2018 By Tyler Durden, Zerohedge.com Educate! Facebook, Fascism, Mass Surveillance, Social Media, US Imperialism

Facebook has lately announced a series of major steps it would take to combat fake news and the global spread of misinformation that it says could influence elections, but the more we learn about just who it is Facebook is partnering with in this endeavor, the clearer it becomes that these initiatives are not at all designed to foster independent thought and discourse, but to ultimately ensure that public online discourse doesn't stray too far from official state narratives. Mark Weisbrot, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently slammed Facebook’s decision to work with US government-funded organizations as "Orwellian" — especially given the fact these organizations themselves "specialize in overseas propaganda."

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