Six on Surveillance: Worried about how facial recognition technology is being used? You should be; The Porch Pirate of Potrero Hill; Cyprus police confiscate Israeli ex-top intel officer's 'spy van,'; PBS: “In the Age of Artificial Intelligence”; A

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Nov 21, 2019, 12:54:08 AM11/21/19
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 Six on Surveillance: Worried about how facial recognition technology is being used? You should be; The Porch Pirate of Potrero Hill; Cyprus police confiscate Israeli ex-top intel officer's 'spy van,'; PBS: “In the Age of Artificial Intelligence”; As Cameras Track Detroit’s Residents, a Debate Ensues Over Racial Bias; How to Be a Whistle-Blower


Worried about how facial recognition technology is being used? You should be.

"Already, this technology is being used in many U.S. cities and around the world. Rights groups have raised alarm about its use to monitor public spaces and protests, to track and profile minorities, and to flag suspects in criminal investigations. The screening of travelers, concertgoers and sports fans with the technology has also sparked privacy and civil liberties concerns.



















Facial recognition increasingly relies on machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to sift through still images or video of people’s faces and obtain identity matches. Even more dubious forms of AI-enabled monitoring are in the works.

Tech companies have begun hawking a range of products to government customers that attempt to infer and predict emotions, intentions and “anomalous” behavior from facial expressions, body language, voice tone and even the direction of a gaze. These technologies are being touted as powerful tools for governments to anticipate criminal activity, head off terrorist threats and police an increasingly amorphous range of suspicious behaviors. But can they really do that?



Applications of AI for emotion and behavior recognition are at odds with scientific studies warning that facial expressions and other external behaviors are not a reliable indicator of mental or emotional states. And that is worrying.





One concern is that these technologies could single out racial and ethnic minorities and other marginalized populations for unjustified scrutiny, if how they talk, dress or walk deviates from behavior that the software is programmed to interpret as normal — a standard likely to default to the cultural expressions, behaviors and understandings of the majority.

Perhaps cognizant of these challenges, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Union are formulating ethics-based guidelines for AI. The OECD Principles and the Ethics Guidelines developed by the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group contain important recommendations. But several key recommendations dealing with human rights obligations should not just be voluntary standards: They should be adopted by governments as legally binding rules.

For example, both sets of guidelines recognize that transparency is key. They say that governments should disclose when someone might interact with an AI system — such as when CCTV cameras in a neighborhood are equipped with facial recognition software. They also call for disclosure of a system’s internal logic and real-life impact — which faces or behaviors, say, is the software programmed to flag to police? And if so, what might happen when an individual’s face or behavior is flagged?"

Opinion: Worried about how facial recognition technology is being used? You should be





Cyprus police confiscate Israeli ex-top intel officer's 'spy van,' probe privacy violations

"Cypriot police have confiscated a van reportedly loaded with sophisticated surveillance equipment and have questioned its Israeli owner following media reports that the vehicle was being hired out to spy on people.

Police said Saturday that officers also searched the office of the Israeli’s Cyprus-registered company that’s being investigated on possible violations of privacy rights laws.

Police chief Kypros Michaelides told private radio station Astra that authorities are also questioning the Larnaca-based company’s other Cypriot shareholders and are looking into how this van and other surveillance equipment was imported into the country.

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The police probe was initiated after local media highlighted an earlier Forbes report on the Israeli it identified as a former intelligence officer who showed off the $9 million van’s spying capabilities."






Cyprus police confiscate Israeli ex-top intel officer's 'spy van,' probe privacy violations



Forbes' August report and reports on Cypriot media identified the Israeli as intelligence expert Tal Dilian, co-founder of surveillance firm Circles Technologies. According to a 2018 Haaretz report, its system can be installed on drones and surveillance vehicles.



According to Forbes, Dilian's surveillance kit can extract any information from smartphones in its vicinity or empty them of content.

He told the paper his services are intended to track terrorists and criminals, but Dilian's Circles merged in 2014 with NSO Group, whose malware has been used to target activists and journalists, including a close friend of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi."







PBS: “In the Age of Artificial Intelligence”

This is a fascinating documentary about artificial intelligence. 



"Robots are replacing jobs performed by humans.

Cashiers, secretaries, clerks, truck drivers.

There is no turning back. Middle-class jobs are disappearing.

Trump promises to bring back the jobs destroyed by AI. He won’t. He can’t.

China has perfected the art of facial recognition and uses it to surveil everyone.

We live in the “age of surveillance capitalism.” Also, “surveillance authoritarianism.”

A quote: “How do I do this more efficiently? That means, how do I do it with fewer workers?”

Another: ”Automation substitutes capital for labor.”

Automation increases inequality.

Surveillance eliminates the last vestiges of privacy.

This is a must-see documentary.

Think about it.

Prepare yourself to fight for privacy and humanity.

Insist on interpersonal interactions.

Don’t let Them fool you into thinking that an interaction with a machine is “personalized.”

 As Cameras Track Detroit’s Residents, a Debate Ensues Over Racial Bias

As Cameras Track Detroit’s Residents, a Debate Ensues Over Racial Bias





How to Be a Whistle-Blower

"What are the biggest threats right now to privacy for normal citizens?

It’s useful to distinguish between bulk collection and targeted surveillance. Both are threats. The average citizen is likely already caught up by bulk collection, although the proliferation of targeted surveillance technologies are increasingly threatening whistle-blowers, journalists and others that find themselves on the wrong side of unaccountable governments and security agencies.

Bulk collection affects everyone. A number of governments and companies have the goal of building databases with detailed profile information for every person on earth, or at least every internet user — including where you are at any given moment, who your friends are, what kind of messages and photos you are creating and how you think about the world. They are closer than you might expect.

Some entities, including the American government, effectively capture and store a huge portion of all the private data worldwide, perhaps even a majority. The last decade or so is the first time in human history that such a thing has even been possible, and we’re only just now starting to wrestle with the implications.

I hear objections that regular people without public profiles or those who don’t deal with sensitive information don’t need to worry about spyware swooping in and compromising their devices. What’s your response to that?

The best thing you can do is avoid being a target. Because if you are a high-value target, there is no safe way to use digital communication devices. Companies, like NSO Group, sell surveillance software to governments with terrible human rights records, no questions asked. NSO surveillance software was found on Jamal Khashoggi’s phone before he was murdered, and on the phones of other journalists, human rights defenders and opposition figures.


It’s not just journalists and activists — more people than you would expect are targeted for individual surveillance. There are auction sites where anyone can pay to get targeted surveillance software in a matter of minutes. It’s not just governments, but also run-of-the-mill criminals and jilted lovers who are using this kind of surveillance software at a lower cost than you would expect. And the victims almost never even learn they were hacked. A lot more industries than you would expect are targeted for penetration by foreign governments. And it’s not just the top executives; most hacking starts with junior employees and then escalates.


Opinion | How to Be a Whistle-Blower


Facial recognition software has been deployed around the world surveillance.jpg
uss-liberty-us-nsa-isreal-1496434112.jpgIsraeli planes and torpedo boats attacked this U.S. Navy research ship, the USS Liberty, in the Mediterranean Sea near the Sinai Peninsula on June 8, 1967.jpg
The National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland,.jpg
A protest against the Met’s trials of facial recognition technology, which showed an 81% error rate..jpg
Demonstrators hold images of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during a protest over the company's facial recognition system at the Amazon headquarters in Seattle on October 31, 2018 surveillance.jpg
perceptics-p7-1562600386You’ve heard of facial recognition; this is car recognition..jpg
Derek Lewis backs a car equipped with license-plate-recognition cameras out of the garage at Relentless Recovery in Cleveland before going out to scan for cars that need to be repossessed last month.jpg
‘Every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll.’.jpg
Parent-Toolkit-for-Student-Privacy.pdf
Demonstrators hold images of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during a protest over the company's facial recognition system at the Amazon headquarters in Seattle on October 31, 2018 surveillance.jpg
A giant screen displaying the Kaaba at a monitoring center surveillance.jpg
perceptics-p8-1562600388 surveillance.jpg
A demonstrator dressed as a security camera at an anti-surveillance protest, Berlin, November 2017.jpg
Darth4-1516142113.jpgTHE #RESISTANCE JUST GAVE DARTH VADER’S NSA BROAD SPY POWERS.jpg
Darth3-1516142111.jpgTHE #RESISTANCE JUST GAVE DARTH VADER’S NSA BROAD SPY POWERS.jpg
Darth1-1516142106.jpgTHE #RESISTANCE JUST GAVE DARTH VADER’S NSA BROAD SPY POWERS.jpg
THE #RESISTANCE JUST GAVE DARTH VADER’S NSA BROAD SPY POWERS.jpg
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