Search
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International has written to the Southern Co-operative supermarket chain to express serious concerns and ask for assurances following a report that it "completed a successful trial using Facewatch [facial recognition] in a select number of stores".
Facewatch describes itself as a “cloud-based facial recognition security system [which] safeguards businesses against crime.” Premises using the system are alerted when Subjects of Interest (SOI) enter their premises through the…
Content type: Examples
Professional sports teams are considering adopting facial recognition admissions systems to make stadiums as touchless for fans as possible as part of efforts to provide a safe environment during the pandemic. Both the Los Angeles Football Club and the New York Mets are trying the Clear app, made by Alclear, and Major League Baseball is considering it. At the LAFC, fans will use the app to take and upload a selfie to their accounts and link it to their Ticketmaster profiles; on entry to the…
Content type: Examples
A preliminary study finds that facial recognition algorithms struggle to identify people wearing masks. The study tested 89 commercial facial recognition algorithms, and the best had error rates between 5% and 50% in matching unmasked photos with photos of the same person wearing a digitally-applied mask. Masks both lowered the algorithms’ accuracy rates and raised the number of failures to process. The more of the nose is covered by the mask the lower the algorithm’s accuracy; however, error…
Content type: Examples
France has been testing AI tools with security cameras supplied by the French technology company Datakalab in the Paris Metro system and buses in Cannes to detect the percentage of passengers who are wearing face masks. The system does not store or disseminate images and is intended to help authorities anticipate future oubreaks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/18/coronavirus-mass-surveillance-could-be-here-to-stay-tracking
Writer: Oliver Holmes, Justin McCurry, and Michael Safi…
Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International (PI) has today warned UK regulatory and law enforcement bodies about the potential deployment of an extensive and potentially nationwide police facial recognition surveillance system. We are urging them to investigate and take steps to ensure that no ‘backdoor’ for unlawful facial recognition surveillance will be developed under the umbrella of a crime reporting system.
According to pricing and data-sharing templates, UK surveillance company Facewatch is offering to…
Content type: Long Read
As more and more of us feel compelled to cover our faces with masks, companies that work on facial recognition are confronted with a new challenge: how to make their products relevant in an era where masks have gone from being seen as the attribute of those trying to hide to the accessory of good Samaritans trying to protect others.
Facewatch is one of those companies. In May 2020, they announced they had developed a new form of facial recognition technology that allows for the…
Content type: Examples
After governments in many parts of the world began mandating wearing masks when out in public, researchers in China and the US published datasets of images of masked faces scraped from social media sites to use as training data for AI facial recognition models. Researchers from the startup Workaround, who published the COVID19 Mask image Dataset to Github in April 2020 claimed the images were not private because they were posted on Instagram and therefore permission from the posters was not…
Content type: Explainer
At first glance, infrared temperature checks would appear to provide much-needed reassurance for people concerned about their own health, as well as that of loved ones and colleagues, as the lockdown is lifted. More people are beginning to travel, and are re-entering offices, airports, and other contained public and private spaces. Thermal imaging cameras are presented as an effective way to detect if someone has one of the symptoms of the coronavirus - a temperature.
However, there is little…
Content type: Long Read
Over the last two decades we have seen an array of digital technologies being deployed in the context of border controls and immigration enforcement, with surveillance practices and data-driven immigration policies routinely leading to discriminatory treatment of people and undermining peoples’ dignity.And yet this is happening with little public scrutiny, often in a regulatory or legal void and without understanding and consideration to the impact on migrant communities at the border and…
Content type: Case Study
Facial recognition technology (FRT) is fairly present in our daily lives, as an authentication method to unlock phones for example. Despite having useful applications, FRT can also be just another technology used by those in power to undermine our democracies and carry out mass surveillance. The biometric data collected by FRT can be as uniquely identifying as a fingerprint or DNA. The use of this technology by third parties, specially without your consent, violates your right to privacy.
The…
Content type: Long Read
In April 2018, Amazon acquired “Ring”, a smart security device company best known for its video doorbell, which allows Ring users to see, talk to, and record people who come to their doorsteps.
What started out as a company pitch on Shark Tank in 2013, led to the $839 million deal, which has been crucial for Amazon to expand on their concept of the XXI century smart home. It’s not just about convenience anymore, interconnected sensors and algorithms promise protection and provide a feeling of…
Content type: Case Study
Well into the 21st century, Serbia still does not have a strong privacy culture, which has been left in the shadows of past regimes and widespread surveillance. Even today, direct police and security agencies’ access to communications metadata stored by mobile and internet operators makes mass surveillance possible.
However, a new threat to human rights and freedoms in Serbia has emerged. In early 2019, the Minister of Interior and the Police Director announced that Belgrade will receive “a…
Content type: News & Analysis
On June 9th, in light of the global debate against racial injustices, the company IBM announced they would stop selling facial recognition. In a letter to the US congress, they demanded a “national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.”
It is worth noting first of all that it is not entirely clear that IBM is actually stopping facial recognition. The letter states that "IBM no longer offers general purpose IBM facial…
Content type: News & Analysis
Yesterday, Amazon announced that they will be putting a one-year suspension on sales of its facial recognition software Rekognition to law enforcement. While Amazon’s move should be welcomed as a step towards sanctioning company opportunism at the expense of our fundamental freedoms, there is still a lot to be done.
The announcement speaks of just a one-year ban. What is Amazon exactly expecting to change within that one year? Is one year enough to make the technology to not discriminate…
Content type: Examples
The controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI, which came to public attention for scraping billions of photos off social media sites to create a comprehensive facial recognition system, says it has offered to help US federal and three state agencies with contact tracing. The company claims its technology could use the cameras already in place to identify people in surveillance video in restaurants or stores where they may have come into contact with others who subsequently test…
Content type: Press release
Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash
Today Privacy International, Big Brother Watch, medConfidential, Foxglove, and Open Rights Group have sent Palantir 10 questions about their work with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) during the Covid-19 public health crisis and have requested for the contract to be disclosed.
On its website Palantir says that the company has a “culture of open and critical discussion around the implications of [their] technology” but the company have so far…
Content type: Examples
The Guangzhou Public Transportation Group has installed a biometric tablet next to bus drivers' seats so they can check the temperature and identity of every passenger who boards. The tablets will also photograph each passenger, allowing them to be identified by China's facial recognition network in the hope of helping control the spread of the novel coronavirus by enabling contact tracing for anyone displaying symptoms. The Group claims the data so gathered will only be used in the interests…
Content type: Examples
Owing to concerns about the possibility of spreading the coronavirus via banknotes and payment cards, Russia has begun testing its Unified Biometric System (EBS) for payments at a selection of grocery stores including Lenta supermarkets. The Russian bank VTB plans a mass roll-out for mid-2020. For the beginning of 2021, Promsvyazbank is planning trials of facial biometric payments, a system the bank is negotiating to introduce with several retail chains. Facial biometric payments are made…
Content type: Examples
Managed from a purpose-built coronavirus control centre, Moscow's network of 100,000 cameras equipped with facial recognition technology is being used to ensure that anyone placed under quarantine stays off the streets. Officials claim the centre can also be used to track international arrivals and monitor social media for misinformation.
Source: https://www.france24.com/en/20200324-100-000-cameras-moscow-uses-facial-recognition-to-enforce-quarantine
Writer: Sam Ball
Publication: France 24
Content type: Examples
As governments look into surveillance, geolocation and biometric facial recognition to contain the coronavirus, even if they violate user data privacy, the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI is allegedly negotiating a partnership with state agencies to monitor infected people and the individuals with whom they have interacted. The data mining company Palantir is already collaborating with the CDC and NIH, while the White House convened a task force of technology companies to…
Content type: Case Study
The increasing deployment of highly intrusive technologies in public and private spaces such as facial recognition technologies (FRT) threaten to impair our freedom of movement. These systems track and monitor millions of people without any regulation or oversight.
Tens of thousands of people pass through the Kings Cross Estate in London every day. Since 2015, Argent - the group that runs the Kings Cross Estate - were using FRT to track all of those people.
Police authorities rushed in secret…
Content type: Long Read
The UK’s Metropolitan Police have began formally deploying Live Facial Recognition technology across London, claiming that it will only be used to identify serious criminals on “bespoke ‘watch lists’” and on “small, targeted” areas.
Yet, at the same time, the UK’s largest police force is also listed as a collaborator in a UK government-funded research programme explicitly intended to "develop unconstrained face recognition technology", aimed “at making face…
Content type: Long Read
The European Union (EU) spends billions on research and development aimed at driving economic growth and jobs, as well as furthering the bloc’s broader agenda. Within the current budget, known as Horizon 2020 and covering the years 2014-2020, some €80 billion has been made available for research in a huge number of areas, ranging from finding cures for diseases to helping keep the earth viable for life.
From the same budget, it also funds a lot of projects aimed at developing surveillance…