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Content type: Examples
14th November 2022
Ohio teenager Aaron Ogletree has won a lawsuit he filed against Cleveland State University after he was required to pan a webcam around his bedroom to eliminate possible cheating before taking a remote exam.
The court agreed that Ogletree's Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the scanning requirement, which briefly exposed tax documents and medications. The university has filed an appeal and in the meantime has told students that they will not be permitted to take remotely proctored…
Content type: Examples
14th November 2022
In a 2010 case, the Lower Merion school district in suburban Philadelphia school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits brought by students who had discovered that the webcams attached to their school-issued laptops had secretly taken hundreds of photographs of them in their homes along with hundreds of screen shots. In one of the cases, a teenaged boy was accused of popping pills; in fact, he was eating jelly beans.
https://www.wired.com/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/
Writer…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2022
Even though schools are back in session in person, their teachers can still monitor the screens on their school-issued devices via software such as GoGuardian. In a new report from the Center for Democracy and Technology, 89% of teachers say their schools will continue to use student-monitoring software, up from 84% in 2021, raising worries about how the data will be used in a climate increasingly hostile towards abortion and LGBTQ+ issues.
CDT also reports that 44% of teachers say that at…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2022
A new report from the education news site The 74 Million finds that in-school digital surveillance programs are flagging LGBTQ+ content as "pornographic". For example, Gaggle, comprehensive monitoring software implemented in the Minneapolis public school system, has led administrators to notify parents that their children's submissions have been flagged, without context, for mentioning suicide, gay, and lesbian. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Richard…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2022
Following the US Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that paved the way for states to enact legislation criminalising abortion, health advocates warn that the surveillance software schools use to algorithmically monitor students' messages and search terms could be weaponised against teens looking for reproductive health care. These systems can automatically alert school administrators, parents, or police when they detect "dangerous behaviour", which may include anything from imminent suicide…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2022
The Welsh Local Government Association is collaborating with the Centre for Digital Public Services on an 8-to-12-week discovery project to help local authorities to understand schools' requirements for information management systems and understand the market offerings in order to formulate a needs-based procurement specification. The project is intended to produce a shared set of core requirements and will look at user need for establishing one or more core datasets, individual schools'…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2022
During a remotely proctored online exam, a number of students on the Bar Professional Training Course urinated in bottles and buckets and wore adult diapers rather than risk the possibility that their exam would be terminated if they left their screens long enough to go to the toilet. The Bar Standards Board responded to the story by saying that students are warned in advance that they will not be able to leave the room during an online exam and that they should take the exam in a test centre…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2022
In September 2022, the UK Department for Education announced that under a £270,000 contract with Suffolk-based Wonde Ltd it would collect data on children's school attendance and potentially share it with other government departments and third parties as part of its drive to raise attendance. A visualisation tool will create an interactive national attendance dashboard to run alongside the publication of fortnightly attendance data that the DfE says will provide "ongoing transparency". LSE…
Content type: Examples
15th September 2022
Despite having opened their borders to and taking in millions of fleeing Venezuelan migrants, the Colombian government’s handling process for this population tells a story of discrimination rather than inclusion.
The 2021 issuance of the Temporary Statute for Venezuelan Migrants came with a legal framework laying out the benefits for incoming Venezuelans, but also outlined how a multibiometric system would be used for identification of this specific migrant group.
This system allows for…
Content type: Examples
22nd June 2022
Ukraine and Russia are both weaponising facial recognition - but Russia is using it to hunt down anti-war protesters, holding and sometimes torturing anyone who refuses to be photographed, while Ukraine is using software donated by Clearview AI to help find Russian infiltrators at checkpoints, identify the dead and reunite families. Russia's widespread surveillance means that activists can be followed and arrested anywhere. In an approved, peaceful anti-government rally in Moscow in 2019,…
Content type: Examples
22nd June 2022
The Kommersant reports that Russia's Rostec State Corporation is developing a new AI-powered anti-riot surveillance system that uses biometrics-powered cameras and can search social media networks and other publicly accessible data and intends to deploy the new system by the end of 2022. The behaviou analysis software is being developed as part of the Safe City project under the aegis of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, which intends to spend 97 billion rubles ($1.3 billion) deploying Safe…
Content type: Examples
22nd June 2022
The energy company Cuadrilla used Facebook to surveil anti-fracking protesters in Blackpool and forwarded the gathered intelligence to Lancashire Police, which arrested more than 450 protesters at Cuadrilla's Preston New Road site over a period of three years in a policing operation that cost more than £12 million. Legal experts have called the relationship between fracking companies and the police "increasingly unhealthy" and called on the ICO and the Independent Office for Police Conduct to…
Content type: Examples
22nd June 2022
Emails obtained by EFF show that the Los Angeles Police Department contacted Amazon Ring owners specifically asking for footage of protests against racist police violence that took place across the US in the summer of 2020. LAPD signed a formal partnership with Ring and its associated "Neighbors" app in May 2019. Requests for Ring footage typically include the name of the detective, a description of the incident under investigation, and a time period. If enough people in a neighbourhood agree…
Content type: Examples
19th November 2021
Myanmar’s Covid-19 Economic Recovery Plan (CERP) includes more than 50 measures over a 15-page document. With only two items being assigned a specific budget, the Economic Recovery Plan appears largely aspirational.
Beneficiaries and relevant areas to target are picked from data from township officials, recent surveys, the 2014 census, civil society organisations and local news sources. The Union government stated they have released a list of 16 criteria used to target transfers. At the time…
Content type: Examples
19th November 2021
The National Commission Action for Sierra Leone is providing one-off cash transfers to households in response to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Cash recipients are being selected through field action from NaCSA and other governmental bodies. A scoring matrix based on ten assessment areas of potential vulnerability is used to consider whether a person is eligible to receive this disbursement. A score of more than seven vulnerabilities means an individual is eligible for support. Having…
Content type: Examples
19th November 2021
In 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Mozambique, the government started implementing the National Response Plan of Social Protection which aims to pay cash transfers to 1,582,179 beneficiaries. These cash transfers are done via mobile phone through the service Mpesa.
Throughout the roll-out of the programme, there have been reports of people being threatened and harassed over the phone by thugs demanding that benefit claimants hand in the phones to which the benefit is linked. It is not…
Content type: Examples
19th November 2021
In 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Mozambique, the government started implementing the National Response Plan of Social Protection which aims to pay cash transfers to 1,582,179 beneficiaries. These cash transfers are done via mobile phone through the service Mpesa.
Since then, there have been reports of people having registration and access difficulties, such as having wrong phone numbers associated with their names, and hence not being able to claim their benefits.
Adding to this,…
Content type: Examples
19th November 2021
Kwenda is a social protection program started in Angola in May 2020 to support people affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and it is expected to last for 3 years. The program is backed by 420 million USD funding from the World Bank and has 4 distinct components.
In July 2021 the Angolan government announced that they were in a phase of ‘data validation’, where government teams visit neighbourhoods with ‘systemically generated’ provisional lists of beneficiaries. The government describes these…
Content type: Examples
17th November 2021
As a result of the challenges emerging from Covid-19 to disburse financial assistance, the government of Paraguay decided to change its food security programme, Ñangareko, from an in-kind benefit to a bank transfer consisting of a one-off payment of PYG 500,000 (= +/-73USD).
The Ñangareko Programme is aimed at those affected by Covid-19 which are stated to include the most vulnerable, informal workers, persons without a RUC (the unique taxpayer registry number) or social security, and who don’…
Content type: Examples
17th November 2021
A new COVID-19 Cash Transfer Programme for ID Poor Households was launched in June 2020 to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable groups of the population, including the needs of children aged 0-5 years old, persons with disabilities, the elderly, persons living with HIV/AIDS, and those identified as poor (ID Poor 1 and ID Poor 2) through the existing national ID Poor programme.
Those households identified as eligible beneficiaries need to register with an administrator at commune level,…
Content type: Examples
11th November 2021
The Jordanian government implemented at least 8 different social protection measures in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The successful implementation of rapid response projects across social insurance, social assistance and refugee protection was an incredibly important means of protecting low-wage workers and communities facing vulnerable and precarious situations. Within 6 months of the first Covid-19 cases in Jordan, social security measures were put in place to support an estimated 960,…
Content type: Examples
11th November 2021
In January 2021, the World Bank agreed to loan the Lebanese government $246,000,000 to finance an "emergency social safety net" project in response to Covid-19 and Lebanon's ongoing economic crisis.
As part of the project, the Lebanese Government must provide cash-transfers to approximately 147,000 Lebanese households. To be eligible to receive cash transfers, households must be
* Lebanese,
* assessed as living below the World Bank's "extreme poverty line", and
* belong to "pre-defined…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2021
A welfare benefit being rolled out in Nigerian in response to Covid-19 reportedly relies on highly data-intensive techniques.
The Rapid Response Registration Cash Transfer Project was set up by the Nigerian government to provide support to poor Nigerians located in urban and semi-urban areas that were not receiving any other form of welfare support.
According to statements by the Nigerian vice-president, the Rapid Response Register uses "scientifically validated methods of satellite remote…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2021
A third-party, privately-owned electronic wallet platform is being used to disburse welfare benefits in Honduras.
The Single Voucher is a one-time subsidy delivered through an electronic voucher that can be exchanged for food, medicine and /or medical supplies.
The benefit is disbursed in the form of a voucher that can be used in authorised establishments, namely supermarkets, pharmacies, grocery stores throughout the country. According to a Powerpoint presentation by the WHO and Honduran…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2021
A welfare benefit introduced by the Peruvian government not only relies on unclear eligibility criteria, but has been shown to exclude many.
Peru's Stay at Home bonus targets 2.7 million poor and non-extreme poor households. Those eligible are identified through the National Household Register, which categorises households into different bands. Among other factors, households categorised by the Register as being in poverty are deemed eligible to the benefit. However, the criteria used to…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2021
In 2020, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Mozambique, the government started implementing the National Response Plan of Social Protection which aims to provide cash transfers to 1,582,179 beneficiaries.
The selection of priority areas to enroll people was based on a multimethodological approach using the MultiDimensional Poverty Index mapping that combines social and economic indicators. The index relied on the data gathered in the recent census, as well as high resolution satellite imaginary…
Content type: Examples
10th November 2021
Kwenda is a social protection program started in Angola in May 2020 to support people affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and it is expected to last for 3 years. The program counts with 420 million USD funding from the World Bank and has 4 distinct components.
Besides aiding with the effects of the pandemic, the Angolan government additionally sees KWENDA as a way to increase banking and digital inclusion for populations. This digitisation includes the creation of a centralised database under…
Content type: Examples
9th November 2021
As a response to the current pandemic, Malawi has set an emergency welfare support programme aiming at delivering cash for a three to four months period to vulnerable households. The International Labour Organization and the World Food Programme have designed a mechanism to select which neighbourhoods most needed support. The mechanism was created based on data analysis, consultations with local councils and satellite data to identify "poverty hot spot." Beneficiaries can contact a call centre…
Content type: Examples
4th November 2021
As part of a collaboration with Unicef and the World Bank, the Malagasy government launched Tosika Fameno. Tosika Fameno is an unconditional cash transfer programme aiming to support 189,400 households affected by the pandemic. The benefit aims to address the needs of citizens in vulnerable situations from the town of Antananarivo, Moramanga, Toamasina and Fianarantsoa, where lockdown measures were put in place.
However, the way beneficiaries were chosen could raise questions when it comes to…
Content type: Examples
29th October 2021
The 20 years since the 9/11 attacks have fundamentally changed the way the New York Police Department operates, leading it to use facial recognition software, licence plate readers, and mobile X-ray vans, among other surveillance tools for both detecting and blocking potential terrorist attacks and solving minor crimes. Surveillance drones monitor mass protests, antiterrorism officers interrogate protesters, and the NYPD’s Intelligence Division uses antiterror tactics against gang violence and…