How would you feel about being fingerprinted every time you went out in public?
Well, that dystopian future is coming, with the rise of #FacialRecognition technology in public spaces.
If you’re in the UK, join the ‘End of Privacy in Public’ campaign and write to your MP today:
pvcy.org/facialrecognition
#Ukraine#Russia#Clearview#FacialRecognition#Biometrics: "In the ongoing war against Russia, Clearview has become the Ukrainian government’s “secret weapon,” Tymchenko says. More than 1,500 officials across 18 Ukrainian government agencies are using the facial-recognition tool, which has helped them identify more than 230,000 Russian soldiers and officials who have participated in the military invasion. Ukraine's use of Clearview has rapidly expanded beyond identifying Russian troops on their soil. The nation has come to rely on the private U.S. tech company, which has just 35 employees, to assist with a vast range of wartime tasks, many of which have not been previously reported, according to interviews with officials from half a dozen government agencies, law-enforcement officers, Ukrainian analysts, and Clearview executives.
This is a critical time for protecting citizens and their fundamental rights against #FacialRecognition and other forms of #BiometricMassSurveillance. Read this opinion by Ella Jakubowska @ella from @edri to know what is going on:
„The EU is on the precipice of a huge achievement — an #AIAct which truly puts people at its centre. But if done poorly, we will instead find ourselves on the precipice of a law which tells the whole world that the EU prioritises the surveillance industry over people and communities.“
Increasing use of #FacialRecognition cameras in public will mean none of us are invisible. Your local council, the Home Office, the police, retailers, the pub landlord. They all may be able to ID you.
Join the 'End of Privacy in Public' campaign today - pvcy.org/facialrecognition
Blur tools for Signal: if you take or edit photos of crowds or strangers with Signal, you can use our face blur tool to quickly hide people's biometric face data....
#UN#AI#AIAct#EU#Surveillance#FacialRecognition#HumanRights#Privacy#OHCHR: "Moreover, OHCHR supports a ban on the use of biometric recognition tools and other systems that process the biometric data of people to categorize them based on the color of their skin, gender, or other protected characteristics. Further, OHCHR supports bans on AI systems that seek to infer people’s emotions, individualized crime prediction tools, and untargeted scraping tools to build or expand facial recognition databases. Such tools entail dangerous accuracy issues, often due to a lack of scientific grounding, and are deeply intrusive. They threaten to systematically undermine human rights, in particular due process and judicial guarantees."
“Most British lawmakers are unaware or misinformed about how and where facial recognition technology (FRT) is being used, and the privacy threats it poses…”
Join the ‘End of Privacy in Public’ campaign and write to your local MP to find out if dystopian #FacialRecognition technology is being used on your local High Street.
In our recent YouGov survey of 100 UK MPs, a startling 70% didn’t know if #FacialRecognition tech is being used in public spaces, bars & shops in their constituency. And most MPs don’t know that there’s no FRT law! They’re asleep at the wheel. Join our new campaign to wake up your local MP!
#Surveillance#Privacy#Biometrics#FacialRecognition#PoliceState#Clearview#AI: "In “Your Face Belongs to Us,” a new book that traces the history of facial-recognition technology, Kashmir Hill, a reporter at the Times, describes how, in 2019, a Department of Homeland Security agent investigating a child-sex-abuse case e-mailed a suspect’s photograph to colleagues, one of whom ran the image through Clearview AI’s platform. The agent received back an Instagram photograph of a muscular man and a muscular woman posing at a bodybuilding expo in Las Vegas. In the background of the image was someone who resembled the suspect; he was standing behind a table at the booth of a dietary-supplement company. The agent called the company, which was based in Florida. The man, identified as Andres Rafael Viola, was arrested, and in his subsequent trial federal authorities presented enough other evidence, such as images obtained from his electronic devices, to secure a conviction. Viola was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
It’s not hard to imagine why law-enforcement officials might desire a tool capable of such feats. Critics, however, fear that the police could use automated face recognition for more objectionable purposes, such as monitoring the activities of peaceful protesters and impinging on citizens’ privacy. And questions remain about how reliable the tool is."
Rapidly expanding use of #FacialRecognition cameras on our streets will mean we will no longer be anonymous in public.
If you're in the UK, join the 'End of Privacy in Public' campaign, by sending a letter to your MP to demand they find out if facial recognition cameras are being used in your local area.
🧵 NEW CAMPAIGN! The UK government is ramping up the use of #FacialRecognition tech (FRT) on our streets - including plans to expand the use of FRT in retail spaces, alongside the unfettered roll out of FRT in policing.
#UK#Surveillance#PoliceState#Biometrics#FacialRecognition: "Police have been told to double their use of face searches against databases by early next year—45 million passport photos could be opened up to searches—and police are increasingly working with stores to try to identify shoplifters. Simultaneously, more regional police forces are testing real-time systems in public places.
The rapid expansion of face recognition comes at a time when trust in policing levels are at record lows, following a series of high-profile scandals. Civil liberties groups, experts, and some lawmakers have called for bans on the use of face recognition technology, particularly in public places, saying it infringes on people’s privacy and human rights, and isn’t a “proportionate” way to find people suspected of committing crimes.
“In the democratic world, we are an outlier at the moment,” says Madeleine Stone, a senior advocacy officer with Big Brother Watch, a privacy-focused group that has called for a ban and “immediate stop” on live face recognition, a proposal backed by 65 UK lawmakers. The EU, which the UK left in 2016, may ban the real-time use of face recognition systems, and one of its highest courts has called the technology “highly intrusive.” Various US states have banned police from using the technology."
Early May 2023, Democracy Now ! aired this 20' video on Amnesty International report.
A new report by Amnesty International documents how the Israeli government is using an experimental facial recognition system to track Palestinians and control their movements.
The findings are part of “Automated Apartheid,” which reveals an ever-growing surveillance network of cameras in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron and in East Jerusalem — two places in the Occupied Territories where Israeli settlements are expanding within Palestinian areas.
“Surveillance has been ramping up as illegal settler activity has also been ramping up,” says Amnesty researcher Matt Mahmoudi, who adds that the surveillance technology is part of an overall coercive structure used against Palestinians by Israel.
“Effectively, facial recognition is augmenting, reinforcing, entrenching aspects of apartheid.”
#EU#AI#AIAct#Biometrics#FacialRecognition: "The European Parliament might be on the verge of agreeing to some narrow conditions for using remote biometric identification technologies in real-time as part of a package deal extending the list of prohibited practices.
Remote biometric identification (RBI) has been a critical contention point in the negotiations of the AI Act, a draft EU law intended to regulate Artificial Intelligence systems based on their potential to cause harm.
The AI draft law is at the last phase of the EU legislative process, so-called trilogues, whereby the EU Parliament, Council and Commission hash out the final provisions.
On Friday (3 November), the offices of the European Parliament’s co-rapporteurs Dragoș Tudorache and Brando Benifei circulated a compromise text dropping the complete ban on real-time RBI in exchange for concessions on other parts of the file."
#Surveillance#Privacy#Biometrics#FacialRecognition#Clearview: "Even though facial recognition technology can be used for good purposes such as criminal investigations, the dangers it poses to privacy rights could outweigh its benefits, said Hill. Both the right to privacy and users’ right to control their personal information shared on social media platforms should be protected, she added. New laws to protect those rights should be modeled after regulations that made wiretapping, or the recording of communications between parties without their consent, illegal.
Recent privacy laws in Europe restrict how personal data is collected and handled by social media platforms. And in 2008, Illinois passed the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), an initiative led by the ACLU of Illinois, which guarantees that individuals are in control of their own biometric data (i.e., fingerprints, iris scans, DNA) and prohibits private companies from collecting it unless they inform users and obtain their written consent. Technology is not going to slow down, so the law needs to catch up and regulate its uses, said Hill.
The authors of the independent study warn that plans to abolish and not replace existing safeguards in this crucial area will leave the UK without proper oversight just when advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies mean they are needed more than ever.
The report by the Centre for Research into Information Surveillance and Privacy (CRISP) analyses the likely effect of abolishing the roles of the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner (BSCC) and the requirement for the government to publish a surveillance camera code of practice." https://www.gov.uk/government/news/report-finds-worrying-vacuum-in-surveillance-camera-plans
#UK#Surveillance#PoliceState#Biometrics#FacialRecognition#DataProtection: "Britain is an “omni-surveillance” society with police forces in the “extraordinary” position of holding more than 3m custody photographs of innocent people more than a decade after being told to destroy them, the independent surveillance watchdog has said.
Fraser Sampson, who will end his term as the Home Office’s biometrics and surveillance commissioner this month, said there “isn’t much not being watched by somebody” in the UK and that the regulatory framework was “inconsistent, incomplete and in some areas incoherent”.
He spoke of his concerns that the law was not keeping up with technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) that allow millions of images to be sorted through within moments and that there were insufficient checks and balances on the police."
Blur tools for Signal (signal.org)
Blur tools for Signal: if you take or edit photos of crowds or strangers with Signal, you can use our face blur tool to quickly hide people's biometric face data....