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Content type: Advocacy
Generative AI models cannot rely on untested technology to uphold people's rightsThe development of generative AI has been dependent on secretive scraping and processing of publicly available data, including personal data. However, AI companies have to date had an unacceptably poor approach towards transparency and have sought to rely on unproven ways to fulfill people's rights, such as to access, rectify, and request deletion of their dataOur view is that the ICO should adopt a stronger…
Content type: Advocacy
Generative AI models are based on indiscriminate and potentially harmful data scrapingExisting and emergent practices of web-scraping for AI is rife with problems. We are not convinced it stands up to the scrutiny and standards expected by existing law. If the balance is got wrong here, then people stand to have their right to privacy further violated by new technologies.The approach taken by the ICO towards web scraping for generative AI models may therefore have important downstream…
Content type: News & Analysis
What if we told you that every photo of you, your family, and your friends posted on your social media or even your blog could be copied and saved indefinitely in a database with billions of images of other people, by a company you've never heard of? And what if we told you that this mass surveillance database was pitched to law enforcement and private companies across the world?
This is more or less the business model and aspiration of Clearview AI, a company that only received worldwide…
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: 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: Long Read
On 12 April 2020, citing confidential documents, the Guardian reported Palantir would be involved in a Covid-19 data project which "includes large volumes of data pertaining to individuals, including protected health information, Covid-19 test results, the contents of people’s calls to the NHS health advice line 111 and clinical information about those in intensive care".
It cited a Whitehall source "alarmed at the “unprecedented” amounts of confidential health information being swept up in the…
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
Few people realise how many databases may include images of their face; these may be owned by data brokers, social media companies such as Facebook and Snapchat, and governments. The systems in use by Snap and the Chinese start-up Face++ don't save facial images, but map detailed points on faces and store that data instead. The FBI's latest system, as of 2017, gave it the ability to scan the images of millions of ordinary Americans collected from millions of mugshots and the driver's licence…
Content type: Long Read
Tech firms and governments are keen to use algorithms and AI, everywhere. We urgently need to understand what algorithms, intelligence, and machine learning actually are so that we can disentangle the optimism from the hype. It will also ensure that we come up with meaningful responses and ultimately protections and safeguards.
Many technologists emerge from University, College or graduate courses with the impression that technology is neutral and believe that all systems they apply their…