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Content Type: Video
Since we recorded this podcast there has been an update on the Microsoft Activision mergerLinksPI competition page (our "very influential work")More about Dr MantzariEcosystems and competition law in theory and practice - a research paper about ecosystemsPower Imbalances in Online Marketplaces: At the Crossroads of Competition Law and Regulation - one of Dr Deni's papers looking at peconomic dependence in online marketplacesGoogle Android European court case on abuse of dominance and more info…
Content Type: Long Read
Introduction
The 28th of September marks International Safe Abortion Day. It remains a day necessary to mobilise and raise awareness of the continued struggles women and girls face when accessing reproductive healthcare, including access to safe abortion. Across the world, abortion continues to be criminalised, restricted and in some places under attack. All of which constitute severe obstacles for women and girls to fully exercise their human rights, particularly their right to privacy, which…
Content Type: Long Read
In 2023, Privacy International continues to produce real change by challenging governments and corporations that use data and technology to exploit us.Since the beginning of the year, we had some significant achievements we're proud of and want to share with you. Take a look below to see how we are changing the world for the better.SpringBetter EU regulation of digital products PI’s continuous advocacy around the Cyber Resilience Act resulted in further adjustment of the…
Content Type: Explainer
On International Identity Day, we are highlighting that the technology-driven ID systems being implemented around the world are leading to new forms of surveillance and exclusion.Last September, PI and its global network of partners launched Identity Crisis - a campaign to change the narrative on identity systems. Around the world PI and our partners have seen ID systems creating and facilitating exclusion, insecurity, and surveillance.To learn more, watch our Identity Crisis video, in which…
Content Type: Examples
The rise of hybrid work has led to a rise in "bossware": increasingly intrusive technology that monitors employees, tracks their locations, and watches or listens to office workers via cameras and microphones. 90% of such systems can give employers a list of everything a worker has done that day. The cost of such systems has dropped, as has employer trust in staff. The increasing surveillance, now with AI predictive functions, threatens job security and increases the power companies have over…
Content Type: Examples
Drivers for app-based companies like Uber, tired of their lack of transparency, share their experience and swap tips to help each other game the platforms to their advantage via in-person workshops and Telegram groups, aided by the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers and the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers' Union. Similar movements exist around the world. In 2021, a Dutch court upheld a complaint by Uber and Ola drivers from the UK and Portugal asking those companies to provide…
Content Type: Examples
Behind every powerful AI system are huge numbers of people labelling and clarifying data to train it, contracted by companies like Remotasks, a subsidiary of Silicon Valley-based data vendor Scale AI, whose customers include the US military and OpenAI. Often the workers, who are assigned tasks they don't understand for a purpose they don't know, are sworn to secrecy. Yet labelling is crucial; it can make the difference between a car stopping to spare the person walking a bike across the road or…
Content Type: Examples
More than 150 workers employed by third-party outsourcing companies to provide content moderation for AI tools on Facebook, TikTok, and ChatGPT depend have pledged to create the African Content Moderators Union. The move to create such a union began in 2019 when the outsourcing company Sama fired Facebook content moderator Daniel Motaung for trying to form a union. https://time.com/6275995/chatgpt-facebook-african-workers-union/Publication: TimePublication date: 2023-05-01Writer: Billy…
Content Type: Examples
Outsourced artists, designers, copywriters, software developers, and call centre operators in the global south are the first to feel the effects of the arrival of generative AI, as client companies see the new technology as a way of cutting costs. Some workers are adding prompt engineering to their advertised skillsets or offer a service copy-editing and fact-checking AI-generated output; others say that using AI tools helps them produce more work faster, albeit for less money. Outsourcing…
Content Type: Examples
Technology companies that call themselves "AI first" rely on heavily surveilled gig workers who label data, deliver packages, moderate content, and perform gig work via platforms. Startups pressured by their venture capital funders even hire humans to pretend to be chatbots so they can claim to be "AI" companies. For these reasons, worker exploitation needs to be a central part of the discussion of the ethical development and deployment of AI systems.https://www.noemamag.com/the-exploited-labor…
Content Type: Examples
In a legal action, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain and the App Drivers and Couriers Union claim that Uber's use of facial recognition software for its Real-Time ID Check to verify the identity of drivers is discriminatory because facial recognition software is known to be less accurate at identifying people with darker skin. The action was brought on behalf of two drivers whose accounts were terminated following errors made by the Microsoft-supposed facial recognition software.…
Content Type: Examples
A former Amazon warehouse worker writes that every day was "brutal" because of the "exploitative and dangerous" standards enforced by Amazon executives. Amazon's anxiety-inducing policies about bathroom use and low pay should be seen in context with fast food and retail workers, who frequently encounter violence on the job and many essential workers' struggle to afford the basic necessities of life. In response, workers are beginning to target investors as an important voice that can help…
Content Type: Examples
An excerpt from the new book "Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door—Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy", describes in detail the tracking systems used in Amazon warehouses to ensure workers meet their managers' targets. The system is a mix of surveillance, measurement, psychology, targets, incentives, slogans, and proprietary technologies.https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-way-amazon-uses-tech-to-squeeze-performance-out-of-workers-deserves-its-own-name-bezosism-…
Content Type: Examples
Documents filed with the US National Labor Relations Board show that Amazon issues warehouse workers with radio-frequency handheld scanners to track and record every minute of "time off task". The filing is part of a dispute at the State Island Amazon warehouse, where workers voted to unionise in 2022. Managers must ask the person with the most "time off task", which includes time spent in the bathroom, talking to other associates, and navigational errors, about their whereabouts for each "…
Content Type: Examples
Amazon has begun issuing partner delivery companies with AI-enabled cameras to monitor and track drivers' behaviour on the road. The cameras add another layer of monitoring to existing requirements to run the smartphone app Mentor; drivers complain that the app's bugs lead to unfair disciplinary action against them; the app may also follow them into their homes. Drivers swap tips on gaming the app on Reddit.https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/amazon-mentor-app-tracks-and-disciplines-delivery-…
Content Type: Examples
Amazon delivery partner companies are ordering their drivers to turn off Amazon's Mentor monitoring app so they can take more risks in order to hit Amazon's delivery targets. Mentor, made by a company called eDriving, is a smartphone app Amazon uses to monitor drivers in Amazon-branded vans that tracks drivers' speed, braking, acceleration, and cornering; it also detect "phone distraction" and gives drivers a safe driving score. Amazon has pushed the liability for infractions onto the more than…
Content Type: Examples
Numerous video clips from Amazon's in-van driver-facing surveillance cameras are appearing on Reddit in violence of Amazon's stated privacy policies and raising questions about drivers' privacy. The videos are clearly not being posted by drivers themselves, but come from inside Amazon delivery partners, though who is posting them is unknown. The cameras capture all aspects of drivers road behaviour; the company claims they protect road safety. Drivers say they do not have access to the videos.…
Content Type: Examples
A 24-year-old man in Atlanta, Georgia is suing Amazon after being left with extensive brain and spinal cord injuries after an Amazon van crashed into his car. Amazon claims it isn't legally liable because the driver worked for the delivery company Harper Logistics LLC. However, the lawsuit seeks to prove that Amazon controls all aspects of deliveries from how many packages drivers are assigned to their continued employment and tracks drivers intensively, pressuring them to take risks in order…
Content Type: Examples
Employees monitored by monitoring tools such as Hubstaff, CleverControl, and FlexiSPY report that the software takes a screenshot every ten minutes and calculate an activity score based on how they type and move their mouse. Aware that employers are looking at these scores, employees pause the tracker while they perform tasks such as participating in Zoom meetings, watching videos, or taking notes, which then requires them to work more hours to make up the time. A TUC poll in 2022 found that 60…
Content Type: Examples
Four people in Kenya have filed a petition calling on the government to investigate conditions for contractors reviewing the content used to train large language models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. They allege that these are exploitative and have left some former contractors traumatized. The petition relates to a contract between OpenAI and data annotation services company Sama. Content moderation is necessary because LLM algorithms must be trained to recognise prompts that would generate harmful…
Content Type: Press release
Today the European Court of Human Rights held the United Kingdom accountable for its digital spying, even when that spying affects people outside of the UK’s borders.In this case, Mr Wieder and Mr Guarnieri, both researchers who work on information security and privacy, challenged the lack of access to redress mechanisms for alleged breaches to their rights to privacy and freedom of expression by UK intelligence agencies before the European Court of Human Rights.Mr Wieder and Mr Guarnieri…
Content Type: Examples
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the use of facial recognition technology to arrest protester Nikolay Glukhin on the Moscow metro system was "incompatible with the ideals and values of a democratic society governed by the rule of law". Glukhin's protest consisted of travelling carrying a life-sized cardboard figure of the dissident Konstantin Kotov holding a banner that said "I’m facing up to five years … for peaceful protests." Glukhin was arrested several days later, charged…
Content Type: Examples
Authorities in Germany and France are using legal powers intended for use against organised crime and extremist groups to crack down on direct action protests intended to spur public action against climate change. State authorities in Germany are preventively detaining protesters, in one case holding an individual for 30 days without charge. In France, lawmakers passed new surveillance and detection laws, and in UK legislation has made it illegal to lock or glue yourself to physical…
Content Type: Examples
A coalition of 65 NGOs including Access Now, EFF, and Article 19, have written a letter asking the European Commission to reject the possibility that content moderation provisions in the Digital Services Act could be used to compel social media shutdowns. The letter was in response to comments by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton saying that the DSA would allow the Commission to fine and ban social media networks from operating in the EU that don't immediately remove hateful content…
Content Type: Examples
Despite mass demonstrations in 2022 supporting women's right to bare their heads, Iranian authorities are considering a draft law that proposes prison terms of five to ten years (up from ten days to two months) for women to refuse to wear the hijab, substantial fines for businesses and celebrities who disobey the rules, and the use of AI to identify women violating the code. The Iranian parliament would vote on the bill in the next two months. Security forces are already using some of the…
Content Type: Examples
Thousands of cameras made by Bosch are part of a surveillance network on the streets of Tehran that clerical rulers are using to track women who refuse to cover their heads in public. Amnesty International reports that women whose bare heads are detected receive text messages threatening them with fines. Bosch says its cameras, which were sold to Iran between 2015 to 2017, were not equipped with facial recognition technology, but that the Iranian state could use software sourced from elsewhere…