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Content type: Examples
A woman was killed by a spear to the chest at her home in Hallandale Beache, Florida, north of Miami, in July. Witness "Alexa" has been called yet another time to give evidence and solve the mystery. The police is hoping that the smart assistance Amazon Echo, known as Alexa, was accidentally activated and recorded key moments of the murder. “It is believed that evidence of crimes, audio recordings capturing the attack on victim Silvia Crespo that occurred in the main bedroom … may be found on…
Content type: Examples
The US Department of Homeland Security awarded a $113 million contract to General Dynamics to carry out the Visa Lifecycle Vetting Initiative (VLVI), a renamed version of the Extreme Vetting Initiative and part of a larger effort called the National Vetting Enterprise. In May 2018, public outrage led the DHS to back away from a machine learning system that would monitor immigrants continuously; however, the reason it gave was that the technology to automate vetting did not yet exist. These…
Content type: Examples
New workplace technologies are generating mountains of data on workers despite a lack of clarity over how the data is used and who owns it. In offices, smart badges track interactions and sensors track fitness and health; in trucks sensors monitor drivers' performance in the name of safety. In the US state of Illinois, between July and October 2017 26 lawsuits were filed by employees alleging that their employers had violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires a…
Content type: Examples
In November 2018, worried American parents wishing to check out prospective babysitters and dissatisfied with criminal background checks began paying $24.99 for a scan from the online service Predictim, which claimed to use "advanced artificial intelligence" to offer an automated risk rating. Predictim based its scores in part on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts - applicants were required to share broad access to their accounts - and offered no explanation of how it reached its risk…
Content type: News & Analysis
Picture Credit: US AID
US President Trump has been cutting aid to Central America, including a surprise cut of approximately $500m in aid to the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, apparently as punishment for “doing absolutely nothing” to prevent emigration to the US.
What remains of the funds is largely and deliberately being repurposed for spending on the US’s own security interests: indeed, one area which his…
Content type: News & Analysis
Foto: US AID
El presidente estadounidense Trump ha estado recortando la ayuda a Centroamérica, incluyendo un recorte sorpresivo de aproximadamente 500 millones de dólares a los países del “Triángulo del Norte” (El Salvador, Guatemala y Honduras), al parecer como castigo por “no haber hecho absolutamente nada” para impedir la emigración hacia los Estados Unidos.
Los fondos restantes están siendo reorientados,en su gran mayoría y deliberadamente, al gasto para…
Content type: Advocacy
Privacy International has today sent letters to leading social media platforms to ask what they're doing to protect their users' from dangerous surveillance by government immigration authorities.
The letter comes following the implementation of plans by US authorities to require nearly all visa applicants to hand over identifiers of all social media accounts they have used in the previous five years, or face “serious immigration consequences”.
The move not only represents…
Content type: News & Analysis
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency at the centre of carrying out President Trump’s “zero tolerance” approach to immigration enforcement and family separation, has for years been contracting a US surveillance company to intercept peoples’ communications across the United States. The wide potential scope for the use of the powers raises concerns about their use for the real-time surveillance of people, families, and communities caught up in Trump’s immigration crackdown…
Content type: Examples
For low-income Americans to receive public benefits they are legally entitled to, they must submit to widespread monitoring of their intimate and personal affairs. This monitoring includes sharing a trove of personal documents and information, unannounced home visits from caseworkers, mandatory face-to-face meetings with caseworkers to review one’s grocery, hygiene, and parenting choices, electronic and physical surveillance, mandatory drug testing, and investigations by fraud control agents…
Content type: Examples
The New York City public benefits system has been criticized for its punitive design, how it too often disciplines, rather than helps, people who are legally entitled to benefits. According to Mariana Chilton, the public benefits system is designed to control, surveil, and penalize low-income people, and it is women of colour who disproportionately bear these burdens. Chilton highlights how the violent treatment of Jazmine Headley and her baby in a public assistance waiting room in December…
Content type: Examples
In the United States, while everyone is surveilled not every is equal when it comes to surveillance. Factors including poverty, race, religion, ethnicity, and immigration status will affect how much you end up being surveilled. This reality has a punitive effect on poor people and their families and places disproportionate burdens on people of minority groups.
https://tcf.org/content/report/disparate-impact-surveillance/?agreed=1
Author: Barton Gellman and Sam Adler-Bell
Publication: The…
Content type: Examples
Virginia Eubanks explains what we can draw from understanding the experience of surveillance of marginalised groups: it is a civil rights issue, technologies carry the bias of those who design them, people are resisting and why we need to move away from the privacy rights discourse.
https://prospect.org/article/want-predict-future-surveillance-ask-poor-communities
Author: Virginia Eubanks
Publication: The American Prospect
Content type: Examples
This article is an overview of some of the research documenting how people in vulnerable positions are the ones most affected by government surveillance.
https://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/technology-opportunity-researcher-says-surveillance-separate-and-unequal
Author: Kimberly Springer
Publication: State of Opportunity Michigan Radio
Content type: News & Analysis
Federal law enforcement is deploying powerful computer hacking tools to conduct domestic criminal and immigration investigations.
By Alex Betschen, Student Attorney, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, University at Buffalo School of Law
Hacking by the government raises grave privacy concerns, creating surveillance possibilities that were previously the stuff of science fiction. It also poses a security risk, because hacking takes advantage of unpatched vulnerabilities in our…
Content type: Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 21, 2018
CONTACTS:
Alex Betschen, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, [email protected], 716–531–6649
Colton Kells, Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic, [email protected], 585–766–5119
Abdullah Hasan, ACLU, [email protected], 646–905–8879
NEW YORK — Privacy International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Civil Liberties & Transparency Clinic of the University at Buffalo School of Law filed a lawsuit today…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo credit: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The trial of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman started in New York back in November 2018. But last week, the jurors were presented with a trove of new key evidence: dozens of text messages exchanged between Guzman, his wife, and his mistresses.
The reason behind this set of revelations? Guzman had been spying on his wife and mistresses, using publicly-available surveillance software called FlexiSpy. Once installed on his targets…