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Content type: News & Analysis
Privacy International (PI) has today warned UK regulatory and law enforcement bodies about the potential deployment of an extensive and potentially nationwide police facial recognition surveillance system. We are urging them to investigate and take steps to ensure that no ‘backdoor’ for unlawful facial recognition surveillance will be developed under the umbrella of a crime reporting system.
According to pricing and data-sharing templates, UK surveillance company Facewatch is offering to…
Content type: Long Read
As more and more of us feel compelled to cover our faces with masks, companies that work on facial recognition are confronted with a new challenge: how to make their products relevant in an era where masks have gone from being seen as the attribute of those trying to hide to the accessory of good Samaritans trying to protect others.
Facewatch is one of those companies. In May 2020, they announced they had developed a new form of facial recognition technology that allows for the…
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: Examples
The Guangzhou Public Transportation Group has installed a biometric tablet next to bus drivers' seats so they can check the temperature and identity of every passenger who boards. The tablets will also photograph each passenger, allowing them to be identified by China's facial recognition network in the hope of helping control the spread of the novel coronavirus by enabling contact tracing for anyone displaying symptoms. The Group claims the data so gathered will only be used in the interests…
Content type: Long Read
The UK’s Metropolitan Police have began formally deploying Live Facial Recognition technology across London, claiming that it will only be used to identify serious criminals on “bespoke ‘watch lists’” and on “small, targeted” areas.
Yet, at the same time, the UK’s largest police force is also listed as a collaborator in a UK government-funded research programme explicitly intended to "develop unconstrained face recognition technology", aimed “at making face…
Content type: Long Read
The European Union (EU) spends billions on research and development aimed at driving economic growth and jobs, as well as furthering the bloc’s broader agenda. Within the current budget, known as Horizon 2020 and covering the years 2014-2020, some €80 billion has been made available for research in a huge number of areas, ranging from finding cures for diseases to helping keep the earth viable for life.
From the same budget, it also funds a lot of projects aimed at developing surveillance…