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Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
When Dallas police posted on Twitter asking for videos of the protests taking place after George Floyd's killing, a flood of videos and images of K-pop stars were uploaded to its anonymous iWatch Dallas tip-off app. Law enforcement can call on vast numbers of networked cameras - from cars, food and retail chains that are typically willing to share with police, law enforcement agencies' own networks of surveillance and body cameras as well as object and face recognition software, protesters and…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
Following the January 6 invasion of the US Capitol Building, federal law enforcement used a wide variety of surveillance technologies to track down participants, including facial recognition, licence plate readers, policy body cameras, and cellphone tracking. While many of the people being tracked and charged are members of white supremacist groups, human rights organizations such as ACLU and EFF are concerned that the level of surveillance was excessive and poses a threat to peaceful protests…
Content type: Examples
14th June 2021
Human rights activists and Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to top law enforcement officials in the Trump administration to demand they cease surveilling Americans engaging in peaceful protests. Trump and others in his administration called those protesting the killing of George Floyd "domestic terrorists" and "anarchists". Recent efforts to surveil Americans have included facial recognition, automated licence plate readers, and Stingrays, as well as spy planes and drones.
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Content type: Examples
19th October 2020
Professional sports teams are considering adopting facial recognition admissions systems to make stadiums as touchless for fans as possible as part of efforts to provide a safe environment during the pandemic. Both the Los Angeles Football Club and the New York Mets are trying the Clear app, made by Alclear, and Major League Baseball is considering it. At the LAFC, fans will use the app to take and upload a selfie to their accounts and link it to their Ticketmaster profiles; on entry to the…
Content type: Examples
19th October 2020
A preliminary study finds that facial recognition algorithms struggle to identify people wearing masks. The study tested 89 commercial facial recognition algorithms, and the best had error rates between 5% and 50% in matching unmasked photos with photos of the same person wearing a digitally-applied mask. Masks both lowered the algorithms’ accuracy rates and raised the number of failures to process. The more of the nose is covered by the mask the lower the algorithm’s accuracy; however, error…
Content type: Examples
20th May 2020
The controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI, which came to public attention for scraping billions of photos off social media sites to create a comprehensive facial recognition system, says it has offered to help US federal and three state agencies with contact tracing. The company claims its technology could use the cameras already in place to identify people in surveillance video in restaurants or stores where they may have come into contact with others who subsequently test…
Content type: Examples
21st March 2020
As governments look into surveillance, geolocation and biometric facial recognition to contain the coronavirus, even if they violate user data privacy, the controversial facial recognition company Clearview AI is allegedly negotiating a partnership with state agencies to monitor infected people and the individuals with whom they have interacted. The data mining company Palantir is already collaborating with the CDC and NIH, while the White House convened a task force of technology companies to…
Content type: Examples
12th August 2019
In October 2018, the answers to a FOIA request filed by the Project on Government Oversight revealed that in June 2018 Amazon pitched its Rekognition facial recognition system to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials as a way to help them target or identify immigrants. Amazon has also marketed Rekognition to police departments, and it is used by officers in Oregon and Florida even though tests have raised questions about its accuracy. Hundreds of Amazon workers protested by writing a…
Content type: News & Analysis
13th December 2018
Taylor Swift may be tracking you, particularly if you were at her Rose Bowl show in May.
According to an article published by Vanity Fair, at Swift’s concert at the California stadium, fans were drawn to a kiosk where they could watch rehearsal clips. At the same time – and without their knowledge - facial-recognition cameras were scanning them, and the scans were then reportedly sent to a “command post” in Nashville, where they were compared to photos of people who are known to be Swift’s…