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Content type: Examples
As the long Minnesota winter came to an end in March 2021, both protesters and police began preparing for the beginning of tunneling work to build the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. Intended to update the decaying previous structure and double its capacity. Police practiced a variety of crowd control tactics and countering different types of imagined threats, honing their strategies by monitoring social media.
https://theintercept.com/2021/03/23/enbridge-line-3-mississippi-minnesota-police/…
Content type: Examples
Police in Phoenix, Arizona called leaders of a peaceful protest in October 2020 "targets" while surveilling them with drones, cameras, and vehicles. ABC15 found that police and prosecutors collaborated to charge protesters as a "criminal street gang". Although the charges were later dropped, protest leaders said they had a chilling effect on later protests and caused them to change tactics.
https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/protest-arrests/phoenix-police-called-protesters-…
Content type: Examples
Over 2020, EFF supported the right to protest without being surveilled by bringing lawsuits, offering protesters legal support, teaching protesters surveillance self-defence, and providing tools for people on the ground to use to determine what equipment their local police departments are using to spy on activists. Via public records requests, EFF discovered that the San Francisco Police Department gained access to over 400 cameras belonging to the Union Square Business Improvement District to…
Content type: Examples
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
Despite having promised in 2016 not to facilitate domestic surveillance, the AI startup Dataminr used its firehose access to Twitter to alert law enforcement to social media posts with the latest whereabouts and actions of demonstrators involved in the protests following the killing of George Floyd. Dataminr's investors include the CIA and, previously, Twitter itself. Twitter's terms of service ban software developers from tracking or monitoring protest events. Some alerts were sourced from…
Content type: Examples
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
New data emerged in January 2021 to show that the National Guard deployment of more than 43,350 troops during the nationwide demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd was far more extensive than had been realised, and far greater than the 6,200 troops deployed at the Capitol during the forewarned insurrection. At least 20 military surveillance and reconnaissance helicopters flew over protests in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Washington DC, raising concerns about the data…
Content type: Examples
Hundreds of emails and documents obtained in response to a freedom of information request by BuzzFeed News show that US federal agents monitored social media for information on planned Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Minneapolis, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and other cities. Researchers and activists (such as EFF) warned that technology-driven surveillance of protesters could set a dangerous precedent and chill assembly and speech, particularly in the case of Black Lives Matter. The…
Content type: Examples
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.
https://…
Content type: Examples
During the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020, US police took advantage of a lack of regulation and new technologies to expand the scope of people and platforms they monitor; details typically emerge through lawsuits, public records disclosures, and stories released by police department PR as crime prevention successes. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice highlights New York Police Department threats to privacy, freedom of expression, and due process and the use of a predator…
Content type: Report
In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. Department of Defense developed its biometric program in confluence with US military operations in. Its expansion was tightly linked to the goals of military commanders during the “War on Terror”: to distinguish insurgents and terrorists from the local civilian population. This research shows how the DOD’s biometric programme was developed and implemented without prior assessment of its human rights impact and without the safeguards necessary to prevent its…
Content type: Examples
Numerous US colleges are forcing students to download location-tracking apps or wear symptom-tracking devices, many of them similar to tracking systems student athletes are often required to install on their phones. Tracking athletes did little to help them gain either an education or a professional career and backfired when they bypassed the system to reclaim some privacy. Tracking the student body at large is likely to follow suit, with dangerous consequences for public health. In addition,…
Content type: Examples
Students arriving for the fall semester at the University of Arizona were required on arrival to take a rapid COVID-19 test. Those testing negative could proceed to move into their dorms and begin campus life; those testing positive were required to spend ten days in a special isolation dorm and take classes online. The university also set up wastewater sampling to provide an early warning system to detect emerging hot spots. The system enabled the university to detect and isolate two cases…
Content type: Examples
A nationwide US study plans to examine the impact on employer surveillance of the shift of workers from on-site office environments to working in their homes. The authors intend to highlight worker (dis)comfort and concerns.
Source: https://covid19research.ssrc.org/grantee/how-covid-19-is-changing-workplace-surveillance-american-workers-experiences-and-privacy-expectations-when-working-from-home/
Writer: Jessica Vitak and Michael Zimmer
Publication: Social Science Research Council
Content type: Examples
While countries like New Zealand, Singapore, and South Korea publish detailed near-real-time data on local coronavirus outbreaks, the US offers very few details on how the disease is spreading due to political meddling, privacy concerns, and long-time neglect of public health surveillance systems. CDC reports are often delayed until after they can influence outcomes, a problem that has not been helped by the Trump administration’s decision to divert data from the CDC to a new $10 million system…
Content type: Examples
A growing number of companies - for example, San Mateo start-up Camio and AI startup Actuate, which uses machine learning to identify objects and events in surveillance footage - are repositioning themselves as providers of AI software that can track workplace compliance with covid safety rules such as social distancing and wearing masks. Amazon developed its own social distancing tracking technology for internal use in its warehouses and other buildings, and is offering it as a free tool to…
Content type: Examples
In late May, Florida fired Rebekah Jones, its geographic information system manager and architect of the state’s COVID-19 data and surveillance dashboard. The dashboard was praised on TV two weeks earlier by Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force for its accessibility and transparency. A spokeswoman for Florida governor Ron DeSantis blamed Jones’s firing on “insubordination”. A week before, across the state line in Atlanta, Georgia, the…
Content type: Examples
The US National Basketball Association’s plan to restart its season includes isolating players and other personnel at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida with a plan for frequent testing, quarantine protocols, and bracelets that beep if people come within six feet for too long. In addition, the NBA proposed to give players the option of wearing Oura smart rings after a study showed the physiological data they collect could, in combination with information collected from other wearers via in-…
Content type: Examples
A group of Democratic US Senators and Congressional Representatives have written to Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar asking for more transparency around the HHS Protect Now programme, which collects vast amounts of data, including coronavirus test results, from the CDC and state and local sources and analyses it using technology from Palantir. The letter asked whether any of the data gathered would be shared with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which Palantir has helped to…
Content type: Examples
Thermal temperature scanners, software keystroke monitors, and wearable location trackers are proliferating in US workplaces, with the data they collect outside of any of the country's electronic privacy laws. Companies report that employers are being asked to form part of the front line of contact tracing for COVID-19 and share data on a wholly new level. Even before the pandemic, employers sought to keep employee data exempt from the CCPA; privacy activists eventually won a one-year…
Content type: Examples
Many of the steps suggested in a draft programme for China-style mass surveillance in the US are being promoted and implemented as part of the government’s response to the pandemic, perhaps due to the overlap of membership between the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, the body that drafted the programme, and the advisory task forces charged with guiding the government’s plans to reopen the economy. The draft, obtained by EPIC in a FOIA request, is aimed at ensuring that…
Content type: Examples
US state and local authorities are using data from a host of location tracking companies, some of them little-known, such as X-Mode Social, Foursquare Labs, Cuebiq, Unacast, Phunware, and SafeGraph, to help them decide how and when to reopen. Many of these companies are part of the adtech industry and collect location data from unrelated apps to which users have given permission to access their location. Apple’s and Google’s refusal to allow contact tracing apps using their system to access…
Content type: Examples
Cameras repurposed as "fever-detecting" aren't designed for and are not very good at detecting infections, but businesses, airlines, major employers, and public officials are nonetheless reacting to the coronavirus pandemic by spending large sums to buy them without understanding their limitations. The systems can detect elevated skin temperatures, but aren't precise enough to be able to identify the cause. In addition, many people who develop COVID-19 don't have fevers. The scanners have not…
Content type: Examples
Amazon has spent $10 million to buy 1,500 cameras to take the temperature of workers from the Chinese firm Zhejiang Dahua Technology Company even though the US previously blacklisted Dahua because it was alleged to have helped China detain and monitor the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
The cameras work by comparing a person’s radiation with a separate infrared calibration device and uses face detection technology to make sure it is looking for heat in the right part of the subjects…
Content type: Examples
The state of Utah gave the AI company Banjo real time access to state traffic cameras, CCTV, and public safety cameras, 911 emergency systems, location data for state-owned vehicles, and other data that the company says it's combining with information collected from social media, satellites, and various apps in order to detect anomalies in the real world and alert law enforcement to crimes as they are happening. The company claims its algorithm can do all this while stripping all personal data…
Content type: Examples
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
At least four law enforcement agencies in the US - two in California, and one in each of Maryland and Texas - are using drones to communicate with homeless people about maintaining social distance because encampments are located in areas that are difficult to access and police do not have to visit in person. Critics complain that the move increases encampment dwellers' already-high distrust in government. Many of the drones are being donated by the China-based drone company DJI as part of the…
Content type: Examples
The automated facial recognition company Clearview AI has suggested to US federal and state authorities that its facial biometrics could leverage cameras already in place at gyms and retailers in order to identify individuals in the interests of contact tracing.
Simultaneously, the company is asking for a stay in a privacy lawsuit in federal court in Illinois under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act. The company wants the case to be moved to the Southern District of New York, where…
Content type: Examples
To speed up daily temperature checks, Amazon has installed thermal cameras to screen workers for coronavirus symptoms in its warehouses around the world. Cases of COVID-19 have been reported at more than 50 of the company's US warehouses. Thermal cameras will also replace thermometers at staff entrances to many of Amazon's Whole Foods stores. Workers have claimed it is almost impossible to socially distance inside the warehouses.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52356177
Writer:…
Content type: Examples
Drone manufacturer DJI has loaned five drones equipped with voice capabilities and sirens to the US town of Elizabeth, New Jersey for use to patrol public areas and warn violators of the state's lockdown rules. The drones' messages are recordings of the mayor telling people to stop gathering, disperse, and go home. Police have the power to fine violators up to $1,000.
Sources:
https://nypost.com/2020/04/08/nj-town-using-talking-drones-to-scold-people-for-gathering/
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/…