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Content type: Examples
13th August 2019
In February 2019 Gemalto announced it would supply the Uganda Police Force with its Cogent Automated Biometric Identification System and LiveScan technology in order to improve crime-solving. LiveScan enables police to capture biometric data alongside mugshots and biographical data. CABIS speeds up the biometric matching process by mapping distinctive characteristics in fingerprints, palm prints, and facial images. The Ugandan police will also pilot Gemalto's Mobile Biometric Identification…
Content type: Examples
12th August 2019
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
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: Examples
12th August 2019
In November 2018, 112 civil liberties, immigrant rights groups, child welfare advocates, and privacy activists wrote a letter to the heads of the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security demanding an immediate halt to the HHS Office for Refugee Resettlement's practice of using information given them by detained migrant children to arrest and deport their US-based relatives and other sponsors. The policy began in April 2018, and the result has been that…
Content type: Examples
12th August 2019
In October 2018, British home secretary Sajid Javid apologised to more than 400 migrants, who included Gurkha soldiers and Afghans who had worked for the British armed forces, who were forced to provide DNA samples when applying to live and work in the UK. DNA samples are sometimes provided by applicants to prove their relationship to someone already in the UK, but are not supposed to be mandatory. An internal review indicated that more people than the initially estimated 449 had received DNA…
Content type: Examples
12th August 2019
In December 2018, Florida citizen Peter Sean Brown filed a federal lawsuit against the Monroe County Sheriff's offices for arresting and detaining him for three weeks claiming he was an illegal alien from Jamaica. Even though Brown offered to show the sheriff his birth certificate and explained he had been wrongfully detained 20 years before and the jail's own records listed his birthplace as Philadelphia, PA, the sheriff relied on a form sent by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Brown had…
Content type: Examples
12th August 2019
In February 2019, the World Food Programme, a United Nations aid agency, announced a five-year, $45 million partnership with the data analytics company Palantir. WFP, the world's largest humanitarian organisation focusing on hunger and food security, hoped that Palantir, better known for partnering with police and surveillance agencies, could help analyse large amounts of data to create new insights from the data WFP collects from the 90 million people in 80 countries to whom it distributes 3…
Content type: Examples
8th May 2019
The State is not always the only actor involved in the surveillance of benefits claimants. Often those practices are encouraged, facilitated or conducted by private companies. South Africa for instance mandated MasterCard to help distribute benefits through biometric debit cards.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/23941/south-africa-enlists-mastercard-to-distribute-welfare-through-biometric-debit-cards
Publication: FinExtra
Content type: Examples
7th May 2019
The National Board of Scholarships and School Aid (Junaeb) in Chile was also heavily criticised for its use of facial recognition programmes to deliver meals at thirty schools in three cities across the country. After the Supreme Court requested in 2017 that the system must not be applied without the consent of the parents, in February 2019 it was the Council for Transparency that declared that: “The use of biometric identification systems to certify the delivery of food rations at schools…
Content type: Examples
7th May 2019
In Mexico, people registered as beneficiaries of any programmes led by the Ministry of Social Development could obtain a TV set, as part of the transition from analogue to digital TV organised by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation. Yet, the Ministry of Communications and Transportation requested the collection of fingerprints, the scanning of the beneficiary’s voter card and the beneficiary’s address in exchange of the TV set. The company Codigo Empresarial SA de CV was tasked…
Content type: Examples
7th May 2019
In Bangladesh, as part of the USAID and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supported programme “a2i” (Access to Information), the government has built a system to allow citizens to receive their welfare payment on a pre-paid debit card given to them at the Bangladesh Post Office after having been registered with their biometric data.
https://govinsider.asia/smart-gov/bangladesh-a2i-mobile-payments/
Author: Joshua Chambers and Nurfilzah Rohaidi
Publication: Gov Insider