How ICE uses social media to surveil and arrest immigrants

E-mails sent by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) made public during a trial reveal how the agency hunts migrants by using social networks and buying personal information from private data brokers. They consider all public information to be fair game.

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San Diego’s massive, 7-year experiment with facial recognition technology appears to be a flop

Over seven years, San Diego fed a facial recognition tool 65,000 images. Unfortunately, the "crime-fighting" system the city imposed on residents has yet to lead to a single arrest.

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To fight the coronavirus China is undertaking its biggest experiment yet in rule by data: an app that automates quarantines. Alibaba software, using unexplained data, now decides whether millions can leave their home. It also shares data with the police.

As the Covid-19 pandemic was just getting started outside of China, the New York Times explored how China was assigning color-coded QR codes (green, yellow, red) to its citizens depending on their health status: quarantined or not. After analyzing the application's code, NYT reports that it does more than indicate whether a person poses a contamination risk: it also transfers data to the police. The app used is the popular AliPay wallet application. Many countries later adopted (black-and-white) QR codes on dedicated smartphone apps as the preferred means to signal vaccination or medical status during the pandemic.

Note from the archivist: "I think that after this project my anxiety levels will be so high that I'll go raise goats in the mountains," says a generally upbeat developer on the Monkey Moon forum.

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Fooling Facial Detection with Fashion

To fool facial recognition software integrated into videosurveillance systems, this blog article presents histogram designs which can be printed on masks.

Note from the archivist: This article was written in 2019, before Covid-19 made public masking so widespread.

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British Cops Want to Use AI to Spot Porn—But It Keeps Mistaking Desert Pics for Nudes

The London police hoped that machine learning would help them to detect child pornography images on the Internet. The system has been a disappointment, sometimes mistaking images of the desert for naked bodies.

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A Facebook engineer abused access to user data to track down a woman who had left their hotel room after they fought on vacation, new book says

A book reveals that Facebook fired over 50 employees between January 2014 and August 2015 for misusing their access to the users' personal data. One of them used it to stalk a woman who had recently broken up with him. Another stalked a woman who had decided not to pursue a relationship with him after one date.

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Black teen barred from skating rink by inaccurate facial recognition

A young Black woman with glasses was refused access to roller skating rink in Detroit because the site's facial recognition system "recognized" her as an individual who had caused a fight during a previous visit. But as it turned out, the teenhad never been there before. The system was unable to distinguish her from another young Black woman with glasses. The article highlights the fact that facial recognition tools are much less precise when it comes to people of color, women and children, which can sometimes result in wrongful arrest and prosecution.

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Amazon will pay you $10 in credit for your palm print biometrics

As part of its plan to automate work, Amazon has rolled out stores with no checkout, no cash and no cards--only Amazon accounts. Since 2021, Amazon has used customers' handprints to connect them to their account via a biometric scanner in some stores. The company will pay you $10 in credit to scan your palm and add the data to your Amazon account. Data protection organizations have highlighted the fact that fingerprints and handprints are among the only identifying characteristics humans cannot change, and that normalizing their use is dangerous.

Note from the archivist: A success for Amazon: as Flat Eye near the end of development, Amazon has announced that palm recognition payment will be expanded to 65 of its Whole Foods stores in the United States.

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A Shanghai, des robots et des drones surveillent 25 millions de confinés

This French article and video explain that two years after the first lockdown, China has updated its surveillance arsenal. Now land and air drones--a CCTV 2.0 of sorts--give orders in the streets.

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