Surveillance

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday sued the facial recognition start-up Clearview AI, which claims to have helped hundreds of law enforcement agencies use online photos to solve crimes, accusing the company of “unlawful, privacy-destroying surveillance activities.” In a suit filed in Illinois, the A.C.L.U. said that Clearview violated…

About 20 years ago, I published my dissertation research on workplace surveillance. Not surprisingly, I found that people being monitored electronically react very negatively when their privacy at work has been invaded, and respond in very negative ways. But back in 2001, no one could really visualize the kind of…

Technical folks looking to improve web privacy haven’t been able to decide whether sound beyond the range of human hearing poses enough of a privacy risk to merit restriction. People can generally hear audio frequencies ranging from 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, though individual hearing ranges vary. Audio frequencies below…

A first-of-its-kind judicial decision sets out the rules for lawful tracking in an epidemic outbreak situation. The Israeli Supreme Court strikes a balance between COVID-19-related contact tracing technology and the right to privacy in a landmark decision about the government’s limits of power and the rights to privacy and dignity.…

Increasingly widespread adoption of facial recognition technology for law enforcement purposes has sparked a heated global debate over the past year or two. Clearview AI has been one of the central points of contention, becoming something of a poster child for potential abuses and lack of transparency in such programs.…

You check out Facebook to see if one of your friends or someone in your family has done something interesting. Your attention is drawn to a holiday advert. That’s a coincidence, you think, because just before you went to Facebook you had been searching internet for a holiday destination. But…

The RCMP has been quietly running an operation monitoring individuals’ Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media activity for at least two years, The Tyee has learned. The existence of Project Wide Awake has never been reported. And The Tyee investigation revealed that the RCMP has moved from a “reactive”…

In June 2018, more than 400,000 people protested the Trump administration’s policy of separating families at the border. The following month saw a host of demonstrations in New York City on issues including racism and xenophobia, the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the National Rifle Association. Given the ease…