Loopholes to FRT Bans And Ban the Scan
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition) Issue 11
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition) documents trends in the surveillance of public space. Curated by Rebecca Williams and Madeleine Smith as part of "smart city" surveillance research for the Technology and Public Purpose Project at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center.
City Watch
Aurora, IL, U.S. - “City leaders plan to apply data analytics to parking spots, traffic flow and other areas where the municipality can measure the movement of people.” [State Tech Magazine]
Bhubaneswar, India - “Inadequate CCTVs in Capital, cops grope in dark.” [The Indian Express] <— It’s interesting to see this framing after last week’s news that private entities in Visakhapatnam were being fined for not installing CCTV on their premises.
Hue, Vietnam - “South Korea backs Hue smart city plans with $13 mln” [VN Express]
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India (Update) - “Even as the rollout of artificial intelligence-driven security cameras to help women in distress by the Lucknow police face flak for encroachment in personal space, the Uttar Pradesh government is set to go ahead with the smart city project implementation.” [Gadgets 360, see also “What Good Can Facial Surveillance Bring In A Fascist State?” from Feminism India]
New Delhi, India - “Indian police use facial recognition in search for farmer protesters.” [FT]
New Jersey, U.S. - “NJ Transit, the country’s third-largest public transit system, will test an array of emerging technologies like heat mapping, face-mask detection, and artificial intelligence to monitor the capacity of its light rail system as the COVID-10 pandemic drags on.” [State Scoop]
St. Louis, MO, U.S. - “St. Louisans Mapped Monuments of Their City, and Uncovered Surprising Connections. ‘This process was not designed to be definitive or comprehensive, but we believe it captures ways of seeing things that many other forms of official data collection leave out,’ says Laurie Allen, senior research advisor for Monument Lab.” [Next City]
Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China (Update) - “Revealed: Massive Chinese Police Database. Millions of Leaked Police Files Detail Suffocating Surveillance of China’s Uyghur Minority region.” [The Intercept]
Various U.S. Cities - “An eye-opening look at law-enforcement surveillance. Jon Fasman, The Economist’s US digital editor, argues that action must be taken now to restrain the growing surveillance state.” [The Economist]
Various U.S. Cities - “How Cities Are Reimagining Our Democracy” [Next City]
Market Watch
Acquisitions & Financing
Video
“[Arnold Ventures] say they’re backing out of financing surveillance plane technology that flew over Baltimore” [Baltimore Sun]
Other
Nexii Building Solutions, a Canadian building tech company, raised roughly CAD$33 million ($25 million). Investors include Lotus Capital Corp. [Fortune Term Sheet]
Patents & Tech Trends
Biometrics
“Facial recognition payments are starting to take place in a number of countries and likely to be a popular addition to the wearable payments technology that is now widely in use.” [The CEO Magazine]
“[Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a novel software platform] that could help track missing persons: IISc Study” [Deccan Herald]
(Update) “The Everalbum case illustrates how facial recognition is spreading like poison ivy in the business world, with at least some companies quietly exploiting the technology for questionable purposes.” [LA Times]
“CyberLink, a pioneer in AI and facial recognition technologies, and developer of the FaceMe AI facial recognition algorithm achieved a top-six ranking in the latest 1:N Identification (WILD, 1E-5) Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT).” [Planet Biometrics]
(Update) “Intel RealSense ID Solution F455 is ... a small device comprising camera sensors, secure elements, an illuminator, a projector, and system-on-chip (SoC) to perform facial recognition. The SoC in this device performs the data processing and runs the neural networks to accurately match and recognize faces. The dual-camera setup is meant for authentication, while the IR illuminator and projector are used for indoor and outdoor operations.” [Tech Genix]
Public-Private Partnerships
Biometrics
(Update) “The technology [from Cawamo] will be installed on two cameras in the lobby of city hall -- at no cost to the city -- to test its ability to detect people entering the building not wearing a mask and those standing too close to one another. “ [GCN]
“A publicly accessible record on the collaborative uses of live facial recognition (LFR) should be created to reduce the secrecy around public-private partnerships, says an advisory body to the Home Office.” [Computer Weekly]
Purchasing Trends
Biometrics
“A new report explores where and what spending for ‘smart; airports is likely to focus on.” [BDC Network]
Other
“Smart city projects haven’t taken off as quickly as expected, partly because of COVID-19 decimating local economies and reducing city budgets. [...] Furthermore, some smart city projects had been focused on fixing problems that are no longer as pressing. Reducing traffic and parking now in many cities isn't as important because many workers no longer commute to downtowns because of shelter-in-place rules.” [Fortune]
Policy Watch
Canada - “The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA)] is calling for a temporary ban on the use of facial recognition in the country.” [Find Biometrics | IT World Canada]
Canada - “Being smart about smart cities: U of T's Mariana Valverde explores the possibilities and pitfalls” [U Toronto]
China (Update) - “Facial recognition is used in China for everything from refuse collection to toilet roll dispensers and its citizens are growing increasingly alarmed, survey shows. Almost 90 percent of respondents said they do not want facial recognition in commercial areas, Beijing News survey shows. Data leaks and privacy remain top concerns, with respondents giving support to more regulation.” [South China Morning Post]
Maryland - “EPIC Senior Counsel Jeramie Scott testified today to Senate and House Committees of the Maryland General Assembly in support of legislation protecting biometric information privacy. HB218 and SB16 are modeled after the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).” [EPIC]
U.K. - “Collaborations on live facial recognition and other biometric technologies between the public and private sectors are likely to increase, according to a new analysis from the UK Government’s Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group. The Group identifies several ethical concerns [in] ‘Briefing note on the ethical issues arising from public-private collaboration in the use of live facial recognition technology’” [Biometric Update]
U.S. Federal - “The new administration can do two things immediately that would help stop some of the more nefarious ways that police departments get surveillance technology. It should further roll back the infamous 1033 program of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows local police to inherit military gear. And it should bar the use of funds seized by civil asset forfeiture to fund these technologies.” [EFF]
U.S. Federal - “CDT joins over a dozen leading civil rights and technology organizations in releasing a civil rights, privacy, and technology oversight agenda for the 117th Congress.” [Center for Democracy and Technology]
Utah, U.S. - “[Utah] bill would ‘require agencies to file written requests to use facial recognition software, and inform driver’s license applicants that their photos could be analyzed by facial recognition software.’” [State Scoop]
Various EU Cities - “The Council of Europe, an international organisation distinct from the EU, has called for much stricter regulations on facial-recognition technology to protect privacy and equality.” [E&T]
Various Global Cities - “ARTICLE 19, Access Now, and the Association for Progressive Communications welcome a new resolution on privacy in the digital age adopted by consensus at the U.N. General Assembly on December 16, 2020.” [Access Now]
Various Global Cities - “The future of data protection: what we expect in 2021” [Access Now]
Various Global Cities - “Our report, Exposed and exploited: Data protection in the Middle East and North Africa, provides an overview of the laws in four MENA countries: Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Tunisia.” [Access Now]
Various Global Cities - “The Coup We Are Not Talking About. We can have democracy, or we can have a surveillance society, but we cannot have both.“ [NY Times]
Various U.S. Cities - “Facial recognition technology company Clearview AI has asked the Seventh Circuit to rehear its challenge to a lower court's order sending three Illinois residents' biometric privacy suit back to state court, arguing a panel incorrectly found no federal standing for their claim.” [Law 360]
Various U.S. Cities -“More than a dozen cities have passed facial recognition bans in the past couple of years, but police say there are loopholes” [The Markup]
Watching the Watchers Watch
Chicago, IL, U.S. - “Lucy Parsons Labs rebooted their Chicago Police Surveillance website on January 27th. Our webpage documents the privacy and legal concerns, efficacy, and costs of surveillance technologies and its use by CPD.” [@lucyparsonslabs]
New York, NY, U.S - “Amnesty International will produce a crowdsourced map showing the location of every camera capable of facial recognition in New York City before expanding out to other places like the West Bank and New Delhi.” [Fast Company]
Various Global Cities - Amnesty International launched “a global campaign to ban the use of facial recognition systems, a form of mass surveillance that amplifies racist policing and threatens the right to protest. The Ban the Scan campaign kicks off with New York City and will then expand to focus on the use of facial recognition in other parts of the world in 2021.” [Amnesty.org | The Verge ]
Various Global Cities - “The patterns on the goods in this shop are designed to trigger Automated License Plate Readers, injecting junk data into the systems used by the State and its contractors to monitor and track civilians and their locations.” [Adversarial Fashion h/t @parismartineau]
Bonus Section...Podcasts to Watch, um, Listen to
🔈 Podcast: “Surveillance and Local Police: How Technology is Evolving Faster than Regulation” [NPR]
🔈 Podcast: “‘City Surveillance Watch: Network Effect’ in Detroit, Kansas, and New Orleans.” [Smart Cities Dive]
🔈 Podcast: “Fighting police for openness on cell tracking” [Tomorrow Unlocked]
(Update: The Intercept has a piece on “Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing” by Sarah Brayne)