One State Protects Your Transit PII Now, AI for Street Harassment, And Bat Backpacks
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition) Issue 10
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. Subscribe now so you don’t miss an issue and help us spread the word to folks who would enjoy this content.
City Watch
Barcelona, Spain - Barcelona launches a pilot program to create “an example of the experience and best practices regarding the operation of a smart city based on 5G networks.” [SDxCentral]
Dubai, United Arab Emirates - “Emirates unveils biometric path at Dubai Airport for contactless journeys.” [Globe Trender]
Edinburgh, Scotland - City announces “major upgrade of their public space video surveillance system.” [Security Informed]
Lesbos, Greece - “How the Pandemic Turned Refugees Into ‘Guinea Pigs’ for Surveillance Tech. An interview with Dr. Petra Molnar, who spent 2020 investigating the use of drones, facial recognition, and lidar on refugees” [One Zero]
Lucknow, India - “Lucknow police is deploying facial recognition technology backed by security cameras that will read expressions of women in distress and alert their nearest police station. The technology is claimed to use artificial intelligence (AI) to read facial expressions of women.” [Gadgets360]. The project raises concerns regarding accuracy and privacy. [Mashable India | South China Morning Post]
Malaysia - “Facial recognition technology to be implemented in KLIA airport within the first half of 2021” as part of the “Single Token Journey Initiative.” [TechNave | CAPA]
Mexico City, Mexico - “Mexico City has one of the most ambitious and sophisticated video surveillance systems in the world. But it hasn’t stopped crime.” [Rest of World]
Miami, Florida - “Miami Mayor Francis Suarez says he has hobnobbed with a large cast of venture capital luminaries who have come to town. That list includes former Google chief Eric Schmidt, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Chris Dixon, Craft Ventures' David Sacks and Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel—who recently bought an $18 million house in the city, according to reports on Tuesday.” [Bloomberg Technology’s newsletter]
Peachtree Corners, GA, U.S. (Update) - UK-based CCTV company Cawamo will be used to “detect crowds to determine if people are violating social distancing requirements and pick out individuals who aren't wearing required face masks.” [TechRepublic | CitiesToday]
Raipur, India - “Surveillance cameras, wrong way cameras, automatic number plate cameras and speed violation detection cameras have been installed across the city” and used to issue automatic fines. [Free Press Journal]
San Diego, CA, U.S. (Update) - “Council Unknowingly OK’d Surveillance Gear for Secretive Police Group. As one of its final acts in 2020, the outgoing San Diego City Council gave city employees permission to buy cell-phone hacking technology — as well as drones and rapid response vehicles — without realizing it.” [Voice of San Diego]
Singapore - “Given the ongoing Covid-19 situation and safe distancing measures introduced during Parliament sittings, plans for a facial recognition system to track MPs' attendance in Parliament have been shelved.” [Straits Times]
Thailand - “In accordance with Thailand 4.0, the country aims to achieve 100 smart cities by 2024.” [The ASEAN Post]
Various Global Cities - “Defense Intelligence Agency admits to buying citizens’ location data” and claims “it doesn’t need a warrant to collect the information.” [The Verge]
Various Global Cities - “Palantir’s God’s-Eye View of Afghanistan. An excerpt from the book First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance by Annie Jacobsen” [WIRED]
Various U.S. Cities - Smart City Challenge 2021 will take place between January 23- February 18, 2021, for $350,000 in cash and in-kind prizes. [Smart City Works, h/t @b__k]
Visakhapatnam, India (Update) - “City police have begun the exercise to find out the number of private establishments, including residential apartments, commercial establishments, and few others that have not installed CCTV cameras. Police are now serving notices to such establishments and have decided to register cases for not installing CCTV cameras.” [Times of India]
Washington, DC (Update) - “This site posted every face from Parler’s Capitol Hill insurrection videos. Faces of the Riot used open source software to detect, extract, and deduplicate every face.” [Ars Technica]
Wauwatosa, WI, U.S. - “Wauwatosa PD created ‘Protester List’ during protester crackdown. Records requests reveal emails documenting list and ‘protest folder,’ suggesting overreach.” [Patch]
Market Watch
Drones -
“Skyqraft, a Swedish maker of a drone that inspects powerlines, raised $2.2 million in seed funding. Subvenio Invest led the round and was joined by investors including Antler and Next Human Ventures.” [Fortune Term Sheet]
Wingcopter, a Danish delivery drone maker, raised $22 million in Series A funding. Xplorer Capital and Futury Regio Growth led the round. [Fortune Term Sheet]
Facial Recognition Technology -
“NEC targets major sales year for biometrics and touchless interactions in 2021. Subsidiary buys undercover police software-maker.” [Biometric Update]
“Apple has just been granted a new patent that is related to its Face ID biometric security system. The patent details a next gen advancement in facial recognition technology, which apparently uses facial heat mapping for authentication.” [GizmoChina]
“A non-intrusive spoof detection feature for facial recognition technology has been released by Innovative Technology of the UK [for use in casinos.] The company’s ICU product provides three functions - age verification, facial recognition and face covering detection.” [iNTERGAME]
Mobility Technology -
“While U.S. cities have seen dockless bikes come and go, often being replaced by e-bike and scooter-share instead, the opposite has been true in the roughly 400 Chinese cities with dockless bike share where 47 million dockless bike trips are taken every day.” [Next City]
Smart Cities - “CES showcases 6 trends to shape smart cities in 2021” [Smart Cities Dive]
Wearables - “Today I learned bats are trendsetters in tracking tech” [The Verge]
Policy Watch
Massachusetts, U.S. - “The Massachusetts Legislature has enacted a new law that prevents Massachusetts transit authorities from disclosing personal information related to individuals' transit system use for non-transit purposes and requires police obtain a search warrant before accessing personal data collected by the authorities. The law resolves many of the issues raised in Commonwealth v. Zachery, a case pending before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in which the government obtained, without a warrant, location data generated by the Defendant's use of a Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority transit card.” [EPIC]
Minneapolis, MN, U.S. - “Proposed ban on use of facial recognition technology by police advances. Council member who backs prohibition says its use ‘feels dystopian.’” [Star Tribune]
Oakland, CA, U.S. (Update) - “Last week, Oakland's City Council voted unanimously to strengthen the city's already groundbreaking Surveillance and Community Safety Ordinance. The latest amendment, which immediately went into effect, adds prohibitions on Oakland's Police Department using predictive policing technology—which has been shown to amplify existing bias in policing—as well as a range of privacy-invasive biometric surveillance technologies, to the city’s existing ban on government use of face recognition.” [EFF]
Washington, U.S. - “New legislation in Washington state would regulate the procurement of automated decision systems.” [Washington Legislature via JTDL]
Washington, U.S. - “Lawmakers in Washington state have advanced a privacy bill that would require companies to obtain people's opt-in consent before drawing on “sensitive” data – including precise geolocation data, biometric data and information that could reveal people's race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, health conditions, immigration status or sexual orientation – for ad targeting.” [Media Post]
Worcester, MA, U.S. - “[City] Council voted to approve the funding for the expansion of the existing ShotSpotter technology but sent the ShotSpotter Connect ["data-driven crime forecasting"] component to subcommittee.” [Government Technology via JTDL]
U.S. Federal -
FTC (Update): “Facial-recognition company Everalbum will delete a trove of data gleaned from its photo storage app Ever in order to settle allegations that it misled users about its use of controversial technology that puts names to faces, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.” [Media Post | Gold Rush Cam | JD Supra]
U.S. Federal - “Democrats in Congress are planning to reintroduce legislation that would ban federal agencies from using facial recognition technology.” [FindBiometrics]
Various U.S. Cities - “Why EFF doesn’t support bans of private use of facial recognition” [EFF]
Watching the Watchers Watch
Various Tech Policy Recs for the New Biden Administration
“CDT Recommendations to the Biden Administration and 117th Congress to Advance Civil Rights & Civil Liberties in the Digital Age” [Center for Democracy and Technology]
“Privacy laws should help, not harm, criminal-justice reform.” [Day One Project]
“Supporting Federal Decision Making through Participatory Technology Assessment” [Day One Project]
“EFF Transition Memo to Incoming Biden Administration” [EFF]
“End Abusive Surveillance of Immigrant, Black & Brown Communities” [Just Futures Law]
“Big tech critics alarmed at direction of Biden antitrust personnel. Renata Hesse, who has worked for Google and Amazon, is the leading candidate to run the Justice Department’s antitrust division.” [The Intercept, see also Reuters]
“Privacy And Digital Rights For All: A blueprint for the next Administration.” [Privacy Citizen, et al]
Bonus Section...A Podcast to Watch, um, Listen to
🔈Podcast: Surveillance tech is not accomplishing the things it’s supposed to. [Marketplace Tech]
(Update: The Coded Bias documentary team had a Twitter Q&A with EFFon Facial Recognition)
(Update: The New Public Festival has posted 🔮 Provocations for a Better Future)