Spy Plane Updates, Inside TALON, And #NOMOREDATAWEAPONS
Whose Streets? Our Streets! (Tech Edition) Issue 16
T👁️p 3 St👁️ries 👁️f the Week
City: Officials in Baltimore and St. Louis Put the Brakes on Persistent Surveillance Systems Spy Planes
“Baltimore, MD and St. Louis, MO, have a lot in common. Both cities suffer from declining populations and high crime rates. In recent years, the predominantly Black population in each city has engaged in collective action opposing police violence. In recent weeks, officials in both cities voted unanimously to spare their respective residents from further invasions on their privacy and essential liberties by a panoptic aerial surveillance system designed to protect soldiers on the battlefield, not resident's rights and public safety.” [EFF]
Policy: Introducing #NoMoreDataWeapons
“Data for Black Lives is launching #NoMoreDataWeapons. No more investing in Data Weapons, No more building new Data Weapons, No more disguising Data Weapons as legitimate and neutral.” [Data for Black Lives Blog]
Watching the Watchers: Inside ‘TALON,’ the Nationwide Network of AI-Enabled Surveillance Cameras
“Hundreds of pages of emails obtained by Motherboard show how little-known company Flock has expanded from surveilling individual neighborhoods into a network of smart cameras that spans the United States.” [VICE]
City Watch
Aizuwakamatsu, Japan - Japanese Smart City Offers Residents Quake, Privacy Protection [Business World]
China - China's ‘Sharp Eyes’ Program Aims to Surveil 100% of Public Space [OneZero]
Dubai (Update) - At Dubai airport, travelers’ eyes become their passports [The Tribune]
Durham, NC - Can Good Data Improve Policing and Prevent Excessive Force? [Government Technology]
Moscow, Russia - Moscow Metro to Let Riders Pay With a Glance by Year-End [Bloomberg]
New York, NY (Update) - Robot Police Dogs are Here. Should We be Worried? [ACLU]
San Diego, CA - ShotSpotter Devices Will Get More Scrutiny Going Forward [Voice of San Diego]
St. Petersburg, FL, U.S. - Innovation District’s ‘smart city’ projects take center stage [Catalyst]
Various U.S. Cities - US government urged to ‘jump start’ smart cities [Cities Today]
Various U.S. Cities - Financing city digitization in a post-pandemic world [Smart Cities World]
Market Watch
Patents/New Tech
Mobility
OpenHaystack is a new open-source tool that lets you create DIY AirTags on Apple’s Find My Network [The Verge]
Other
Artificial intelligence research continues to grow as China overtakes the US in AI journal citations [The Verge]
Historians used X-ray technology to read 17th-century letters without opening them [World Economic Forum]
Purchasing Trends
Other
As China Rises, the US Builds Toward a Bigger Role in AI [WIRED]
Policy Watch
China - Law on collection of facial recognition data to be proposed at two sessions [Global Times]
Pennsylvania, U.S. - Robots get legal rights as ‘pedestrians’ [Axios]
U.S. Federal - Acting FTC Chair Signals AI-Related Enforcement Priorities [JD Supra]
U.S. Federal - The Justice in Policing Act Does Not Do Enough to Rein in Body-Worn Cameras [EFF]
U.S. Federal - White House signals coming antitrust push with Tim Wu appointment [Ars Technica]
Various Global Cities - Six CPPCC members jointly call for stronger facial recognition supervision in China [Global Times]
Various Global Cities - The Unasked Question in Tech Policy: Where Do We Get The Lawyers? [Techdirt]
Various Global Cities - Feminist Perspectives on Space, Safety and Surveillance: Improving a Woman’s Right to the City [The Wire]
Watching the Watchers Watch
New York, NY, U.S. - The Power and Peril of Geolocation Data [S.T.O.P.—Surveillance Technology Oversight Project]
Various Global Cities - Congrats! You Live in a World Where Anyone Can Use Facial Recognition [Interesting Engineering]
Bonus Section…An Event to Watch, um, Attend
🏞️ Event: Terra Incognita NYC Launch Event: Reclaiming our Public Spaces [New_Public’s Eventbrite]
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.