Archive for the 'Surveillance' Category
Amazon Is Working on a Device That Can Read Human Emotions
May 23rd, 2019This strikes an interesting balance. It’s right on the line between cringe inducing and hilarious. Via: Bloomberg: Amazon.com Inc. is developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognize human emotions. The wrist-worn gadget is described as a health and wellness product in internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. It’s a collaboration between Lab126, the hardware development […]
Chicago and Detroit Have Bought Real-Time Facial Recognition Systems
May 19th, 2019Via: Wired: Civil liberties activists trying to inspire alarm about the authoritarian potential of facial recognition technology often point to China, where some police departments use systems that can spot suspects who show their faces in public. A report from Georgetown researchers on Thursday suggests Americans should also focus their concern closer to home. The […]
Britain: Police Fine Pedestrian £90 for Disorderly Behaviour After Hiding His Face from Facial Recognition Camera
May 16th, 2019Via: Daily Mail: Police fined a pedestrian £90 for disorderly behaviour after he tried to cover his face when he saw a controversial facial recognition camera on a street in London. Officers set up the camera on a van in Romford, East London, which then cross-checked photos of faces of passers-by against a database of […]
Man Makes Videos Critical of New Zealand Government, Gets Visits by Armed Police
May 15th, 2019Here are the videos that attracted the attention of the police. This is a Facebook post with the video of one of the police visits. In case you don’t use Facebook, someone mirrored the video on YouTube: Via: Cross the Rubicon:
Monsanto ‘Compiled Dossier’ on Political Opponents
May 13th, 2019Via: BBC: French officials are investigating after revelations that agro-chemicals firm Monsanto compiled a potentially illegal file on critics on chemicals and genetically modified crops. The document was made by a PR agency working for Monsanto, which makes the controversial weed killer glyphosate. Marketed as Roundup by Monsanto, the weed killer has come under fire […]
All Four Major Wireless Carriers Hit With Lawsuits Over Sharing, Selling Location Data
May 13th, 2019Via: TechDirt: We’ve noted repeatedly that if you’re upset about Facebook’s privacy scandals, you should be equally concerned about the wireless industry’s ongoing location data scandals. Not only were the major carriers caught selling your location data to any nitwit with a checkbook, they were even found to be selling your E-911 location data, which […]
Swarms of Drones, Piloted by Artificial Intelligence, May Soon Patrol Europe’s Borders
May 12th, 2019Step 1: Facilitate and encourage illegal immigration to the point of collapsing European society. Step 2: Deploy swarms of surveillance drones to interrogate/track/identify individuals at random. You know, since we created the problem in the first place, we’ll come up with a “solution.” Step 3: ….. (Fill in the blank) Hmm. I know. How about: […]
Privacy Experts, Senators Demand Investigation of Amazon’s Child Data Collection Practices
May 12th, 2019Via: The Intercept: Last year, a coalition of privacy advocates and child psychologists warned against putting an Amazon Alexa speaker anywhere near your child on the fairly reasonable grounds that developing minds shouldn’t befriend always-on surveillance devices, no matter how cute the packaging. Now, a group of privacy researchers, attorneys, and U.S. senators are calling […]
IBM: Use AI to Identify Vaccine-Hesitant Parents
May 8th, 2019Mmm hmm. IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation by Edwin Black Via: IEEE: Growing skepticism toward vaccines has sparked a flareup of measles outbreaks affecting New York City neighborhoods, cruise ships, international airports and even Google’s Mountain View headquarters. To help family physicians reach out to […]
For Lower-Paid Workers, the Robot Overlords Have Arrived
May 2nd, 2019Via: Wall Street Journal: It’s time to stop worrying that robots will take our jobs — and start worrying that they will decide who gets jobs. Millions of low-paid workers’ lives are increasingly governed by software and algorithms. This was starkly illustrated by a report last week that Amazon.com tracks the productivity of its employees […]
