Tag: facial recognition

Israeli authorities are using facial recognition technology to entrench apartheid

The Israeli authorities are using an experimental facial recognition system known as Red Wolf to track Palestinians and automate harsh restrictions on their freedom of movement, Amnesty International said today.  In a new report, Automated Apartheid, the organization documents how Red Wolf is part of an ever-growing surveillance network which is entrenching the Israeli government’s control over Palestinians, and which helps to maintain Israel’s system of apartheid. Red Wolf is deployed at military checkpoints in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, where it scans Palestinians’ faces and adds them to vast surveillance databases without their consent.

Amnesty International also documented how Israel’s use of facial recognition technology against Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem has increased, especially in the wake of protests and in the areas around illegal settlements. In both Hebron and occupied East Jerusalem, facial recognition technology supports a dense network of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras to keep Palestinians under near-constant observation. Automated Apartheid shows how this surveillance is part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians, with the aim of minimizing their presence in strategic areas.

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The Dangers of Biometrics: Beyond Fingerprints and Facial Recognition

Biometrics, the science of identifying individuals based on their unique physical and behavioral characteristics, has a rich history. However, it wasn’t until the late 19th century that Sir Francis Galton established the scientific basis for fingerprint identification.

Over the years, biometrics has evolved from manual methods to sophisticated electronic systems. In the 1960s, the FBI began using computers to store and match fingerprints. The 1970s saw the development of voice recognition systems, and the 1980s brought iris recognition technology. The advent of digital cameras in the 1990s paved the way for facial recognition systems.

Biometrics has become integral to various applications, from securing smartphones to controlling access to high-security facilities. Fingerprint scanners, for instance, are now standard on most smartphones, allowing users to unlock their devices with just a touch. Airports and border control increasingly adopt facial recognition technology to verify travelers’ identities. In other areas, such as India’s Aadhaar program, iris scanners are used for national identification. Meanwhile, wearables and smart home devices continuously collect data from their users’ daily activities. In some cases, individuals willingly hand over their sensitive data, as seen with 23&Me, a company facing financial difficulties and considering selling the DNA data of its 15 million users.

However, the widespread use of biometrics also raises significant privacy concerns. Unlike passwords or other credentials, biometric data such as DNA is immutable—you can’t change it once it’s compromised. This permanence fuels fears about the security of biometric databases. It is a growing concern, as they present attractive targets for threat actors seeking to gain access to sensitive personal data.

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Isle of Man explores facial recognition at entry and exit points and mandatory ID for all residents

The government plans to introduce FRT at air and sea ports, utilising automated number plate recognition (“ANPR”) to secure borders and detect criminals before they enter the island.  In addition, the government is considering a mandatory ID registration system for all island residents, not just migrants.

The move comes in response to the growing threat of organised crime including drug trafficking, weapons, modern slavery, immigration abuses and other criminal activities being facilitated through the island’s ports. The ‘Securing Our Island’ strategy aims to address these issues by leveraging modern technologies and strengthening border security.

In a video interview, Jane Poole-Wilson Member of the House of Keys (“MHK”) and Minister for Justice and Home Affairs said that in terms of facial recognition, it will be automated to quickly identify people against a known watchlist of criminals.

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Illinois changes biometric privacy law to help corporations avoid big payouts

Illinois has changed its Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) to dramatically limit the financial penalties faced by companies that illegally obtain or sell biometric identifiers such as eye scans, face scans, fingerprints, and voiceprints.

The 2008 law required companies to obtain written consent for the collection or use of biometric data and allowed victims to sue for damages of $1,000 for each negligent violation and $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation. But an amendment enacted on Friday states that multiple violations related to a single person’s biometric data will be counted as only one violation.

The amendment, approved by the Illinois Legislature in May and signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on August 2, provides “that a private entity that more than once collects or discloses a person’s biometric identifier or biometric information from the same person in violation of the Act has committed a single violation for which the aggrieved person is entitled to, at most, one recovery.”

As Reuters reports, the “changes to the law effectively overturn a 2023 Illinois Supreme Court ruling that said companies could be held liable for each time they misused a person’s private information and not only the first time.” That ruling came in a proposed class action brought against the White Castle restaurant chain by an employee.

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Ammo Vending Machines Arrive At Grocery Stores In Red States 

Nothing says ‘Merica like supermarkets with automated vending machines stocked with ammunition. A select number of supermarkets across Alabama and Oklahoma have these new machines. This means you can leave the store with milk, eggs, and boxes of 9mm and .223 rounds. 

American Rounds installed AI-powered ammunition vending machines in several Alabama and Oklahoma supermarket stores. These vending machines are said to feature built-in AI technology, card scanning capability, and facial recognition software to verify that buyers are 21 or older and match the identity on the license. 

“Our automated ammo dispensers are accessible 24/7, ensuring that you can buy ammunition on your own schedule, free from the constraints of store hours and long lines,” American Rounds notes on its website. 

American Rounds shows six supermarkets, including two Fresh Value stores in Alabama and four Super C Mart stores in Oklahoma, have these new retail automated ammo dispensers. 

In an interview with Newsweek, Grants Magers, CEO of American Rounds, said that the company’s AI-powered ammunition vending machines have recently been expanded to eight across four states. 

“We have over 200 store requests for AARM [Automated Ammo Retail Machine] units covering approximately nine states currently and that number is growing daily,” Magers said. 

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Scotland Plans Live Facial Recognition Technology

More controversy is developing in the UK, this time in Scotland, around the use by law enforcement of cameras equipped with live facial recognition technology.

Reports say that the police in Scotland may intend to start using this tech to catch shoplifters and persons who break bail conditions. But civil rights group Big Brother Watch is warning against any kind of deployment of live facial recognition as incompatible with democracy – primarily because it indiscriminately jeopardizes the privacy of millions of people.

To make sure this is not happening, the non-profit’s head of research Jake Hurfurt has told the press that the tech should be banned.

That would be an improvement also from the point of view of legal clarity around how AI and big data are used by law enforcement; since currently, Hurfurt remarked, the government and the police “cobble together patchwork legal justifications to experiment on the public with intrusive and Orwellian technology.”

Big Brother Watch offered another observation – the UK is a rare country outside of China and Russia (apparently, even the EU is “scaling back”) that is ramping up this type of surveillance.

The previous heated debate over live face recognition had to do with the London police, and at the moment, the Met’s decision to deploy it – besides being “a multi-million pound mistake,” is also facing a legal challenge, the group said.

They are hopeful this might serve as a teachable moment for the police in Scotland and dissuade them from repeating the same costly “experiment” of trying to usher in a “hi-tech police state.”

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Indiana Cop Used Facial Recognition Scans To Preform Non-Work-Related Searches

The use of Clearview’s facial recognition tech by US law enforcement is controversial in and of itself, and it turns out some police officers can use it “for personal purposes.”

One such case happened in Evansville, Indiana, where an officer had to resign after an audit showed the tech was “misused” to carry out searches that had nothing to do with his cases.

Clearview AI, which has been hit with fines and much criticism – only to see its business go stronger than ever, is almost casually described in legacy media reports as “secretive.”

But that sits badly in juxtaposition of another description of the company, as peddling to law enforcement (and the Department of Homeland Security in the US) some of the most sophisticated facial recognition and search technology in existence.

However, the Indiana case is not about Clearview itself – the only reason the officer, Michael Dockery, and his activities got exposed is because of a “routine audit,” as reports put it. And the audit was necessary to get Clearview’s license renewed by the police department.

In other words, the focus is not on the company and what it does (and how much of what and how it does, citizens are allowed to know) but on there being audits, and those ending up in smoking out some cops who performed “improper searches.” It’s almost a way to assure people Clearview’s tech is okay and subject to proper checks.

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U.S. Department of Commerce Has Plan Already in Place to Digitize the Identities of all Americans Receiving ‘Public Benefits’

Federal ‘Guidelines’ have already been secretly adopted for a Digital ID program that will start off as ‘voluntary’ but only the most gullible Americans would believe that’s anything but temporary.

In the globalist drive toward the creation of a national digital ID for all Americans is well under way, and the first group of citizens to be coerced into accepting a digital ID will be those receiving public benefits of one type or another.

Government healthcare benefits, Veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and of course low-income welfare programs of every type will all be fair game for digital IDs, and the U.S. government is already far down the road to adopting a strategy of digitizing all government-dependent citizens.

It all begins with a little-known program within the U.S. Department of Commerce.

I bet you didn’t know that the federal Commerce Department has a sub-agency called the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST for short, and that NIST has already adopted a set of “digital identity guidelines.”

These guidelines are ostensibly designed “to better support public-benefits programs.” Biometric Update reports that these programs assist beneficiaries with essential needs such as food, housing, and medical expenses, and then goes on to explain NIST’s role in digitizing all these government beneficiaries.

As is almost always the case, the federal agency has partners in the private sector to help it fulfill its mission of bringing in the technocratic/biometric beast system designed to replace people’s free will with government mandating every facet of their lives.

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Rights Groups Join Fight Against Racially Biased Facial Recognition Tech

There is a small but growing lobby made up of people who have been wrongly arrested as a result of facial recognition technology. Among them is Robert Williams, an American who was handcuffed in front of his family in 2020 after police facial recognition misidentified him as a suspect in a federal larceny case.

Williams is now calling for police forces in Ireland to scrap their plans to deploy the biometric tech. In comments made at an event in Dublin hosted by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and issued in a release, Williams points to the risk that comes with using tools that are prone to misidentify people of color.

“Federal studies have shown that facial recognition systems misidentify Asian and Black people up to 100 times more often than white people,” Williams says. “In America, we’re trying to undo the harms that FRT has already done. Here in Ireland, you have an opportunity not to introduce it in the first place. I hope your government will listen to experiences like mine and think twice before bringing FRT into policing.”

Williams refers to a 2019 report from NIST, which has since been updated, showing that some algorithms were 10 to 100 times more likely to misidentify a Black or East Asian than a white face. Not all of the algorithms evaluated are in commercial production, however, and others were found to have imperceptible differences in performance between demographics, prompting NIST Biometric Standards and Testing Lead Patrick Grother to urge those implementing facial recognition to be specific in evaluating bias.

Williams’ statement on the U.S. could also be debated, given the uptake of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies across the country. And while it is true that Irish police could still decide to pass on facial recognition, it is unlikely. The government is in the process of drafting legislation that would give Gardaí access to FRT. And police in the neighboring UK have embraced facial recognition with aplomb.

Nor is it merely an island thing. Police in Sweden are currently pushing against the limits of the still-fresh AI Act with plans to deploy 1:N facial recognition in public spaces. And Canadian police recently contracted Idemia to provide facial recognition services.

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Ugandan human rights lawyer’s arrest exposes use of national ID for surveillance

A Ugandan human rights lawyer’s recent arrest highlights the country’s surveillance and government control via the use of the national identification card.

First introduced by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) nearly a decade ago, Uganda’s national ID card was initially touted as a solution to streamline administrative processes and bolster citizen services.

However, Nick Opiyo, one of Uganda’s human rights lawyers, believes that there was an ulterior motive for his December 2020 imprisonment as he became ensnared in this surveillance dragnet, enduring arbitrary detention and harassment for his endeavors to expose state-backed human rights transgressions, a Bloomberg feature uncovers. His plight spotlights the impact of state surveillance on dissent and freedom of expression.

In fact, a 2023 study by the African Center for Media Excellence (ACME) concludes that the implementation of biometric and digital identity (BDI) programs in Uganda has given room for surveillance and intrusion on journalism and media in the region, unveiling that journalists in the country have become targets due to the mass collection of data under the government’s biometric and digital ID programs and its ability to engage in communications surveillance.

The expansion of Uganda’s surveillance apparatus hasn’t gone unnoticed by the global community.

Presently, in the country, possessing a NIRA-issued ID card isn’t just advantageous but essential for accessing fundamental services and participating in societal affairs.

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