Links to video and text articles
* A song to listen to while reading this list... It's a Beautiful Day
Some of these resource links are provided by the Digital Fourth group compiled from the source: https://massprivatei.blogspot.com and others are citation links to things I write and speak about in my research to learn more about surveillance, privacy and tracking.
I will be adding to this list as I find links in my research on surveillance and privacy.
Working from home and using Zoom? You need to see what Zoom has to say about YOU.
Please add a comment below if you have a resource to share.
Here is a direct link to a document about predictive scanning of citizens for mental illness, written by William Barr the US Attorney General:
The scariest link I have found so far - Retail Surveillance / Retail Countersurveillance
Sureveillance, privacy and security news and information:
The United Nations Refugee Agency, Partners With IrisGuard To Identify Egypt Refugee's:
Russia - Ministry Of Internal Affairs: Is Testing Gait Recognition
Estonia - SK ID Solutions To Use Smart-ID Biometric Bank Registration For More Than A Million Customers:* "This is also good news to the more than one million Smart-ID users in Latvia and Lithuania who can now upgrade their Smart-ID Basic account into a qualified electronic signature tool in just a couple of minutes,” said the CEO of SK ID Solutions, Kalev Pihl."
Germany - Users would tell Facebook their bank balance for $8.44 a month
Spain - Morocco’s Royal Gendarmerie (Police) to Use Drones To Monitor Highways:
UK - MI5 chief asks tech firms for 'exceptional access' to encrypted messages
UK - London police chief Cressida Dick calls for government to legislate police use of AI
UK - Cisco Is Turning The City of Sheffied Into A Public Surveillance Smart City:
Sheffield's 'Smart Cities' technology with Amey
UK - Can I move my data to the EU before Google shifts it to the US?
UK - Google data transfer to USA just the start – “possibilities for abuse are enormous”
UK - Dorset Police Use Drone Patrols to Allegedly Deter Arson And Poaching:
Dorset Police use drone patrols to prevent anti-social behavior
SCT - Facial Recognition: How Police Make Use Of This Technology PDF
Dr. Garfield Benjamin on Facial Recognition PDF
China -Government uses facial recognition and infrared scanners on everyone:
China - Government is using WeChat and Twitter to find and silence people sharing coronavirus information:
India - Facebook, Twitter, Google threaten to shut services over new internet law
U.N. claims Lybya is 'world's largest theatre' for drone attacks: "Yacoub el-Hillo, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Libya, said that the protracted conflict was severely impacting civilians in all parts of the country on a scale never seen before, with nearly 900,000 people needing humanitarian assistance."
AU - Performing Arts Venue "West HQ" To Use NEC Facial Recognition Kiosks
West HQ announces major partnership with NEC Australia
AU - Domestic abuse and the darker side of the smart home: "In an abusive relationship where a parent or partner is trying to control what you eat, where you go, who you talk to, and how much electricity you’re allowed to use, it is the recipe for a controlling nightmare.It ranges from low tech — like abusive text messaging — right through to high tech, where perpetrators install tracking software on their spouse’s car or phone, or use smart home devices like their TV or fridge to exert fear and control. Frankly, nothing surprises us any more in terms of how motivated perpetrators will misuse technology to menace their domestic partners."
Canada - Judge: Biased expert testimony is a huge problem
‘1984’ Has Come To China… USA Is Next
The US Department of Justice has officially begun to denaturalize citizens:
Trump's immigration policy violates sacred patient-doctor confidentiality:
The Austin Sanctuary Network Sues ICE For Fining Immigrants Up To $500,000 In Fines:* "In the summer of 2019, several asylum-seeking women living in sanctuary received letters stating that ICE was imposing fines of up to $500,000 under the Immigration and Nationality Act §274D."
U.S. Resident Indefinitely Detained Without Charge Secures His Day In Court
Doctors Have a Name for Separating Kids from Their Parents at the Border: It's Torture
Family Separations at the Border Constitute Torture, New Report Claims
You Will Never See Your Child Again: The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family Separation
The FBI Is Investigating Massive Embezzlement of Border Patrol Union Funds:
Shadowy Watchlisting Council Has Control Over Your Legal Rights — And It Does Not Really Exist
Appeals Court Ruled Trump Administration Can Withhold Funds From Sanctuary States:
CBP to use Facial Recognition at Pedestrian Border Crossing in Brownsville, Texas
Clearview has billions of our photos. Its entire client list was just stolen
Gizmodo Reporters Found Clearview Shady Face Recognition App: "The data is being sent to Google Analytics, Crashlytics, and App-Measurement. The app also grants access to Android’s Fine Location API, which determines the most precise location possible from available location providers, including the Global Positioning System (GPS) as well as wifi and mobile cell data."
Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Has Been Used By The Justice Department, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, And The NBA:* "Clearview has signed paid contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, and Macy’s. The company also has credentialed users at the FBI, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Interpol, and hundreds of local police departments."
Here’s the File Clearview Has Been Keeping on Me, and Probably on You Too:
Is facial recognition at Sea-Tac Airport a fait accompli? "Port staff didn’t wait for governing policies to be developed and approved before posting a Request For Proposals (RFP) soliciting bids for new automated facial recognition systems to be deployed by the Port itself at Sea-Tac."
BASF's facial recognition "Trinimix" can tell the difference between a living human, a deceased one, a photograph, and a mask.
New "Fawkes" Facial Recognition Tool Claims To Be 95% Effective:"Fawkes achieves this by helping users adding imperceptible pixel-level changes (we call them“cloaks”) to their own photos before publishing them online. When collected by a third-party “tracker” and used to train facial recognition models, these “cloaked” images produce functional models that consistently misidentify the user. We experimentally prove that Fawkes provides 95+% protection against user recognition regardless of how trackers train their models.
PDF Fawkes: Protecting Personal Privacy against Unauthorized Deep Learning Models
NASA to license heartbeat Identification:" According to NASA, “the heartbeat system is a new biometric technique to verify someone's identity.”
The FBI's Clothing Photo Analysis Method Has Serious Flaws
Assessing the reliability of a clothing-based forensic identification
N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Program Cost $100 Million And Produced Only Two Unique Leads
The “EARN IT” Act Is Another Terrible Proposal to “Reform” Section 230: "It’s terrible committee design to have the decision-makers of the committee’s work product (AG, DHS, FTC) also participate as voting committee members. Other committee members are going to be reluctant to speak in opposition to, or vote against, the final approvers because of the likely futility. This increases the odds that the Commission will just whitewash the agendas of the final approvers.
Congress set for clash over surveillance reforms (USA Freedom Act and Section 215)
AG Barr Pushes Republicans to Reauthorize Surveillance Powers
Push for More Privacy Protections Throws Surveillance Bill Talks Into Disarray
The Political Landscape of FISA Reauthorization
The House Judiciary Committee’s Proposed Changes to FISA
Coronavirus Spending Bill Could be Used to Cement Spying Powers: "As must-pass legislation that congressional leaders of both parties could use to ram through a reauthorization of the FBI’s call detail records program. Such a move would sidestep the House’s reform effort and instead push through a clean reauthorization of the program.
Personal Data Collection: Outsourcing Surveillance
Will My Data Be Online Forever?
Do Geofence Warrants Violate the Fourth Amendment?
Trump’s New Spy Chief Used to Work for a Foreign Politician the U.S. Accused of Corruption
DNA Databases Are Boon to Police But Menace to Privacy, Critics Say
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's The Data Protection Act of 2020
End-to-End Encryption and Law Enforcement Access to Data Can Coexist, Justice Official Says
https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf
Facebook sues SDK maker for secretly harvesting user data
Opponents Ask Judge to Reject Google ‘Wi-Spy’ Settlement: "After nearly a decade of litigation, attorneys reached a deal to settle a multidistrict class action claiming Google vehicles not only collected images for its street view maps feature but also swiped emails, passwords and other personal data from unsuspecting users of unsecured Wi-Fi networks in what became known as the Wi-Spy scandal."
Many WhatsApp private groups are indexed in Google and open to the public
Here's The Paltry Sum Your Phone Company Could Pay for Illegally Sharing Your Location Data“The carriers have shown an egregious contempt for the law,” Free Press Senior Policy Counsel Gaurav Laroia said in an email, adding: “With all the attention devoted to the serious misdeeds of online platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, we haven’t paid enough attention to the very real threats the carriers pose to our privacy rights.”
How The Internet of Things Stole (And Is Stealing) Our Privacy
EPIC Files Complaint with FTC about Airbnb's Secret "Trustworthiness" Scores: "Airbnb secretly rates customers “trustworthiness" based on a patent that considers such factors as authoring online content with negative language. The company’s opaque, proprietary algorithm also considers "posts on the person’s social network account" as well the individual's relationships with others, and adjusts the "trustworthiness" score based on the scores of those associations."
Pentagon adopts so-called ‘AI Ethical Principles’ for its killer robots
Citizen App Lets Users Report PROTESTORS And Much More: "Citizen encourages people to report incidents about “protests, lost pets, downed power lines, and other community FYIs.” But its general criteria for reported incidents from 911 calls are broader, and include alleged crimes in progress such as assaults and thefts, fire, smoke, gas leaks, situations involving hazardous materials, and heightened police activity."
The Cardozo Law Review: The Dangers of America’s Expanding ‘Digital Prison’ "On any given day, hundreds of thousands of citizens are subjected to similar restrictive surveillance schemes through the use of electronic ankle monitors, where they are free, yet seemingly unfree, despite the fact that most have not been convicted of a crime and others have served full sentences. This expanding reliance upon correctional surveillance technology as tools for decarceration at pretrial and post-conviction hearings marks a transformation that is quietly taking place within the criminal justice system with seemingly little fanfare and scant attention."
Justice in America Podcast: Police Accountability
Privacy Gaps for Digital Cardiology Data: Big Problems With Big Data
GoodRx Shares My Prescriptions With Third Parties—and It's Perfectly Legal
Edward Snowden’s Tweet Exposed How Our TV’s Are Spying On Us
Privacy And Personalization Clash For Retailers
Amazon Opens Cashierless Supermarket in Latest Push to Sell Food
How to protect your privacy on Instagram
Sentry Mode: Guarding Your Tesla
How Allstate’s Secret Auto Insurance Risk AnalysisAlgorithm Squeezes Big Spenders: "Allstate asked the Maryland Insurance Administration for permission to run each policy through an advanced algorithm containing dozens of variables that would adjust it in the general direction of the new risk model."
How We Analyzed Allstate’s Car Insurance Algorithm
San Diego Company Uses DriveCam To Monitor What Is Happening Inside Truck Drivers Cabs: SmartDrive claims in-cab truck surveillance cameras are "saving the planet"
"Spooky Action Robotics" Claims Their Solar-Powered Tethered Drones Will Provide Cellular Communications To Kenya, Niger, Botswana and Senega:
"Our flagship tether system – with SuperFly you can stay in the air indefinitely and safer than ever before. The tether lets you capture aerial images for longer and in more places than a traditional drone."
NH -ACLU, Valley Street jail reach agreement on ICE detainers
NH -Center Conway Fire Department Acquires A Drone
MA - Springfield City Council passes facial recognition moratorium
MA - Harvard students sue university officials over school's investment ties to private prisons: "Students contend in the lawsuit that the money funds the opulent lifestyles of Harvard's top administrators who are prison profiteers."
MA -Auto companies plan to jack up rates for repeat hands-free offenders:
MA -Boston Considers Income-Adjusted Parking Tickets
MA - Red Light Bill Tabled Until March 2nd
NY - NYCLU:Facial Recognition Should Stay Out of Schools
NY - State senate democrats are set to overhaul bail law in place for just six weeks: "But it would also be a response to criticism from judges, prosecutors and police that the current bail law — which is just six weeks old — had taken away their power and discretion to detain dangerous suspects."
NY - Axon Q&A On The State's Discovery Laws
NY - Bloomberg’s NYPD Cozied Up To A Middle East Human Rights Abuser:"The UAE donated $1 million toward the collaboration and ultimately hired the architect of Bloomberg’s widely criticized Muslim surveillance program."
NY - What Bloomberg Did to Peaceful Protesters
NJ - Innocent Man who was punched in the head 12 times sues Camden cop
Jury acquits Camden County police officer of excessive force charge
NJ - When the South Orange Police Stop a Teenager With Special Needs
NJ - ProPublica Asks The Public For Information About Police Misconduct In The State
PA - ACLU weighs in on York City's policy on releasing police body-cam footage:"Pennsylvania's Act 22 of 2017 has an investigative exemption that allows police agencies and public officials to withhold body-camera video indefinitely — even after a case is closed and the defendant and victim are dead, according to Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania News Media Association."
PA - Judge Tears Into Cops For Beating A Man Who Dared To Question Their Words And Actions
PA - Expect more apartments around the city to offer smart-home technology:"Elaborate smart-home systems have been integrated into purchased properties for more than a decade. But in the last couple of years, said Mike McNelis, chief executive officer of the rental brokerage Philly Apartment Co., the technology has become “a focal point” for new rental construction." *SC- Appeals Court Decides Black Men Should Feel Free To Terminate 'Consensual' Stops By Law Enforcement Officers
MD - ICE has run facial-recognition searches on millions of drivers
MD - ICE warrantless facial recognition searches triggers creation of senate bill 649
Maryland General Assembly2020 Session PDF
MD - House Passes Bill to Ban Warrantless Stingray Spying
MD -Firearms Expert for the State Crime Lab, Routinely Lied And Forged Signatures on Firearms Ballistics Reports"Joseph Kopera could explain all things ballistics — shell casings, firing pins, shotgun blasts — and during his tenure with the Maryland State Police forensics division from 1991 to 2007 testified in hundreds of cases."
FL - Body camera video: 6-year-old girl cries, screams for help as Orlando police arrest her at school "Officer Dennis Turner told them he had arrested 6,000 people in his career — the youngest, to that point, was 7. When school employees told him Kaia was 6, not 8 like he thought, he did not seem concerned."
Recommendations for Ohio's facial-recognition system released in report
OH -State to Put 24 Million Drivers Licenses and ID's Into Facial Recognition Database
OH - Kent State University protesters bully DHS out of career fair
MI - Genesee County Judge has suspended its local drone ordinance: "In a news release on its Facebook page, MCDO has called Farah’s ruling a victory that “will likely have a nationwide impact" in states that currently have local restrictions on the operation of drones."
MI - An Innocent Man Beaten By Law Enforcement Asks The Supreme Court To Give Him His Day In Court
MN - House Committee Passes Bill to Ban Warrantless Data Collection
MN - House Committee Passes Bill to Limit Drone Surveillance
IL - Evanston Police Chief, Used Department Computers To Post Lies About Man Being HIV-Positive On Snap Chat, Facebook And Other Social Media Websites PDF
IL - Chicago Cops, Beat, Pepper Spray And Shoot Man Twice For Jumping Between Train Cars: "The shooting happened shortly after 4 p.m. Officers who were dispatched to the scene after receiving a call that another officer needed assistance spotted a man jumping from one car to another, which violates a city ordinance. Officers chased and ultimately grabbed the man."
IL - Innocent elderly couple swarmed by police, handcuffed after being mistaken for bank robbers
VA - Press Has First Amendment Right to See New Court Complaints on Day of Filing
VA - Senators Advance Package of Seven Gun-Control Bills
MS - How an online search for abortion pills landed this woman in jail
KY - Owensboro Police Department Creates Drone Flight Team: "The Owensboro Police Department recently created a 10-member Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Team who were trained and certified to fly the department’s $2,300 drone inside city limits. Lt. Adam Johnston, a member of the team, said the drone is equipped with a 4K digital camera, a thermal imaging application and a speaker so OPD can relay messages from the drone to the ground."
TN - City of Mount Juliet To Install 37 License Plate Readers: "The cameras are hooked up to a hot list from the crime information center. If a vehicle passes one of the cameras, and the license plate is on the hot list, Chief Hambrick says, an alert goes out to patrolling officers."
Safe Virtual Neighborhood Video
VA - Senate Committee Passes Bill to End Civil Asset Forfeiture
NM - Governor signs red-flag gun bill, tells sheriffs to enforce it or resign
TX - Houston Police Want $8.5 Million For New Surveillance Cameras And ShotSpotter Surveillance Devices: ":The technology upgrades include a network of surveillance cameras that homeowners could opt into and a pilot project using a gunshot detection system called ShotSpotter that would cover 5 square miles in south Houston."
TX - 69 convicted solely on disgraced ex-Houston cop's 'evidence' could see new trials
A Police Officer’s Word Convicted Them. Now He’s Charged With Murder
TX - The Harris County DA's office uses private attorneys to prosecute misdemeanor cases
REDACTED Cobin v. City of Phoenix Complaint 6-4-19.Final
CA -Orange CountyDeputies Accused Of Mishandling Evidence On a Staggering Scale
CA -Santa Clara County To Create Task Force To Seize Guns From Banned Owners
CA - Bill Would Restrict Police Participation in FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force
CA - San Francisco D.A. To Announce Sweeping Changes On Sentencing Policy and Police Stops
CA - Patagonia’s new film celebrates activists fighting urban oil drilling in L.A.
EU - Companies Use 'Dark Patterns' to Mislead Users About Privacy Law
France - Government's Data Protection Authority Wants To Keep Track of Online Cookies
UK - Anger over use of facial recognition at south Wales football derby
UK - Betting firms use schools data on 28 million children
SCT - Police Use "Cyber Kiosks" To Scan Smartphones And Laptops
https://www.scotland.police.uk/about-us/police-scotland/specialistcrime-division/cybercrime-investigations-digital-forensics/cyber-kiosks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-AFsvnstM0&feature=emb_title
China - Government's New 200 MPH Smart Train Uses Facial Recognition
India- Why The Government Is Installing Facial Recognition At Its Railway Stations
Africa - New privacy law in Mozambique threatens freedom of expression
Brazil - Navy To Use Boeing's INSITU ScanEagle Surveillance Drones
https://www.insitu.com/information-delivery/unmanned-systems/scaneagle
Bahamas - Government Spent $17 Million On 55 Surveillance Drones
"The deal includes the purchase of 55 short- and medium-range drones, immediate surveillance capabilities, training and support, and the establishment of a regional drone academy."
Puerto Rico - Facebook Warrant Targeting Student Journalists Prompts Fears of Political Surveillance
Mexico - Santander Bank Plans On Collecting 3.7 million customers facial and biometric information
Canada - Ottawa considering 'significant and meaningful' compensation for privacy breach victims
Supreme Court Declines To Consider Whether Travelers Have Standing to Challenge Random TSA Searches
New Book: "Pacifying the Homeland" Proves That Fusion Centers Spy On Minorities And Political Groups
(I highly recommend everyone read this amazing book on what Fusion Centers are really doing, spying on minorities and political groups)
The Right to Move Freely: How we lost it, and why it matters
"With every new government policy trampling on the right to free movement, the court was at best forgetful about what it had said about Americans’ right to be left alone in public, and at worst complicit in disregarding it. With the courts’ consent, the moment at which the citizen moved in public would become the moment of government ambush and control."
CBP Expands Facial Recognition for Global Entry Travelers (Jan 2020)
Philadelphia International Airport To Begin Using Facial Recognition Next Week
St. Louis Lambert International Airport to use CLEAR facial recognition
Airbus Has Created The World's First Facial Recognition Airplane
"Clearview" Facial Recognition Could End Privacy As We Know It
"Without public scrutiny, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year, according to the company, which declined to provide a list. Clearview has shrouded itself in secrecy, avoiding debate about its boundary-pushing technology."
https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=clearview
https://clearview.ai/
http://kirenaga.com/portfolio/clearview-ai/
The U.S. Military Is Building Long-Range Facial Recognition That Works in the Dark
America Is The 4th Worst Abuser Of Biometric Privacy Rights In The World
The U.S. Marshals Service Claims They Need Counter-Biometric Experts
Biometric Companies Increasingly Hit With Privacy Act Lawsuits
Congress moves toward facial recognition regulation
US lawmakers concerned by accuracy of facial recognition
AOC is sounding the alarm about the rise of facial recognition: "This is some real-life Black Mirror stuff"
How the Police Use Facial Recognition, and Where It Falls Short
The University of New Mexico has developed a wearable facial recognition device for firefighters
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925231219311579
Fight for the Future campaign to keep facial recognition off college campuses
VIVOTEK and CyberLink Announce Strategic Partnership in Facial Recognition:
CES 2020 in Las Vegas: Facial recognition could take over, one 'convenience' at a time
It’s time to get used to facial recognition cameras watching us in our cars
Netki Releases Enhanced Facial Recognition Technology for OnboardID
Despite what you may think, face recognition surveillance isn’t inevitable
Apple shared customer data with US government in a record-high 90% of cases:
Investigators Say iPhone is Easier to Crack
“We’ve got the tools to extract data from an iPhone 5 and 7 now,” said Andy Garrett, a chief executive of Garrett Discovery, a forensics investigation firm. “Everybody does.”
The FBI used Graykey to unlock an iPhone 11 Pro:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/01/15/fbi-reportedly-accessed-locked-iphone-11-pro-max-with-graykey-third-party-tool
https://graykey.grayshift.com/
Surveillance Cameras Are Changing Our Understanding of Human Behavior
The case for ... cities that aren't dystopian surveillance states:
How Much Have Americans Been Spied On? (Sharyl Attkisson)
Times Up for Mass Surveillance (Section 215 Of The Patriot Act)
Judicial Watch Sues The State Department About Their CrowdTangle Social Media Monitoring Program
Now Stores Must Tell You How They're Tracking Your Every Move:
"That includes “smartphone detectors” and Wi-Fi routers that note the location and unique identifiers of your phone, and cameras equipped with software that estimates your age and gender."
What kind of data is my new car collecting about me? Nearly everything it can, apparently
BlackVue's Flawed Design Let Us Track Drivers in Real-Time Across the US
The Ann Arbor Connected Environment Is The Country's Largest Deployment Of Connected (Spying) Vehicle Technology:
CES 2020: 'Surveillance' tech including a doorbell with night vision, an eyelid-tracking dash cam and an autonomous DRONE that patrols your garden
Illinois Man Sues Fingerprint Database Service Over Privacy Law Breach:
"Paul Sayas wants to initiate a class-action lawsuit against “Biometric Impressions”, a fingerprint database and biometrics checking service provider."
Police arrested an innocent man for murder using Google (Geo Fence) location data
Free speech zones galore: 5 Times students’ First Amendment rights were violated on campus in 2019
A billion medical images are exposed online, as doctors ignore warnings
Confidential patient data freely accessible on the internet
Out of Control: How consumers are exploited by the online advertising industry
“The evidence keeps mounting against the commercial surveillance systems at the heart of online advertising, the Council writes, dubbing the current situation completely out of control, harming consumers, societies, and businesses.”
Camera apps with billions of downloads steal your data and infect your phone with malware:
Funnel raises $47 million to automate data collection for marketers
"Funnel connects with more than 500 data sources, from LinkedIn and Mailchimp to Salesforce and Shopify. It then automatically cleans, maps, and groups this data before feeding it into a destination of the user’s choice — anything from Tableau to Looker, Microsoft Power BI, or Qlik."
Grindr and OkCupid reveal personal information to advertising agencies
Amazon's Alexa Spies On Peoples Whispers "Amazon expanded the feature to all locales in November 2019, such that all smart home appliances powered by Alexa — the company’s virtual assistant — now respond to whispered speech by whispering back."
Apple And Amazon Both Exceed In Exploiting America:
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2020/01/apple-and-amazon-both-exceed-in.html
Microsoft's Fitbit Wants to Spy On Yo While You Sleep:
Large Military-Grade Drones Could Soon Be Flying Over Your Backyard
"SkyGuardian’s endurance represents a dramatic advantage for police departments as a replacement for human-piloted helicopters, which are limited by how long the pilot can stay in the air. Using SkyGuardian, police would be able to silently monitor suspects or protests for up to 40 hours and stream high-resolution video to police from more than 2,000 feet above."
State Of New York To Invest $9 Million In Griffiss Drone Facility
MA - Cambridge bans facial recognition technology, becoming fourth community in the state to do so:
MA - Springfield City Council moves to ban facial recognition; says systems are unproven, inaccurate
MA - After Years Of Corruption State Police Agree To Install Vehicle Locator System But Only If They Get A Raise
"This is the second version of the AVL that the state has used. It initially implemented the system in May 2018 in wake of the state police overtime scandal. The initial system was installed in about 1,000 cruisers."
MA - "Stranger Labs" In Cambridge Has Been Awarded $197,020.95 By DHS
NY - Lockport Trustee Wants School District to Get Refund for Recognition Tech:
IL - Supreme Court to decide whether smell of pot is grounds to search a car:
IL - City Of Fairview Heights Installs DEA License Plate Readers:
"The other resolution approved by the council calls for the city to belong to the National License Plate Reader Network which is administered by the DEA. The agreement with the DEA allows Fairview Heights Police to both input data into the national system and retrieve data from it along with establishing the processes for the sharing and use of such information."
IL - Evaluation Of Real-Time Crime Centers in Chicago:
MS - Lambert International Airport To Use CLEAR Facial Recognition System:
AL - The City of Fultondale approves "Flock Safety" license plate reading cameras:
CO - Woman uses red flag law against officer who shot and killed her son:
CO - Police Use DHS's Secret Multi-Mission Aircraft To Identify Mysterious Drones:
"A state surveillance airplane loaded with sophisticated cameras and sensors was launched Monday evening."
TX - Leon Valley red light camera program produces over 50,000 citations in 2019:
"Police Chief Joe Salvaggio says 55,308 citations were issued in Leon Valley in 2019. Tickets cost $75 if paid on time, $100 if they are paid late. That translates into potential annual revenue of over $4 million for the city."
TX - Memorial Village Police Claim 20 License Plate Readers Help Catch Criminals:
WA - Privacy Bill Would Authorize Fines for Violators:
CA - Body cams contradict LAPD’s gang designations. It’s another milestone in their use:
CA - LAPD probe expands into falsification of traffic stop data:
CA - Disgraced Ex-LA Sheriff Lee Baca Ordered to Prison After Justices Refuse Appeal:
CA - Police unions, agencies should pay attorneys’ fees in fight over misconduct records:
CA - San Diego Sheriffs Have Been Using Drones To Allegedly Engage And Count Homeless For Two Years:
“Our goal is to engage every person we see who is homeless,” said Tamera Kohler, CEO of the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless
Governments of the world just ramped up spying on reporters:
https://www.cjr.org/first_person/ft-nations-surveillance-attacks.php
EU - Commission VP Margrethe Vestager says Automated facial recognition breaches data protection rules:
EU - Leaked Reports Show Police Are Planning a Pan-European Network of Facial Recognition Databases:
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/21/eu-facial-recognition-database/
EU - The European Commission backtracks on plans to ban facial recognition:
https://euobserver.com/science/147500
EU - Whitepaper On Artificial Intelligence:
EU - Why is regulating artificial intelligence important in Europe?
"Like any new technology, artificial intelligence carries some risks. Clearly, we cannot allow our privacy to be violated or algorithms that are used to discriminate."
Russia - Government allegedly deploys facial recognition technology for coronavirus quarantine:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/moscow-deploys-facial-recognition-technology-123136718.html
Germany - Veridos provides real-time facial recognition for Munich Security Conference:
"Additionally, verification of the badges can be supported by scanning high-security short-range chips with specialized handheld RFID readers and smartphones, thus enabling security personnel to manually verify the participant if necessary."
Czech Republic - Balkan spies 'feed' EU's police database:
"Secret services in at least one non-EU Western Balkan state are indirectly feeding the EU's police database with alerts on suspected foreign terrorist fighters."https://euobserver.com/justice/147420
UK - The International Casino Exhibition 2020 celebrates customer facial recognition companies:
UK - South Wales Police Claim Automated Facial Recognition Helps Them Become Smarter, Creating a Safer and Connected Community: http://afr.south-wales.police.uk/
UK - The long arm of the algorithm? Automated Facial Recognition as evidence and trigger for police intervention
"This paper reviews the recent decision regarding the deployment of AFR by South Wales Police."
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3505456
UK - Britain First leader Paul Golding charged under the Terrorism Act For Refusing To Give Police Access To His Phone:
"Paul Golding, the leader of the fringe far-right group Britain First, has been charged with an offence under the Terrorism Act after refusing to give police access to his phone."
UK - Government Urges Parents to Report Their Kids to Police for using Virtual machines, the Tor Browser, Kali GNU/GNU/Linux, WiFi Pineapple, Discord, and Metasploit:
UK - Center for Data Ethics and Innovation publishes final report on “online targeting”
UK - Privacy Nightmare: Google plans to move British users accounts to the U.S.
UK - Barclays scraps 'Big Brother' staff tracking system:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51570401
UK - Protesters rally against Assange extradition:
IRL - Data Protection Commission investigates GDPR violations by Facebook and others:
https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/data-protection-commission-publishes-2019-annual-report
China - Government Installs Facial recognition Thermometers in Buses in Guangdong Province:
China - Xinjiang camps Leaked records expose how Uyghurs are judged and detained:
"Officials, track everyone's jobs, religious activity, trustworthiness and their level of cooperation with the authorities."
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/02/asia/xinjiang-china-karakax-document-intl-hnk/
Singapore - TRD unveiled the Orion-H+, a handheld counter-drone jamming system:
Singapore - Police To Use HID Global Biometrics To Identify Drivers License Applicants:
S. Korea - Government Tracks Virus Patients’ Travels—and Publishes Them Online:
India - Police open case against hundreds of people in Jammu and Kashmir for using VPN:
AU - Peter Dutton renews calls for 'public debate' over domestic surveillance powers:
AU - Competition and Consumer Commission to examine anti-competitive behavior by Google and Facebook:
Philippines - Government uses Dermalog Facial Recognition To Create Biometric Drivers Licenses:
"Up to 20,000 licenses are issued by LTO per day and about 14 million citizens already hold the new biometric driver's license."
South America - Banks In Numerous Countries Are Using Aware, Inc. Facial Recognition To Identify Customers:
(Knomi is from Bedford, Mass.)
https://www.aware.com/press-releases/
https://www.aware.com/knomi-mobile-biometric-authentication/
Argentina - HID Global To Create National Biometric ID Card:
Canada - Ottawa Police Admit To Secretly Using Facial Recognition in 2019:
Canada - Privacy commissioners launch investigation into Clearview facial recognition tested by police:
Canada - What Canadians can learn from this Michigan city's use of doorbell cameras to catch criminals:
"The whole system of frictionless video sharing with the police undermines most of the privacy rights that we've built over time," said Bonnie Stewart, a University of Windsor education professor who studies technology's implications for everyday life. She compared it to "building a surveillance infrastructure that looks back at us."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/livonia-michigan-windsor-ontario-ring-doorbell-1.5464761
Canada - After Police Defend a Gas Pipeline Over Indigenous Land Rights, Protesters Shut Down Railways Across The Country:
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/23/wetsuweten-protest-coastal-gaslink-pipeline/
Canada - Royal Canadian Mounted Police Throw Man With Stroke In Jail For 18 Hours Thought He Was Drunk:
"According to police reports, a bar employee assumed he had arrived drunk — since Adam Ruel had only had a glass of water at the bar — kicked Ruel out and called police. The arresting officer reported smelling alcohol on Ruel's breath. Ruel says he told officers he wasn't drunk and asked for a breathalyzer test but was denied."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/rcmp-jail-cell-stroke-drunk-tank-1.5459539
Canada - Personal Data of 144,000 Citizens Breached by Federal Authorities:
Canada - Draganfly wants to use drones to scan large crowds for viruses:
What the Hell Is That Device, and Is It Spying on You? This App Might Have the Answer
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8pgj/internet-of-things-tracking-app-spying
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.iotprivacy.iotassistant
EFF to California Appeals Court: Border Searches of Electronic Devices Require a Warrant
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-amicus-brief-elsharkawi-v-us-9th-cir
Airports warn of chaos as up to 181 MILLION Americans rush to get Real IDs:
Homeland Security waives contracting laws for border wall:
https://apnews.com/1689fa48a2e177d1f397b95ff0cb97db
CBP Memo Confirms Bus Drivers Have A Right To Deny Agents Permission To Search Buses And Passengers:
https://apnews.com/48960c783dd3f22af2ad320227e40b20
Comedian Mohanad Elshieky Is Suing CBP For Pulling Him Off Of Greyhound Bus And Detaining Him:
"“I have been stopped and questioned before by people who are militia members, where there are no laws at the time to stop them from doing so,” he said. “It just shows you that people across the world can have the same mentality, which is not OK. It’s an abuse of power that needs to stop.”
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-21/comedian-border-patrol-libya-asylum
It’s time for Greyhound to say no to CBP harassment of bus riders:
Greyhound will allegedly stop allowing Border Patrol agents to conduct immigration checks on buses without warrant:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/greyhound-stop-border-patrol-agents-immigration-checks-without-warrant
NY Governor offers Trump DMV data, but no Social Security numbers:
"It’s part of an effort to persuade the Trump administration to let state residents back into Global Entry and other frequent traveler programs."
https://www.localsyr.com/news/state-news/cuomo-offers-trump-dmv-data-but-no-social-security-numbers/
EPIC Obtains Documents About TSA's VIPR Program:
https://epic.org/2020/02/epic-obtains-documents-about-t.html
Part 1
https://epic.org/foia/tsa/EPIC-15-09-22-TSA-FOIA-20200214-Production-pt1.pdf
Part 2
https://epic.org/foia/tsa/EPIC-15-09-22-TSA-FOIA-20200214-Production-pt2.pdf
Part 3
https://epic.org/foia/tsa/EPIC-15-09-22-TSA-FOIA-20200214-Production-pt3.pdf
ICE's Destruction of Civil Rights Violation Records Must Be Stopped:
https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/ices-destruction-of-records-must-be-stopped/
Inside the Secretive Court at Guantanamo Bay as CIA Torture Architect Testifies:
Portland, Oregon considering strictest ban on facial recognition technology in the U.S.
EPIC Obtains Details on State Department's Facial Recognition Program:
"The State Department agreements include the Labor, Interior, and Defense Departments. Several of the documents EPIC obtained concealed the name of the federal agency accessing the State Department database."
https://epic.org/foia/dos/facial-recognition-database/#foia
Senate Bill Would Ban Federal Use of Facial Recognition:
https://www.merkley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/20.02.12%20Facial%20Recognition.pdf
A Simple Introduction to Mixnets (CCTV Facial Recognition Surveillance)
"This is the magic of one of our technologies, called Sphinx. All information traveling through the mixnet (the street, in our analogy) is wrapped up in Sphinx packets. Sphinx makes it difficult to distinguish between different pieces of information because it wraps all distinguishing features under into a bland, same-ish uniform of encryption.".
https://medium.com/nymtech/a-simple-introduction-to-mixnets-6783a103d20e
Clearview's ‘Face search’ creeps people out. But it still has a future—in AR:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90463340/face-search-freaks-people-out-but-it-still-has-a-future-in-ar
PhotoSquared App Exposed 100,000+ Customer Photos:
https://www.techradar.com/news/photosquared-data-leak-puts-thousands-of-users-at-risk
Vuzix Announces Partnership With TensorMark To Create Facial Recognition Glasses:
https://ir.vuzix.com/press-releases/detail/1747
U.S. Army Modernizes Its Biometric Processing Capabilities (Facial & Iris Recognition)
"The Biometrics Automated Toolset -- Army (BAT-A) is a handheld device used by deployed Soldiers to collect, process and reference biometric identity information -- such as iris, fingerprint and facial images -- during force protection screenings."
https://www.army.mil/article/232346/army_modernizes_its_biometric_processing_capabilities
Oakland Community College Banned Students From Discussing Facial Recognition:
The FBI's Sloppy FISA Surveillance Is Exposed:
https://reason.com/2020/02/19/the-fbis-sloppy-fisa-surveillance-is-exposed/
Warrant-Proof Encrypted Messages Targeted By Trump Administration:
Bayer Enters Real-Time Tracking or Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) Field:
"It will also become a talent pipeline for companies like Bayer and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which is relocating its Washington, D.C. headquarters to a site that is less than two miles away from T-REX."
Ring cameras can help you spy on your neighbors, but they haven’t really helped police:
House Oversight panel wants a briefing with Amazon officials about Ring Doorbells:
Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs:
"They analyzed their neighbors. They monitored their kids and house guests. And they judged the performance of housekeepers, babysitters and other domestic workers, often without letting them know they were being recorded. I know maybe I should tell them, one woman explained, but they won't be as candid."
https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/Ring-and-Nest-helped-normalize-American-15064072.php
Don't worry, Alexa and friends only record you up to 19 times a day:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/dont-worry-alexa-and-friends-only-record-you-up-to-19-times-a-day/
The Only Way To Stop Amazon Alexa From Spying On Your Family, Throw It Away:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11012582/amazon-alexa-recording-audio-home-listen/
The For-Profit Contractor (Lexipol) Behind Troubled Policing In Pete Buttigieg’s South Bend:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/south-bend-police-pete-buttigieg-lexipol_n_5e504139c5b6b82aa653167f
Lexipol, a private for-profit company, has quietly become one of the most powerful voices in American law enforcement policy
Axon rolls out the next level of police technology: Live-streaming body cameras
The Crime Reports Handbook To America's 1,700 correctional facilities:
"The federal government alone spends nearly $8 billion annually to house only a small fraction of the nation’s inmates – there is relatively little in-depth coverage of the subject by news media."
https://thecrimereport.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/COVERING-AMERICAS-CORRECTION-SYSTEM.pdf
Police Chases Over Minor Crimes Kill Thousands of Innocent Bystanders:
"There is no comprehensive, national database on police chases. The IACP report is based upon data for just under 8,000 police chases, a tiny fraction of the total – even for one year. To put it into perspective, California reported 9,343 police chases in 2017 alone."
https://www.thefinelawfirm.com/people-killed-in-police-chases/
Compliance 101: Gun-Toting Cops Endanger Students and Turn the Schools into Prisons
"Welcome to Compliance 101: the police state’s primer in how to churn out compliant citizens and transform the nation’s school’s into quasi-prisons through the use of surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills. Young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, threatened, tied up, locked down, treated like criminals for non-criminal behavior, tasered and in some cases shot."
Mom says police deceived her to get her DNA and charge her son with murder:
A murder case raises the question: Is it OK for police to lie to get an innocent person's DNA?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/they-lied-us-mom-says-police-deceived-her-get-her-n1140696
Courtroom Psychology and IQ Tests are Junk Science:
"Most of the tools used in courts (90%) have been subjected to testing, but information about general acceptance was available for only about half of them. Of the tools for which general acceptance data were available, only about two thirds could be considered generally accepted by the psychological community at large, and a third were clearly not accepted."
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/10.1177%2F1529100619888860+-+FREE/pdf
Why Section 230 Matters And How Not To Break The Internet; DOJ 230 Workshop Review, Part I
Section 230 and Criminal Law; DOJ 230 Workshop Review, Part II
Corporations are working with the Trump administration to control online speech:
Deepfake Bot Submissions to Federal Public Comment Websites Cannot Be Distinguished from Human Submissions:
https://techscience.org/a/2019121801/
Study Finds Online Surveys Vulnerable to Bad Data
The Extradition of Assange Would Set a Dangerous Precedent:
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer said.
https://truthout.org/articles/extradition-of-assange-would-set-a-dangerous-precedent/
Microsoft, the ID2020 Alliance, universal digital identification and you:
"The fundamental mission of creating a universal identification system that incorporates every person on the globe, using modern technology and the support of various governments, financial institutions and more is the goal hidden behind the humanitarian cause."
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-universal-digital-identification-and-you
Trump's next health care move: Giving Silicon Valley your medical data
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/19/trump-silicon-valley-medical-115879
Health apps can change their terms of service without users’ knowledge:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/21/21146097/health-apps-terms-of-service-change-privacy
In smart apartments, is tenants’ privacy for rent?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/11/business/smart-apartments-is-tenants-privacy-rent/
Airbnb Is Pushing Surveillance Devices as 'Party Prevention'
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akwnga/airbnb-is-pushing-surveillance-devices-as-party-prevention
Inside the Black Mirror World of Polygraph Job Screenings:
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-polygraph-job-screening-black-mirror/
How your browser protects your privacy (Firefox, Safari, Edge, Brave, Chrome):
11 most important iPhone security and privacy settings:
Android apps are secretly sharing your data with Facebook:
https://learnworthy.net/android-apps-are-secretly-sharing-your-data-with-facebook/
MIT Researchers Raise Security, Privacy Concerns With Voatz App:
https://www.meritalk.com/articles/mit-researchers-raise-security-privacy-concerns-with-voatz-app/
How to identify and remove KidsGuard ‘stalkerware’ from your phone:
https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/kidsguard-remove-stalkerware/
Sacramento Police Department is the first to test micro-drones in the U.S.
"The Sacramento Police Department, which are first in the country to test them out. Police Chief Daniel Hahn said the 12 small drones the department has, which are about the size an adult man’s fist, cost about $90 each."
https://www.fatshark.com/fatshark101/
https://www.fatshark.com/blog/introducing-fat-shark-101-drone-training-system/
ME - Comcast, AT&T Sue The State Over Privacy Law, Claim It Violates Free Speech:
NH - House Passes Bill to Ban Facial Recognition:
MA - Joint Legislative Committee Passes Bill to Limit ALPR Use:
MA - Senate Could Approve Red Light Cameras By Thursday Feb. 27th:
https://www.telegram.com/news/20200220/red-light-cameras-could-get-green-light-from-state-senate
Senate Bill 2553
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/S2553
MA - Collective Punishment At The Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center:
"The Department of Correction reported to the Legislature last year that roughly 3,200 inmates had spent time in solitary in the first six months of the year. More than 200 of those inmates were placed in solitary for two months or more.”
https://theappeal.org/collective-punishment-at-a-massachusetts-prison/
CT - State Police Caught On Camera Conspiring Against DUI Checkpoint Protestor Settle For $50,000
NY - Lawsuit Claims ICE Agents Shot Unarmed Man In The Face At Point-Blank Range:
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Border-Patrol-Shooting.pdf
NY - NYPD Stop & Frisks Rose Last Year To 13,459
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-ties-a-rise-in-stop-and-frisk-to-better-reporting-11582058090
NY - Mike Bloomberg Ran Stasi-Style Police and Surveillance Operations Against Muslim Americans:
NY - The New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner Has Underreported Lab Errors In DNA Database It Oversees:
https://theappeal.org/new-york-city-dna-database-lab-errors/
NY - Police, Prosecutors and Republicans Are Looking To Undo Criminal Justice Reform:
https://theintercept.com/2020/02/23/criminal-justice-bail-reform-backlash-new-york/
NY - Opponents of Plan to Close Rikers Prison Sue NYC:
"Queens Residents United and Community Preservation Coalition, both of which are based in Kew Gardens, filed their 45-page petition Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court."
https://www.courthousenews.com/opponents-of-plan-to-close-rikers-prison-sue-nyc/
NY - New York Post Reporter’s Twitter Account Subpoenaed by the NYPD
NY - NYPD Lied About National Security During An Attempt To Obtain A Journalist's Records From Twitter:
NY - NYC generated over $10 Million in speed camera violations during January:
NY - Drivers of color more likely to have licenses suspended:
Driving While Black And Latinx: Stops, Fines, Fees, and Unjust Debts
NY - Suffolk County To Attempt To Ban Smoking In Private Homes:
"The lawmaker added offenders could be fined up to $1,000 or even arrested, and that enforcement will be complaint driven."
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/02/19/suffolk-county-smoking-ban-private-home-secondhand-smoke/
NJ - Camden Police Use ShotSpotter's AI At Their Command Center To Predict Where Crime WIll Occur:
"Each person sits before six computer monitors displaying video feeds from surveillance cameras, maps, real time police call data, and the intelligence they’ve collected to make sense of it all. ShotSpotter says that its system uses data including past police calls and crime data, the time, day and season, plus environmental factors like the density of vacant properties or bars."
PA - Acquitted Cops Smirked At Jurors And Laughed At Defense Attorney
Judge: “You perjured yourselves. You escalated a situation without cause. Cops smirking on the stand at this jury, laughing at the defense attorney, high-fiving in the hallway after testimony as if there were something, anything, to be proud of here."
PA - 376,000 drivers have their licenses suspended for unpaid traffic tickets. That’s more than the population of Pittsburgh:
https://projects.publicsource.org/true-cost-of-court-debt/part-three.html
DC - Washington DC issues record $1 BILLION in traffic and parking tickets, AAA calls it 'predatory'
https://wjla.com/features/7-on-your-side/dc-issues-a-record-1-billion-in-traffic-and-parking-tickets
MD - Senate Passes Bill to Ban Warrantless Stingray Spying:
MD - Farmer Randy Sowers Fought IRS Over Numerous Cash Deposits of Less Than $10,000:
https://www.agweb.com/article/farmer-refuses-roll-rips-lid-irs-behavior
VA - New light poles around Hampton will have surveillance cameras for police:
VA - State Police want to charge drivers a fee for digitized tickets:
https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+HB172
Formerly Known as HB381
https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?181+sum+HB381
NC - Home Owners Associations Use Flock Safety License Plate Readers And Send Info To The Police:
"In Durham, there's another draw for potential customers. An agreement between the company and the police department allows detectives to access camera data directly, without requesting it from the HOA."
https://www.wral.com/ai-powered-cameras-upgrade-community-watch-and-privacy-concerns/18912240/
NC - Appeals Court Ruled That 30 years of satellite based monitoring of this convicted sex offender was unreasonable:
https://www.nccourts.gov/documents/appellate-court-opinions/state-v-griffin-21
NC - Greensboro police searched 800 cars or their drivers. Motorists say not all searches were proper:
SC - Deputy Body Slams and Arrests Man For Recording him in Public:
FL - Deputy Pulls Gun On High School Student Trying To Leave Campus To Go To A Dentist Appointment:
FL - 6-Year-Old Girl Taken From School by Police Held in Facility for 48 Hours for a Tantrum:
https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Mom-wants-answers-after-girl-taken-to-mental-15044957.php
FL - School Staffer Body-Slammed A 12-Year-Old Boy For Cutting In Lunch Line:
"The next day, the boy’s mom kept him home from school with what she thought was the flu. On Thursday, she took him to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. There she learned he had a skull fracture, two subdural hematomas and a brain bleed, police said."
FL - Cop Charged For Deputy Caught Yanking A 13-Year-Old Girl’s Hair:
“She was afraid to go to school. She is afraid to talk to people. She was like hiding. She has a fear behind her head that anything can happen to them, until now,” her aunt said.
FL - PA Man Instantly Turned Into A Felon Once He Moved To Daytona Beach:
FL - Appeals Court: State Can't Require Payment of Court Debts To Regain Voting Rights:
FL - New Report Highlights Link Between Red-Light Camera Companies & Politicians:
MI - Innocent Man Beaten & Hospitalized By Police Asks U.S. Supreme Court To Hold State/Federal Task Forces Accountable For Constitutional Violations:
MN - 15 Police Departments Have Created Video Doorbell Neighborhood Watch Groups:
"Since July 2019, 15 police departments and county sheriff's offices around Minnesota have joined forces with Ring to gain voluntary access to homeowners' surveillance systems. Society has changed. The old way of policing is gone, Jeff Magee, a retired St. Paul ATF agent said from a St. Paul coffee shop, noting that he’s under constant surveillance when he steps outside his home. There is no real privacy.”
MI - Following Lawsuit, Detroit Police Return Car Illegally Seized Using Civil Forfeiture:
MI - Police Task Force Plays Jurisdiction Games To Avoid Compensating an Innocent Man Cops Put in the Hospital:
MI - How the City of Bessemer Decided to Buy This Ridiculous $2,000 Weed-Smelling Device:
WI - Milwaukee Police Department Releases Semiannual Stop And Frisk Analysis:
https://www.wpr.org/milwaukee-police-department-releases-semiannual-stop-and-frisk-analysis
WI - 8 in10 Milwaukee police stop-and-frisk incidents lack justification:
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/report-8-out-of-10-mpd-stop-and-frisks-are-not-justified
IL - Lawsuit Accuses Motorola (Mugshots) and Vigilant Solutions of Violating The Biometric Information Privacy Act:
https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/emerging-tech/motorola-sued-over-mugshot-database/
IL - Lawsuit Accuses OkCupid Of Violating the Biometric Information Privacy Act:
IL - Kane County Police Plan 'No Refusal' DUI Patrol Around St. Patrick's Day, Because Repeat Drunks Would Refuse Breathalyzers:
"Next month's patrol will be the 25th No Refusal event, which was created with the rationale was that savvy or repeat DUI suspects would often refuse any testing to prevent police from collecting evidence that could lead to another conviction."
IL - School Employees Have Used Isolated Timeouts Illegally:
"In six of eight districts investigators examined, they found that workers broke the law by improperly secluding students."
IL - Vernon Hills Police Department uses Auto Thefts, to Justify buying 10 Solar-Powered Flock Safety License Plate Readers:
"Vernon Hills will soon get 10 solar cameras. The black boxes will be mounted to poles and will take snapshots of every vehicle’s plate as the drivers pass through the intersections."
IA - Swim Team Student Gets Thrown On The Ground And A Gun Pointed At His Head For 'Taking A Selfie While Black'
IN - State supreme court rules for man charged with theft for removing GPS planted on his car by cops:
https://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/02202001lhr.pdf
DE - Cops Smell Weed on 16- Year-Old Teen and Beat the Hell Out of Him:
MS - Handcuffed Black Motorist Sues Water Valley Police Department After Being Beaten By Cops For A Suspended License:
https://www.wcbi.com/grenada-county-man-files-lawsuit-allegedly-beaten-officers/
http://media.heartlandtv.com/documents/FILE_5463.pdf
MS - MEMA Plans To Adopt RapidSOS Which Can Pinpoint A Cellphone To Within 3 Feet:
https://www.msema.org/news/mema-introduces-counties-to-rapidsos-for-faster-emergency-response/
MO - Proposed legislation would allow testing of workers for medical pot:
https://www.senate.mo.gov/19info/pdf-bill/intro/SB227.pdf
MO - Appeals Court upholds verdict awarding $100,000 to a woman falsely arrested over a red light camera ticket:
"The city of St. Peters insisted that the judgment be overturned on the grounds of sovereign immunity, but the Court of Appeals disagreed in an unsigned memorandum opinion."
http://thenewspaper.com/news/68/6892.asp
TN - Personal information of 7.2 million drivers sold to companies by state agency:
KY - Boyle County Decides To Only Take 25% Of Inmates Money Off The Top:
"In Boyle County, if anyone puts money into an inmate’s account — allowing the inmate to buy things like additional food, drink or clothes — 50% of that money is taken off the top by the county government."
KY - Appeals Court Says Cops Need Warrants To Obtain Real-Time Cell Site Location Info:
LA - State Continues to Imprison People Past Their Release Dates:
https://theappeal.org/louisiana-continues-to-imprison-people-past-their-release-dates/
AL - Guards beat, hog-tied, ignored inmate who later died:
NM - Senate Passes Bill to Strengthen Electronic Communications Privacy Act:
NM - AG sues Google for collecting school kids' personal data:
https://apnews.com/68de82f96a1c61fdbd51dbb71bd8c1df
TX - William P. Hobby Airport Begins Using Facial Recognition:
TX - The Memorial Villages Police Department and 25 Communities Use Flock Safety License Plate Readers To Track Every Vehicle:
"More than 25 communities in Greater Houston now use Flock Safety’s license plate readers. The city of Katy just adopted them last month, and Sugar Land has used the technology for more than a decade. And Memorial City Mall is the latest Houston area location that will be using the readers."
TX - Cop Convicted of "Official Oppression" For Entering A Person's Home Because He Yelled At Officer To Slow Down:
TX - Houston D.A. Doubles the Scope of Her Case Review Following a Deadly Drug Raid Based on a Phony Affidavit:
TX - Waco Police Department releases latest Racial Profiling Report:
UT - State Signs Participating Addendum with Avion Unmanned:
"Avion Solutions, Inc., signed a participating addendum with the State of Utah's Division of Purchasing that allows for the use of this contract by the State's agencies, political subdivisions and institutions. This contract opens the door for Avion Unmanned to provide UAS services to state and local government agencies."
OR - House passes bill to stop courts from suspending licenses over unpaid traffic fines:
WA - Senate approves consumer-privacy bill to place restrictions on facial recognition:
WA - House Bill 2566 would impose round-the-clock camera surveillance on the traveling public:
http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2019-20/Pdf/Bills/House%20Bills/2566.pdf?q=20200217143305
WA - Senate bill would discourage ticket quotas for officers:
https://mynorthwest.com/1723060/ticket-quotas-officers-washington/
http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2019-20/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Bills/6316.pdf#page=1
CA - UCLA Abandons Plans to Use Facial Recognition After Backlash:
CA - Cops Are Collecting Info on Millions of Drivers Who Have Done Nothing Wrong:
The Four Law Enforcement Agencies We Reviewed Have Not Consistently Fulfilled Requirements Designed to Protect Individuals’ Privacy
https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2019-118/auditresults.html
CA - Got a red light ticket? Chances are cops still have the photo:
Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article240276126.html#storylink=cpy
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article240276126.html
CA - License-plate spy programs missing 1 important requirement:
https://www.wnd.com/2020/02/license-plate-spy-programs-missing-1-important-requirement/
CA - Auditor Slams License Plate Readers on Privacy Issues:
"Technology gives governments the ability to accumulate volumes of information about people, raising a reasonable question: How is an individual's privacy to be preserved?" State Auditor Elaine M. Howle asked.
http://thenewspaper.com/news/68/6893.asp
http://thenewspaper.com/rlc/docs/2020/ca-lpraudit.pdf
CA - Unconstitutional Homeless ‘Sweeps’ Settlement: Homeless People Get $5,500 Each, Attorneys Get $3.5 MILLION
"If the deal is approved, Caltrans will pay $1.3 million to compensate homeless plaintiffs in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville — paying out up to $5,500 per person. Caltrans will pay another $700,000 to the nonprofit Homeless Action Center, plus $3.5 million in attorneys’ fees."
CA - ICE Agents Ignore Sanctuary Law, Make Arrests at Sonoma County Superior Court:
"ICE said in a statement that California’s law doesn’t supersede federal law and “will not govern the conduct of federal officers acting pursuant to duly enacted laws passed by Congress that provide the authority to make administrative arrests of removable aliens inside the United States.”
CA - Chula Vista police to expand drone program:
"Since launching in October 2017, the Chula Vista Police Department has dispatched drones to 911 calls 1,509 times and drones have assisted in 224 arrests."
Drone Company Worked Closely with Chula Vista PD and the City of San Diego to Create BVLOS Drones:
"Cape, a cloud platform for drone telepresence and data management, has announced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted the first-ever Certificate of Authorization (COA) with a provision for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) for a public safety organization."
"Since October 2018, Cape has powered the nation’s first Drone as a First Responder program in partnership with the Chula Vista Police Department, where drones are integrated into daily emergency response operations as part of the San Diego Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Pilot Program."
https://www.uasvision.com/2019/03/21/first-faa-coa-with-bvlos-provision-for-public-safety-drone-program/
- https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-collection-violated-human-rights-strasbourg-court-rules
- https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/16/them-too/
- https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2018/08/21/google-data-collection-research/
- https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/04/facebook-terms-of-service/
- https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/21/technology/google-data-collection/index.html
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/us-tech-giants-knew-nsa-data-collection-rajesh-de
- https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/apples-tim-cook-warns-silicon-valley-it-would-be-destructive-to-block-strong-privacy-laws.html
- https://cointelegraph.com/news/electronics-giant-bosch-partners-with-iota-to-launch-new-device-for-iot-data-collection
- https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/11/bumble-bees-bearing-high-tech-backpacks-act-as-a-living-data-collection-platform/
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/01/nsa-data-collection-tech-firms
- https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/typeform-a-platform-for-conversational-data-collection-raises-35m/
- https://www.coindesk.com/brave-launches-legal-offensive-on-google-ads-data-collection-practices
- https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/2-million-users-impacted-by-new-data-collection-policy-in-stylish-browser-add-on/
- https://news.bitcoin.com/pr-crowdforce-launches-ico-for-blockchain-based-agency-banking-data-collection-platform/
- https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/11/13/bosch-boosts-iota-with-new-device-connectivity-for-iot-data-collection/
- https://bitcoinist.com/shapeshift-ends-anonymity-with-announcement-of-mandatory-kyc-data-collection/
Amazon Ring Doorbells
Amazon has been gifting local police departments with a video surveillance system that has a back-end portal for the police. The hardware is partnered with software called Neighborhood Watch that allows people to share the footage they collect with their cameras.
Amazon is going to continue to expand their surveillance network. Together, we can shut down Amazon’s surveillance dragnet.
The Policing of the American Porch (Ring Doorbells)
Video system hacked by a digital intruder in 8 year-old child's bedroom
1. Forbes
2. Reuters
5. The Atlantic