Privacy & New Media

EPIC Again Urges DHS Advisory Committee to Investigate Fusion Centers

17 11 2020

EPIC

Nov. 10, 2020

EPIC submitted comments urging the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee to investigate fusion centers and recommend that DHS ban facial recognition technology at fusion centers.

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Portland City Council Votes to Ban Facial Recognition

12 09 2020

EPIC

September 10, 2020

The Portland City Council has passed two ordinances banning the use of facial recognition. One ordinance prohibits the city from using facial recognition. A second ordinance prohibits private companies from using facial recognition in public spaces. The ordinances note the technologies demonstrated “biases against Black people, women, and older people.” Portland joins a growing list of cities that have banned the facial recognition technology, including Boston, Oakland, and San Francisco. EPIC has launched a campaign to Ban Face Surveillance and through the Public Voice coalition gathered the support of over 100 organizations and many leading experts across 30 plus countries. Earlier this year, an EPIC-led coalition called on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to recommend the suspension of face surveillance systems across the federal government.

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EPIC Obtains Records about Utah’s Contact Tracing App; State Hasn’t Conducted Privacy Audit of App

19 08 2020

Epic
May 29, 2020

Through a Freedom of Information request, EPIC has obtained records concerning Utah’s “Healthy Together” COVID-19 app. The documents include a presentation from Twenty Holdings, Inc., the company that developed the app, and include details of its development. The records reveal that “[o]nce the economy resumes normalcy, the App will continue to provide the mechanism to monitor any emerging risks.” It has been reported that Twenty hopes to sell the app and app back end to other states and private companies. The developers of the app plan to integrate the Apple/Google API when it is available. The app current methodology relies on collated location data from all users, rather than decentralized proximity tracking. The Utah Governor’s Office of Management and Budget found no records of any audits or independent privacy assessments of the contact tracing app. EPIC has called on Congress to ensure that government agencies and private companies establish privacy safeguards for digital contact tracing. But without audits and independent privacy assessments, contact tracing apps like Healthy Together cannot be “robust, scalable, and provable.”

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Boston City Council Votes to Ban Facial Recognition

18 08 2020

Epic
June 24, 2020

Yesterday, the Boston City Council voted unanimously to ban the use of facial recognition technology by the city of Boston. The ordinance noted the “racial bias in face surveillance” and makes it illegal for the city of Boston to “obtain, retain, possess, access, or use any face surveillance system.” Several municipalities in Massachusetts have already banned the use of facial recognition. EPIC previously testified before the Massachusetts Legislature in support of a bill to establish a moratorium on the use of facial recognition by state agencies. EPIC has launched a campaign to Ban Face Surveillance and through the Public Voice coalition gathered the support of over 100 organizations and many leading experts across 30 plus countries. An EPIC-led coalition has also called on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to recommend the suspension of face surveillance systems across the federal government.

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Categories : Biometrics, facial recognition, local law enforcement, Privacy, Surveillance, Uncategorized

BREAKING: Top Court in Europe Invalidates EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, Citing Lack of Privacy Safeguards and Overbroad U.S. Surveillance Laws

18 08 2020

Epic
July 16, 2020

Today the European Court of Justice issued a decision in Irish Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook & Schrems, a case concerning transfers of personal data by Facebook between the EU and the United States. Specifically, the court considered the validity of transfers made from companies in the EU to companies in the U.S. pursuant to standard contracts or to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement, both of which had been authorized by the European Commission. But the court held that the Privacy Shield was invalid and that transfers could not be made under the contracts where personal data is not adequately protected. Because U.S. surveillance law authorizes the mass processing of personal data transferred from abroad, under Section 702 of FISA, it “cannot ensure a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed by the Charter.” EPIC participated as an amicus curiae in the case and argued that U.S. surveillance law does not provide an equivalent level of protection because it does not provide adequate protections or remedies for non-U.S. persons abroad. EPIC was represented in this case by the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC) and by barristers Grainne Gilmore and Colm O’Dwyer, SC. [PRESS RELEASE]

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Federal Appeals Court Sounds Alarm Over Predictive Policing

18 08 2020

Epic
July 16, 2020

Judges on a federal appeals court took aim yesterday at predictive policing, the practice of using algorithmic analysis to predict crime and direct law enforcement resources. The Fourth Circuit ruled that Richmond police violated the Fourth Amendment when they stopped and searched the defendant, Billy Curry, simply because he was walking near the scene of a shooting. In a dissent, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson called the court’s decision a “gut-punch to predictive policing.” But others on the court responded to highlight the dangers and failings of the practice. Chief Judge Roger Gregory questioned whether predictive policing is “a high-tech version of racial profiling.” Judge James A. Wynn highlighted the “devastating effects of over-policing on minority communities” and explained that predictive policing “results in the citizens of those communities being accorded fewer constitutional protections than citizens of other communities.” Judge Stephanie D. Thacker warned that “any computer program or algorithm is only as good as the data that goes into it” and that predictive policing “has been shown to be, at best, of questionable, effectiveness, and at worst, deeply flawed and infused with racial bias.” EPIC has long highlighted the risks of algorithms in the criminal justice system and recently obtained a 2014 Justice Department report detailing the dangers of predictive policing.

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New Year Begins with California Consumer Privacy Law

8 01 2020

January 2, 2020
Epic.org
The New Year begins with the California Consumer Privacy Act. All Californians now have the right to find out the personal data that companies collect about them, their devices, and their children, the right to opt-out of the sale of personal data, and the right to sue companies for data breaches. Californians can also request that a business delete their personal information. In comments to the California Attorney General, EPIC urged strong enforcement of the privacy law. EPIC’s Mary Stone Ross, a coauthor of the law, spoke recently on NPR’s All Things Considered about the new law. The complete text of the California Consumer Privacy Act is available in the EPIC 2020 Privacy Law Sourcebook.

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I’m an Engineer, and I’m Not Buying Into ‘Smart’ Cities

8 01 2020

Shoshanna Saxe
NYT
July 16, 2018

Like a classroom full of overachieving students, cities around the world are racing to declare themselves “smart” — using sensors, data and ubiquitous cameras to make themselves more efficient, safe and sustainable. Perhaps the most famous initiative is here in Toronto, where Sidewalk Labs, a sibling company to Google, recently released a 1,500-page master plan to remake two neighborhoods with things like snow-melting roads and an underground pneumatic-tube network.

Smart cities make two fundamental promises: lots of data, and automated decision making based on that data. The ultimate smart city will require a raft of existing and to-be-invented technologies, from sensors to robots to artificial intelligence. For many this promises a more efficient, equitable city; for others, it raises questions about privacy and algorithmic bias.

But there is a more basic concern when it comes to smart cities: They will be exceedingly complex to manage, with all sorts of unpredictable vulnerabilities. There will always be a place for new technology in our urban infrastructure, but we may find that often, “dumb” cities will do better than smart ones.

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Amazon Faces Investor Pressure Over Facial Recognition

8 01 2020

Natasha Singer
NYT
May 20, 2019
“

Facial recognition software is coming under increasing scrutiny from civil liberties groups and lawmakers. Now Amazon, one of the most visible purveyors of the technology, is facing pressure from another corner as well: its own shareholders.

As part of Amazon’s annual meeting in Seattle on Wednesday, investors are voting on whether the tech giant’s aggressive push to spread the surveillance software threatens civil rights — and, as a consequence, the company’s reputation and profits.

Shareholders have introduced two proposals on facial recognition for a vote. One asks the company to prohibit sales of its facial recognition system, called Amazon Rekognition, to government agencies, unless its board concludes that the technology does not facilitate human rights violations. The other asks the company to commission an independent report examining the extent to which Rekognition may threaten civil, human and privacy rights, and the company’s finances.”

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