Items tagged with ACLU
Amazon is halting the use of its facial recognition software by law enforcement officials, in hopes that the "one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition," as the technology is called, will give Congress enough time to impose regulations ensuring its "ethical use." It's not clear if that simply means additional license will not be sold for one year, or if Amazon will also prevent its Rekognition software from functioning within police departments that already paid for it. Either way, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wants to see a bigger commitment from Amazon over what it deems a "threat" to civil rights, not just in the here and now, but beyond the one-year ban. "This surveillance...
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While we may all know Amazon for fast, two-day shipping on millions of products, Prime Video, and a host of other offline and online services, police departments are looking to the tech giant for a different reason. According to emails that were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) via a freedom of information request, the company is selling its Rekognition software to police departments across the United States. The Rekognition artificial intelligence (AI) system is capable of scanning faces in real-time and matching them against a database. In the case of police departments, this tool is being used to match people that may walk within range of...
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At the behest of President Obama, Federal Chief Information Officer Tony Scott yesterday issued Memorandum M-15-13 calling for the provision of government service for all Federal websites via HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). The HTTPS standard was described by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as a "great first step", this despite it being written off as a "top-down solution" by a database administrator for NASA. Memorandum M-15-13 explicitly states that "All browsing activity should be considered private and sensitive." It also provides guidance to government agencies on transitioning to the HTTPS protocol, including the directive that all newly...
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Last week, the ACLU was scheduled to meet with local police in Sarasota Florida to discuss the use of cell phone interception towers, dubbed stingrays, that are an increasingly common feature of federal and local investigations. A stingray is a fake cell phone tower that law enforcement can configure to temporarily replace the real towers a device would normally connect to. In an astonishing turn of events, the US Marshals Service has acted to prevent the meeting from taking place -- seizing all of the relevant records and claiming that they're the property of the Marshals (and by extension, the US government). Meanwhile, a Tallahassee judge reviewing a similar request for access to what ought...
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Ask.com is the fourth most popular search engine in the United States, accounting for 4.7 percent of all web searches. They've decided to differentiate themselves from the rest of their competitiors by offering AskEraser -- a widget on their service you can use to direct the search engine to discard information like search term, user's Internet address, and other identifying features immediately after your search. If you're worried about what search engines do with the archived information they glean from your searches, this is the service for you. Maybe.“It works like a light switch,” said Doug Leeds, senior vice president for product management at Ask.com. Mr. Leeds said the service would...
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