All posts tagged: surveillance

New Jersey Bans Surveillance Pricing, Puts the Brakes on Electronic Shelf Labels

New Jersey Bans Surveillance Pricing, Puts the Brakes on Electronic Shelf Labels

Published by skeptic

A new law set to go into effect next year bars grocery stores in New Jersey from setting prices based on any given shopper’s personal data. The Fair Price Protection Act seeks to outlaw surveillance pricing that discriminates against individual customers by using personal information like their purchasing history or online activity. “New Jersey families are already feeling the pressure of higher costs,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement. “The last thing they need is companies secretly using their personal data to charge them more than someone else for the exact same product.” Penalties for retailers could include fines of up to $10,000 for a first offense, $20,000 for subsequent violations and the potential for cease and desist orders and the assessment of punitive damages. The law also includes a provision that pauses new electronic shelf labels for a year while the state studies their effect on surveillance pricing. Two other states, Maryland and Connecticut, have recently enacted laws meant to protect consumer privacy, particularly when it comes to grocery prices. Other states including …

This Searchable Tool Is Helping Track Flock Surveillance Cameras in Your City

This Searchable Tool Is Helping Track Flock Surveillance Cameras in Your City

Published by skeptic

Recent coverage of Flock Safety, the fast‑growing US surveillance technology company, reveals how opposition to automated license plate readers is playing out at the local level. In South Carolina, officials have been sparring over whether to install 25 new cameras, a dispute that reflects broader questions about cost, oversight, and how much surveillance communities are willing to accept. The city of Los Angeles recently broke its contract with Flock Safety, though Flock’s CEO argues that the suspension should be temporary while the police department revises its rules. These cancellations are in large part driven by public concern around a system designed to enable mass surveillance, which is susceptible to serious abuses, including biased policing and privacy violations. To track such surveillance, journalists and researchers are increasingly turning to a free tool called the Atlas of Surveillance, a collaboration between the renowned digital privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Reno. The site has become a go‑to source for mapping police technology — which also includes drones, facial-recognition cameras and body cameras — …

For Taylor Swift, Madison Square Garden’s Controversial Cameras Briefly Went Dark

For Taylor Swift, Madison Square Garden’s Controversial Cameras Briefly Went Dark

Published by skeptic

Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan has insisted that the face-recognition system and array of surveillance cameras deployed at his venues is “very, very useful for security”—a big reason why MSG “is the most secure venue in the country.” On the night of July 2, security in and around the Garden was particularly intense. Roughly 130 cops were deployed to the area. New York City officials were preparing to shut down the surrounding blocks to both vehicles and pedestrians the next day for a major, major event. July 2 was, of course, the kickoff to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding celebration, an approximately 100-person rehearsal dinner at Madison Square Garden’s Infosys Theater. And yet, on that extremely sensitive evening, Dolan’s MSG locked nearly all of its security team out of the network of surveillance cameras inside the arena, according to an internal document reviewed by WIRED. The move functionally prevented MSG security from fully operating the venue’s controversial face-recognition program that evening, two sources familiar with the Garden’s operations say. While the shutdown order …

Target Practice | Sophia Goodfriend

Target Practice | Sophia Goodfriend

Published by Jenni Sidey

In April 2024 international news sources circulated a video of a talk delivered by a senior Israeli military official during a tech conference at Tel Aviv University about a year earlier. The speaker, whose face is not shown, introduces himself only as “Colonel Yoav,” the head of data science and AI for Unit 8200, an elite outfit within Israel’s intelligence directorate. He is there to talk about the force’s embrace of artificial intelligence for the purposes of, as one slide in his presentation puts it, “finding new terrorists.” During Israel’s May 2021 assault on Gaza, Colonel Yoav explains, his unit had used AI to generate two hundred targets, a process that in the past would have taken “almost a year.” In comparison, he suggests, the algorithm could identify likely members of militant organizations in practically no time: “Let’s say we have some terrorists that form a group, and we know only some of them. By practicing our data science magic powder we are able to find the rest.” When Israel again began bombing Gaza after …

Trump administration plans for billion-dollar, AI-powered border surveillance

Trump administration plans for billion-dollar, AI-powered border surveillance

Published by skeptic

More than a thousand new surveillance towers will be erected along U.S. borders, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assessment by the Government Accounting Office. The expanded autonomous surveillance plan, including tech upgrades to existing towers overseen by DHS, is estimated to cost around $1 billion and aims to be finished by 2034. Upon completion, the country’s borders will boast 2,300 surveillance towers — it currently operates around 830, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports. SEE ALSO: Google’s AI Search is a minefield for schools The expenditure is part of the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) consolidated Integrated Surveillance Tower (IST) program, which operates a network of intel-gathering towers and surveillance that detect “items of interest” along the border and in nearby towns. The towers are integrated into a central system accessible by agents. Mashable Light Speed “It’s not just a barrier. A lot of people miss that [it] has technology built into it,” said CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott during an April budget hearing with lawmakers regarding the agency’s plans. Building on years …

The ACLU Is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets

The ACLU Is Arming Lawyers to Expose State Surveillance Secrets

Published by skeptic

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts says it’s releasing an online toolkit this week for criminal defense attorneys designed to uncover whether police used surveillance technologies—facial recognition, automatic license plate readers, gunshot detection systems, and more—to build the cases against their clients in secret. The toolkit, which the group describes as the first of its kind, is built around handcrafted legal motions that, when granted by a judge, will force prosecutors to reveal whether surveillance technology was used against a defendant. It covers an array of technologies, from “stingray” phone trackers and location data sold by commercial brokers to AI-drafted police reports and forensic tools that crack phones and siphon data from car infotainment systems. It also includes preservation motions—demands that surveillance data be saved before it is deleted automatically—aimed at government agencies and private vendors alike. The filings rest on a bedrock rule of American criminal law, established in 1963, that prosecutors are required to turn over all evidence that could help the defense. The motions will be distributed through a password-protected library, …

Apps Marketed to US Troops Are Shipping Chinese and Russian Code

Apps Marketed to US Troops Are Shipping Chinese and Russian Code

Published by skeptic

A recent examination of hundreds of mobile apps marketed toward US military personnel found more than one in eight contained software built by companies in China, Russia, or other foreign nations, raising fresh concerns that adversary governments could harvest data revealing where service members live, work, and deploy. According to researchers at Purdue University, the US Military Academy at West Point, and Florida International University, one popular app used by service members to rate living conditions on their own bases include code from Huawei, the Chinese telecom that US regulators flagged as a national security threat in 2020. Two others were built by Russian companies and incorporate the Russian ad service Yandex. The largely unregulated advertising industry that tracks Americans online treats civilians and service members mostly the same—unless there is profit in telling them apart—despite evidence that exposure can reveal troop deployments, unit movements, and the routines of personnel within intelligence facilities and hardened shelters where nuclear weapons are believed to be stored. WIRED investigations have previously shown location data harvested from ordinary apps …

AI and surveillance? What is happening to our world? – OpentheWord.org

AI and surveillance? What is happening to our world? – OpentheWord.org

Published by Sam Flores

Credit: Mourya Pranay, unsplash.com You probably know AI (Artificial Intelligence) is something to argue about these days. AI data centers are starting arguments and public demonstrations. Many people just don’t want them. There are reasons for this, including problems with the environment.  If you are interested, Internet research with terms like “AI” and “controversy” will bring up many news articles and videos. Controversy. I don’t want to get involved in the arguments. Do you know, AI surveillance could track this article. So, for the record, I think there is something that we need to see about ourselves. I don’t want to get too deep into the AI arguments. You can find enough of them without me adding something more. I recommend that we should all be informed about issues in the news, like AI and what it means in our lives and our future. It’s good to be informed. And here is more information: People are becoming concerned about public surveillance through AI. Imagine a world where giant computer systems, like monster robots, can track …

A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance

A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance

Published by skeptic

Just after noon on a Saturday last month, a Skydio X10 quadcopter hovered about 200 feet over a San Francisco apartment complex, watching police chase a man hiding behind a parked car. The target of this manhunt lay down on the pavement, apparently unaware that he remained in full view of the flying eye overhead. The 5-pound drone had, in fact, already followed him across the city, zooming in on his black SUV’s license plate, keeping the vehicle locked at the center of its video frame until he pulled over. Now it watched the police as they closed in and surrounded him. As the officers approached, the man adjusted his hiding spot, moving to the other side of the parked car. At that moment, however, another Skydio drone zoomed in on his location, one of four Skydio quadcopters that had followed the man in just the prior hour. This one had been called away from a nearby McDonald’s, where it had been watching two people who’d exited the suspect’s car a few minutes earlier—and now …

Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities

Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities

Published by skeptic

Fat Joe is a superfan, both of the New York Knicks and their controversial owner, Jim Dolan. The rapper celebrated with Dolan in Cleveland when the team clinched its first finals appearance in decades. When the Knicks organization came under intense scrutiny over aggressive security measures for game 3 of the NBA finals, Fat Joe stuck up for the boss. “Shoutout to Mr. Dolan, greatest team owner in the game,” he told reporters at the time. “They villainize Mr. Dolan, like, almost like a Bruce Wayne, like a Batman movie and this is Gotham City … This man takes care of us.” Within Dolan’s organization, however, some have a different view of Fat Joe. An internal Madison Square Garden database of VIPs labels Joe a “medium risk,” one of roughly 400 celebrities given a risk score. Many of those celebs are courtside fixtures at Knicks games: Edie Falco, Mark Ronson, John Turturro, and Tracy Morgan, to name a few. That makes the 400-ish entries unusual. The vast majority of the 39,539 entries in the so-called …