Featured: Privacy News Online – Week of October 16th, 2020 Survey finds 85% of smartphone users believe they’re being spied on by a mobile app A new survey by WhistleOut asked users if they believe an app on their phone spies on them, and if so… which app or apps? And the results are in. … Continue reading “Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: October 16, 2020”
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Two years ago, Privacy News Online warned that the growing number of large-scale DNA databases were likely to become a serious threat to people’s privacy. Sadly, things have not improved since then. The increasing police use of DNA sites to find suspects for serious crimes, as described in that post, led one of the leaders … Continue reading “As privacy problems continue to pile up for DNA databases, Covid-19 introduces a major new risk”
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Automated facial recognition has emerged as one of the most problematic technologies for privacy. That’s reflected in the increasing number of posts on this blog dealing with the issues it raises. Of particular concern is police use. The UK has been in the vanguard here, as has the pushback by privacy campaigners. A year ago … Continue reading “Court finds UK police use of facial recognition technology breaches privacy rights, data protection laws and equality laws”
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As this blog has noted, police forces around the world have been pushing for the routine deployment of real-time facial recognition technologies. It’s an attractive option for politicians. It offers the hope that more criminals will be arrested and convicted, and for a price that is constantly falling. As a result, it’s hard to win … Continue reading “Top suppliers halt sales of facial recognition technology to the police – how much of a win is that really?”
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Facial recognition crops up on this blog more than most technologies. That’s in part because the underlying AI is advancing rapidly, boosting the ability of low-cost systems to match faces to those in databases. The Clearview saga is a good example of this, where an unheard-of startup has put together what is claimed to be … Continue reading “Police forces around the world continue to push for routine – and real-time – facial recognition capabilities”
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A couple of weeks ago, a story in the New York Times put facial recognition, and the serious problems it raises, firmly into the mainstream. It concerned the start-up Clearview AI, which, as the headline breathlessly informed us, “might end privacy as we know it.” The reason for this worrying description is not any breakthrough … Continue reading “What can we learn from the Clearview “end of privacy” story?”
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Last month, this blog wrote about governments around the world continuing to trial facial recognition systems, and the growing concerns this is provoking. There’s one area in particular where facial recognition systems are deployed: law enforcement. That’s hardly a surprise, since the legal system can only operate if it identifies alleged criminals that need to … Continue reading “Police forces around the world continue to deploy facial recognition systems, despite no evidence of their utility”
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Amazon may have started out by selling books, but it is now getting heavily into the surveillance market. There are four main sectors where it is already working on solutions that pose risks to privacy. Three of them have been covered extensively in this blog before. They are: the home, with its Alexa devices; the … Continue reading “Smile as you buy your holiday goods in a store – you are probably being watched, tracked and analyzed”
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Amazon was founded almost exactly 25 years ago. Initially it sold books, and people saw it as an interesting early example of e-commerce, but probably assumed that it would remain a fairly small player in a relatively unexciting market. Nothing could be further from the truth. Amazon soon started selling goods in other sectors, and … Continue reading “Amazon’s collaborations with local police turn its Ring doorbell cameras into unofficial community surveillance systems”
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Back in 2017, Privacy News Online wrote about a massive police system being built in China that would allow “predictive policing” – the ability to spot criminals before they even commit a crime. As we warned then, China often turns out to provide an early glimpse of what will later happen in the West, and … Continue reading “AI-based predictive policing systems widely used in US and UK, despite concerns about privacy, and flaws in the approach”
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