Privacy Matters | Privacy SOS

Bias All the Way Down: Research Shows Domino Effect When Humans Use Face Recognition Algorithms

09/22/2020 - Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Biometrics

Earlier this month, Portland, Oregon joined over a dozen other municipalities nationwide that have banned government use of face surveillance technology. And with a new study confirming that face recognition algorithms can influence human perceptions of faces, it’s become even clearer: police...
Wear a Mask: Federal Study Finds COVID-19 Masks Fool Face Recognition

08/28/2020 - Biometrics

Wearing a mask protects you from more than just the coronavirus. A new federal study of 89 facial recognition algorithms has found that every single one of them performed worse – many over 30 times worse – when analyzing images of masked...
Mass. High Court: Cops Must Get a Warrant to Conduct Long-term Video Surveillance of a Private Home

08/14/2020 - Law Reform

Last week, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled in Commonwealth v. Mora that the Massachusetts state constitution prohibits police from conducting continuous, long-term pole camera surveillance targeted at a private home without a warrant. The Massachusetts highest court’s decision builds upon...
Huge Win For Privacy: Europe Highest Court Strikes Down E.U-U.S Data Transfer Pact

07/22/2020

Last week, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg—Europe’s top court— ruled that the agreement that allowed data transfers between the European Union and the United States is invalid under European law. In a crucial pro-privacy ruling, the Court decided that the...
Overwhelming Support For Banning Face Surveillance In Boston: When We Fight, We Win!

06/12/2020 - Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Biometrics, Mass Surveillance, Racism

On Tuesday afternoon, in a four-hour-long hearing at the Boston City Council’s Committee on Government Operations, the ACLU of Massachusetts, Muslim Justice League, Student Immigrant Movement, Unafraid Educators, Algorithmic Justice League, and Boston Teachers Union joined forces with MIT researchers, the National...
Want to protest anonymously? Help ban face surveillance in Boston.

06/02/2020

Nationwide, people are marching in record numbers to demand justice for Black communities long subject to police violence, and an end to white supremacy. In response, government agencies from the local to the state and federal are mounting increasingly aggressive attacks on...
Mass. High Court: License Plate Reader Surveillance Can Trigger Constitutional Protections

04/16/2020

Can the cops in Massachusetts use digital surveillance technologies to track every driver’s every movement throughout the state? Not without violating the constitution, says the state’s highest court. In a series of crucial court rulings culminating in the historic 2018 Supreme Court...
ACLU and Teachers Unions: Superintendents Must Prevent Face Surveillance in Schools

03/17/2020

Last week, the ACLU of Massachusetts and the two largest teachers’ unions in the state—the Massachusetts Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers, Mass. Chapter—sent a letter to all 273 school superintendents in the state, asking the leaders to prohibit the...
No, facial recognition will not stop school shootings. Here’s why.

02/06/2020

A school district in New York has flipped the switch to activate a facial recognition system across hundreds of cameras in its school buildings, drawing sharp criticism from civil rights advocates and concerned parents and students. The move comes as school administrators...
Five Fast Facts from the Federal Study of Demographic Bias in Facial Recognition

02/03/2020

In December 2019, the non-partisan federal government National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a landmark study presenting further evidence that facial recognition algorithms, across the board, are not ready for prime-time. The researchers found that face recognition algorithms perform more...