Last year, the Boston City Council unanimously approved an ordinance giving the council control over how the Boston Police Department acquires and uses surveillance technology. Now, for the first time, the public can see a full list of all the surveillance technologies...
UPDATE: Victory! Acting Mayor Janey pulled the plug on the RFP, thanks to your advocacy. When we fight, we win! A request for proposals (RFP) published on the City of Boston’s website in April, first reported by DigBoston, raises extremely alarming concerns...
Recent reporting from Los Angeles highlights the urgent need for city councils across the United States to take control of local government surveillance operations, subjecting police spying to democratic control, oversight, transparency, and public accountability. On November 10, Boston residents have an...
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...
David Mack was unprepared for a political confrontation with U.S. border agents as he reentered the United States through New York’s JFK airport. As an Australian with a U.S. work visa, he expected the usual questions from a U.S. Customs and Border...
The National Institute for Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, has published an advertisement for a grant seeking proposals for projects that deploy artificial intelligence to reduce recidivism among the five million people under the control of parole and...
In September, Lawrence became the first city in Massachusetts to pass an ordinance requiring community control of police surveillance. The ordinance requires, among other things, that city agencies like the police get permission from the City Council before deploying new surveillance technologies....
Last night, the Cambridge City Council unanimously voted to approve an ordinance requiring community control over police surveillance. Under the ordinance, City agencies including the police are required to seek City Council permission before buying, acquiring, or otherwise using new surveillance technologies....
A new patent application filed by Amazon could enable the kind of dystopian face tracking envisioned in the movies and sci-fi books, where thousands of cameras are linked to track one person as they move through a city. The patent application, published...
A new study examining a face surveillance program implemented by the South Wales police finds the system is wrong 50 percent of the time. The Financial Times reports: The facial recognition technology used by South Wales Police was developed by Japanese company...