Last week, the ACLU of Northern California revealed that Amazon’s Rekognition face surveillance software identified 28 members of Congress as people who have been previously arrested for a crime. The only problem? They were false matches. Unsurprisingly, the 28 members of Congress...
Last week, DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen celebrated US independence by publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post calling on Congress to pass an Orwellian surveillance law. The measure, Senator Ron Johnson’s “S.2836 – Preventing Emerging Threats Act of 2018,” would enable the...
BIG TECH EMPLOYEES ARE MAKING NOISE// From Wired: Why Tech Worker Dissent is Going Viral Tech workers are fed up, and they are fighting back. In response to the administration’s deplorable actions at the border and throughout the country, workers at big...
In a hearing last week at the Boston City Council, police leaders signaled that they would support a measure to require community control over police surveillance, and community advocates highlighted extreme racial disparities in policing in Boston as a primary driver of...
Next week, the Massachusetts state senate is set to consider vast new surveillance powers for law enforcement. We cannot allow this dangerous legislation to become law. We beat back similar privacy-invasive plans last fall, and now we must do it again. Back...
Today, the ACLU of Massachusetts and two technology experts affiliated with the Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security to learn about the federal government’s use of facial recognition...
The Trump administration has taken the first official step towards fulfilling its promise to conduct “extreme vetting” of visitors and immigrants. On March 30, the State Department released a proposal outlining its plan to require visa applicants to disclose all the social...
Unfortunately, Congress has begun scratching an old, FBI-inspired itch again. Staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the support of chair Senator Chuck Grassley and ranking democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, are reportedly in talks with technology companies about legislation that would most...
Earlier this week I heard a young computer scientist named Julia Dressel talk about her work examining the accuracy and fairness of the COMPAS tool, a proprietary system courts across the country are using in bail, sentencing, and parole contexts. This revolution...
In December 2016, the Boston City Council held a hearing to discuss the Boston Police Department’s plan to spend $1.4 million on a social media surveillance system. Police Superintendent Paul Fitzgerald and Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) director David Carabin spoke of...