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All too often, police and other government agencies unleash invasive surveillance technologies on the streets of our communities, based on the unilateral and secret decisions of agency executives, after hearing from no one except corporate sales agents. This spy tech causes false arrests, disparately burdens BIPOC and immigrants, invades our privacy, and deters our free speech.
Many communities have found Community Control of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) laws to be an effective step on the path to systemic change. CCOPS laws empower the people of a community, through their legislators, to decide whether or not city agencies may acquire or use surveillance technology. Communities can say “no,” full stop. That will often be the best answer, given the threats posed by many of these technologies, such as face surveillance or predictive policing. If the community chooses to say “yes,” CCOPS laws require the adoption of use policies that secure civil rights and civil liberties, and
Baltimore, MD and St. Louis, MO, have a lot in common. Both cities suffer from declining populations and high crime rates. In recent years, the predominantly Black population in each city has engaged in collective action opposing police violence. In recent weeks, officials in both cities voted unanimously to spare their respective residents from further invasions on their privacy and essential liberties by a panoptic aerial surveillance system designed to protect soldiers on the battlefield, not resident s rights and public safety.
Baltimore’s Unanimous Vote to Terminate
From April to October of 2020, Baltimore residents were subjected to a panopticon-like system of surveillance facilitated by a partnership between the Baltimore Police Department and a privately-funded Ohio company called Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS). During that period, for at least 40 hours a week, PSS flew surveillance aircraft over 32 square miles of the city, enabling police to identify specific
Alex Andrade-Walz from Evernym Explains how their Self-Sovereign Identity Tech Is Improving User Authentication, Credential Verification
February 12, 2021 @ 10:17 am By Omar Faridi
It’s been over a year since the COVID-19 outbreak brought the world to a halt, and we’re now may be just beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel, due to the increasing availability of testing facilities and the vaccine rollout. However, this process is still in its early stages and we can’t really make any definitive conclusions at this point.
But, as many had predicted, businesses and border control agents will be needing a reliable way to safely determine or assess risks before they are able to safely reopen. They must know who has been vaccinated or recently tested negative and they also need to do this in a manner that can be trusted, without the risk of fraud that usually comes with paper health certificates or the risk of data breaches that come with centralized digital platforms
Why EFF doesn’t support bans on private use of face recognition
14 minute read
An employee at a cafe, which uses a unified biometric facial recognition system for payments, in Moscow, Russia, 25 March 2020, Gavriil GrigorovTASS via Getty Images Instead of a prohibition on private use, EFF supports strict laws to ensure that each of us is empowered to choose if and by whom our faceprints may be collected.
This statement was originally published on eff.org on 20 January 2021.
Government and private use of face recognition technology each present a wealth of concerns. Privacy, safety, and amplification of carceral bias are just some of the reasons why we must ban government use.