Facial recognition system

A San Diego Police Department officer looks on as activists hold signs and protest the California lockdown due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on May 01, 2020 in San Diego, California.Photo: Sean M. Haffey (Getty Images)San Diego is joining a growing list of cities taking official action against the unregulated use of emergent police surveillance technologies.Community-led efforts to address potential civil liberties violations, spurred by the deployment of more 3,000 police cameras across the city, finally paid…

Image: Christopher Furlong (Getty Images)Migrants convicted of a crime in the U.K. may soon have to submit five daily facial recognition scans via a smartwatch as part of sweeping new surveillance practices under consideration by the country’s Home Office and Ministry of Justice. Privacy advocates say the always-on surveillance wearable is cruel, unnecessary, and based on technology plagued by inaccuracy and bias.Spoilers of the Week: August 5thA 2021 data protection impact assessment document acquired by The Guardian…

Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)A patchwork of individual state privacy laws isn’t filling the hole left by absent federal government regulation on facial recognition. Virginia, which approved a ban on local police use of biometric identification tools around a year ago, formally bailed on the law’s most substantive measures on Friday. Now, under an amended bill, law enforcement can implement the technology in a number of scenarios, including when an officer loosely harbors a “reasonable suspicion” an individual has…

View of the biometric facial recognition system in front of a security checkpoint in the departure area of Hamburg Airport. Photo: Marcus Brandt (AP)A group of House lawmakers charged with investigating the implications of biometric surveillance empaneled three experts Wednesday to testify about the future of facial recognition and other tools widely employed by the U.S. government with little regard for citizens’ privacy.The experts described a country—and a world—that is being saturated with biometric sensors. Hampered…

Google was allegedly collecting biometric data from photos without notifying users.Photo: Leon Neal (Getty Images)Google took another hit today. The tech company has settled for $100 million following a class action lawsuit in Illinois over data privacy concerns from users of the Google Photos app.Why did Google get sued?A class action lawsuit was filed by the plaintiffs against Google, alleging that the company broke Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The act states that any private company collecting…