Techdirt. – US Army Now Using Clearview’s Unproven Tech To Investigate Crimes

Aug 242021
 

We can add another government agency to the list of entities that have been suckered in by Clearview’s highly questionable sales pitches about its unproven tech: the US Army. [Paywall ahead, but alternatives abound.]

The US Army has a contract with Clearview AI, according to documents that reveal the controversial facial-recognition startup making bold claims to the military about capabilities such as “criminal network discovery” and “force protection and area security.”

The contract, obtained with other documents by Insider via public-records request, shows the US military awarding a discounted contract for Clearview to work with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, which investigates serious crimes that could involve active service members or civilian workers for the Army.

Fantastic. Now, let’s…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210823/17000247418/us-army-now-using-clearviews-unproven-tech-to-investigate-crimes.shtml

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on Techdirt. – US Army Now Using Clearview’s Unproven Tech To Investigate Crimes

Planet PostgreSQL – Paul Ramsey: Fast, Flexible Summaries with Aggregate Filters and Windows

Aug 242021
 

PostgreSQL can provide high performance summaries over multi-million record tables, and supports some great SQL sugar to make it concise and readable, in particular aggregate filtering, a feature unique to PostgreSQL and SQLite. 

A huge amount of reporting is about generating percentages: for a particular condition, what is a value relative to a baseline.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://postgr.es/p/59m

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on Planet PostgreSQL – Paul Ramsey: Fast, Flexible Summaries with Aggregate Filters and Windows

Techdirt. – Congressional Lawmaker Give Up Attempt To Dump Qualified Immunity In Police Reform Efforts

Aug 242021
 

The judicial construct known as qualified immunity will continue to make it harder for people to obtain redress for rights violations… at least for the time being. While there has been a more sustained movement to reform law enforcement across the nation, thanks to cops doing the sort of stuff they’ve been doing for decades, qualified immunity seems particularly bulletproof.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. It provided government employees a way to avoid being entangled in frivolous litigation based on unsustainable allegations of rights violations. But since that point, it has morphed into an easy button for civil suits, a route cops can use to escape accountability for actual rights violations so…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210822/12210747407/congressional-lawmaker-give-up-attempt-to-dump-qualified-immunity-police-reform-efforts.shtml

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on Techdirt. – Congressional Lawmaker Give Up Attempt To Dump Qualified Immunity In Police Reform Efforts

American Civil Liberties Union – Four Problems with the ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection System

Aug 242021
 

A critical report on the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system issued today by the City of Chicago’s Inspector General (IG) is the latest indication of deep problems with the gunshot detection company and its technology, including its methodology, effectiveness, impact on communities of color, and relationship with law enforcement. The report questioned the “operational value” of the technology and found that it increases the incidence of stop and frisk tactics by police officers in some neighborhoods.
The IG’s report follows a similarly critical report and legal filing by the Northwestern School of Law’s MacArthur Justice Center and devastating investigative reporting by Vice News and the Associated Press. Last week, the AP profiled Michael Williams, a man who spent…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on American Civil Liberties Union – Four Problems with the ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection System

Jacobin – Amazon Is Beefing Up Its Already Dystopian Worker Surveillance Machine

Aug 242021
 

Amazon is installing high-tech cameras inside supplier-owned delivery vehicles. Workers say the cameras are a shocking invasion of privacy as well as a safety hazard.
An Amazon Prime delivery van in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons Earlier this year, Amazon revealed plans to install high-tech surveillance cameras in its fleet of delivery vans that are now ubiquitous in neighborhoods across the United States. The cameras watch drivers as well as the road and provide real-time audio feedback. While many of these drivers work in Amazon Prime–branded vehicles, they are not Amazon employees, but rather are employed by third-party contractors called delivery-service partners (DSPs) — an arrangement that,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/08/amazon-worker-surveillance/

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on Jacobin – Amazon Is Beefing Up Its Already Dystopian Worker Surveillance Machine

Motherboard – Prop 22 Was Declared Unconstitutional, and It’s Just the Beginning

Aug 242021
 

On Friday, California Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that Proposition 22—the ballot measure written by Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Instacart to deny drivers and couriers the benefits and protections of employee classification—was unenforceable and unconstitutional despite the deep-pocketed campaign’s victory in November.  Writing in favor of the petitioners—the Service Employees International Union and three drivers—Roesch concluded that Prop 22 appears to only “protect the economic interests” of gig companies and undermined the constitutional authority of the state’s legislature to write and enforce labor laws. Specifically, Roesch pointed at a part of Proposition 22 that required a seven-eights legislative majority to alter Proposition 22, but even then only with the approval of the gig company drafters….

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4av8jb/prop-22-was-declared-unconstitutional-and-its-just-the-beginning

 2021-08-24  Comments Off on Motherboard – Prop 22 Was Declared Unconstitutional, and It’s Just the Beginning