The Death of the Mind

Lakeland, Florida is not known as a particularly violent city. It does not appear on lists of America’s most crime-ridden towns. But it is home to one of the first installations of real-time public facial recognition in the U.S. The first among the cameras have been installed by the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority (LDDA), according to local NBC affiliate WFLA. The Ledger counts 14 cameras in the project, and says they are running Verkada software. The installation is expected to be complete at the end of April. The cameras cost $115,000. Three individuals, specifically, are concerning enough to be placed on a biometric watchlist so they can be identified in real-time. They have histories of…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.biometricupdate.com/202403/florida-town-installs-live-facial-recognition-to-protect-against-3-trespassers

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the Democratic Party has assembled a “new team of lawyers” tasked with blocking third-party candidates from appearing on the ballot.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/03/22/nzvc-m22.html

The leader in gunshot detection tech rebranded recently. Following several months of sustained negative press, ShotSpotter decided it wanted to be called something else: SoundThinking.
But a raffelesia by any other name smells the same. ShotSpotter had experienced a bit of quick uptake by law enforcement agencies, but in recent years, it was more well-known for having contracts terminated by major cities, allegedly altering data to better fit police report narratives, and suing reporters for covering nothing more than allegations made against the company in court.
No one’s going to stop calling ShotSpotter by its original Christian name. SoundThinking may be the new brand, but if anyone wants readers to instantly understand the tech being discussed, ShotSpotter…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/04/leaked-data-details-the-reach-and-breadth-of-shotspotters-gunshot-detection-systems/

As we celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, we are reminded of all the ways these flexible copyright exceptions enable libraries to preserve materials and meet the needs of the communities they serve. Indeed, fair use is essential to the functioning of libraries, and underlies many of the ordinary library practices that we all take for granted. In this blog post, we wanted to describe a few of the ways the fair use doctrine has helped us build our library. Fair use in action: Web Archives and the Wayback Machine The Internet Archive has been archiving the web since the mid-1990’s. Our web collection now includes more than 850 billion web pages, with hundreds of millions…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://blog.archive.org/2024/03/01/fair-use-in-action-at-the-internet-archive/

The Debian project has completed a
general-resolution vote, adopting a statement expressing concern about
the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) pending in the European Union.

Even if only “commercial activities” are in the scope of CRA, the Free Software community – and as a consequence, everybody – will lose a lot of small projects. CRA will force many small enterprises and most probably all self employed developers out of business because they simply cannot fulfill the requirements imposed by CRA. Debian and other Linux distributions depend on their work. If accepted as it is, CRA will undermine not only an established community but also a thriving market. CRA needs an exemption for small businesses and, at the very least,…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/956187/

According to this story, the Green Party of North Carolina did not submit any presidential candidates for inclusion on its 2024 presidential primary. The decision does not affect the ability of the party to list its presidential nominee in November.

In 2020, the North Carolina Green Party did have a presidential primary, and the ballot listed Howie Hawkins and uncommitted.

The article also says the No Labels Party isn’t using its presidential primary either, but the law does not permit a new party to have a primary, so even if No Labels had wanted a presidential primary, it could not have had one.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://ballot-access.org/2023/12/26/north-carolina-green-party-chooses-not-to-use-its-presidential-primary/

The Internet Archive (IA) is a non-profit organization that aims to preserve digital history for generations to come.
The digital library is a staunch supporter of a free and open Internet and began meticulously archiving the web over a quarter century ago.
In addition to archiving the web, IA also operates a library that offers a broad collection of digital media, including books. Staying true to the centuries-old library concept, IA patrons can also borrow books that are scanned and digitized in-house.
Publishers vs. Internet Archive
The self-scanning service is different from the licensing deals other libraries enter into. Not all publishers are happy with IA’s approach which triggered a massive legal battle two years ago.
Publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John…

External feed Read More at the Source: https://torrentfreak.com/authors-and-copyright-scholars-back-internet-archive-in-landmark-legal-battle-231222/

Albertsons and Macy’s uses facial recognition on customers, but this article gives us little information on how.

We must reject the idea that businesses deserve the freedom to do
facial recognition on video images in and around their premises, or
the freedom to make videos and transmit them elsewhere, or regularly
save them for more than a few weeks, This supposed freedom conflicts with the privacy that humans beings deserve, and it facilitates the repression
than US cities and agencies are already eager to commit. These include
Atlanta
and Florida.

External feed Read More at the Source: https://stallman.org/archives/2023-sep-dec.html#24_December_2023_(Facial_recognition_being_used_on_customers)