every day your movement is tracked your
purchase is logged your search is saved
and your face is scanned facial
recognition technology is becoming more
widespread daily privacy international
has reported 24 countries have already
implemented location tracking to help
ensure compliance with quarantines and
if you were thinking that increased
facemask usage might help protect your
privacy
China's facial recognition algorithms
have already figured out a way around
them in January 2020 the New York Times
reported that a company called Clearview
AI has created a database that makes it
possible to snap a photo of a stranger
and reveal that person's identity the
technology was developed using more than
three billion images scraped from public
social media accounts by Australian
wonton fat whom the Huffington Post
revealed has collaborated with
anti-immigration alt-right political
operatives elements of Clearview AI are
in use by more than 600 law enforcement
agencies in North America including the
FBI Department of Homeland Security and
ice what if your software facilitates a
world you didn't want to live in we're
not going to make sure that will happen
so can we resist the surveillance
society should we
Kate Rose says yes I think you have a
right to consent to how your information
is used especially if it's meant to be
at some point used against you or used
extra judicially I am trying my best to
explore these systems and see how we
together can work to confound them or to
put data into them as we please
Rose is a designer cybersecurity expert
and founder of adversarial fashion a
line of surveillance resistant clothing
such as masks meant to block facial
recognition cameras and shirts patterned
with fake license plates meant to feed
bad data into the automated license
plate readers now ubiquitous in the US
and Europe I came up with a couple of
different designs that not only do read
effectively into license plate readers
but they gave me enough wiggle room
design wise to also make a pattern that
is aesthetic and fun to wear and
something people would like to actually
buy roses concern about extrajudicial
use of personal data is less far-fetched
than ever in the age of coronavirus
lockdowns Politico reported in late
March that the Department of Justice is
requested Congress pass a law to allow
indefinite detention without trial of US
citizens during national emergencies
unauthorized movements picked up by
surveillance could be a pretext for such
indefinite detention privacy rights need
to be more in trying any data that's
collected about you must have a warrant
before it is used Rose is one of several
designers trying to fight surveillance
with fashion while roses license plates
shirts and dresses disseminate bad data
other anti-surveillance designers use
fashion as a form of obstruction
marketing makeup products or these
glasses donned by Electronic Frontier
Foundation researcher Dave Maas I really
love how people are exploring the
different ways to counter surveillance
technology and to empower people to do
so but at the end of the day people
should not have to wear a mask or put on
face paint or wear like complicated
t-shirt patterns in order to protect
their privacy our government should be
protecting our privacy and you know the
power structures as they are should be
valuing our privacy Maas and his
colleagues at EF F successfully lobbied
the California Legislature to pass a law
that starting in 2020 puts a three year
moratorium on law enforcement use of
facial recognition technology
including those departments who were
experimenting with Clearview AI it'll
mean that law enforcement agencies in
San Diego County will have to stop using
a shared facial identification system
available to officers and handheld
tablets San Diego is one of the first
agencies that we identified that was
using mobile biometric technology face
recognition that they could use from the
palm of their hand this wide range
system where one law-enforcement agency
gets the technology and they're able to
disseminate it across the entire region
and the data didn't stay local San Diego
a border county regularly shared access
with the federal government we saw that
local law enforcement agencies had given
face recognition devices to border
patrol ice and we don't know how those
agencies use that technology San
Francisco and Oakland have outright
banned the use of facial recognition
technology by law enforcement this idea
that we are suspending AI facial
recognition like for example in San
Francisco or in Oakland or the idea that
California might be putting a moratorium
on it for a couple years is idiocy to be
honest I think lives will be lost as a
result of that Zoltan Istvan is part of
the transhumanist movement which
believes that humans should use
technology to modify the human body and
experience
he's implanted an RFID chip in his hand
that allows him to unlock his front door
it's gonna be very useful to the human
race but we just kind of got to get over
it being creepy it's fun envisions
authorities using facial recognition and
other AI surveillance to prevent
terrorist attacks by recognizing
abnormal behaviors or suspicious
individuals in crowd settings or aiding
the government in fighting human
trafficking and that's not even
including other biometrics surveillance
capabilities such as scanning for
elevated body temperatures to isolate
feverish individuals and a pandemic let
us look at what it can do for human
trafficking let us look at what it can
do for overcoming criminality in our
cities let us look at what it can do for
the overall safety there are so many
different things where we could use this
kind of guardian angel out there to
recognize that we're having a hardship
and maybe even going to die and
authorities can be notified
face me software was originally marketed
for virtual makeup demonstrations before
evolving into a product serving a wide
range of uses such as logging into apps
entering a space and identifying
intruders in a secure facility we can
have a precision level of up to
ninety-nine point five eight percent
literally the only companies that are
slightly more precise than us come from
countries like China or Russia that have
a difficulty going to market outside of
their home market
Richard carrier is face meas general
manager although the majority of the
company's clients are in the private
sector they have supplied technology to
governments around the world and carrier
agrees with s-bahn that facial
recognition technology could be a giant
boon to public safety and that it could
reduce the likelihood of police
interactions turning violent if I'm a
citizen and cops come to me I'd be very
happy for them to know I am even before
they come to me and carrier says the
company won't sell its technology to
repressive governments or law
enforcement agencies I'd like to believe
that we would only associate ourselves
with police forces or law enforcement
organizations that are respectful of
individual rights but law enforcement
agencies are already showing a lack of
accountability and how they use facial
recognition technology the police
department in Chula Vista California
failed to properly report to a federal
oversight committee how it was using a
facial recognition program according to
a fired whistleblower Chula Vista PD
declined our interview request what
we're saying is with all surveillance
technologies whether it's license plate
reader systems or face recognition that
agencies are being very promiscuous with
who they share data with without really
ensuring that the rules that are in
place locally are also being followed
nationally or by other states they want
to collect it all but they don't really
care about protecting it all and he
worries about China's use of facial
recognition in conjunction with the
state-run Social Credit System which
assigns citizens a numerical score based
on their behavior
China has also rolled out increased
pandemic related surveillance that
monitors for fevers and Flags
individuals not wearing protect
of masks during an outbreak the thing
that we can learn from China is that
this surveillance as it continues to
grow is going to be less and less about
public safety and more and more about
controlling people it's about social
control I think the social credit system
that China is using is absolutely awful
and the problem is that they're setting
such a bad example for the rest of the
world that everyone's turning their back
against AI facial recognition there is a
good way to use it it's just pure safety
is there a terrorist walking into the
Super Bowl stadium with a suitcase that
somebody didn't catch if there's
somebody walking into a mall with a gun
these are things that I think AI facial
recognition as well as other types of
surveillance devices can really help the
public it's fun also believes our entire
conception of privacy will need to be
revised in the coming years I believe in
a society that's totally transparent a
society where sort of everybody can see
what everybody's doing now I'm not
saying in your bedrooms but certainly in
anywhere in the public sphere that it
has to go both ways and you must be able
to look into the lives of all government
officials I would like a kind of law
that all police officers are always
filmed whenever they're on duty I would
like something very similar with any
kind of politician I don't want backroom
deals I don't want things that the
public can't see privacy I believe
really does steal our Liberty away its
transparency that's going to give us all
the freedoms we want
I do think conceptions of privacy are
changing but I think they're
strengthening people didn't necessarily
have a whole lot of concern about the
images they posted to Instagram or
Facebook but now post Clearview AI where
it's coming out that all these image
were scraped and put into a face
recognition database people are
concerned and outraged about that and we
are seeing a backlash against this
company and the law enforcement agencies
that work with it but Rose says that as
the technology becomes more powerful and
present Americans will need to take a
page from the protesters in Hong Kong
who've used face masks encrypted
communication and most importantly mass
disobedience to resist authoritarian
control the things that seem like
anti-surveillance actions that don't
matter by yourself when you hit a
critical mass of people it matters a lot
so everyone there decided they were all
going to ignore mass laws they all
we're gonna get out umbrellas they all
decided they were going to get out the
laser pointers and point them at the
cameras and try to disrupt the
collection of that information of people
next to them who maybe didn't have a
mask or it was knocked off and I think
that kind of belief in your power that
even if you think it might not work 100%
of the time that all of you together
have this like tremendous power
roses aim isn't just a design clothing
that torts today's systems but to
cultivate a community that continually
develops new methods to confound the
surveillance state as its tools continue
evolving I'm just a single human and you
actually have all of the skills at your
disposal to try some of those makeup
techniques or see if anything in your
closet that you might already wear has
the ability to confound or interfere
with these systems it's a really
important opportunity for us to try and
get as far ahead as we can before we
begin playing catch-up again
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