Technology as a surveillance tool.

Good afternoon and welcome back to another post from ToBeSecured. It’s relieving and heart warming to know my subscribers are learning and finding information for themselves. Thank you to those of you who are adequately relaying information to me via social media, the internet, and other news sources. I find it helpful when my team helps me to generate stories and topics to discuss. Please continue to educate yourselves and one another on how we can become more secured in a world where our privacy is threatened by technology.

Do you believe technology is a gift and a curse? Have you ever talked about something and seen it on social media the same day, not long after you were discussing it? Seemed unreal right? Our lives are being watched according to the latest news. There’s a video, which I’ll insert a link to, that discusses how companies, agencies, and governments are all collecting our data without our consent using biometrics.

First of all, I would like to applaud the privacy experts and everyone who is working diligently to uphold the standards of the constitution, privacy laws, and principalities of life when it refers to technology. There are certain standards that should be left as is and we as people must make sure they’re unchanging. If it was accustomed, we wouldn’t be discussing this issue and we would have knowledge about what is happening, in addition to our consent being given. Unfortunately, here we are.

So when I initially received the video, it was sent by a friend and they immediately thought about the privacy issues I cover on my blog and how meaningful this would be to and for me. The video is titled “AOC is taking on Big Tech for selling facial recognition data“. AOC are the initials for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an American politician and activist who serves as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district. She begins the video speaking about how right now Amazon can scan our faces without consent and sell it to the government without our knowledge. She then seeks unanimous consent on how Amazon met with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials over facial recognition system that could identify immigrants. She then follows up with another question “And Ms. Garvie, in fact, it’s not just Amazon that’s doing this, right? It’s Facebook, Microsoft, it’s a very large amount of tech companies, correct?”. Ms. Garvie then answers “That’s correct”. The continuation of the conversation can be found in the link inserted from YouTube. I recommend watching it and learning about how these algorithms are affecting our privacy.

After watching the video, I felt violated, threatened, and angry of course. I received this video last Thursday and made it a priority to draft up a post on today and release it to you all. How do you feel knowing your life is no longer private? What are you willing to do to protect the future lives of younger adults, kids, and yourselves?

In addition to the video, after doing some research I was reluctant on how I would approach this topic. I came across an article from The Washington Post titled “FBI, ICE find state driver’s license photos are a gold mine for facial-recognition searches”. Agents from the FBI and ICE have turned databases from the DMV into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through millions of Americans‘ photos without their knowledge and consent. The information in the article is tied into the same statements AOC released in the video. Police have long had access to fingerprints, DNA and other “biometric data” taken from criminal suspects. But the DMV records contain the photos of a vast majority of a state’s residents, most of whom have never been charged with a crime.

Since 2011, the FBI has logged more than 390,000 facial-recognition searches of federal and local databases, including state DMV databases, the Government Accountability Office said last month, and the records show that federal investigators have forged daily working relationships with DMV officials. The FBI’s facial-recognition search has access to local, state and federal databases containing more than 641 million face photos, a GAO director said last month. But the agency provides little information about when the searches are used, who is targeted and how often searches return false matches. The software’s precision is highly dependent on a number of factors, including the lighting of a subject’s face and the quality of the image, and research has shown that the technology performs less accurately on people with darker skin.

It is absolutely outrageous how right now these governments and agencies are able to essentially steal or use our biometric data from us without our consent. We are supposed to have a right to privacy and be protected by laws and constitutions. After all, we live in America. These algorithms and technologies are specifically designed by and intended for white men. And they’re trying to sell it and exploit it on the entirety of the country. The FBI has not tested their system’s accuracy under conditions that are closer to normal, such as when a facial search returns only a few possible matches. Instead, the FBI said it’s system is 86 percent accurate at finding the right person if a search is able to generate a list of 50 possible matches, according to the GAO. These inaccuracies of facial recognition definitely pose a heightened danger of misidentification and false arrests. The public does not have a way of controlling what information the government has on them, and there are very few guidelines and protections for people, which place our sensitive information and data at the fingertips of others. Why do you think it has come to this? Are these companies suffering any consequences? Will they continue to use and sell our data “inadvertently”?

If you would like to discuss further, please leave a comment or ask a question. I'd love to chat with my readers and hear your thoughts. Thank you for dropping in and remember ToBeSecured!