Wednesday, May 25, 2022

I disagree. There are too many organizations who want this technology for it to disappear.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/24/1052653/clearview-ai-data-privacy-uk/

The walls are closing in on Clearview AI

… “The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behaviour [New to me. Have I missed something? Bob] and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable,” said John Edwards, the UK’s information commissioner, in a statement.

Europe is working on an AI law that could ban the use of “real-time” remote biometric identification systems, such as facial recognition, in public places. The current drafting of the text restricts the use of facial recognition by law enforcement unless it is to fight serious crimes, such as terrorism or kidnappings.



(Related) Is a face match “identification” or must other steps be taken? (A face is not a name.)

https://www.insideprivacy.com/data-privacy/general-court-of-the-eu-finds-that-individual-was-unable-to-prove-that-information-published-online-constitutes-personal-data/

General Court of the EU Finds that Individual was Unable to Prove that Information Published Online Constitutes “Personal Data”

On May 4, 2022, the General Court of the EU handed down a decision that helps clarify the standard of proof required to demonstrate that information that does not identify someone by name constitutes “personal data” under EU data protection law. The court also clarifies that the burden of proof falls on the entity alleging that the information is personal data.



(Related) If not Clearview, someone...

https://www.databreaches.net/israeli-ministry-illegally-shared-biometric-images-of-millions-with-unknown-agency/

Israeli Ministry Illegally Shared Biometric Images of Millions With Unknown Agency

Josh Breiner and Bar Peleg report:

The Population and Immigration Authority illegally shared in the past seven years the facial images of millions of Israelis with an unnamed government agency.

The actions of the Interior Ministry division were disclosed in an official report published last week by Roy Friedman, the head of the Israel National Cyber Directorate’s Identity and Biometric Applications Unit.

Read more at Haaretz.



(Related) ...and not just facial recognition.

https://www.bespacific.com/how-dhs-massive-biometrics-database-will-supercharge-surveillance-and-threaten-rights/

How DHS Massive Biometrics Database Will Supercharge Surveillance and Threaten Rights

Immigration Defense Project – HART Attack: “The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is building a $6.158 billion-dollar, next-wave biometric database that will vastly expand its surveillance capabilities and supercharge the deportation system. The Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART) will collect, organize, and share invasive data on over 270 million people (including juveniles), with that number projected to grow significantly. This data will come from federal agencies including DHS and the FBI, as well as local and state police, and foreign governments. Powered by military-grade technologies, HART will aggregate and compare biometrics data including facial recognition, DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and voice prints—most often gathered without obtaining consent or a warrant. This will allow DHS to target immigrants for surveillance, raids, arrests, detention, and deportation. HART could be used to identify people in public spaces, creating chilling consequences for people’s rights to protest, assemble, associate, and to live their daily lives. HART threatens to violate human and privacy rights at an exponential rate, particularly in Black, brown, and immigrant communities already facing discriminatory policing and surveillance. Despite the terrifying risks, HART remains a black box—shrouded in secrecy with virtually no oversight and accountability mechanisms. Although only in phase one of its development, HART has become vastly more expensive than anticipated—generating massive revenues for first, Northrop Grumman (a military contractor), and now, Veritas Capital (a billionaire private equity firm). While troubling questions over its privacy and human rights violations remain, Congress continues to fund HART, even though it has failed to meet every milestone in its government contract.

Our report explains the dangers of HART by diving into the system’s mechanics, costs, and biometric and biographic data sources. We spotlight the companies profiting from HART’s development, and the agencies, private companies, and foreign governments that will contribute to and access its data. We outline the short- and long-term civil, privacy, and human rights risks. The underlying role and impact of HART will be to turbocharge DHS’ unchecked power—to approve or deny immigration benefits, assemble target lists for ICE raids, expand the tech border wall, and to facilitate surveillance, arrests, immigrant detention and deportation. For such reasons, we call on DHS to dismantle HART. We also call on Congress to freeze funds dedicated to HART as an interim step…”





Fear the legal AI!

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/05/the-legal-consequences-of-when-who-dun-it-becomes-what-dun-it/

The Legal Consequences Of When Who Dun It Becomes What Dun It

Elementary, my dear human.

You may have already been exposed to the fear that robots will take over the profession. This, of course, is a fringe concern for now. It is hard to give serious thought to the technological singularitys making human labor and thought obsolete when aging men who have difficulty opening Word documents still move and shake so much of the industry. Even if applications to law school are down ~10% compared to last year, its a far cry from 100%. As it stands, when pro se litigants are advised to consult a competent attorney, they usually ask around for a graduate of an accredited law school rather than Siri.

But not all fields are prepared for technological innovation, and one of them is patent law.





Isn’t this obvious?

https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-case-for-placing-ai-at-the-heart-of-digitally-robust-financial-regulation/

The case for placing AI at the heart of digitally robust financial regulation

… Thanks to digitization, regulators today have a chance to gather and analyze much more data and to see much of it in something close to real time.

The potential for peril arises from the concern that the regulators’ current technology framework lacks the capacity to synthesize the data. The irony is that this flood of information is too much for them to handle. Without digital improvements, the data fuel that financial regulators need to supervise the system will merely make them overheat.

Enter artificial intelligence.





Redefinition requires rethinking. Well, I (the non-lawyer) find it amusing…

https://abovethelaw.com/2022/05/will-fracking-advocates-and-pollutant-manufacturers-become-bedfellows-if-roe-is-overturned/

Will Fracking Advocates And Pollutant Manufacturers Become Bedfellows If Roe Is Overturned?

Oklahoma’s anti-abortion law that totally isn’t just a religious belief codified into law is the strictest abortion ban in the nation. And given that the whole separation of church and state thing isn’t enough, some folks have been decided to change strategies by playing chicken — you can define life at conception all you want, but are you actually ready for that?

will child support start At conception

can we take out life insurance on fetus

can you jail a pregnant person; fetus did not commit crime or get due process

does US citizenship start at conception

tax credit?

miscarriage requires death certificate

Can a person who has suffered recurrent miscarriages in Oklahoma sue companies that introduce chemicals into the environment with a known link to miscarriages? Can we look at, say, areas around manufacturing plants where chronic infertility is higher than the general population, conclude that the polluters are to blame, and file suit? I think we should.





Tools & Techniques.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/copilot-githubs-ai-powered-coding-tool-will-become-generally-available-this-summer/

Copilot, GitHub’s AI-powered coding tool, will be free for students

Last June, Microsoft-owned GitHub and OpenAI launched Copilot, a service that provides suggestions for whole lines of code inside development environments like Microsoft Visual Studio. Available as a downloadable extension, Copilot is powered by an AI model called Codex that’s trained on billions of lines of public code to suggest additional lines of code and functions given the context of existing code. Copilot can also surface an approach or solution in response to a description of what a developer wants to accomplish (e.g. “Say hello world”), drawing on its knowledge base and current context.

While Copilot was previously available in technical preview, it’ll become generally available starting sometime this summer, Microsoft announced at Build 2022. Copilot will also be available free for students as well as “verified” open source contributors. On the latter point, GitHub said it’ll share more at a later date.



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