#mass-surveillance

#mass-surveillance

There are few things everyone can rally behind as much as finding a lost dog. But what if that mission is actually a workaround for mass surveillance? That's the question many people are asking following a Super Bowl commercial from Ring, Amazon's doorbell camera and home security brand. The 30-second video shows a series of missing dog posters and claims that 10 million pets go missing every year.

During Super Bowl LX, one of the coveted ad slots went to home security company Ring. With the commercial, Ring announced a new AI-driven feature that accesses all cameras in a neighborhood to help find lost pets. According to the spokesperson in the commercial, a Ring owner would simply have to post a photo of their pet in the Ring app, and that post would force outdoor cameras to begin searching for visual matches in the area. The new featured has been dubbed Search Party.

A judicial review against the Metropolitan Police's use of live facial recognition (LFR) will argue the force is unlawfully deploying the technology across London, without effective safeguards or constraints in place to protect people's human rights from invasive biometric surveillance.

The government surveils you every time you drive through San Jose, collecting a trove of highly revealing data that police search thousands of times per month without ever seeking a warrant. It's an unchecked police power, an end run around judicial oversight and a blatant privacy invasion. It's also a violation of the California Constitution. That's why we at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with ACLU of Northern California, have sued the city, its police chief and its mayor.

In a recent interview, Alex Karp said that his company Palantir was the most important software company in America and therefore in the world. He may well be right. To some, Palantir is also the scariest company in the world, what with its involvement in the Trump administration's authoritarian agenda. The potential end point of Palantir's tech is an all-powerful government system amalgamating citizens' tax records, biometric data and other personal information the ultimate state surveillance tool.

In 2025, Trump administration officials-primarily at the Departments of State and Homeland Security-created a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by noncitizens lawfully present in the U.S. Using AI and other automated technologies, the program has surveilled the social media accounts of visa holders and lawful permanent residents...

Microsoft launched a review on August 15, shortly after the Guardian article was published. According to Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith, the review is based on two principles that the company applies worldwide. Firstly, not supplying technology for the mass surveillance of citizens. And secondly, protecting the privacy rights of customers. He emphasized that Microsoft is not a country or a government, but a company that independently determines which products and services it offers.

The laws create a new interconnected intelligence system dubbed the Central Intelligence Platform, under which intelligence and security agencies at all levels of government -federal, state and municipal-have the power to access, from any entity public or private, personal information for "intelligence purposes," including license plate numbers, biometric information, telephone details that allow the identification of individuals, financial, banking, and health records, public and private property records, tax data, and more.

Walk down the street and you're likelyto be recorded by one of thousandsof security cameras, some belongingto the New York Police Department,others just connected or available to the department's databases. Drive into the city and traffic cameraswill automatically photograph your car, capturing your vehicle's license plate, make, model, color, distinctive markings and even passengers. Post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok and the N.Y.P.D. can scrape and store your messages, capturing your thoughts, plans, political statements and friend groups.