• 
• 10 min
• The Washington Post
• 2019

Law enforcement officials at Federal and state levels, notably the FBI and ICE, use state driver’s license photo databases as a repository for facial recognition software. Such capabilities allow DMVs to help law enforcement in finding those suspected of a crime, undocumented immigrants, or even witnesses. Ultimately, states allow this to happen with certain stipulations, feeding into a concerning system of facial recognition and breach of trust. There is not a solid established system for citizen consent to such monitoring.

• Data Privacy
• Civil Surveillance
• Computer Vision
• Biometrics

• 
• 5 min
• Wired
• 2019

Axon’s novel use of an ethics committee led to a decision to not use facial recognition programs on the body cameras which they provide to police department, on the basis of latent racial bias and privacy concerns. While this is a beneficial step, companies and government offices at multiple levels debate over when and how facial recognition should be deployed and limited.

• Civil Surveillance
• Algorithmic Bias
• Computer Vision

• 
• 28 min
• Cornell Tech
• 2019

Pre-trial risk assessment is part of an attempted answer to mass incarceration. Data sometimes answers a different question than the ones we’re trying to answer (data based on riskiness before incarceration, not how dangerous they are later). Essentially, technologies and algorithms which end up in contexts of social power differentials can often be abused to further cause injustice against people accused of a crime, for example. Numbers are not neutral and can even be a “moral anesthetic,” especially if the sampled data has confounding variables that collectors ignore. Engineers designing technology do not always envisage ethical questions when making decisions that ought to be political.

• Civil Surveillance
• Algorithmic Bias
• Machine Learning

• 
• 5 min
• The New York Times
• 2019

In New York City, biometrics were used as a step in the investigation process, and thus combined with human oversight to help identify criminals and victims alike.

• Civil Surveillance
• Machine Learning
• Biometrics

• 
• 10 min
• Field of Vision
• 2017

Video criticising the AT&T and NSA partnership, which allowed the NSA to spy on the UN, the World Bank, etc, by installing its surveillance equipment in AT&T hubs.

• Data Privacy
• Civil Surveillance
• Smartphones
• Networks

• 
• 7 min
• The New York Times
• 2019

ICE, along with other law enforcement agencies, mined state driver’s license databases using facial recognition tech to track down undocumented immigrants and prosecute more cases.

• Data Privacy
• Civil Surveillance
• Computer Vision
• Object Recognition
• Data Mining