Olives @olives@qoto.org

https://libertyinvestigates.org.uk/articles/police-secretly-conducting-facial-recognition-searches-of-passport-database/

"Police forces have been secretly conducting hundreds of facial recognition searches using the UK’s database of 46 million British passport holders, it can be revealed.

Policing minister Chris Philp sparked fresh alarm among privacy campaigners at the Conservative Party conference in October when he announced plans to instruct officers to use passport photos to identify suspects in all burglaries, thefts and shoplifting, as part of a Home Office drive to increase police use of facial recognition.

However, Liberty Investigates can reveal the practice has been secretly taking place since at least 2019, according to a freedom of information (FOI) request – with searches dramatically ramping up in the months prior to Philp’s speech.

Data obtained from the Home Office shows forces searched the UK passport database – which contains the images of all 46 million British passport holders – using facial recognition technology more than 300 times in the first nine months of 2023. Forces have also carried out searches of the UK immigration database, which holds information on foreign nationals."

#privacy

https://web.archive.org/web/20240108091404/https://rm.coe.int/0900001680ad5b97 A case about prisoners being granted leave to attend the funerals of relatives.

There also appears to be an ECHR case against Russia for the "mysterious set of deaths" which seem to be happening to people who criticize the president.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240107132330/https://rm.coe.int/0900001680ad98ff Apparently, the indefinite retention of biometrics by police violates the European Convention on Human Rights (#ECHR). Yes, a British case, lol. #privacy

Someone seems to think VR is a new idea.

VR is not a new idea. It's an idea from the 90s which has been warmed up more recently.

For another 2023 highlight, there was the "metaverse". A "platform" which next to no one uses.

For whatever reason, government officials have some wild fantasy of censoring and controlling things, so they started imagining it up as some bigger than life thing. We saw it mentioned at CoE. We saw it mentioned at World Government Summit 2023, where it was described as some world shaking technology which will revolutionize countless fields. We also saw a would-be censor in a country I won't mention for now chasing it, along with a bunch of other highly speculative technologies, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). What's up with that?

If you have any inkling about UX though, it's not hard to understand why it won't takeover the world...

Now, it is hard to say it is absolutely useless, there are a few novel games which use VR headsets, perhaps, that'll go somewhere, although it also may not. However, this dream of having everyone run conferences or their lives out of the #metaverse is assuredly nonsense. The worst one being Facebook's metaverse which removes many of the positive benefits which someone might actually get out of the technology. Hell, it took an eternity for people to even get a bottom half to their bodies, and as is often the case, Mark Zuckerberg was ridiculed for being scared of sex.

We also saw concerns about privacy being voiced, likely largely stemming from Facebook's long history of... Not really being kind when it comes to privacy. Right now, the subject appears to have gone quiet for quite a number of months, which I suppose is probably a good thing. I also went into how bad faith actors were trying to conflate fictional content with reality*.

* https://qoto.org/@olives/111191543236620885

Hah, there are any number of things I could write a dive about. It would be absolutely exhausting to chase all of them though.

Did you know that Dominic Raab wanted to replace the British Human Rights Act with a fake rights bill which made it far harder for someone to challenge a violation of their rights and which also deletes the freedom of expression and makes it about literal speech instead?

And then, when he polled people, around 90% of the population was against it, and it was quietly scrapped?

The argument against prohibition right now is stronger now than it ever was (and it's only going to get stronger, judging by what I've seen).

It's pretty much come out of nowhere after being settled for quite some time. I don't really want to open the can of worms right now though.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-urges-pennsylvania-supreme-court-find-keyword-search-warrant-unconstitutional

"Keyword warrants that let police indiscriminately sift through search engine databases are unconstitutional dragnets that target free speech, lack particularity and probable cause, and violate the privacy of countless innocent people, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other organizations argued in a brief filed today to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Everyone deserves to search online without police looking over their shoulder, yet millions of innocent Americans’ privacy rights are at risk in Commonwealth v. Kurtz—only the second case of its kind to reach a state’s highest court. The brief filed by EFF, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), and the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (PACDL) challenges the constitutionality of a keyword search warrant issued by the police to Google. The case involves a massive invasion of Google users’ privacy, and unless the lower court’s ruling is overturned, it could be applied to any user using any search engine.

“Keyword search warrants are totally incompatible with constitutional protections for privacy and freedom of speech and expression,” said EFF Surveillance Litigation Director Andrew Crocker. “All keyword warrants—which target our speech when we seek information on a search engine—have the potential to implicate innocent people who just happen to be searching for something an officer believes is somehow linked to a crime. Dragnet warrants that target speech simply have no place in a democracy.”"

#privacy

I see people comparing ideas for "AI assistants" to Clippy, lol.