Somerville, Massachusetts Becomes The Second US City To Ban Facial Recognition Tech

from the pioneering-spirit-that-made-America-great dept

Is it a movement? Or just a couple of outliers that will forever remain on the periphery of the surveillance state? It's too early to say, but at least we can now say San Francisco isn't an anomaly.

Somerville, Massachusetts just became the second U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition in public space.

The "Face Surveillance Full Ban Ordinance," which passed through Somerville's City Council on Thursday night, forbids any “department, agency, bureau, and/or subordinate division of the City of Somerville” from using facial recognition software in public spaces. The ordinance passed Somerville’s Legislative Matters Committee on earlier this week.

Last month, San Francisco became the first city in the nation to ban the use of facial recognition tech by city government agencies. While it can't keep the federales from rolling in and deploying the software against city residents, it does prevent local law enforcement from deciding this is the tech toy it can't live without.

The ordinance passed in Somerville is pretty much the same thing. No local use, but federal-level use is OK. To be fair, the city can't regulate the activities of the federal government. It could have forbidden local agencies from working with federal agencies using facial recognition tech, but it didn't go quite that far.

This is a solid move, one that certainly looks smarter than allowing local cops to load up on tech that's been roasted by Congress and (still!) sports a pretty gaudy failure rate.

If other cities are interested in joining the very short list of facial recognition banners, activists have created a few road maps for governments to use. At the moment, the greatest chance for success appears to be at the hyper-local level. The ACLU says it all comes down to cities making the most of their limited power.

Kade Crockford, director of the technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in a phone call that at the state level, the ACLU is advocating for a moratorium or pause of facial recognition technology, while at the local level, the ACLU is advocating for bans.

“At the municipal level, it’s different,” Crockford said. “State governments have the capacity to regulate, whereas local governments really don’t. They don’t have the ability, for example, to create new institutions that could oversee, with sufficient care and attention, the implementation of an oversight or accountability system to guard against civil rights and civil liberties abuses.”

Generating momentum at the state level may be difficult until more cities are on board. If bans like these become more common, state legislators may respond favorably to wind direction changes and finally push back a bit against entrenched interests with an inordinate amount of power, like police unions and incumbent politicians with an authoritarian bent.

Somerville and its small network of 30 government-owned surveillance cameras may not seem like much, but a ban on the books is still effective if the city decides it needs to expand its set of eyes. And, as Vice News reports, it's not just small towns taking up San Francisco's anti-surveillance creep torch. Oakland -- which has already made major strides in curbing local government use of surveillance gear -- is considering a ban of its own.

Filed Under: ban, facial recognition, massachusetts, somerville

UK Government Screws Head On Straight, Bans Use Of Term 'Fake News' By Gov't Officials

from the stopped-clock-governance dept

A government has decided to handle "fake news" in about the only way it should be handled. FINALLY. While most governments appear willing to treat "fake news" legislation as a gateway drug to censorship, the UK government -- a government that certainly isn't known for its rational handling of speech issues -- is going the other way.

It's a decision that treats the term with all the respect it deserves: none.

The government has banned the term “fake news” after urging ministers to use “misinformation” or "disinformation" instead.

The phrase - a favourite of US President Donald Trump - will no longer appear in policy documents or official papers because it is “a poorly-defined and misleading term that conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign interference in democratic processes,” officials said.

This is a shocking development. While some government figures have recognized the term is divisive and generally means nothing more than "stuff I don't like," most have felt compelled to do something about it. A lot of this "something" has presented itself as pressure applied to social media platforms. For other governments with a more authoritarian bent, the term has proven to be a handy way to directly control new agencies and third-party content posted to social media services.

The UK's clearheaded stance isn't likely to be adopted by others. It returns too much control to citizens and strips the term of its power. But this is the way governments should approach the loaded term: by first admitting they have a problem. A nebulous term that acts as a partisan dog whistle should be eliminated from governments' vocabulary. As is suggested here, it should be replaced with clearly defined terms far less likely to be abused by politicians looking to score easy points in front of the home team crowd.

“We recommend that the Government rejects the term ‘fake news’, and instead puts forward an agreed definition of the words ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. With such a shared definition, and clear guidelines for companies, organisations, and the Government to follow, there will be a shared consistency of meaning across the platforms, which can be used as the basis of regulation and enforcement,” [the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Committee] stated.

This is a remarkable turnaround, considering only a few months ago DCMS members were going after Facebook for contributing to the "fake news that threatens our democracy." Included in this package of adopted recommendations is (surprise!) the abandonment of a social media tax targeting Facebook and Twitter -- two companies routinely blamed for the incredible amount of stupidity and misleading content posted by their users.

Some sanity has prevailed somewhere in the world. Let's try to enjoy that.

Filed Under: ban, disinformation, fake news, political, uk

DHS To Expand Foreign Laptop Ban If Overseas Airlines Won't Make Their Security More Theatrical

from the speak-loudly-and-keep-swinging-that-stick dept

The DHS and TSA are just going to keep making things worse. Despite there being almost no evidence of terrorists targeting planes, the DHS is looking to expand its laptop ban to cover even more incoming flights from foreign airports.

The Trump administration said Wednesday it will ban large electronics on flights to the United States altogether — on board, and in checked bags — unless airlines comply with new directives to ramp up passenger and baggage screening.

The mandate, announced by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, would affect 280 last-point-of-departure airports and as many as 2,000 daily international flights to the United States and potentially throw a huge wrench into business travelers' plans.

The original plan only targeted 10 airports -- mostly in the Middle East. This expansion would cause even more passengers to either leave their laptops/tablets behind, as this ban would prevent them from being placed in checked luggage.

What the DHS is looking for is transplanted security theater performances by foreign airline personnel. Not much was explicitly listed in DHS head John Kelly's speech on Wednesday, but a few DHS officials offered to fill the factual gaps in Kelly's rhetoric.

DHS officials said the agency is broadly pushing airlines and airports to "take the next step" in beefing up security — meaning using more canine teams, adopting more advanced screening technology and enrolling in a Customs and Border Protection pre-clearance inspection program.

And, as always, the burden will be borne by travelers. Airlines are being given some time to make these changes, but there doesn't appear to be a hard deadline for compliance. If foreign airlines don't live up to the DHS's expectations, passengers will presumably be informed about the fate of their electronic devices after they've already taken them to the airport. The DHS encourages foreign travelers to keep themselves apprised of these changes, but doesn't say how they're supposed to obtain this information when making travel plans. All that's being recommended is staying in "close contact" with their airline of choice, which sounds like the sort of pen pal relationship no one's in any hurry to engage in.

European officials are trying to stay on top of the DHS's constantly-shifting demands -- not out of fear of terrorist attacks, but because the laptop ban itself would make flying less safe.

European Commission officials have been especially vocal about their wish to avoid the ban and have repeatedly pointed out the fire risks associated with stacking laptops with flammable lithium batteries in planes' cargo holds…

I guess that's why Kelly wants a total ban. That solves the exploding battery problem, but does nothing for thousands of non-terrorists who need to bring their work with them when visiting the US.

There's no room for logic in security theater. What the US determines to be security best practices will be foisted on the rest of the world -- even though there's nothing in the history of the DHS and TSA suggesting faster, harder "security" will do anything more than irritate travelers.

Filed Under: ban, dhs, homeland security, laptops, security theater, tsa

This Makes No Sense: US To Ban Laptops On All Flights From Europe

from the yes,-but-wait-what? dept

Earlier this year we wrote about the nonsensical move by the Department of Homeland Security to ban laptops and tablets in the cabin on flights from a bunch of cities in the Middle East. The rumored reason was discoveries that terrorists had learned how to make bombs out of laptops. As we noted, this made almost no sense at all when you challenged any of the assumptions. But, never let logic and reason get in the way of a bit of inane security theater. Because now Homeland Security is about to announce that it's now banning laptops in the cabins on all flights from Europe (it's unclear if this will also apply on flights from the US to Europe, but it seems likely that European airports will reciprocate).

While this does answer one of the questions raised by the original ban ("why won't potential terrorists just fly out of other countries?") it still raises a host of other questions. Again: why won't this apply to flights from other countries? Or domestic flights? Or all flights? But, really, that just raises an even larger issue, which is that if you want to protect 100% of all flights 100% of the time from ever having a problem in which people might die, the answer is ground all flights and never let anyone fly anywhere ever. Problem solved. Of course, the cost of such a solution would be horrendous -- which is why we don't do it. But that's the key issue: all of these things involve tradeoffs. All too frequently, it appears that government officials -- especially those on the national security side of things -- don't care at all about the tradeoffs. They just care about blocking any possible attack no matter how unlikely or how remote the chance of such an attack might be, and without any consideration of the costs and inconveniences to everyone else. And, yes, it's reasonable to point out that a single attack would be very, very costly as well. And there's clearly a reason to protect heavily against attacks. But there's still a balance.

And there must be a better solution. If laptops are a risk factor, it's difficult to see how putting them in the cargo hold -- where there's no one to stop a fire -- is a better solution. Hell, most current airline rules require passengers to store all lithium ion batteries in carry-on luggage for exactly that reason. Putting them all in the hold would seem to increase the risk of accidental explosions and fires that might cause just as much, if not more, damage. And, of course, forcing people to give up their laptops has a secondary (but very serious) problem: for anyone traveling with sensitive information (lawyers, doctors, reporters, business execs, public officials, etc.) giving up your laptop is a massive security risk.

In other words, the "cost" of this solution is ridiculously high for a very large number of people, for whom flying to or from Europe has just become a massive inconvenience and tremendously problematic to justify given the personal risk. And for what? Vague and unclear threats about "possible" exploding laptops? I'm sure that no one wants to be on a flight with a laptop that will explode (whether on purpose or not), but there has to be a better way to tackle the problem than doing a blanket ban on laptops in the cabin. And, yes, perhaps this sounds like saying nerd harder back to Homeland Security, but this is a case where there clearly are more reasonable tradeoffs that can and should be explored, well short of inconveniencing everyone and creating a very different (but very serious) kind of security threat by forcing people to give up their laptops.

Filed Under: ban, computers, cost benefit, dhs, europe, homeland security, laptops, terrorism

Arizona Legislators Trying (Again) To Ban Traffic Cameras

from the exceptions-abound dept

Seven years after the idea was first proposed, it finally appears as though the state of Arizona might be on the verge of a traffic camera ban.

The movement to outlaw photo enforcement in Arizona advanced on Tuesday with a 5-4 vote in the state House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Members favorably reported a measure that repeals the existing state authorization for the use of red light cameras and speed cameras.

Well, sort of. The bill is still undergoing massive invasive surgery from entities unwilling to see this revenue stream dry up. Another proposal to scale back the state's reliance on traffic cam income moved forward after being limited solely to state highways -- basically killing off cameras in only two towns along those roads. This more expansive proposal is experiencing whatever the opposite of growing pains are. The exceptions to the proposed rule are turning the bill into a hollow shell of an idea, despite the ban having widespread support from the public.

During the debate on the issue, key committee members signaled their interest in the amending the measure so that it would allow continued use of speed cameras in school zones and unlimited use of red light cameras.

The good news is that several politicians who previously supported a very generous expansion of the state's traffic camera programs have now switched sides -- including one who is a co-sponsor of the new bill. Many of these legislators who backed this expansion campaigned as "supporters of liberty" but apparently secretly harbored a soft spot for cop-less traffic enforcement and the persuasive tactics of American Traffic Solution's lobbyists. After experiencing some backlash, these legislators are now backing the new bill, which may actually scale back use of some cameras if there's anything left when everyone's done rewriting it.

Those arguing for a less aggressive cutback are apparently willing to let individual locales undercut the intent of the proposed law entirely.

State Representatives Richard C. Andrade (D-Glendale), Charlene R. Fernandez (D-Yuma), Matthew A. Kopec (D-Tucson), Noel W. Campbell (R-Prescott) and Karen Fann (R-Prescott) each suggested that as long as a city council favors automated ticketing machines, they should be allowed to hire a private company to deploy them.

The other bill -- also approved by this committee -- is nearly completely useless as there are hardly any cameras in use on state highways.


And the state's history with traffic cams is far from comforting, especially if you're someone the cameras are going to be used against. Arizona used to have contracts with Redflex -- now under investigation for bribing government officials in thirteen states -- but dumped it just as it was handing it a "Governor's Award for Innovation." American Traffic Solutions wants to pick up the slack, but it's only a "better" choice in the sense that the company hasn't actually bribed government officials. Instead, it's been responsible for millions of dollars of dismissed tickets -- some because it never sent out notices in time and others because it kept "enforcing" school speed limits when the schools weren't actually in session. The latter is especially notable because the committee approving the bill wants to carve out an exception for school zone traffic enforcement.

With the public behind a ban on traffic cams, an exception-riddled bill that does little to scale back Arizona's use of the technology can't exactly be called "representational" of the public's views. But that's seemingly not going to stop their "representatives" from gutting it anyway.

Filed Under: arizona, ban, traffic cameras

DailyDirt: Warnings Are Not Hazardous To Your Health

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Cities have enacted laws against smoking, salt, sugar, trans fat... and it's raising awareness of these unhealthy habits. But is it really effective at improving general health? Maybe not. It's difficult to actually measure what effect these health warnings have when the result is essentially a decades-long experiment on participants that aren't monitored that well. However, smoking is down, diabetes is no longer on the rise, and consumption of sugary soda is also down. (NB: It probably wasn't warning labels alone that caused these trends.)

• NYC is starting to require a "salt warning" on restaurant menus for items that exceed 2,300 milligrams of sodium. While sodium intake can contribute to high blood pressure and complications, it's not clear that targeting salt intake alone is a silver bullet for improving health. [url]
• Too much sugar isn't healthy, and there's a surprising amount of "added sugar" in packaged foods. The website sugarscience.org is dedicated to informing everyone about the possible health impact of too much sugar in a diet. [url]
• Food labels warning about trans fat might not actually make us measurably healthier. Eaters gonna eat. But education can't hurt, right? [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our holiday gift ideas for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ban, diet, education, fat, food, food label, health, high blood pressure, policy, salt warning, sin tax, sugar

Turkey's YouTube Ban Breached Right To Information, Says European Court Of Human Rights

from the not-just-for-cat-videos dept

Last week Techdirt wrote about a curious case involving the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Gollum. In passing, Mike mentioned that the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) had just made an important ruling involving one of Turkey's many bans on YouTube. Here's what the ECHR found (pdf):

that there had been a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned the blocking of access to YouTube, a website enabling users to send, view and share videos.

The Court found in particular that the applicants, all academics in different [Turkish] universities, had been prevented from accessing YouTube for a lengthy period of time and that, as active users, and having regard to the circumstances of the case, they could legitimately claim that the blocking order in question had affected their right to receive and impart information and ideas.

One interesting aspect is how the court describes YouTube -- not just a place to find cat videos, but:

a single platform which enabled information of specific interest, particularly on political and social matters, to be broadcast. It was therefore an important source of communication and the blocking order precluded access to specific information which it was not possible to access by other means.

A post on Access Now points out that this latest decision is the second such ruling involving Turkey and the ECtHR -- Techdirt wrote about the earlier one back in 2012:

This ruling builds on the earlier ruling by the ECtHR in Yildrim v. Turkey (2012), which found against the Turkish practice of blocking entire sites and web services when content might have been illegal in only some instances. In the 2012 decision, the court recognized the claim of the owner of a service using Google Sites; in this case, the plaintiffs were not site owners, but users. In short, this ruling recognizes the rights and standing of internet users under the [European Convention on Human Rights]. The academics also successfully petitioned the court to recognize the concept of "citizen journalism" for the first time. This opens the door for more non-credentialed, unlicensed, or independent journalists and bloggers to fight for their rights.

Those broader implications make the win by the three Turkish academics even more valuable, since the ECtHR judgment can now be used to fight censorship in any of the 47 countries that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights (pdf).

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: ban, echr, europe, human rights, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey
Companies: youtube

Turkish Ministry Recommends Banning Super-Violent Minecraft

from the not-too-crafty dept

Insanely popular game Minecraft is known for a lot of things. It's a fantastic creative outlet and the digital sandbox of youngsters' dreams, for instance. The game has also been known to raise the ire of unrelated companies who somehow think all that creativity by gamers is something that can be sued over. It's known for amazing user-generated content, including games within games and replicas of entire cities. The nation of Turkey is known for very different things. It's a country that absolutely loves to censor stuff, for instance. And, thanks to recent developments, Turkey is also known as a great place to get a front-row look at the incredible violence done by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But the Turkish government has a plan to keep its youngsters from witnessing too much violence: it is calling for a Minecraft ban.

Turkish websites Hürriyet Daily News and LeaderGamer report that the country's Family and Social Policies Ministry is now calling for Minecraft to be banned in the region. The ministry's report has been sent to the legal affairs department, along with instructions for the legal process for the ban to begin. Ultimately, whether the game is banned or not will be decided in the Turkish courts.

When it comes to the issue of violence corrupting the national youth, one would really think that the Turkish government might have bigger fish to fry than a sandbox game in which battling fictional and non-human monsters is almost an aside from the actual gameplay mechanics. The point of the game is to build, to be creative, to express. For a Turkish government with the barbarians quite literally at its doorstep to call for censorship of one of the more benign gaming titles in recent memory would be comical if it were parody. But it isn't.

Nor are some of the hilariously contradictory claims to Ministry made in its report.

Although the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children by letting them build houses, farmlands and bridges, mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed in order to protect these structures. In short, the game is based on violence," the report stated (via Hürriyet Daily News). The ministry feels as though children may confuse the in-game world with the real world, and even begin torturing animals, oblivious to the pain they're inflicting. The report added that not only would Minecraft cause "social isolation," but that the online component might lead to internet bullying.

Ah, of course! It's a video game, so it has to create isolation amongst players, except it's a video game, so it must also create bullying problems because of the all the interacting going on between those isolated players. Don't think about that sentence for too long or your brain will storm out of your noggin in protest.

Turkey may be censorship happy, but going after Minecraft over violence concerns? C'mon guys...

Filed Under: ban, minecraft, turkey, violence

Interesting Strategy: Rockstar Games To Dump Cheaters Into A Game Where They Only Play Other Cheaters

from the trolls-with-trolls dept

Gamers who cheat are an issue that lots of online games have to deal with, though some are much more aggressive than others. In the past, we've argued that it's overkill to ban such players completely, especially when the "cheats" are really just exposing glitches or bugs in the game itself (i.e., fix the damn game, don't blame the players for your lousy coding). Either way, there's a legitimate concern that some people are getting an unfair advantage and harming the experience for everyone else. Well, now it appears that Rockstar Games has come up with a solution that's slightly more elegant than the sledgehammer of a complete ban. Instead, players caught cheating will be quarantined to a version of the game with each other. So, yes, you can keep playing, but only against other players who are cheating as well.

Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a "Cheaters Pool", where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants. In the event we decide to absolve any of these cheaters for their past transgressions they may re-enter play with the general public, however a second offense will result in their indefinite banishment. In either case, we will be removing invalid leaderboard entries to ensure that the players at the top of the charts have earned their spots fairly.

I am a little curious about the appeals process (it would be awesome if they built an in-game courtroom...), but overall, the solution seems a lot more sensible than outright bans. While some are wondering if some players may prefer this "Cheaters Pool," I don't see how that's a problem. It basically allows Rockstar to offer two different versions of the game, in which the skills required are slightly different.

Filed Under: ban, cheating, games
Companies: rockstar games