COVID-19 Could Provide Cover for Surveillance Expansion

guest · Aug 2, 2020

New Ontario law requiring personal info for dining in prompts privacy concerns
Restaurants required to take names, contact info of diners to improve contact tracing
August 1, 2020
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/otta...o-law-personal-information-covid-19-1.5671145

Patrons in Ontario looking to dine out at restaurants, bars and even boat tours will soon need to provide their names and contact information under a new law intended to improve COVID-19 contact tracing, raising some concerns with a privacy expert.

The regulations come into effect next Friday and require everyone remain seated unless they're picking up food or going to the washroom. Their names and contact information will also have to be kept on file for 30 days.

"It seems every week we do get a whole new list of protocols that are put into place. Some of them reasonable, some of them not so reasonable, but we've been able to negotiate happy mediums for most of those protocols," said Bob Firestone, owner of the Blue Cactus Bar & Grill in the ByWard Market.
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End to anonymity, says expert
That raises some concerns for Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy at the University of Ottawa.
She understands why the government is introducing the regulations, after an uptick in cases linked primarily to bars, but believes it means the end to anonymous dining — at least for now.
Privacy laws dictate how to collect, destroy data
"You can't just scribble the names down and leave the sheet of paper sitting at the front entrance way. You have to securely store the information," she said. "You don't toss lists in the garbage. If they're handwritten lists, you shred them, or if they're on a computer, you make sure the file is properly deleted."
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guest · Aug 3, 2020

Singapore to make travellers wear electronic tags to enforce quarantine
August 3, 2020
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-h...onic-tags-to-enforce-quarantine-idUKKBN24Z0D9

Singapore will make some incoming travellers wear an electronic monitoring device to ensure that they comply with coronavirus quarantines as the city-state gradually reopens its borders, authorities said on Monday.

From August 11, the devices will be given to incoming travellers, including citizens and residents, from a select group of countries who will be allowed to isolate at home rather than at a state-appointed facility.
Similar measures using electronic wristbands to track peoples’ movements during quarantine have been used in Hong Kong and South Korea.

Any attempt to leave home or tamper with the device will trigger an alert to the authorities.
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Hong Kong in March introduced a scheme for incoming travellers to use a slim electronic wristband, similar to a tag worn by hospital patients, to enforce quarantines for arriving passengers. South Korea has also used such wristbands connected to smartphone apps for those who violate quarantine.
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guest · Aug 3, 2020

Some hospitals are tracking Covid-19 by adding sensors to employees’ badges
Now, for the first time, it’s tracking people’s movements
August 2, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/02/hos...with-badge-sensors-swipesense-technology.html

Around 50 hospitals today use a technology from a company called SwipeSense to monitor whether medical staff are washing their hands when they enter and exit patient rooms. Others use it to track expensive assets, like wheelchairs or IV pumps, which have a tendency to go missing.
Because of privacy concerns, SwipeSense has steered clear of monitoring people’s movements. That is, until Covid-19.

When hospitals started reporting that their staff had contracted the virus, SwipeSense’s chief executive Mert Iseri figured he could help.
So Iseri had the idea of adding sensors to staff badges, which they routinely wear on shifts. From there, the company could create a virtual floor map of sorts to track their movements, including to document potential exposure to Covid-19 inside the hospital.
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Aspects of the system might sound like Big Brother. Iseri, who’s well aware of the potential privacy and security implications, notes that the company and its customers are taking steps to alleviate the ‘creep’ factor.
Still, he acknowledges there are risks when it comes to monitoring people rather than things. And these kinds of tools can always get into the wrong hands.

“We have to be really thoughtful about the technology we’re building,” he said.
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guest · Aug 3, 2020

University mandates wearable COVID-19 tracker, sparking student protest
August 3, 2020
https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/03/...le-covid-19-tracker-sparking-student-protest/

Having opted to open both classrooms and residence halls, Michigan’s Oakland University will require residents and staff to wear COVID-19 trackers, a move that has led to a petition drive against the mandate.

Under the new rules, which students say were quietly introduced on a student life web page at the end of July, resident students “must wear a BioButton,” a device introduced in May to continuously monitor a person’s vital signs for 90 days.
Developer BioIntellisense says that the coin-sized, disposable device can track temperature, respiratory rate, heart rate, body position, sleep, and activity state with medical-grade accuracy, enabling monitoring of students, workers, and high-risk patients without their active participation.
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Unsurprisingly, the petitioning students object to being continuously tracked on and off campus, and are citing a collection of valid concerns, ranging from violations of personal privacy to religious objections, as well as the absence of any agreement to the new requirement.
While the petition isn’t demanding a stop to the use of BioButtons, it’s asking the university to make the trackers optional for staff and students, a step that would decrease the system’s efficacy — assuming that it works as expected.

As of press time, the petition has over 2,200 signatures, which represents over 10% of the university’s total student population of roughly 20,000.
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guest · Aug 5, 2020

Are they any use? With Europe's black-box coronavirus apps it's hard to tell
August 5, 2020
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-h...ronavirus-apps-its-hard-to-tell-idUKKCN2510O1

Europe’s experiment in using technology to fight coronavirus has achieved some early successes: millions of people have downloaded smartphone tracker apps and hundreds have uploaded the results of positive COVID-19 tests.

Yet most European countries so far lack solid evidence that their apps - which identify close contacts via Bluetooth connections with nearby users - are actually alerting people who may have caught the disease before they can infect others.
The reason? Design choices made by governments and their app developers to protect people’s privacy.

In Switzerland, for example, the Federal Office of Public Health acknowledged that “the effectiveness of the SwissCovid App is difficult to measure because of the ‘privacy by design’”.
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Switzerland is publishing daily updates (here) on downloads, active users and uploads of positive test results - now running at a rate of just over 10 a day. But, again, no monitoring of risk notifications is possible in its version of the Google-Apple setup. The two companies declined to comment for this article.

In Asia, China and South Korea have chosen more intrusive location-based contact tracing, while Singapore tried a Bluetooth app that, because it used a central server, did not work properly due to the privacy settings on Apple iPhones.
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guest · Aug 7, 2020

Don't stand so close: Singapore trials automated drones to check
August 6, 2020
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-h...rials-automated-drones-to-check-idUKKCN2521K7

Beware, Singaporeans standing too close, automated drones might be keeping an eye on you from above.
Singapore’s police have been trialling two pilotless drones developed by Israel’s Airobotics to help enforce social distancing measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19.

The three-and-a-half-month trial, over an industrial estate in the west of the city, is the first time automated commercial drones have been approved to fly over a major metropolis, according to Airobotics.

“Specifically for COVID, what we are doing is helping them maintain normal operations,” CEO Ran Krauss told Reuters. “The pandemic created a situation where it might be difficult for police to maintain operations.”
They can pinpoint locations and zoom into areas that might not be visible to police officers on foot or in vehicles, Senior Engineer Low Hsien Meng from HTX’s Robotics, Automation & Unmanned Systems Centre, said.
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Airobotics, which has raised $120 million in funding, said it had invested some $100 million to develop the drones.
Krauss said Airobotics is in talks with other cities to deploy the drones.
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guest · Aug 12, 2020

MLB Teams Explore Using Cameras to Detect Maskless Fans at Games
August 11, 2020
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...us-new-camera-tool-could-detect-maskless-fans

The baseball season has started with eerily empty stadiums, but some teams are exploring high-tech ways to verify that people in the stands are taking health precautions, a possible step toward bringing fans back.

Several Major League Baseball teams have held talks with a California startup called Airspace Systems Inc. that develops technology to detect whether people are wearing face masks, the league and the company said.
Representatives for Airspace and MLB declined to name the teams in talks to use the technology.
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The use of software to analyze people’s behavior on camera is contentious, too. Airspace’s system reviews people’s faces, but the results aren’t personally identifiable, the company said.

“We need to think about this as a larger societal issue,” she said. “Are we ushering in an era of constant surveillance for citizens, and when will that era end? We do need to have an endpoint if we are going to introduce these technologies for the control of disease.”
The software analyzes video from security cameras to determine whether certain areas might be “hot zones” for mask misuse.
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In an early experiment, the system was able to identify proper mask use with more than 80% accuracy, Banga said. Airspace said it has also held conversations with airports about testing the technology but declined to say which ones.
Banga dismissed privacy concerns.
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guest · Aug 13, 2020

Cry of privacy breach as Kerala cops tap call records of Covid patients
August 13, 2020
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...ds-of-covid-patients/articleshow/77514082.cms

[...] an ethical and legal storm with a controversial police decision to collect call detail records (CDR) of Covid-positive citizens and draw up “route maps” to trace those who came in contact with them.

Opposition parties and legal experts have termed the move a serious breach of privacy, citing the Supreme Court’s 2017 judgment in the K S Puttaswamy versus Union of India case.

“The decision to retrieve CDRs of infected citizens is a gross infringement on the right to privacy. The right to privacy of an individual has been explained in detail in the Puttaswamy case by the Supreme Court. The police can seek information in specific crime cases, but people cannot be put under surveillance in this manner. This is not a police state,” former state law secretary B G Hareendranath said.
The police justified the move as a necessary evil to fight the pandemic.
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Sources said some telecom service providers had been hesitant in sharing CDRs.
Vijayan said the data collected by the police won’t be used for any other purpose other than mentioned.
[...] What the opposition demands is that retrieving CDRs should be limited to contact tracing alone, [...] Let us see how this turns out.”

Prior to the police taking over contact tracing and preparing the route maps of Covid-19 patients, the health department used to rely on voluntary disclosure on who the person met and the places she or he visited.
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guest · Aug 17, 2020

Governments have collected large amounts of data to fight the coronavirus. That’s raising privacy concerns
August 17, 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/17/gov...ght-coronavirus-raising-privacy-concerns.html

Technology has enabled the world to respond quickly to the coronavirus pandemic — but solutions through mass data collection have also raised questions about privacy rights.

Digital check-in systems, wristband trackers and mobile applications are just some examples of the surveillance technology implemented by governments to monitor and track the movement of people as they seek to stem the spread of the virus.
However, though these measures have paved the way for efficient contact tracing, they harness the power of data in ways that put the privacy of individuals at risk.
Privacy spectrum
Different governments have leveraged different methods to varying degrees of effectiveness in fighting the pandemic. Some have been deemed more controversial than others.
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In addition to its contact tracing app, South Korea uses credit card information, phone call records and CCTV footage to form a more complete picture of the whereabouts and activities of its citizens.
Certain regions of India have also employed surveillance tools like their contact tracing app Aarogya Setu, phone records, camera footage and phone location data, in order to identify possible links to patients infected with coronavirus.
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hawki · Aug 18, 2020

"Phone apps were seen as a way to track covid-19. It hasn’t worked that way.

Some countries’ initiatives have drawn fire from privacy advocates, while others have been criticized as ineffective. And voluntary usage of the apps has lagged — possibly because of distrust..."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...ovidapps-715am-1-duplicate:homepage/story-ans

guest · Aug 18, 2020

No to Expanded HHS Surveillance of COVID-19 Patients
August 17, 2020
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/no-expanded-hhs-surveillance-covid-19-patients

The federal government plans to process more of our personal data, in the name of containing COVID-19, but without showing that this serious privacy intrusion would actually do anything to protect public health. EFF filed comments in opposition to these new plans from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

[...] CDC for decades has managed the federal government’s processing of personal data about infection. [...] But in July 2020, HHS stripped this tracking authority from the CDC, and transferred it to a new program called “HHS Protect.”
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HHS issued two new Systems of Records Notices (SORNs) about this new HHS program. The federal Privacy Act requires federal agencies to issue SORNs to advise people about personally identifiable information that the government maintains about them.
Unfortunately, HHS Protect poses a grave threat to the data privacy of all Americans.

New data sharing. The SORNs would allow sharing of these vast sets of data with additional federal agencies, unspecified outside contractors, and even “student volunteers.”
New data use. The SORNs would allow use of this data in litigation and “other proceedings” whenever the federal government has “an interest” in them (such use now is allowed only when HHS is a defendant in litigation).
New data storing. The SORNs would allow permanent retention of data with “significant historical and/or research value” (retention now is limited to four years).
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No doubt, the ongoing COVID-19 crisis requires a coordinated governmental response, which in turn requires robust data concerning the spread of the disease. But HHS has made no showing that CDC’s existing epidemiological data systems are not up to the task.

Thus, EFF filed comments with HHS, asking the agency to withdraw these two SORNs. They violate the Privacy Act and create new threats to privacy without any showing of public health benefit.
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guest · Aug 19, 2020

Covid app downloaded 100,000 times despite privacy concerns
August 18, 2020
https://nltimes.nl/2020/08/18/covid-app-downloaded-100000-times-despite-privacy-concerns

The Dutch government's coronavirus notification app CoronaMelder was massively downloaded on the first day of its release, despite warnings from the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) that the app does not guarantee users' privacy sufficiently.

The app launched on Android and iOS on Monday. Within a day, the app was downloaded over 100 thousand times from the Google Play Store, RTL Nieuws reports. The Apple store could not give the broadcaster figures yet, but CoronaMelder was in the top three most popular apps in the Netherlands all day.
The app is currently only functional in Drenthe and Overijssel, where it is being tested. The plan is to launch it Netherlands-wide in September.
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After the app became available to download on Monday, the AP issued a warning saying that the app still insufficiently guaranteed users' privacy, according to the broadcaster. No agreements had been made with Apple and Google about the use of their Bluetooth technology, on which the app works

In response, Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health said that the AP advice is "open to discussion" [...]
The state attorney also concluded that the AP was too strict in its criticism.

"The AP appears to pay relatively little attention in its advice to the extraordinary circumstances that prompted the development of the app," he said in a report, adding that he finds the advice "not necessarily convincing".
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guest · Aug 19, 2020

Fearing coronavirus, a Michigan college tracks its students with a flawed app
And students have no way to opt out
August 19, 2020
https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/19/coronavirus-albion-security-flaws-app/

Albion College, a small liberal arts school in Michigan, said in June it would allow its nearly 1,500 students to return to campus for the new academic year starting in August.
But less than two weeks before students began arriving on campus, the school announced it would require them to download and install a contact-tracing app called Aura, which it says will help it tackle any coronavirus outbreak on campus.

The Aura app lets the school know when a student tests positive for COVID-19.
But the feature requires constant access to the student’s real-time location, which the college says is necessary to track the spread of any exposure.

The school’s mandatory use of the app sparked privacy concerns and prompted parents to launch a petition to make using the app optional.
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Worse, the app had at least two security vulnerabilities only discovered after the app was rolled out. One of the vulnerabilities allowed access to the app’s back-end servers. The other allowed us to infer a student’s COVID-19 test results.
The vulnerabilities were fixed. But students are still expected to use the app or face suspension.

Exactly how Aura came to be and how Albion became its first major customer is a mystery. [...] founded in 2020, with no apparent history or experience in building or developing healthcare apps besides a brief mention in a recent press release.
Aura uses the student’s real-time location to determine if they have come into contact with another person with the virus.
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If a student leaves campus without permission, the app will alert the school, and the student’s ID card will be locked and access to campus buildings will be revoked, according to an email to students, seen by TechCrunch.
Students are not allowed to turn off their location and can be suspended and “removed from campus” if they violate the policy, the email read.
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guest · Aug 21, 2020

London Police snooped on personal health data 10,475 times in 4 months
August 19, 2020
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-police-covid-database-1.5690787

The London Police Service used a provincial database containing the personal health records of people who tested positive for COVID-19 at one of the highest rates in Ontario, snooping on private medical information 10,475 times between April and July.

Law enforcement gained the unprecedented power to access people's personal medical information when the database was shared by emergency order of the Ontario government in April, a period of heightened anxiety about the coronavirus pandemic when the caseload of new infections topped 400 a day.
The power was revoked by the Ontario government on July 22, but only after a group of legal and civil liberties organizations challenged the directive on the grounds that the police access to such data breached provincial privacy protections and was a violation of individuals' constitutional rights to privacy and equality.
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Public may not know COVID tests could be accessed by police

"It's really unprecedented to share such a blanket swathe of personal health information with law enforcement," said Abby Deshman, the director of the criminal justice program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), one of the legal groups that was a party to the lawsuit.
"I think that when people went to get their COVID test, they were being told this wasn't going to be shared with police. They weren't asked for permission."
Private medical data likely used to support charges
Deshman said police also more than likely used the data to support criminal charges.
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It's the second time this year the London Police Service has encountered controversy when it comes to surveillance techniques.
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guest · Aug 21, 2020

MPs criticise privacy watchdog over NHS test-and-trace data
UK information commissioner ‘must ensure government uses public’s data safely and legally’
August 21, 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ormation-commissioner-nhs-test-and-trace-data

A cross-party group of more than 20 MPs has accused the UK’s privacy watchdog of failing to hold the government to account for its failures in the NHS coronavirus test-and-trace programme.

The MPs have urged Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner, to demand that the government change the programme after it admitted failing to conduct a legally required impact assessment of its privacy implications.
In a letter signed by 22 MPs from four parties, the group calls on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to consider fining the government “if it fails to adhere to the standards which the ICO is responsible for upholding”.
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Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, another signatory, said: “The Johnson government brought this programme forward more quickly than was practical, and we are all paying the consequences. Privacy is fundamental to trust.”
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guest · Aug 22, 2020

Australian Army could have used drones to spy on Aussies
August 21, 2020
https://dronedj.com/2020/08/21/australian-army-could-have-used-drones-to-spy-on-aussies/

The plan to spy on Australians living in Victoria with drones during the COVID lockdown throughout the second wave was scrapped by the Australian Defense Force but drones were likely still being flown by the Victorian police force.

While the plan for the Australian Defense Force to use drones for public surveillance purposes was scrapped, state police were using the drones to aid in police presence in popular areas such as beaches and camping areas.

“We were getting reports … in that warmer weather period of lots of people congregating on the beaches in these populated areas. A drone provides that capability to actually provide that without deploying all these police to all of the areas.”
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Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews said he doesn’t know of any requests for military drones to be brought in but did share Victorian police have used the technology.
“I think Victoria Police have used some of that technology. They might have asked for some support that wasn’t forthcoming. I’m in no way critical of their decision to not provide that.”
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ZDNet: Police launch drones to make sure you're wearing a mask

As Covid continues to plague, will the police be tempted to take technological liberties? In Australia, they're trying
As 7News Melbourne reports, they're sending up drones to catch mask miscreants. They'll also be deputed to discover cars that have gone beyond five kilometers from home, in contravention of current laws.

However, one sentence from the 7News report offers a chilling thought: "There are concerns this style of policing won't end when the pandemic is over."
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guest · Aug 24, 2020

Airplane mode, prepaid SIMs: How some Israelis dodge COVID-19 tracking
August 24, 2020
https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/08...ms-how-some-israelis-dodge-covid-19-tracking/

Israel's cellphone surveillance for coronavirus contact-tracing may have overcome challenges by privacy watchdogs, but the state tracking policy is hard put to deal with low-tech evasion methods seemingly lifted from TV cop shows.

Some Israelis, fearing a quarantine order after unwittingly being near a coronavirus carrier, are rendering themselves untraceable while in public by switching their cellphones to "airplane mode" or using prepaid "burner" SIM cards instead.
Such actions are not illegal and, although there is only anecdotal evidence for their prevalence, they drew remonstration from Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel on Sunday.

"This is a problem," he said. "Ultimately, we are not a police state. We will not manage to compel the public to keep to the health regulations."
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Having been identified by their own cellphone locations, these potential new carriers are then ordered over SMS to self-isolate for a period of 14 days from the moment of exposure.
They also acknowledge a false-positive rate of around 16% [...]
Such instances may be overturned on appeal - a process that can take several days, during which the quarantine is in force.
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guest · Aug 28, 2020

California Moves Two COVID Privacy Bills Forward
August 25, 2020
https://dataprivacy.foxrothschild.c...eries-part-88-california-covid-privacy-bills/

Two bills dealing with processing COVID-19 data in California were referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Assembly Bill 660 prohibits data collected, received or prepared for purposes of contact tracing from being used or disclosed for any purpose other than facilitating contact tracing efforts. It also requires the data collected to be deleted within 60 days, unless that data is in the possession of a state or local health department.

Read the full text and check updated status.
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Assembly Bill 1782 regulates public health entities and businesses that provide technology-assisted contact tracing. It requires data collected and maintained in the course of fulfilling the duties of a TACT contract to be encrypted to the extent practicable. It also requires a business or public health entity offering technology-assisted contact tracing to provide a simple mechanism for a user to revoke consent for the collection, use, maintenance or disclosure of data and requires consent given to be revocable at any time.

Read the full text and check updated status.
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guest · Aug 28, 2020

Proctoring Apps Subject Students to Unnecessary Surveillance
August 20, 2020
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/proctoring-apps-subject-students-unnecessary-surveillance

With COVID-19 forcing millions of teachers and students to rethink in-person schooling, this moment is ripe for an innovation in learning. Unfortunately, many schools have simply substituted surveillance technology for real transformation. The use of proctoring apps—privacy-invasive software products that “watch” students as they take tests or complete schoolwork, has skyrocketed.

Through a series of privacy-invasive monitoring techniques, proctoring apps purport to determine whether a student is cheating.
Even if these features were successful at rooting out all cheating, which is extremely unlikely, what these tools amount to is compelled mass biometric surveillance of potentially millions of students, whose success will be determined not by correct answers, but by algorithms that decide whether or not their “suspicion” score is too high.
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Technology has opened up unprecedented opportunities for learning at a distance, and COVID-19 has forced us to use that technology on a scale never seen before. Yet schools must accept that they cannot have complete control of a student's environment when they are at home, nor should they want to.
Educational institutions will need to adapt fundamentally to distance learning.

Regardless, they should not rely on invasive proctoring apps to attempt to replace methods that only work in person.
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guest · Aug 29, 2020

Online school means online tests, along with computerized surveillance
August 29, 2020
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/29/tech/online-school-test-surveillance/index.html

When Amanda Kemper found out that artificial intelligence would help monitor students during her mechanical engineering class's final exam this summer, she was worried.

With remote learning came remote exams: Starting in July, the university let instructors use software from Honorlock, which is one of numerous companies that can record video — and much more — of students as they take tests, and uses AI to point out any behavior that looks like cheating.
She didn't like the idea of being recorded and having that recording sent to her professor. She has severe test-related anxiety and sometimes gets nauseous — what would happen if she suddenly had to run to the bathroom?

"It seemed like, amidst this crisis, this global pandemic happening, we were being propelled into the software that the university might not have done a lot of research on and students hadn't done the research on," she said.
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An explosion of interest
Honorlock declined an interview request from CNN Business, but several other online proctoring companies said business is booming, thanks to the pandemic.

Mike Olsen, founder and CEO of Proctorio, said that as of mid-August the company had proctored almost 9 million exams for the year, with the typically busy fall season just getting underway. It, too, proctored 5 million exams last year.
"When you compare April 2019 to April 2020, we experienced 900% growth," he said.
Suspicion levels
While putting the onus on course instructors rather than having AI make explicit decisions may make sense, it doesn't always lead to catching cheaters.
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guest · Aug 29, 2020

Libraries, Town Halls And DMVs To Use Facial Recognition/Thermal Imaging Kiosks
August 27, 2020
https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2020/08/libraries-town-halls-and-dmvs-to-use.html

The Concord Monitor's article about 50 businesses and 50 solutions on automated kiosks, is really an article praising a corporation for exploiting peoples fears during a pandemic.

"When the pandemic hit, the team at Advanced Kiosks realized that they had more opportunity for growth than ever before. With social distancing quickly becoming the norm, all sorts of businesses that had previously resisted automation were looking for innovative ways to deliver services without person-to-person interactions."
Advanced Kiosks growth is tied to giving the public an illusion of safety.

“We’ve been seeing people realize that they want to provide goods and services, but need to do it in a way that’s safe for patrons and staff,” said Jeff LeBlanc, director of user experience for Advanced Kiosks.
Government agencies want to install "Guardian Kiosks" in town halls and DMVs across the country.
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A standard feature of Guardian Kiosks is that they come with a "facial recognition library of 30,000 faces; with optional stranger detection."
Advanced Kiosks made it easy for government agencies and businesses to access the cloud. In other words, Guardian Kiosks will have access to any number of facial recognition databases.

When the public sees businesses using Guardian Kiosks, they will no doubt think that libraries, schools, hospitals, department stores, restaurants and movie theaters care about their safety by checking everyone's temperatures.
But that feeling of safety is quickly exposed as just another way to identify and track the public through facial recognition.
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guest · Aug 31, 2020

mood said: ↑

Plans for coronavirus immunity passports should worry us all
June 8, 2020
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/uk-immunity-passports-coronavirus
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California: Tell Your Senators That Ill-Conceived “Immunity Passports” Won’t Help Us
August 25, 2020
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/...ill-conceived-immunity-passports-wont-help-us

Californians should not be forced to present their smartphones to enter public places. But that’s exactly what A.B. 2004 would do, by directing the state to set up a blockchain-based system for “immunity passports”: a verified health credential that shows the results of someone’s last COVID-19 test, and uses those to grant access to public places.

By claiming that blockchain technology is part of a unique solution to the public health crisis we’re in, AB 2004 is opportunism at its worst.
While the latest version of A.B. 2004 steps back from previous plans to create a pilot program for immunity passports, it’s still written to push a hasty and poorly planned system onto Californians.
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But the bill says nothing about how long a credential should be valid, how it should be updated, or how it can be revoked if you’re exposed or even infected after you receive the passport.
EFF also opposes the very purpose of these credentials which, according to the bill's fact sheet and official analysis, is to identify those who should be excluded from workplaces, travel, and "any other processes."

Finally, by suggesting deploying credentials that rely on having a smartphone to control access to public spaces, A.B. 2004 would limit those without smartphones—often lower-income Californians—from being able to move freely.
[...] As Mozilla wrote in its blog post opposing an earlier version of the bill [...]
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EFF: Immunity Passports Are a Threat to Our Privacy and Information Security (May 28, 2020)

Immunity passports would threaten our privacy and information security, and would be a significant step toward a system of national digital identification that can be used to collect and store our personal information and track our location.
Immunity passports are purportedly intended to help combat the spread of COVID-19. But there is little evidence that they would actually accomplish that.
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guest · Sep 5, 2020

Covid-19 Exposure Logging: Key Privacy Considerations
September 3, 2020
https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-s...-exposure-logging-key-privacy-considerations/

Recently, both Apple and Google released new updates for iPhone and Android devices. One feature that was added was “Covid-19 Exposure Logging.” The feature is off (for now), and according to the text that accompanies the app, when turned on, it is set to communicate via Bluetooth to other devices.
It is somewhat ingenious and covertly sinister to use Bluetooth as the communication mechanism.

Contrary to the advice of some security folks, so many people have fitness trackers, headphones and smartwatches connected at all times that it would be impractical to turn Bluetooth off.
An Anonymous Contributor
Whilst it’s great to hear that Apple/Google collaborated on this project, there are still some questions on how effective they can be. I don’t have the answers because it’s a hard topic. Sharing movements, tracking interactions and essentially mapping our lives is a scary thought
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David Bisson, @DMBisson
It’s unclear to me why Apple came out with this feature when it did. On August 24, 9to5Mac.com found that only six states [...]had committed to using Apple’s Exposure Notification API for COVID-19 tracing.
That begs the question: why create this API without the commitment from more public health authorities that their states will ultimately use it?
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guest · Sep 6, 2020

Philippine police draw flak for plan to monitor social media on quarantine
September 6, 2020
https://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCAKBN25X05E-OCATC

Philippine police drew criticism from netizens and activists on Sunday for a plan to monitor social media to enforce quarantine rules, with critics accusing the authorities of authoritarianism and double standards.

National Police Lieutenant General Guillermo Eleazar, head of a task force enforcing quarantine protocols, warned of fines and penalties of community service for people violating precautionary measures, while violators of liquor bans will face “additional charges”.

“Police could use public postings on social media as leads, and these will be over and above the police visibility operations we are conducting and will complement tips we get from police hotline,” Eleazar told Reuters by phone.
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The plan to monitor social media, announced on Saturday, seems to show the police agency “wants to use the pandemic to turn us into a police state, where every action is being watched by the authorities,” Renato Reyes, secretary general of left-wing activist group Bayan (Nation) said on Twitter.
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guest · Sep 9, 2020

Schools Are Buying Up Surveillance Technology to Fight COVID-19
But will it actually prevent an outbreak?
September 8, 2020
https://themarkup.org/coronavirus/2020/09/08/school-reopening-surveillance-contact-tracing

Fayette County Public Schools, a 24-school district in Georgia, reopened its classroom doors last month. As at many schools around the country, officials in Fayette have concerns about safely bringing students back to school amid a pandemic—and they’re turning to surveillance technology for help.

The school district recently made a deal to purchase up to 75 cameras equipped with thermal imaging. The cameras, made by Hikvision, a Chinese provider of facial recognition tools and other surveillance equipment, cost $7,000 each and rapidly estimate temperatures to monitor potential viral spread on school grounds.

“The Hikvision cameras will only be used to measure an individual’s temperature to help eliminate the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses that may cause fever,” Melinda Berry-Dreisbach, a spokesperson for the district said in an email to The Markup.
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Berry-Dreisbach said the cameras will not be used for facial recognition or other automated identification purposes, and temperature readings will be stored on the school’s local network and eventually deleted.

But is this surveillance technology useful at preventing an outbreak? Privacy advocates say no—and also worry that expensive technology installed during the pandemic could be used to track students long after it subsides.

“Either trying to provide education remotely or trying to invest huge sums in manual contact tracing and really restrictive measures.”
“Technology firms offer this seemingly incredible option,” he said. But for him, it’s just that—not credible.
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