Recently, police forces have come under criticism for their engagement of facial recognition technologies. But pandemic response plans may increasingly incorporate surveillance.
South Korean is one of the most surveilled countries in the world.
Yonhup/EPA
Research reveals a complicated relationship between surveillance and freedom, as surveillance activities allow for greater autonomy for women hoping to work in Jordan.
The Bank of Canada is proposing a federally managed digital currency that flies in the face of the decentralized approach to money that cryptocurrencies have established.
‘Smart cities’, featuring networks of automatic lights, video cameras and environmental sensors, have been hailed as an enhancement to urban life. But they are also tools of surveillance and control.
Amazon says it has considered adding facial recognition technology to its Ring doorbell cameras. Some politicians are concerned Ring’s video-sharing partnerships with police departments encroach on people’s privacy and civil liberties.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Jessica Hill
Amazon says it’s the “new neighbourhood watch” but Ring may just be another technology that gives police too much data and lets neighbourhoods double down on their biases.
Although surveillance technologies appear to be race-neutral, modern police surveillance technologies do not operate outside racial bias.
(ShotSpotter)
Rather than helping and providing new unbiased tools for policing, police surveillance technologies tend to be reactionary and biased.
A photograph taken by Stasi operatives of suspected defectors at an abandoned restaurant in Kreuzberg, Berlin, in 1962.
Stasi Records Agency Berlin/Bild
30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, covert surveillance images offer us an unparalleled look at the lives of people trying to escape from the east to the west.
Uighurs wait in line at a face scan checkpoint in Turpan, Xinjiang in northwest China on April 11, 2018.
Darren Byler
An anthropologist who interviewed Uighurs in China found different ways in which Chinese authorities used checkpoints, social media and smartphones to identify, categorize and control this group.
Toohey writes, among other things, about laws hustled through parliament in recent years that hamper journalistic inquiry.
Shutterstock
Researchers examined how youth on three continents think about digital technology today and conducted an experiment to learn what youth said after living without their phones for a week.
Ever more Americans are using digital cameras to keep an eye on elderly relatives who live in nursing homes. This surveillance may violate patients’ privacy and demoralize their caretakers.
ParentsNext requires places like libraries and public pools to monitor parents’ attendance at activities. This undermines their role as spaces of inclusion and support.
The dominant reading of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984” has been that it was a dire prediction of what could be.
Denis Hamel Côté
In the year 1984, there was self-congratulatory coverage that the dystopia of the novel had not been realized. However, an expert argues that the technologies described in the novel are here and watching us.