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October 7, 2024: Silkie Carlo, director, Big Brother Watch

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Today: Silkie Carlo, director, Big Brother Watch

Big Brother Watch, based in London, is working to “roll back the surveillance state.” The group’s director, Silkie Carlo, explains why privacy matters, and why technologies like facial recognition and digital currency are so dangerous to democracy.

• Big Brother Watch

• BBW’s 2022 report The Streets Are Watching: How Billboards Are Spying on You (or see the PDF):

Many digital billboards are now equipped with high definition cameras that can monitor the public space in front of them. Some of these cameras go beyond simple video recording and contain technology that can detect and analyse somebody’s face, their characteristics or what they are wearing so adverts can be tailored to specific kinds of people.

. . . In since-removed promotional material, ALFI claimed that taxi drivers could make £250 ($350) a month by installing the face-scanning tablets in the back of their vehicles, which is a significant amount of money compared to average driver incomes. Uber drivers in London make an average of £25,000 a year according to the employment transparency website Glassdoor. Additional payments that could add 10 per cent to an average driver’s salary would be an attractive offer for anybody.

• License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of Political Lawn Signs and Bumper Stickers (Wired, Oct 3, 2024):

A search result for the license plates from Delaware vehicles with the text “Trump” returned more than 150 images showing people’s homes and bumper stickers. Each search result includes the date, time, and exact location of where a photograph was taken.

. . . Increasingly, CCTV cameras are being equipped with AI to monitor people’s movements and even detect their emotions. The systems have the potential to alert officials, who may not be able to constantly monitor CCTV footage, to real-world events. However, whether license plate recognition can reduce crime has been questioned.

• A Russian Smartwatch-Enabled Assassination & US Army Apple Watch Warning (Watches of Espionage, Sep 17, 2024):

Ukrainian Intelligence Services used smartwatch data to assassinate a Russian naval commander during his morning jog. The US Army released a Counterintelligence warning to the US Military.

. . . according to an Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) bulletin from June 2023, service members across the military received unsolicited smartwatches in the mail, devices that auto-connected to wifi and other nearby devices. According to the report, the devices included malware that “accesses both voice and cameras, enabling actors to access conversations and accounts tied to smartwatches.” A report from Kaspersky, a cybersecurity company, suggests that the accelerometer data that tracks the movement of your wrist can be analyzed to determine passwords and credit card numbers.

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